As we passed more and more guns we heard the reason for the heavy artillery fire of the night before. It was that our guns were firing as many shells as possible so as to give the Boche as much discomfort as they could before the war ended.
The farther we went the stronger became the impression of what the end of the war meant.
Stenay itself was a remarkable transformation from despair to happiness. Before one tiny shop stood a little French child, scarcely four years old, waving a hand to the splendid helmeted soldiers who were passing. One broad-shouldered man stepped from the line, took the child in his arms and held her high in the air, with an ecstatic smile such as fathers only smile.
"I've got kids of my own," he said, answering a question, "and now I know I'll see them again." He is Private A. C. Larsen, of Minneapolis.
And so we finally passed on through the French towns, all rejoicing, to Bar le Duc, bright with lights for the first time in many hundreds of nights, in whose streets the French soldiers and people cried: "La guerre est finie!" and then were silent, as if they feared it were not true.
