At the head of the gangplank there was an old Sergeant who directed
that we line ourselves along both rails of the ship. Then he ordered
us to take life belts from the racks overhead and put them on. I have
crossed the ocean several times and knew I was not seasick, but when I
budded on that life belt, I had a sensation of sickness.

After we got out into the stream all I could think of was that there
were a million German submarines with a torpedo on each, across the
warhead of which was inscribed my name and address.

After five hours we came alongside a pier and disembarked. I had
attained another one of my ambitions. I was "somewhere in France." We
slept in the open that night on the side of a road. About six the next
morning we were ordered to entrain. I looked around for the passenger
coaches, but all I could see on the siding were cattle cars. We
climbed into these. On the side of each car was a sign reading "Hommes
40, Cheveux 8." When we got inside of the cars, we thought that
perhaps the sign painter had reversed the order of things. After
forty-eight hours in these trucks we detrained at Rouen. At this place
we went through an intensive training for ten days.

This training consisted of the rudiments of trench warfare. Trenches
had been dug, with barbed-wire entanglements, bombing saps, dug-outs,
observation posts, and machine-gun emplacements. We were given a
smattering of trench cooking, sanitation, bomb throwing,
reconnoitering, listening posts, constructing and repairing barbed
wire, "carrying in" parties, methods used in attack and defense,
wiring parties, mass formation, and the procedure for poison-gas
attacks.