ld green, push their turrets and
bastions above the mossy plush of the mountain side. Lazy little streams
silver the valleys with their aimless wanderings.

It was a peaceful looking garden of pastoral delight that United States
soldiers had picked out for their martial training ground. It was a
section whose physical appearance was untouched by the three years of
red riot and roar that still rumbled away just a few miles to the north.

The training area was located in the Vosges, in east central France. By
train, it was a nine-hour day trip from Paris. It was located about an
hour's motor ride behind the front lines, which at that time were close
to the north of the cities of Nancy and Toul.

The troops were billeted in a string of small villages that comprised
one side of the letter V. French troops and instructing officers
occupied the other converging line of the letter. Between the two lines
was the area in which our men trained. Where the two lines converged
was the town of Gondercourt, the headquarters of Major General Seibert,
the Commander of the first American division in France.

The area had long since been stripped of male civilian population that
could be utilised for the French ranks. The war had taken the men and
the boys, but had left the old people and children to till the fields,
tend the cattle, prune the hedges and trim the roads.

With the advent of our troops, the restful scene began to change.
Treeless ridges carpeted with just enough green to veil the rocky
formation of the ground began to break out with a superficial rash of
the colour of fresh earth. In rows and circles, by angles and zigzags,
the training trenches began to take form daily under the pick and shovel
exercises of French and Americans working side by side.

Along the white roads, clay-coloured rectangles that moved evenly, like
brown caravans, represented the marching units of United States troops.
The columns of bluish-grey that passed them with shorter, quicker steps,
were companies of those tireless Frenchmen, who after almost three years
of the front line real thing, now played at a mimic war of make-believe,
with taller and heavier novitiates.

Those French troops were Alpine Chasseurs--the famous Blue Devils. They
wore dark blue caps, which resemble tam o'shanters, but are not. They
were proud of the distinction which their uniform gave them. They were
proud of their great fighting records. One single battalion of the