CHAPTER II

WITH GENERAL PERSHING'S FORCE IN FRANCE

We are in the midst of an American army encampment in a French village.
For miles away over the rolling country the golden harvests of France
are ripening in the sun, broken by patches of green field, forest, and
stream. The reapers are gathering in the grain. Only old men, women,
and children are left to do the work, for the sons of France are away
at the battle front. The countryside is more beautiful than the finest
parts of New York or Pennsylvania. In almost every valley sleeps a
little French hamlet, with its red tiled roofs and its neat stone
cottages, clustered about the village church tower. It is a picture of
calm and peace and plenty under the summer sun. But the sound of
distant guns on the neighboring drill grounds, a bugle call down the
village street, the sight of the broad cowboy hats and the khaki
uniforms of the American soldiers, arouse us to the realization of a
world at war and the fact that our boys are here, fighting for the soil
of France and the world's freedom.

We are in a typical French farming village of a thousand people, and
here a thousand American soldiers are quartered. A sergeant and a
score of men are in each shed or stable or barn loft. The Americans
are stationed in a long string of villages down this railway line.
Indeed it is hard to tell for the moment whether we are in France or in
the States. Here are Uncle Sam's uniforms, brown army tents, and new
wooden barracks. The roads are filled with American trucks, wagons,
motors, and whizzing motorcycles, American mules, ammunition wagons,
machine guns, provisions, and supplies, and American sentinels down