n Chepy, which, to us, is the cleanest village
in France, for no manure piles decorate its main street and no dirty
gutters line its roads.

Swimming in the canal near by, French "movies" at the Foyer du Soldat,
plenty of food--vegetables were abundant, and so were cheese, butter and
milk till the hungry soldiers bought out the creamery completely--made
this a delightful place, in spite of the boredom of "trigger squeeze
exercise" and overlong "stables" in the heat of the day.

On the night of June 28 the regiment marched up through Chalons to Camp
de la Carriere, a large concentration camp in the midst of woods, away
from any towns, the nearest of which was the little village of Cuperly.
We were in the great area known as the Camp de Chalons, where MacMahon
had mobilized his army of 50,000 men in 1870, which ended so unhappily
at Sedan.

Sunday, June 30, one year since the regiment had been called out, there
was a rigid inspection in the morning, and in the afternoon Colonel
Reilly and Major Redden spoke on the work of the regiment in that time,
and announced that the 42d was now to go into a new sector as a combat
division.

CHAPTER IV

UNDER GOURAUD IN CHAMPAGNE

The 149th had no fireworks on July 4, 1918. Even the games arranged for
the afternoon to celebrate the holiday were neglected. There was good
reason: one of the biggest batches of mail our battery had ever
received. A letter from home was worth many skyrockets or three-legged
races to us. But that evening we saw a bigger variety of pyrotechnic
displays than we had ever witnessed before, even at "Paine's Burning of
Rome" or some other such spectacle.

After supper we were given the order to pack, and at 10:30 pulled out on
the road. Our way was north, through a broad and barren country, marked
in the darkness only by chalky white roads and trenches. Overhead were
planes whirring and buzzing, invisible, but very audible, in the dark
night. Here and there one dropped a sparkling signal light. At our backs
were big fingers of whiteness thrust up into the sky; they were the
searchlights in front of Chalons, seeking for enemy planes to reveal to
the anti-aircraft guns defending the city from bombers. Ahead, and far
to the right and left, the front lines disclosed their presence by light
rockets or "star-shells" that continually shot up into the sky and
perhaps hovered there for long minutes. We were used to rockets in
Lorraine, but never had we se