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He made no such move.  Instead, he suggested that I go to Saumur and get the matter straight there. He said that the 88th would not be moving into action for at least a week.  Meanwhile he had nothing for me to do at Amanty, so I might as well take a holiday.  I welcomed the idea.  I wanted to see how the Saumur area looked in springtime.  The trip would involved stopovers both ways in Paris.  So I went.

As I had expected, Saumur was beautiful.  I know I was there on May 23rd, for that is the date on the pass the adjutant there gave me to enable me to get back to Amanty.  He told me that the order of April 24 had been rescinded, so as far as I was concerned, on April 27.  I had not yet received the rescinding order, but I did some time later.  The adjutant told me what had happened.  The school was replacing French instructors in the junior grades with Americans.  Those officers who had rated highest in the first graduating class were being recalled to teach.  The school had requested the First Division to send back the six officers named in the order of April 24th.  The First Division headquarters had complied without checking to see what had become of us since we joined it.  When I failed to report with the others in April my absence from the division had finally been discovered.  In a letter of last April 24 (1973, not 1918) I mentioned the names of the five men whom our French instructors rated highest in Section 1 at Saumur.  Four out of those five names are on that order of April 24 1918.  The missing name is that of Aragon, the mathematician from the University of Illinois who played chess with me.  I found him at Saumur.  I don't know when he was ordered there.  He was not appointed in my place.  That honor went to a man from the second section, Willard Walker.

I stayed at Saumur only three or four hours, taking an afternoon train back to Paris.  I had hoped to see John Ransom, but he was out, probably on field exercise.  I had lunch with Aragon at the Grand Hotel de Londres, where he was boarding.  It was then the best hotel in Saumur.  When Helen and I were there in 1938 I went to the Londres without bothering to look it up in the Michelin guide.  I made a big mistake.

I do not remember feeling envious of my friends who had gone back to Saumur.  They were ensured of safety and a comfortable life.