good time and they told me many amusing
and interesting things which I can't tell you because I foresee that
this letter is going to be horribly long.

At two o'clock I got off at a God-forsaken little junction called Les
Laumes. My spirits were high, however, because all around were
snow-covered beautiful hills, patches of woods, and winding roads
outlined by slender poplars with bunches of green mistletoe growing
way up in their branches. There are many Americans billeted at Les
Laumes. Poor boys! A big M.P. (military policeman) met me at the
station. The M.P. is your salvation if you are honest and your terror
if you are not. This was a tall, powerful, bushy-eyebrowed young
westerner. He picked up my bags as if they were nothing at all and
escorted me to the restaurant.

How can I ever begin to describe to you the sweetness and the fineness
of our boys over here! I am proud, proud of America. I love the real
spirit of her which these boys have preserved and strengthened in
these little villages way off in France. You think I ought to work
with children. But I tell you these boys are children; wonderfully
powerful and dexterous children; and I play and work with them as
though they were children, and we have had happy times together. I see
now what there is for me to do. I pray that I may do it, in order to
help them and be worthy of them during these difficult, tedious,
dangerous days of waiting, with nothing to do.

But to return to my nice M.P. with the bushy eyebrows. He got me an
army car to take me to Semur, with a soft-voiced Southerner to run it.
It was a delightful ride of twenty miles or so through chilly country
glistening with snow; and all the time the boy talked of home in
Mississippi, and his mother, and what he wanted to do when he got
back. He took me to the Y.M.C.A. headquarters at Semur. There I met
Mr. M. of Salem, Mass., who is my chief. It seems that Semur is the
centre of all Y.M.C.A. activities with the 78th Division which did
much heroic fighting all along the front. Mr. M. is a delightful
gentleman and a real man. He has been with the boys in the midst of
the fighting. We had a good talk. He finally decided to send me to
Pouillenay with the 2nd Battalion of the 311th Infantry, 78th
Division. "This is an experiment, Miss Shortall," he said. "You will
be the only American woman in the town. The town is off the main line
and the boys have not had their share of comforts and amusements. The