_Well, honey, we has arrived in France, and this war sure is fierce. Every time I steps outside my dugout I wades up to my knees in blood.…_ CHAPTER NINE THE EXILES So tremendous was America’s response when in the spring of this year the call came to her from the Western Front to hurry, so overwhelming the host which she sent over, that our chief difficulty to-day is not to withstand the Hun, but to find a vacant spot on his carcass to hit. We have been in France for over a month now, but so far our services as a unit have not been required in the Line. But we are acclimatized by this time. The days of our green youth in the big camps back home have faded away as though they never had been. In this Old-World, constricted country it requires quite an effort of memory to recall those spacious days upon our own open, rolling plains and hillsides. Gone are the great streets of wooden two-storey huts, with their electric light, steam heat, and hot showers; the various social centres; the roaring Liberty Theatre and the Hostess House; the candy-stores and the shoe-shine parlours. They are but a memory, blurred by four months of incredibly novel experience. To-day we sleep in French barracks—bleak, cheerless buildings, redolent of floor-soap and whitewash; or in billets up and down a little village; or in some great barn, on straw, or under the summer stars in our dog-tents. We perform our ablutions in the open air, mainly at a farm pump or street hydrant, to the diversion of the female population. For recreation we still play baseball; for creature comforts we can turn to the Red Cross, or the Y.M.C.A., or the Knights of Columbus, or the Salvation Army, or the Jewish Welfare Board. There is also a French institution, known as _Le Foyer du Soldat_, where we consort with grave-faced, courteous _poilus_. We have encountered no British troops so far. They are farther north: several of our units have gone up to be brigaded with them.