Tonight one of the secretaries told us that, as he was standing by the roadside watching while we ladled out the chocolate, one of the boys said to him: “I’m thinking of a toast.” “And what might that be?” “God bless American women,” the boy answered him. Rattentout, March 16. When we reached the station-house this morning we found everyone agog over the night’s events. The detraining had gone on all night; at first without incident. All precautions had been taken, no one was allowed to so much as light a match. About midnight one of the marine soup-kitchens had been unloaded and rolled down the road puffing sparks and scattering coals. Some enterprising mess sergeant had evidently planned that his men should have a hot meal. The French spectators in consternation had followed the soup-kitchen down the road, extinguishing the trailing embers, but the mischief was already done. There were German planes scouting overhead, they noted, evidently, the sparks, and signaled the range to the German gunners. Fifteen minutes later a six inch shell exploded a few hundred yards from the little stone-house, then another and another. One shell had fallen in the very center of the grass-plot where Company D had lined up to eat their luncheon of cold corn-willy sandwiches and hot chocolate. The gas-alarm had been sounded. A mule team had become frantic and bolted, encountering the marine band’s big base drum, had made toothpicks of it. Meanwhile confusion, it seemed, had reigned in the little stone-house. One secretary, seizing an article of underwear and putting it on his head in mistake for a helmet, had dashed madly up and down the road as the shells fell, and ended by bursting, in his _déshabille_, into the private dugout of a French colonel. No Americans were hurt, but one poilu had been injured and another killed. “They have our range now,” said everybody. “And look at those Boche balloons, will you?” We looked to the northeast; three German observation balloons were hanging just above the hills. We stirred the chocolate and served it to whatever boys happened to be about, boys on detail, drivers of mule-teams. One can, having been kept warm all night, had turned. Some bright soul suggested that it was the concussion of the shelling that had soured the milk, just as thunderstorms sometimes do. Two poilus leaned in at the window. “What are you doing?” they asked curiously. We explained; they shook their heads. “You spoil your soldiers.” Then, “Was anyone killed last night?” “Yes, one Frenchman.” “Oh that’s nothing!” (_Ça ne fait rien._) They strolled away. The friendly interpreter came in and told us that they were about to hold the poilu’s funeral. A troop-train pulled in. It was loaded with soldiers from my own regiment, the Second Battalion. The chocolate was ready, smelt delicious. “You can’t serve it,” they told us. “On account of last night’s shelling, the troops won’t be allowed to stop until they’re well beyond the town.”