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in. The officer in charge explained that the regiments to which we were assigned were located some miles away; that we had been expected on the previous day and that wagons had then been sent to meet us. He did some telephoning.  Then he told us that it was an 8-hour round trip for the wagons; that it was too late for them to come for us that day, but that they would be sent for us the following [[strikethrough]] , [[/strikethrough]] day, January [[strikethrough]] 3 [[/strikethrough]] ^[[4]].

We asked him where we could spent the night. There was no hotel in Gondrecourt, he said, and all billets were occupied. He suggested that we go to the YMCA. We did. It occupied one of the smaller huts. It had one large room and a sort of kitchen, but no beds. Even the man who ran the place slept somewhere else. Soon after dark he went home and left us in possession. The only alternative was to turn us out to spend the night in the street. The place was heated in teh daytime by a coal stove, but the fire went out and we found no coal to keep it going. January in Gondrecourt was not as cold as it sometimes is in Wheaton, but the snow outside was not thawing. 

So we spent 24 hours at that YMCA. When morning came our host returned and made coffee for us. He also had doughnuts and candy bars. Early next afternoon the wagons arrived and we piled in. We were not formally punished for being tardy. We were not even reprimanded.  But we had paid the penalty that I think we had deserved. It may have occurred to you that a truck could easily have made that round trip, of 15 miles or so each way, in an hour, and could have been sent for us on the day of our arrival. But if our brigade had any trucks at that time I never saw them. In fact, during my brief stay with the First Division, I never saw any [[strikethrough]] M [[/strikethrough]] ^[[m]]otor vehiclae being used by it. Later on, when American division^[[s]] began going into action, each one had lots of trucks. They just weren't there in January.

After that ride our group of 6 Tennesseeans was disperse, for no two of us were assigned to the same battery. I was conveyed to ghe [[the]] headquarters of the First Battalion, 7th Field Artillery, at a village called Couvert-Puits ^[[Couvertpuits.]].  The commander of that battalion was Lieutenant-Colonel Alfred L. P. Sands, who as Captain Sands had been my commander at the officers' training camp at Fort Oglethorpe. He had been promoted through two grades since I first met him.  All regular army officers in the lower grades were being promoted at the same pac^[[e]]. [[strikethrough]] d [[/strikethrough]] Sands greeted me with as much cordiality as a shavetail could expect from one of his rank.