day. But that day they gave us three more prunes for dessert. They
came very close and fairly fast together. As they came Henry was
sitting in the barn where the ambulance boys had their meals. Lunch
was on the table and Henry was writing. The shells sounded just
outside the barn. "What are you writing, Mr. Allen?" asked Major
Murphy. "I'm sketching," stuttered the Wichita statesman, "a sort
of a draft of the American terms of peace!"

After three extra bombs had come in the Germans turned their
guns from the town, and we had our lunch at our ease. And such a
lunch! A melon to begin with; a yellow melon that looks like the
old-fashioned American muskmelon and tastes like a nectar of the
gods, followed by onion soup. Then followed an entree, a large
thin slice of cold sausage which they afterward told us was made
of horse meat, a pate of some kind, then roast veal sliced thin
and slightly underdone with browned potatoes; then new beans served
as a separate course; then fruit and cheese and coffee and cigars!
And that in a barn!

[Illustration: "Come on! Let's go to the abri!"]

We had to go up to a first aid station after lunch so we piled
into an ambulance, were buttoned in from the back by the driver,
and went sailing up the hill and into the woods. They told us that
we were in the Avecourt Woods in the Forest of Hess. We remembered
that but a few weeks before when we were in our newspaper offices,
that the Avecourt Woods had been the scene of some fierce and bloody
fighting. And as we rode up the hill we heard the French cannon
roaring all about us. We were told that four thousand cannon were
planted in the Avecourt Woods, but only about a thousand of them