These rumors proved to be well founded, and on July 17,
he wrote on a picture-postcard representing the Lion of Belfort:

==
We have finally come to the rear for a little rest and reorganization,
and are cantoned in a valley not far from Belfort, in the extreme east
of France, very near the Swiss frontier. Since I wrote you last,
all the Americans in the regiment received 48 hours permission in Paris,
and it was a great happiness to get back even for so short a while
and to see again old scenes and faces after almost a year's absence.
We shall be here several weeks perhaps.
==

Three weeks later (August 8) he wrote to his mother:

==
. . . I have always had the passion to play the biggest part within my reach,
and it is really in a sense a supreme success to be allowed to play this.
If I do not come out, I will share the good fortune of those who disappear
at the pinnacle of their careers. Come to love France and understand
the almost unexampled nobility of the effort this admirable people is making,
for that will be the surest way of your finding comfort
for anything that I am ready to suffer in their cause.
==

The spell of rest lasted some two months, and then the Legion
returned to the front in time for the battle in Champagne
"in which" he writes "we took part from the beginning,
the morning of the memorable 25th. September." I cannot resist