oughts, and there I stayed most of the time.

We left Gondrecourt on Thursday afternoon, June 5th. It was one of
those soft days, delicious humid air, that brought out all the
fragrance of the country, a gray sky and a soft light that gave us the
true essence of the colors in the fields because there were no
shadows. A tapestry day, when all shades were subdued, woven through a
warp of mist.

This part of France, gently undulating, with fields of grain and
carefully tended wood, is very lovely. There is a luxuriant grace
about it. It is a land of carved stone crosses. We kept passing them
by the roadside, beautiful in form and varied in design. It is the
land of Jeanne d'Arc, and often we passed her image with a vase of
fresh flowers beneath it.

In the early evening we arrived at Bar-le-Duc, a sweet little city
built round the famous old chateau on the hill. As we drove through
the streets I was struck by the sign "Cave," "Cave Voutee," or "Cave,
12 hommes," printed on the fronts of the houses. All places of shelter
from bombs were clearly marked. Turning a corner we came upon a
building in ruins. Then upon one with a hole in the roof. Bar-le-Duc
had not escaped the enemies' ravages. There we spent the night. The
next day we lunched at St. Menehould, then went out into the Argonne
itself. Oh, I can't describe it! Think of cultivated fields giving way
to vast rank stretches; ditches and shell holes everywhere; rusty,
tangled barbed wire on all sides; miles and miles of broken, sagging
telephone wires; pathetic pulverized villages, scarcely discernible on
the plain; tops of hills sawed off and furrowed by shell fire; lonely
wooden crosses dotting the fields everywhere; refuse of all kinds
along the roadside--a man's puttee, a wrecked automobile, rusty iron,
a rifle belt, piles of unexploded shells; and signs in French and
English bearing severe traffic orders spoke eloquently of the mad
congestion on the roads, now so lonely. This whole immense silence and
desertion told of pressing crowds, of fierce exertion, of wild
excitement, of cursing and of praying, of roaring and blazing and
dying. Eight months ago it was hell on fire. And now there was not a
soul in sight, nor a sound. The hot sun beat on it all. Now and then
came a fetid odor that turned you sick. The war is over.

Stopping at a prison camp for gasoline, a lieutenant came up to me,
and seeing the lightning streak on my shoulder he told me that he too
belon