It was of no use to go to the French for white flour, for they did not have it. They had been using war bread, dark mixtures with barley flour and other things, for a long time. Besides, the French had a fixed idea that everyone who came from America was made of money. Wood was thirty-five dollars a load (about a cord) and had to be cut and hauled by the purchaser at that. There was a story current throughout the camps that some Frenchmen were talking together among themselves, and one asked the rest where in the world they were going to get the money to rebuild their towns. “Oh,” replied another; “haven’t we the only battlefields in the world? All the Americans will want to come over after the war to see them and we will charge them enough for the sight to rebuild our villages!” But even at any price the French did not have the materials to sell. There was only one place where things of that sort could be had and that was from the Americans, and the question was, would the commissary allow them to buy in large enough quantities to be of any use? The Salvation Army officers as they went about their work, were puzzling their brains how to get around the American commissary and get what they wanted. Meantime, the American Army had slipped quietly into Montiers in the night and been billeted around in barns and houses and outhouses, and anywhere they could be stowed, and were keeping out of sight. For the German High Council had declared: “As soon as the American Army goes into camp we will blow them off the map.” Day after day the Germans lay low and watched. Their airplanes flew over and kept close guard, but they could find no sign of a camp anywhere. No tents were in sight, though they searched the landscape carefully; and day after day, for want of something better to do they bombarded Bar-lé-Duc. Every day some new ravishment of the beautiful city was wrought, new victims buried under ruins, new terror and destruction, until the whole region was in panic and dismay. Now Bar-lé-Duc, as everyone knows, is the home of the famous Bar-lé-Duc jam that brings such high prices the world over, and there were great quantities stored up and waiting to be sold at a high price to Americans after the war. But when the bombardment continued, and it became evident that the whole would either be destroyed or fall into the hands of the Germans, the owners were frightened. Houses were blown up, burying whole families. Victims were being taken hourly from the ruins, injured or dying.