No matter how small the hamlet or how dingy appearing the so-called
hotel in it might be, we were sure of getting satisfying food, cooked
agreeably and served to us by a friendly, smiling little French
maiden, and charged for at a most reasonable figure, considering that
generally the town was fairly close up to the fighting lines and the
bringing in of supplies for civilians' needs was frequently
subordinated to the handling of military necessities.

Indeed, the place might be almost within range of the big guns and
subjected to bombing outrages by enemy airmen, but somehow the local
Boniface managed to produce food ample for our desires, and most
appetising besides. His larder might be limited, but his good nature,
like his willingness and his hospitality, was boundless.

I predict that there is going to be an era of better cooking in
America before very long. Our soldiers, returning home, are going to
demand a tastier and more diversified fare than many of them enjoyed
before they put on khaki and went overseas; and they are going to get
it, too. Remembering what they had to eat under French roofs, they
will never again be satisfied with meats fried to death, with soggy
vegetables, with underdone breads.

Sometimes as we went scouting about on our roving commission to see
what we might see, at mealtime we would enter a community too small
to harbour within it any establishment calling itself a hotel. In such
a case this, then, would be our procedure: We would run down to the
railroad crossing and halt at the door of the inevitable _Café de la
Station_, or, as we should say in our language, the Last Chance
Saloon; and of the proprietor we would inquire the name and
whereabouts of some person in the community who might be induced, for