loading
at Guer. The night was black. On account of the proximity of the front,
no lights could be used. Not a match's flare, not a cigarette's glow,
was allowed, lest it serve as a target for some bombing aeroplane. There
was no loading platform, and the carriages and wagons which had been
rolled across ramps directly onto the flat cars had to be coaxed and
guided down planks steeply inclined from the car's side to the ground.
Handling the horses packed closely in box-cars was a difficult task in
utter darkness.

Dawn was just breaking when the battery pulled out. A grey light showed
us the ruins of the town of Gerberviller as we passed through. The
houses stood like spectres, stripped of the life and semblance of home
which they had held before the German wave had swept this far in August,
1914, and then, after a few days, had receded, leaving them ruins. Four
walls, perhaps not so many, were all that remained of building after
building; windows were gone, roofs fallen, and inside were piles of
brick and stone, in which, here and there, grass had found root.

At the village of Moyen the battery stopped long enough to water the
horses. At 10:30 we arrived in Vathimenil, where the battery halted till
1 o'clock, and mess was served. In the afternoon in the dust and heat of
a sunshiny day such as Lorraine can produce after a cold spring night,
the battery hiked through St. Clermont to Luneville, the cannoneers
following the carriages on foot.

There we were quartered in an old barrack of French lancers, whose
former stables housed our horses. Big, clean rooms, on the third floor,
were assigned to Battery E. With bed ticks filled with straw, we made
this a comfortable home.

A practice review the following morning and another, the real thing, in
the afternoon, before a French general and his staff, formally
introduced us to Lorraine. In our free hours during the day and in the
evening, we added to this acquaintance by pretty thorough familiarity
with the city of Luneville.

Though its nearness to the battle front restricted trade and industry a
great deal, yet its shops, restaurants and cafes proved a paradise for
the men who remained there at the horse-line, as the battery's song,
"When We Were Down in Luneville," attests. Though the streets were
absolutely dark, behind the shuttered windows and the darkened doors
business was brisk enough. At 8 o'clock, however, all shops were closed,
and soldiers must be off the s