CELEBRATING CHRISTMAS ON THE MEUSE 



535 



THE CHRISTMAS BOX FROM HOME 



There were seas of mud and a never-ceasing fall of rain throughout northern France 

 during the last week of December. 1918, but no external incidents could dim the enthusiasm 

 of those intent upon celebrating Christmas in the familiar American fashion. 



sentative attempted to win by a spurt. 

 That bolt was fatal to success, for before 

 long he had bitten off more than he could 

 chew in a very literal sense of the words. 

 The tug o' war and Yorkshire wrest- 

 ling over and the signal relay run far up 

 the hillside and back, we left the muddy 

 stretch of road and climbed to the little 

 level where we had been billeted in 

 shacks and dugouts vacated by the Ger- 

 mans during our advance in the last days 

 of the war. We had begun long before 

 to plan this Christmas, and its crowning 

 feature was to be the dinner. 



MAKING A MESS HAEE 



There were two requisites for that — 

 something to eat and a place to eat it in. 

 Uncle Sam, all the home newspapers to 

 the contrary, could not be counted on to 

 furnish us much of either. Experience 

 had taught us a lot and — well, "corn 

 willie" in the rain seemed but a poor sub- 

 stitute for the turkey and plum pudding 

 of the old days; consequently we had be- 



gun work a fortnight before on our mess 

 hall. 



There was, as a starter, a shack that 

 combined a leaky roof partially knocked 

 in by a shell, with one end wall and glass- 

 less window. There were, beside, suffi- 

 cient uprights to hold the sagging roof in 

 place. That was all. The building had 

 been started by the Germans, but never 

 completed. It looked hopeless and very 

 nearly was so. We built the mess hall, 

 nevertheless, thanks to the magic of "sal- 

 vage" — the modern army's substitute for 

 Aladdin's Lamp. 



The roof presented the most serious 

 problem, as it never stopped raining on 

 it and never could be expected to. We 

 solved it finally by tearing away the badly 

 splintered boards, replacing them by 

 others salvaged from a near-by German 

 dump, and covering the whole affair with 

 a huge piece of water-soaked carpet that 

 had once graced a village parlor. We 

 battened it down with salvaged nails and 

 rope for all the world like troopship 



