Day after day we tramped—through Toul, the northwest corner of the great rectangle of French soil which has been an American military colony since the summer of nineteen-seventeen; across the trench lines of the old days of stationary warfare, where Frenchmen faced the Boches for three long years. American troops have fought there too. Here, in what was once No Man’s Land, stand the ruins of Seicheprey, famed as having been the scene of the first clash between American and German troops. (It was a raid, and we lost our first prisoners there. Well, we have plenty of Germans now to barter for them, when the time comes—and then some!) Then on past Montfaucon, the Crown Prince’s headquarters at the Battle of Verdun, now an American stronghold; through miles and miles of devastated country, with here and there a little American graveyard (to which we pay due reverence), to Grandpré. This is a mere fragment of a village, clinging to the face of a rock looking south, and is shelled out of recognition. Then on, through the Bois des Loges, following the tide of victory northward, towards Mézières and Sedan. Somewhere to our right lies Verdun, garrisoned by American soldiers—all, that is, save the Citadel, a wondrous Gibraltar dug into the interior of a hill, containing miles of illuminated passageways; barracks, a bakery, an arsenal, a chapel, a theatre. Here the French maintain their own garrison—and maybe their own secrets. Secrets or no, it was that Citadel and that garrison which broke the back of the German assault in the critical days of nineteen-sixteen. Somewhere on our left marches the Army of the French General Gouraud, keeping pace with our own in the great enveloping movement of which our attack forms the extreme right. * * * * *