As the weather has been intolerably cold, though it is dry and often sunny, the soldiers are billeted in big groups of fifty or sixty in a room or grange, where they sleep in straw, rolled in their blankets, packed like sardines to keep warm.

They came in nearly frozen, but they thawed out quickly, and now they don’t mind the weather at all.

Hardly had they got thawed out when an epidemic of mumps broke out.  They made quick work of evacuating those who had it, and stop its spreading, to the regret, I am afraid, of a good many of the boys.  One of them said to me the day after the mumpy ones were taken over to Meaux:  “Lucky fellows.  I wish I had the mumps.  After Verdun it must be jolly to be in the hospital with nothing more dangerous than mumps, and a nice, pretty girl, in a white cap, to pet you.  I can’t think of a handsomer way to spend a repos than that.”

When I tell you that these soldiers say, “Men who have not been at Verdun have not seen the war yet,” and then add that the life of the 118th here looks like a long picnic, and that they make play of their work, play of their grenade practice, which they vary with football, play of their twenty miles hikes, I give you leave to laugh at my way of seeing the war, and I’ll even laugh with you.

That reminds me that I never see a thousand or so of these boys on the big plain playing what they call football that I don’t wish some American chaps were here to teach them the game.  All they do here is to throw off their coats and kick the ball as far, and as high, as possible, and run like racers after it, while the crowd, massed on the edge of the field, yells like mad.  The yelling they do very well indeed, and they kick well, and run well.  But, if they only knew the game—­ active, and agile, and light as they are—­they would enjoy it, and play it well.

I had one of the nicest thrills I have had for many a day soon after the 118th arrived.

It was a sunny afternoon.  I was walking in the road, when, just at the turn above my house, two officers rode round the corner, saluted me, and asked if the road led to Quincy.  I told them the road to the right at the foot of the hill, through Voisins, would take them to Quincy.  They thanked me, wheeled their horses across the road and stood there.  I waited to see what was going to happen—­small events are interesting here.  After a bit one of them said that perhaps I would be wise to step out of the road, which was narrow, as the regiment was coming.

I asked, of course, “What regiment?” and “What are they coming for?” and he answered “The 118th,” and that it was simply “taking a walk.”

So I sauntered back to my garden, and down to the corner by the hedge, where I was high above the road, and could see in both directions.  I had hardly got there when the head of the line came round the corner.  In columns of four, knapsacks on their backs, guns on their shoulders, swinging at an easy gait, all looking so brown, so hardy, so clear-eyed, the men from Verdun marched by.