the boys. His great efforts at the expense of much personal risk and of serious damage to his health were directed to get the food up to the front on time. While I was with the division, Colonel Sternberger proved both a staunch personal friend and an active ally in my work.

It took more than a day to become acquainted with the camouflaged offices in the woods. Small huts, with semicircular iron roofs covered with branches, were scattered about among the trees. Some of them had signs, Division Adjutant, Commanding General, and the rest; others were billets. I invariably lost my way when I went to lunch and wandered for some minutes before finding "home." "Home" was a hut exactly like the rest, where the French mission and the gas officer had their offices during the day and where six of us slept at night. I fell heir to the cot of one of the interpreters then home on leave, Georges Lévy, who afterward became one of my best friends. My baggage had disappeared on the trip, so that I had only my hand bag with the little it could hold. My first need, naturally, was for blankets to cover the cot. I collected these from various places, official and otherwise, until the end of the month found me plentifully provided. I must admit that the first cool nights in the woods forced me to sleep in my clothes. Naturally, my first task was to wire for my baggage, but it had completely vanished and did not return for four long months. Everybody lost his possessions at some time during the war; I was unique only in losing them at the outset and not seeing them until the whole need for them was over.

The boys had just come out of the line, worn out, with terrible losses, but after a great victory such as occurs only a few times in any war. They had broken the Hindenburg Line, that triple row of trenches and barbed wire, with its concrete pill-boxes, its enfilading fire from machine guns, its intricate and tremendous system of defenses. I crossed the line many times during the month that followed and never failed to marvel that human beings could ever have forced it. The famous tunnel of the St. Quentin Canal was in our sector, too, as well as part of the canal itself. The villages about us were destroyed so completely that no single roof or complete wall was standing for a shelter and the men had to live in the cellars.

One wall always bore the name of the former village in large letters, which became still larger and more striking in the territory near the Hindenburg Line, so long occupied by the Germans. I used to repay the generous Tommies for their rides on the constant stream of trucks (we called them "lorries," like the English) by translating the numerous German signs at railroad crossings and the like, about which they always had much curiosity.

One could travel anywhere on main roads by waiting until a truck came along and then hailing it. If the seat was occupied there was usually some room in the rear, and the British drivers were always glad to take one on and equally glad to air their views on the war. When one came to a cross road, he jumped off, hailed the M. P. (Military Police) for directions and took the next truck which was going in the proper direction. In that way I have often traveled on a dozen trucks in a day, with stop-overs and occasional walks of a few miles to fill in the gaps. Between a map, a compass and the M. P.'s, we always managed to circulate and eventually find our way home again.

We saw the heavy guns lumbering on their way to the front, the aëroplanes humming overhead like a swarm of dragon-flies. Day and night we could hear the rumble of guns like distant thunder, while at night the flashes showed low on the horizon like heat lightning. Our salvage depot was at Tincourt at the foot of the hill, and when I went over there Corporal Klein and Sergeant Friedlander were quick to repair gaps in my equipment. One night I witnessed the division musical comedy (the "Broadway Boys") in an old barn at Templeux le Fosse, where we walked in the dark, found the place up an alley and witnessed a really excellent performance with costumes, scenery and real orchestra. In the middle of an act, an announcement would be made that all men of the third battalion, 108th Infantry, should report back at once, and a group of fellows would rise and file out for the five-mile hike back in the darkness: they were to move up to the front before morning.

My chief effort during those few hurried days was to get into touch with the various units so that I could be of some definite service to them when they went into action. Unfortunately, almost every time I arranged for a service and appeared to hold it the "outfit" would already be on the move. The best service I held was at the village of Buire, where about forty boys gathered together under the trees among the ruined houses. They were a deeply devotional group, told me about their holyday services conducted by a British army chaplain at Doulens, about their fallen comrades for whom they wanted to repeat the memorial prayers, and about their own narrow escapes for which they were eager to offer thanks. They had the deep spiritual consciousness which comes to most men in moments of great peril.

I managed to reach most of the infantry regiments, however, by hiking down from the woods and sometimes catching a ride. Everywhere was action. It was the breathing space between our two great battles of the war. Every unit was hoping and expecting a long rest. But that hope could not be fulfilled. The intensity of the drive against the entire German line was beginning to tell and every possible unit was needed in the line to push ahead. So the rest of the Twenty-Seventh Division was brief indeed. Every regiment was starting for the front with no replacements after the terrific slaughter of two weeks before, with very little new equipment and practically no rest. And the front was now further away than it had been. The success of the allied forces meant longer marches for our tired troops.

All the villages were devastated in this area. It was the section between Peronne and the old Hindenburg Line. Not until we came to the German side of the Hindenburg Line did we find the villages in any sort of repair. The men lived in cellars without roofs, in rooms without walls or sometimes in barracks which were constructed by either of the opposing armies during the long years of the struggle. Of course, many shelters existed such as our "elephant huts" in the woods or the perfect honeycomb of dugouts in the sides of the quarry at Templeux le Gerard.

One day I "lorried" up to the division cemeteries near the old battlefield, which were being laid out by a group of chaplains with a large detail of enlisted men. I saw the occasional Jewish graves marked with the Star of David and later was able to complete the list and have all Jewish graves in our division similarly marked. I got to know the country about Bellicourt and Bony, where our heaviest fighting had taken place. I heard the story of the eight British tanks, lying helpless at the top of the long ridge near Bony, where they had run upon a mine field. I got to know the "Ausies," always the best friends and great admiration of our soldiers, with their dashing courage and reckless heroism, and the "Tommies," those steady, matter-of-fact workmen at the business of war, whom our boys could never quite understand.

Finally our headquarters moved forward, too. I jumped out of a colonel's car one dark night and hunted for an hour and a half among the hills before I found the chalk quarry where they now were hidden from prying air scouts. At last, finding the quarry, I met a boy I knew, who took me to the dugout where the senior chaplain was sleeping. I crawled into a vacant bunk, made myself at home and left the