The American hospital, where the four American Red Cross girls and their new companions were to work, was at the edge of one of the villages in which the great permanent war camp for the United States soldiers had been located.

Yet one could scarcely say the camp had been located in the village, since it not only included the French village, but also covered the surrounding country on all sides. In the little French houses of frame and plaster the officers and as many of the soldiers as possible were quartered. But wherever it[66] was necessary, with the number of men increasing each day, barracks were being built by the soldiers themselves and their French comrades, while a few tents dotted the fields like a sudden up-springing of giant mushrooms.

[66]

Not long after daylight next morning Eugenia, Mildred Thornton and the four new nurses started for the village.

They wished to be in time for the morning drill. A moment or so before their arrival, a little way off they heard the clear, sharp call of the bugle and then the tramping of many thousands of feet.

After a sentry had investigated her permit, Eugenia led the way to the roof of one of the little French houses. She seemed to know its occupants and to have received permission beforehand. The roof was not flat, few roofs of the houses in French villages are, though one finds them almost always with the broad straight roofs in the larger apartment dwellings in Paris. But this small house had a little balcony at the top, and steep steps, almost like a ladder, leading from the inside.

[67]From the balcony one could see the great drill ground, where the United States troops were now forming in lines.

[67]

Over the fields of France floated the Stars and Stripes.

But the American girls, who had lately arrived, could not see plainly, for the mist in their eyes.

[68]

CHAPTER V Introductions

BUT when the drill was over the American girls did not come down from their place of observation. There was still so much of absorbing interest. The soldiers, having completed this work, had still more important training to be gone through with during the morning.

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