As we rode along, the countryside was lovely and the smiling fields and hillsides made "excursions and alarums" seem remote indeed. It felt unnatural to pass through a village with unscarred church spires and houses all intact--such a change from battered, glorious France. We were immediately in the wake of the German army, and taken by and large they must have been retiring in good order, for they left little behind. Our first night we spent at the village of Syren, eight kilometres from the capital of the Duchy. Billeting was not so easy now, for we were ordered to treat the inhabitants as neutrals, and when they objected we couldn't handle the situation as we did later on in Germany. No one likes to have soldiers or civilians quartered on him, and the Luxemburgers were friendly to us only as a matter of policy. Fortunately, the chalk marks of the Boche billeting officers had not been washed off the doors, and these told us how many men had been lodged in a given house. In my lodging I was accorded a most friendly reception, for my hostess was French. Her nephew had come up from Paris to visit her a few months before the outbreak of the war, and had been unable to get back to France. To avoid the dreaded internment camp he had successfully passed as a Luxemburger. In the regiment there were a number of men whose parents came from the Duchy; these and a few more who spoke German acquired a sudden popularity among their comrades. They would make friends with some of the villagers and arrange to turn over their rations so that they would be cooked by the housewife and eaten with the luxurious accompaniment of chair and table. The diplomat would invite a few friends to enjoy with him the welcome change from the "slum" ladled out of the caldrons of the battery rolling kitchen. I had always supposed that I had in my battery a large number of men who could speak German--a glance over the pay-roll would certainly leave that impression--but when I came to test it out, I found that I had but four men who spoke sufficiently well to be of any use as interpreters. Next morning we made a winding, roundabout march to Trintange. Here we were instructed to settle down for a week or ten days' halt, and many worse places might have been chosen. The country was very broken, with hills and ravines. Little patches of woodland and streams dashing down rocky channels on their way to join the Moselle reminded one of Rock Creek Park in Washington. The weather couldn't be bettered; sharp and cold in the early morning with a heavy hoarfrost spreading its white mantle over everything, then out would come the sun, and the hills would be shrouded in mist.