m
boasted that of the twenty-six officers who led it into the first fight
at the opening of the war, only four of them existed.

It was a great advantage for our men to train under such instructors.
Correspondents who had been along the fronts before America's entry
into the war, had a great respect for the soldierly capacity of these
same fighting Frenchmen; not only these sturdy young sons of France who
wore the uniform, but the older French soldiers--ranging in age from
forty to fifty-five years--who had been away to the fronts since the
very beginning of the war.

We had seen them many, many times. Miles upon miles of them, in the
motor trucks along the roads. Twenty of them rode in each truck. They
sat on two side benches facing the centre of the trucks. They were men
actually bent forward from the weight of the martial equipment strapped
to their bodies. They seemed to carry inordinate loads--knapsacks,
blanket roll, spare shoes, haversacks, gas masks, water bottles,
ammunition belts, grenade aprons, rifle, bayonet and helmet.

Many of them were very old men. They had thick black eyebrows and wore
long black beards. They were tired, weary men. We had seen them in the
camions, each man resting his head on the shoulder of the man seated
beside him. The dust of the journey turned their black beards grey. On
the front seat of the camion a sleepless one handled the wheel, while
beside him the relief driver slept on the seat.

Thus they had been seen, mile upon mile of them, thousand upon thousand
of them, moving ever up and down those roads that paralleled the six
hundred and fifty miles of front from Flanders to the Alps--moving
always. Thus they had been seen night and day, winter and summer, for
more than three long years, always trying to be at the place where the
enemy struck. The world knows and the world is thankful that they always
were there.

It was under such veteran instructors as these that our first Americans
in France trained, there, in the Vosges, in a garden spot of beauty, in
the province that boasts the birthplace of Jeanne d'Arc. On the few
leave days, many of our men, with permission, would absent themselves
from camp, and make short pilgrimages over the hills to the little town
of Domremy to visit the house in which the Maid of Orleans was born.

Our men were eager to learn. I observed them daily at their training
tasks. One day when they had progressed as far as the use of the New
French a