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German subjects because Germany had annexed Alsace and part of Lorraine after the war of 1870.  All three had served in the German army in peacetime, but had deserted to join the French in 1914.

When the French closed their cavalry school at Saumur they left there for our benefit some marvellously trained horses, the stable crews, and several riding instructors.  We had about half a day of riding each week.  Our riding instructor was a cavalry lieutenant named Jacques Boutet, as handsome a man and as graceful a rider as I had ever seen.

When I revisited Saumur with Helen in 1938 the street that runs past the school had been renamed the Avenue Foch.  I don't remember what its name was in 1917, but across it from the main building were the stables, four or five huge riding halls and an open space called the Chardonnet.  In the old days the Chardonnet had been the scene of riding exhibitions at graduation time.  One day in my first week there, walking across it, I saw one of our Americans being dragged by a runaway horse.  It turned out that he had undertaken to ride while wearing wrapped cloth puttees, a most imprudent thing to do.  Somehow he had fallen off and one of his puttees had become entangled in the stirrup.  As he fell the puttee unwound down as far as his shoe, but stuck there.  He was not seriously injured, but his face on one side was badly skinned and bleeding, from being rubbed in the gravel.  The man was from New York City and his name was Jeff Feigel.  I remember it because it appeared in the newspapers a few months later.  Feigel was the first American officer to be killed in World War 1.

A bridle path led from Chardonnet along a small stream to a large field that belonged to the school.  There we had a space to let the horses run, and there we rode in clear weather.  When it rained we rode in one of the riding halls floored with tanbark.  We worked at the hurdles, raising the hurdle one notch after each successful jump.  We were put through some trick riding, such as taking the hurdles with both hands held high in the air and the reins loose on the horse's neck.  (You had to have trained horses to do that).  Sometimes, in that same riding posture, we were made to gallop around in ever-tightening circles.  You had to lean inward to keep from falling off.  The faster the pace, and the smaller the circle, the more you had to learn.  But you also would fall off if you learned too far.  Those