men was worse than separate glimpses of the echelon and the position would have led one to believe. The men, worn down to almost nothing by the last terrific days around Verdun, showed interest in one thing, and one thing only,—sleep. And the horses! Out of the one hundred and sixty odd, that a battery is sup­ posed to have, only sixty remained; sixty gaunt, famished beasts, underfed and overworked. One wondered how a move of even a few kilometers could be accomplished with such animals. It seemed a mathematical impossibility to move four guns, eight caissons, two park wagons, a fourgon, a rolling kitchen, and a ration cart with sixty horses.

                For one brief night the Battery rested in the Thierville woods, and next morning's sun found the billeting parties on the road again, headed for Seraucourt, a few kilometers from the Souilly railhead.

                A smear of red roofs, a huddle of white houses heaped beside the straight white road, that was Seraucourt, a shivering, poverty stricken town where a handful of old women and older men eked out a miserable existence. From the Town Major, an affable, gray-headed old infantry sergeant, a reforme of 1916, we learned Seraucourt's story. In '14, just before the first Marne battle, the Boche held the town; not long enough, apparently, to do a great deal of visible damage, for the houses were for the most part in fairly presentable shape; but, yet, with the true Teutonic benevolence, he had paralyzed the existence of the inhabitants; for when he departed, he took with him all the livestock of the town, not to mention the linen, the clocks, even the tableware

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