ged to the 78th and remembered meeting me last winter. He offered
to take me and whoever else was interested through the wood of
Ardennes where the 78th had fought in October. You can imagine I was
glad to go. So I have seen the scarred and blasted woods and ravines
through which my boys panted and bled and kept on. I seemed to almost
live through it with them, and I felt the exhilaration of battle more
than the horror, and wished fervently that I could have been a man
fighting with them. We came to a place where the Germans had blown up
two engines. Right there Lieut. S. said the 311th had its supply dump.
And sure enough, on a tree I saw the good old Lightning Sign! I took
it down, for I know the boy who made all the signs, and intend to give
it to some one for a souvenir.

But to skip over more quickly, we spent that night at Romagne, where
the great American-Argonne cemetery is being made. The next day we
visited Grand Pre, the town which the 78th took; a terrible wreck,
bearing the signs of hot street fighting, the standing walls being
nicked and riddled with machine gun fire. Here again my spirit was
back with my fighting boys reliving it all with them.

And then, following the long desolate front, we went to Verdun. But I
can't give you any more descriptions. That Verdun battle field! That
stronghold, which the Germans did not pass! I will never forget it.
Even the Argonne is a green, fertile place in comparison. Blasted
skeleton forests, dead fields, plowed and plowed again with shells.
Death, and the silence of death.

I found myself repeating under my breath some verses of poetry that
had caught my eye last winter, written by an officer.

"Nous avons cherche la Victoire.
Ou se cache-t-elle, dis-moi?
Et, repassant la Meuse noire,
Elle me crie, 'Au fond de toi.'"

and

"Est-ce vrai que la mort est une vie immense?
Est-ce vrai que la vie est l'amour de mourir?"

_Lieut. Joachim Gasquet, auteur des
"Hymnes de la Grande Guerre."_

In such ways I tried to understand and to visualize all that had taken
place there.

We returned to Gondrecourt Sunday evening. On Monday I had a new and
comic experience. The Y.M.C.A. announced an auction of all its
supplies and I was asked to conduct it, being the only American who
spoke French. They tell me that I have missed my vocation, that I
ought to have been a saleslady. Any way I made a lark out of it, and
gave