Page:Armistice Day.djvu/157

Rh were killed there by Hun shells shortly before I arrived, and the rain was dripping through gaping openings in roof and walls.

In the main room, with its huge rafters and side studding, its broad, uneven tiles, its wide fireplace, and its furniture made from boxes, were men who spoke a pleasant language, the tongue of the American Southwest. A captain from New Mexico, a brown giant whose clothes were caked with mud, was sitting with his feet on an andiron and humming that Villa war song, "La Curcuracha," when our entrance interrupted—

After lunch, and after I had been shown a frieze of wall paintings after the German idea of humor, put there in the Huns' confidence of permanent occupation, I left these hospitable artillerymen and joined more Texans and Oklahomans, the men of the Ninetieth Division, which was moving into the front line. The historian of the division, a well-known Texas newspaperman, offered the lift this time.

We were bound for Villers to establish the Ninetieth's P. C. just behind where some of its regiments were hunting the Huns up the wooded valleys on the west of the Meuse. The roads here were eaten by shells, but, even so, we could