u, "it was not a comfortable night. But
they are here, and they are content."

I could understand it, of course, but "here" seemed so pitifully poor
a place--a wet and cold and dirty coach house, open to all the winds
that blew; before it a courtyard stabling army horses that stood to
the fetlocks in mud. For food they had what the boy of twenty-two or
other cooks like him were preparing over tiny fires built against
brick walls. But they were alive, and there were letters from home,
and before very long they expected to drive the Germans back in one of
those glorious charges so dear to the French heart. They were here,
and they were content.

More sheds, more small fires, more paring of potatoes and onions and
simmering of stews. The meal of the day was in preparation and its
odours were savoury. In one shed I photographed the cook, paring
potatoes with a knife that looked as though it belonged on the end of
a bayonet. And here I was lined up by the fire and the cook--and the
knife--and my picture taken. It has not yet reached me. Perhaps it
went by way of England, and was deleted by the censor as showing
munitions of war!

From Elverdingue the road led north and west, following the curves of
the trenches. We went through Woesten, where on the day before a
dramatic incident had taken place. Although the town was close to the
battlefield and its church in plain view from the German lines, it had
escaped bombardment. But one Sunday morning a shot was fired. The
shell went through the roof of the church just above the altar, fell
and exploded, killing the priest as he knelt. The hole in the roof of
the building bore mute evidence to this tragedy. It was a small hole,
for the shell exploded inside the building. When I saw it a half dozen
planks had been nailed over it to keep out the rain.

There were trees outside Woesten, more trees than I had been
accustomed to nearer the sea. Here and there a troop of cavalry horses
was corralled in a grove; shaggy horses, not so large as the English
ones. They were confined by the simple expedient of stretching a rope
from tree to tree in a large circle.

"French horses," I said, "always look to me so small and light
compared with English horses."

Then a horse moved about, and on its shaggy flank showed plainly the
mark of a Western branding iron! They were American cow ponies from
the plains.

"There are more than a hundred thousand American horses here,"
observed the Lieu