ery near by, to gain experience in actual firing. Little
firing was done--only 24 rounds per gun one day and 15 rounds the
second, for in this quiet sector there was little ordinarily but
reprisal fire--but the men learned quickly the actual working of a
battery. To the Frenchmen the quickness and the constant good-humor of
the American boys, much younger than the average among them, were
matters of comment. "Toujours chantant, toujours riant" (Always singing,
always laughing), were the words of the lieutenant who fired the
battery. The warm-hearted hospitality of these Frenchmen--resting in
this sector from the fearful work, night and day, at Verdun and
pardonable, one would say, if somewhat uneven-tempered and unmindful of
others in their fatigue from that strain--impressed the Americans in
turn. Every comfort that the dug-outs afforded was offered to the
visitors, and when the Americans had, in an impromptu quartette,
entertained the Frenchmen with harmonized popular songs, the latter
summoned a young "chanteur" who sang the latest songs from Paris till
his voice was weary.

Orders came to cease work on this position, and none too soon. For when
the men were returning from work there for the last time, about 5 p. m.,
March 2, the woods in the vicinity were deluged with gas shells.

The following day the gun squads and engineers hiked to the town of
Laneuveville-aux-Bois, about two kilometres away. There they had for
billet a big room, formerly the police magistrate's office. The town
contained only French soldiers billeted there en route to the trenches
or return. So close to the lines was it, that shells fell there
frequently.

Back of the town and to the left was the site of Battery E's first gun
position. On the far side (from the enemy lines) of a gently sloping
hill, covered by tall yellow grass, was staked out the four gun pits,
with abris between. The first work was to construct the camouflage. This
was composed of strips of chicken wire, in which long yellow grass was
thinly woven so as to blend with that growing around the position. These
strips were supported by wires stretched from tall stakes, forming the
ridge, to short stakes, scarcely two feet above the ground, at either
side. In shape, the result was something like a greenhouse. The angles
were so graduated that no shadow was cast by the sun, and the color
blended so well with the surroundings that no human trace was visible on
the hillside from a