all of brass. I noticed some
rather untidy figures, emerging from the miserable little shacks that
dotted the scrub, slinking through the brush in our direction and
gathering on the flanks of our firing line, eight or ten men and boys and
girls, one of the latter carrying a baby. Near me Captain Kirby cursed
them under his breath as "human buzzards," and I understood that these
camp followers had not gathered merely to admire. As soon as the last
platoon filed off the ground, these persons slipped forward, and began
eagerly to pick up the treasure that lay scattered there. With brass at
twenty-five cents a pound, war prices, they made enough, scratching in
the dirt, to keep them going for the next week or so.

Back to camp then, still glad of our ponchos, for though there was no
more rain the wind was steadily colder. Then the job of cleaning, with
one rod per squad, and patches always few, our fouled rifles.

This afternoon we were taken to a neighboring field, where in limited
area are samples of most of the military engineering devices approved by
moderns. Three officers of the engineers in turn took charge of us, and
showed us bridges, roads, entanglements, dugouts, rifle pits, hand
grenades, trench mortars (with real bombs!) and finally the mysteries of
map-making, which for me are practical mysteries still. Some glimmer of
an idea I now have of how a man with a watch and compass, a sketching
board and paper, can make a working map of country entirely new to him;
but I never could do it myself. Calisthenics next, as almost daily; and
then instead of being dismissed for our swim, which none of us wanted in
such cold, we were marched back to the company street, where a line soon
formed at the store tent, and a magic word was passed from squad to
squad.

Overcoats! Overcoats? Could we believe it? But a figure separated itself
from the crowd at the head of the street, and came strutting toward us.
An army overcoat, o. d., and above it the grinning features of a fellow
whom we knew well. It was true! And quickly we ourselves got into line,
coming at last to the tent, where without considering sizes the overcoats
were handed out just as they came. After which men went up and down the
street swapping, the little fellows with 44s calling out for 36s, and the
big fellows demanding 44s. I soon exchanged my 38 for a 42, and now, at
the camp tent, am comfortably writing in it. It holds me sweater and all,
blouse too if nece