“When we hit the camp half of the battery was lined up gettin’ inspected and the other half was fallin’ all over each other, rollin’ up blankets or cussin’ the supply sergeant because he wouldn’t issue stuff that had been swiped or lost. Tacks McLoughlin, who used to _cushay_ next to me in the tent, told me that my detail was goin’ to France _toot sweet_. “You can imagine that the news kind of excited me just a little, ’cause I was green to real excitement in those days. I started to make up my own roll, but when it came time to strap it up I found that I was tyin’ up my own arm inside the roll, so had to unwind the whole darn thing. Finally I got all set and was inspected. Nobody tried to stop me from goin’, so I guess I was thought able and fit. _Toot sweet_ after we _monjayed_ a rotten supper of goolash—some meal to hand a gang about to come to this God-forsaken country—the gang started bettin’ like a bunch of wild men at a horse-race. “‘Bet we’ll get torpedoed,’ shouted one crape-hanger. ‘Ten to one we’ll be at the front in two months,’ said Sundberg, goin’ wild. I told him to lay dead on that stuff. I knew there wasn’t much chance of ’em sendin’ a gang of men who didn’t know a halter-shank from the breech-block of a piece to the front right away. One gink wanted to bet me that he’d get hit before me. I listened to the bull just to keep my excitement down. “The trucks rolled up about eight bells and we all piled in on top of one another and started for the ship. It didn’t take long to get down to the pier and we were loaded on like a bunch of cattle. “We just followed the man in front of us up and down, in and around all of the decks on that cussed boat until, at last, somebody found the way down to what they had rigged up as our quarters. Time I stuck my nose down that companionway I knew that somethin’ was wrong—smelled just like the horse and mule corrals that we had been guardin’. Finally I landed on the last deck, which was at least fifty feet below daylight, and reached my bunk, which was jammed up close to the rear of another mule—I mean a mule’s stall. I swore like a sailor and some funny guy who knew a little bit of French bawled out, ‘_Say la guerre_,’ which I understand pretty well now, even if I didn’t know what he was talkin’ about then.