As Neddy and I returned to our canteen we paused at the door of one of the barracks to listen to the band producing pandemonium within. This band is the pet project of Battery D, the dearest hope of Corporal R. who is theatrical producer, impresario, librettist, base soloist, and band leader for the battery. The instruments were finally assembled some ten days ago. The one thing required of a member seemed to be that he had never played that particular sort of an instrument before. For the last ten days the band has been practicing, mostly in the Y. They have always played the same tune, yet I have never been able to decide what that tune was. Now that the battery is going to the front, the instruments must be put in store and our budding band disbanded almost before it had begun. The instruments are to be interned at Abainville, the town next door. When the day comes to relinquish them the band is going to march all the way from Gondrecourt to Abainville in state, playing their one tune over and over. Tonight Corporal R. sat on a barrel in the kitchen polishing his French horn with the Secretary’s pink tooth-paste. It made excellent brass-polish he had discovered. “It’s too bad you can’t take that band of yours up front,” remarked Snow. “What for?” “’Cause it sure would make the boys feel like fighting.” Gondrecourt June 22. The boys have gone! We saw the last battery off on the train tonight. The guns were loaded on flat cars, horses and men lodged together in the box cars, the boys sleeping under the horses’ very noses and in danger of being nipped, it seemed to me, by an ill-tempered beast. The boys who were to sleep with the guns on the flat cars would be much better off I thought; they had made themselves cozy little nests of straw underneath the gun-carriages. Some of the boys in the box cars, I was pained to observe, had smuggled in bottles with them. The English Lady and I had arrived at the station none too soon. We had no more than walked the length of the train, inspecting each car and wishing every boy Good-bye and Good-luck when the engine whistled and was off. We stood on the platform and waved to the boys who leaned from their cars and waved back until a curve in the track cut off our sight. These last few days have been hectic. Wednesday was my birthday. Neddy found it out and told the boys. They had observed that I didn’t have any raincoat; indeed rainy nights I was always embarrassed by the offer of half a dozen different rubber coats and ponchos to go home in; so they decided,—bless them!—to supply this lack. A crowd of non-coms went downtown; they took along one boy with them as a cloak model because he was about my height and “looked like a girl”; and they made him try on every raincoat in Gondrecourt. Finally they selected one, brought it back and made a ceremonious presentation. The raincoat is a beauty, and ever since I have worn it every day, rain or shine, just to show them how much I thought of it.