CHAPTER V.

ONE "REST PERIOD"

LATE in the afternoon of March 20, 1918, the train drew up outside the station of Brienne-le-Chateau. Favored with a good ramp, the Battery was unloaded, and the horses harnessed and hitched and ready to leave in what was then our record time, some 20 minutes.

It was already dusk when the Battery pulled out of the station on its way to billets. The column passed through two or three villages which were already occupied by units of the division that had preceded us to the area. We were kept busy answering and hurling in return the questions always on inquisitive lips—"What outfit, Buddy?" The fast falling darkness closed from view the country through which we passed.

After two hours riding we arrived at Radonvilliers, our billet. In the darkness, Radonvilliers bore no feature to distinguish it from any other French village. The cobbled, narrow streets over which the caisson wheels jarred and rumbled, the widening of the main street into a bit of square, the square centered with a noisy fountain: of all these, any other village might boast equally well.

The rattle of wheels ceased when the column reached the dirt road on the other side of town, and the Battery drew up in a much too marshy field on the outskirts. With picket line once established be­

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