CHAPTER XI.

FIGHTING THE ARMISTICE

                THE days immediately following  the armistice were among the most gloomy in the annals of the Battery. The war was over; that was the one ray of light on the dark horizon. Would the armistice endure? Where were we going? Russia, the Army of Occupation, home; which was our destination? What were we waiting for? Why was there no movement? These were the questions which fed upon the morale of the Battery, and reduced the men, already exhausted and sapped by the horrors of the last days of the war, to a state of deepest dejection.

                At last, a part of the uncertainty was ended, for on November fifteenth, a move was ordered, a move not forward, but to the area behind Verdun. Bois de Thierville was the first halt; not a town, this, but a rambling collection of Adrian barracks, scattered about in the deep woods, whose thick branches, in days not long past, had screened troop movements from the watchful eyes of the Hun avions whose presence no longer polluted the clean French skies. So here, in the dense woods, the Battery assembled, the heavy wagons and caissons from the Baliecourt echelon meeting the tired cannoneers who, behind the clanking 75's, had hiked all the weary kilometers from the Douaumont position.

                Seen as a whole for the first time since the hike from St. Mihiel, the Battery presented a depressing spectacle; the condition of both the horses and the

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