tside running the entire
length of the car. It is just below the level of the floor and one can
walk from one compartment to the other if he is not afraid of falling
off the car. The compartment is about large enough for four persons to
ride in any degree of comfort if they have cushions to sit on; but the
Railway transport officer evidently thought that there would be more
room if the cushions were removed. There were eight of us to each
compartment.

We were scheduled to leave at three P. M. and by rushing a little we
were loaded by a few minutes after that hour. We lived up to the
reputation of the Sanitary Train for always being on time and pulled out
of the station only three hours late. We thought at least that we were
going to see some of the beautiful France we had heard about. We had not
gone far when we realized that we were going to have plenty of time to
look at the scenery. France must have some very strict laws against
speeding for we never traveled faster than ten miles per hour and it was
very seldom that we ever went that fast.

We ate our supper as soon as we were out of Le Havre. It was a very
hearty meal. Each man's issue was five crackers, one-eighth of a can of
"corn wooley," one-eighth of a can of tomatoes. He didn't have much
variation from that during the trip.

Our next problem was, how were we going to sleep. It did not take long
to solve that. Two of the boys slept in the hat racks, four slept in
the seats and two slept on the floor between the seats. Part of the time
we slept piled on top of each other. When we woke up in the morning we
felt like we had sat up all night.

The second day we began to get our first real sight of France. We saw
soldiers guarding the bridges and tunnels. Troop trains passed us all
day long going to from the front carrying both French and American
soldiers. We saw our first real barbed wire entanglements that day and
it made us realize that we were getting near the place where the
fighting was going on. The children all along the way attracted our
attention by running along the track crying "biskeet" and holding out
their hands. They looked queer to us. They wore a little black apron and
wooden shoes. Some of the fellows threw hard tack out the window to them
just to see them scramble for it.

The rest of our trip was similar to the first day. We went by the way of
Rouen and Troyes and arrived in Epinal, a city on the edge of the Vosges
mountains, on the eve