treets by 8:30.

These restrictions were, in fact, precautions against enemy aeroplanes.
Of these we had close enough experience on our third night in the city,
when a bomb fell in the fields that lay back of the barracks, shaking
the windows by its explosion.

The cannoneers did not stay long in Luneville. February 25 they marched
out of the city with their packs on their backs, up near Marainviller.
There were between forty and fifty men altogether, including the four
gun crews and the engineers' detail. When we marched along a road
screened from the enemy by a mat of boughs stretched by wires between
high poles along one side of the way, we knew we were not far from the
front. The big thrill came, however, when, turning off the high road, we
went forward one squad at a time at intervals of about 200 yards. The
chief object was to avoid attracting the notice of some chance enemy
aeroplane by the movement of a considerable body of men. To our minds
the precaution seemed for the purpose of limiting casualties, in case a
shell burst on the road, to the men of only one squad.

But we took our way in peace up the hill in front of us, and carried up
supplies and tools that followed on the ration cart. We put all in a big
abri--a marvelous piece of work, of long passages, spacious rooms,
wooden floors and stairways, electric lights, and flues for stove
chimneys. Then we discovered that this was not for us, but for some
brigadier-general and his staff when he directed an operation at the
front. So we moved ourselves and baggage to another big abri not far
away and not much less comfortable, except that it lacked the wooden
floors, the electric lights, and the spaciousness of the rooms which the
first abri possessed.

The next four days were spent in preparations for building a battery
position. The spot chosen was in a hollow, back of a gently rising
slope. The woods near by and the tall thickets made good concealment,
but the ground was rather marshy in the wet weather we were then having.
Part of the men began to dig, and part wove twigs through chicken wire
to stretch over the excavations as camouflage. From 7 a. m. to 5 p. m.
was a long arduous day, particularly since it was begun and ended by a
hike of two miles from the dug-out to the position. Rain fell most of
the time, soaking through slickers and blouses to one's very skin.

Two of the days the gunners, No. 1 and No. 2 men of each section spent
at a French batt