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worn as an ordinary raincoat, but [[strikethrough]] o [[/strikethrough]] ^[[i]]f you buttoned in in its detachable woolen [[strikethrough]] ling [[/strikethrough]] ^[[lining]] it gave as much protection against the cold as our regulation army overcoats did. Those American overcoats were not only ungainly but weighty. When soaked with rain they must have weighed [[strikethrough]] 20 [[/strikethrough]] ^[[15]] pounds.

Paris seemed full of friendly and unattached women. Many were of course looking for cash customers, but some at least just wanted to be sociable. At dinner that evening our party was served artichokes, a vegetable none of us had encountered before. While we were fumbling with them two young women got up from a nearby table and came over to instruct us. That brought on a pleasant conversation in [[/erased]] with a very limited vocabulary on both sides. When the womwn left we offered them a choice of escorts from among us, but they declined.

The next morning we went to the Gare d l'Est to board our train. There were found nearly all of the contingent headed for Gondrecourt from Saumur. Only two or three men, more conscientious or perhaps more timid than we, had gone on ahead the day before. Our journey that day was through territory that was to become familiar to me later on. The Marne river joins the Seine a little upstream from Paris. The railroad runs for more than a hundred miles along the Marne. About 50 miles out we passed through Chateau-Thie'rry, a town then 30 miles from the battlefront. But late in May the Germans drove a wedge into the French lines. They reached the Marne at Chateau-Thie'rry and cut that railroad line on which we were travelling in January. Fifty miles further on we passed Chalons-sur-Marne, the railhead nearest the airfield where I was to serve with the French for a few weeks in April and May. Beyond Chalons the railroad and the Marne part company, because the river takes a bend toward the south. The railroad goes on through Bar-le-Duc, the railhead for Verdun. Toward the middle of the afternoon we reached Gondr[[strikethrough]] 4 [[/strikethrough]] ecourt.

It was a village of perhaps 1000 people. A dozen or so wooden huts had been built near the station for the Americans. We learned that Gondrecourt was the railhead for the First Division, which included our brigade of artillery and two brigades of infantry. Those units were billeted in villages scattered over a radius of 15 or 20 miles.  We found a local office of the artillery brigade and report