on our hike from Erize-St. Dizier. Still it was annoying to move; we were comfortably off at Guerpont, living on excellent terms with the inhabitants, and this meant getting used to new accommodations and environment, and a lengthening of our eventual hike to the Tronville rail-head. Decidedly this move was a nuisance. But weather favored us, and we tramped away under a bright sun, with many a longing, backward glance at Guerpont and the corner cafe. Over the hills we went, retracing our former hike till at last we reached Gery. Lined up in the one street which Gery boasted, the Battery stared in apathetic disapproval at the poverty-stricken houses, the omnipresent mud and the manure piles, noting with disappointment the absence of cafes and stores, and speculating coldly on the probable delapidation of the billets. The cooks working about the soup- gun set up a half-hearted clatter of knives and spoons but it lacked conviction, and we crept dismally away to our billets.

                Life in Gery was for a while as dismal as the town's appearance seemed to predict. It rained incessantly, the inhabitants were cold and suspicious, and someone higher up apparently went crazy and sentenced us to long hours of foot-drill. As to the inhabitants, they were soon won over, when they discovered that we did not steal their poultry, break their windows, or disturb their ancestral manure piles. Their hostile attitude was explained by the fact that the American draftees who had occupied Gery before us had been "pas gentil." We, on the contrary, helped improve the town by cleaning the streets and

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