I have a canteen; the Gendarme, who has had some business training, is to work in the office. My canteen is in Saint Thiebault, the village next door. In the morning I go down the hill, past the grey houses built like steps on either side—some with odd pear trees, their branches trained gridiron-wise flat against the fronts,—over the river Meuse, here a sleepy little stream, to Saint Thiebault. On the way I pass lads in olive drab with whom I exchange a smile and a hello, villagers bare-headed, in sabots, and poilus in what was once horizon blue. In Paris the uniforms were all so beautiful and bright, but here at Bourmont one sees the real hue, faded, discolored, muddy, worn. The soldiers, middle-aged men for the most part, slouch about, occupied with homely, simple tasks, chopping wood and drawing water. One feels there is something painfully improper in the fact that they should be in uniform; they should, each and every one, be propped comfortably in front of their own hearthsides reading _l’Echo de Paris_, in felt slippers while their wooden shoes rest on the sill outside. And yet these very ones, I think as I look at them, may be the defenders of Verdun, the victors of the Marne, the veterans of a hundred battles! The Bourmontese, who are proud and haughty folk, and call themselves a city though they number only a few hundred souls, look with disdain on the smaller village of Saint Thiebault, _Saint Thiebault des Crapauds_ they call it, Saint Thiebault of the Toads. Approaching Saint Thiebault one sees two unmistakable signs of American occupancy; first, a large heap of empty tin cans and then the Stars and Stripes fluttering from a flag pole in the centre of the village. For Saint Thiebault is Regimental Headquarters and it is the boast of the old Colonel that wherever the regiment has gone that flag has gone too. Down the main street of the town I go, past the drinking fountain placarded; “Do not drink, good only for animals,” but at which, nevertheless, the doughboys frequently refresh themselves, cheerfully risking death, not to mention a court-martial, in order to get a drink of unmedicated water; and out along the Rue Dieu until I turn off the highway just beyond the village wash-house. The wash-house, known to the French as _la Fontaine_, is a beautiful little building like a tiny stone chapel, with tall arched windows filled with iron grills. Through the centre runs a long oblong pool; at its brim the women kneel to do their scrubbing, handsome peasant wenches many of them, with fresh, high coloring. Often one sees a soldier leaning against the grill, engaged in some attempt at gallantry through the bars. Sometimes one even glimpses a form in olive drab kneeling by the side of one of the peasant girls, he scrubbing his socks, and she her stays, while she gives him a lesson in French and in laundering _à la Française_. When the Americans first came to Saint Thiebault they had only a small-sized guard-house. Then came one