slickers or
shelter-halves.

The following morning the second and third pieces were fitted with new
tubes, and the caissons were loaded with ammunition before the battery
set out again, this time on a march of twenty-two kilometres. Crossing
the river on pontoons at Dun-sur-Meuse, and winding our weary way over
hills on the opposite side through interminable woods in the descending
darkness, we came to the town of Breheville, surrounded by hundreds of
lights and bonfires of the brigade camping for the night. Fortunately we
had billets in the village, and thereafter always were billeted in
towns, though sometimes our sleeping quarters were only barns and hay
mows, not remarkable for either comfort or shelter. At Breheville we
stayed for two days, receiving some new clothes and cleaning up at the
bath house contrived out of the stone structure where ordinarily the
housewives of the town do their washing.

November 20 we made another long journey, to Thonne les Pres, under the
fortified heights of Montmedy-Haut, and the next day a still longer one
into Belgian territory. At Montmedy we had opportunity to see how far
the Germans had carried their occupation of the land they had held for
the previous four years. An electric power plant lit the streets and
houses of the town, the "mairie" and other buildings had been converted
into hospitals, and extensive railroad yards, gun repair shops and
factories spoke of important activity here by the enemy.

The first Belgian towns we entered, Lamarteau, Dompartin and the city of
Virton, were gaily decorated with arches of greenery, festoons of paper
lanterns, and flags of the Allied nations, in welcome of the American
troops. We came at night to St. Leger, where Battery E was quartered in
the school house.

The following night found us in a similar building at Arlon, on which
the words, "Volkschule fuer Maedschen," were painted over those of the
French name. Arlon still showed the marks of having been a wealthy city,
of fine buildings and a wide variety of shops. The barbarian ravages
which had desolated the northern part of Belgium had not spread here.
But the scarcity of food and other supplies, and the citizens' accounts
of extortion and cruelty, revealed the same spirit of oppression.

From Belgium into Luxembourg we went November 23, encountering at the
border a gendarme in a uniform worthy of a general. There were not the
welcoming demonstrations across the border that had