War Service Letters 



463 



spotted the fields with its flaming red. You can picture the landscape, 

 if all our poppies were red instead of yellow. I had often wished while 

 there that I could transport the Sierra Club entire for an overnight trip 

 there. France is a beautiful country. Most particularly is it beautiful 

 in spring. Frequent rains and such trees as usually grow in damp 

 stream-bottoms keep it green when our own state has put on its brown 

 coat that it usually carries for summer wear. It is in fact the prettiest 

 country that I have ever seen. It is pretty in its French way ; but noth- 

 ing that I have seen here can approach the boldness and silent grandeur 

 of our California ridges where they drop into our deep redwood-filled 

 canons in the places where we most like to lay our bags. The vastness 

 of California scenery is missing, and its grandeur. Pretty as it all 

 is, and much as I will dislike to leave it behind, for there is so much 

 historic charm and quaintness everywhere, still it will be a great day 

 for me when I can stretch my legs and lungs again at the six- to ten- 

 thousand-foot level in our own Sierra. 



As you probably know, I am in the artillery branch of the service, and 

 took my course, as did a great many officers of the same branch, at 

 Saumur, which at one time was the oldest and finest cavalry school in 

 the world, but for some time now has been an artillery school, and a 

 very fine one, probably the best-equipped one over here. Homer Spence, 

 a first lieutenant, and, I think, an Alameda boy, is an instructor there, 

 or was at the time that I graduated. Since leaving there my life up to 

 the past month or two has been a rambling one and full of interest. At 

 Gondrecourt I was within hearing of the guns at the front on most all 

 days, though they were a considerable distance away. We could always 

 tell when any action of importance was on by the multiplied intensity 

 of the artillery action. The Boche planes passed over us now and then 

 on their way to Paris, and could be detected by the different sound of 

 their motors from our own. We picked up a large paper balloon one 

 morning to which had been attached a fat bunch of daily papers printed 

 in French within the territory captured by the Germans. It was the 

 Gazette des Ardennes, and was a fine instrument for furthering German 

 propaganda. Its news items were rich with German successes by land 

 and sea. It also drew pleasing pictures in its local items of feast-days, 

 weddings and the like, which laid particular stress upon the ideal life 

 that the inhabitants enjoyed under the rule of their German captors. 

 Altogether it was a very smooth little edition, calculated to work upon 

 the weak and war-weary minds of the territory, which they were seek- 

 ing to further subjugate. This was found at the time that the Germans 

 were beginning their big push which got them as far as Chateau Thier- 

 ry. I had hopes of staying in that vicinity and taking part in what we 

 all felt was going to be a very important and likewise a desperate ac- 

 tion, for the momentum of the German forces at that time seemed to 

 require some very hard fighting to keep them from getting dangerously 



