open. Battlements that once knew the hand of Vaubon frown
down in ancient menace to any invader.

[Illustration: CAPT. CHEVALIER, OF THE FRENCH ARMY, INSTRUCTING AMERICAN
OFFICERS IN THE USE OF THE ONE-POUNDER]

[Illustration: IN THE COURSE OF ITS PROGRESS TO THE VALLEY OF THE VESLE
THIS 155 MM. GUN AND OTHERS OF ITS KIND WERE EDUCATING THE BOCHE TO
RESPECT AMERICA. THE TRACTOR HAULS IT ALONG STEADILY AND SLOWLY, LIKE A
STEAM ROLLER]

No Roman conqueror at the head of his invading legions ever rode through
that triumphal arch with greater pride than rode our little captain
at the head of his battery. Our little captain was in stature the
smallest man in our battery, but he compensated for that by riding the
tallest horse in the battery.

He carried his head at a jaunty angle. He wore his helmet at a nifty
tilt, with the chin strap riding between his underlip and his dimpled,
upheld chin. He carried his shoulders back, and his chest out. The reins
hung gracefully in his left hand, and he had assumed a rather
moving-picture pose of the right fist on his right hip. Behind him flew
the red guidon, its stirruped staff held stiffly at the right arm's
length by the battery standard bearer.

Both of them smiled--expansive smiles of pride--into the clicking lens
of my camera. I forgave our little captain for his smile of pride. I
knew that six weeks before that very day our little captain had fitted
into the scheme of civilian life as a machinery salesman from Indiana.
And there that day, he rode at the head of his two hundred and fifty
fighting men and horses, at the head of his guns, rolling down that road
in France on the way to the front.

In back of him and towering upward, was that historic rock that had
known the tread and passage of countless martial footsteps down through
the centuries. Behind him, the gun carriages rattled through the
frowning portal. Oh, if the folks back on the Wabash could have seen him
then!

We wound through the crooked narrow streets of Besancon, our steel-tired
wheels bounding and banging over the cobblestones. Townsfolk waved to us
from windows and doorways. Old women in the market square abandoned
their baskets of beet roots and beans to flutter green stained aprons in
our direction. Our column was flanked by clattering phalanxes of
wooden-shoed street gamins, who must have known more about our movements
than we did, because they all shouted, "Gude-bye."

Six weeks' familiarity betw