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 Chapter 1: Databases and Database Users 1

Solution Manual for Fundamentals of Database

Systems, 6/E 6th Edition : 0136086209
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CHAPTER 1: DATABASES AND DATABASE USERS

Answers to Selected Exercises

1.8 - Identify some informal queries and update operations that you would expect to apply to
the database shown in Figure 1.2.

Answer:
(a) (Query) List the names of all students majoring in Computer Science.

(b) (Query) What are the prerequisites of the Database course?.

(c) (Query) Retrieve the transcript of Smith. This is a list of <CourseName,

SectionIdentifier, Semester, Year, Grade> for each course section that Smith has
completed.

(d) (Update) Insert a new student in the database whose Name=Jackson,

StudentNumber=23, Class=1 (freshman), and Major=MATH.

(e) (Update) Change the grade that Smith received in Intro to Computer Science section
119 to B.

1.9 - What is the difference between controlled and uncontrolled redundancy?

Answer:
Redundancy is when the same fact is stored multiple times in several places in a database.
For example, in Figure 1.5(a) the fact that the name of the student with StudentNumber=8 is
Brown is stored multiple times. Redundancy is controlled when the DBMS ensures that
multiple copies of the same data are consistent; for example, if a new record with
StudentNumber=8 is stored in the database of Figure 1.5(a), the DBMS will ensure that
StudentName=Smith in that record. If the DBMS has no control over this, we have
uncontrolled redundancy.

1.10 - Specify all the relationships among the records of the database shown in Figure 1.2.

Answer:
(a) Each SECTION record is related to a COURSE record.

(b) Each GRADE_REPORT record is related to one STUDENT record and one SECTION
record.

(c) Each PREREQUISITE record relates two COURSE records: one in the role of a course
and the other in the role of a prerequisite to that course.

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley.

2 Chapter 1: Databases and Database Users

1.11 - Give some additional views that may be needed by other user groups for the database
shown in Figure 1.2.

Answer:
(a) A view that groups all the students who took each section and gives each student's
grade. This may be useful for printing the grade report for each section for the
university administration's use.

(b) A view that gives the number of courses taken and the GPA (grade point average) for
each student. This may be used to determine honors students.

1.12 – Cite some examples of integrity constraints that you think can apply to the database
shown in Figure 1.2.

Answer:
We give a few constraints expressed in English. Following each constraint, we give its
type in the relational database terminology that will be covered in Chapter 6, for
reference purposes.

(a) The StudentNumber should be unique for each STUDENT record (key constraint).

(b) The CourseNumber should be unique for each COURSE record (key constraint).

(c) A value of CourseNumber in a SECTION record must also exist in some COURSE
record (referential integrity constraint).

(d) A value of StudentNumber in a GRADE_REPORT record must also exist in some

STUDENT record (referential integrity constraint).

(e) The value of Grade in a GRADE_REPORT record must be one of the values in the set
{A, B, C, D, F, I, U, S} (domain constraint).

(f) Every record in COURSE must have a value for CourseNumber (entity integrity
constraint).

(g) A STUDENT record cannot have a value of Class=2 (sophomore) unless the student
has completed a number of sections whose total course CreditHours is greater that 24
credits (general semantic integrity constraint).

1.13 - Give examples of systems in which it may make sense to use traditional file
processing instead of a database approach.

Answer:
1.1. Small internal utility to locate files Formatted: Bullets and Numbering
2.2. Small single user application that does not require security (such as a customized
calculator or a personal address and phone book)
3.3. Real-time navigation system (with heavy computation and very little data)
4.4. The students may think of others.

1.14 - Consider Figure 1.2.

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley.

 Chapter 1: Databases and Database Users 3

a.a. If the name of the ‘CS’ (Computer Science) Department changes to ‘CSSE’ (Computer Formatted: Bullets and Numbering
Science and Software Engineering) Department and the corresponding prefix for the
course number also changes, identify the columns in the database that would need
to be updated.
b.b. Can you restructure the columns in COURSE, SECTION, and PREREQUISITE tables so
that only one column will need to be updated?

Answer:
a. The following columns will need to be updated.
Table Column(s)
STUDENT Major
COURSE CourseNumber and Department
SECTION CourseNumber
PREREQUISITE CourseNumber and PrerequisiteNumber

b. You should split the following columns into two columns:

Table Column Split Columns
COURSE CourseNumber CourseDept and CourseNum
SECTION CourseNumber CourseDept and CourseNum
PREREQUISITE CourseNumber CourseDept and CourseNum
PREREQUISITE PrerequisiteNumber PreReqDept and PreReqNum

Note that in the COURSE table, the column CourseDept will not be needed after the above
change, since it is redundant with the Department column.

Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc. Publishing as Pearson Addison-Wesley.

Other documents randomly have
different content
going by the faithful verger who refused to leave his post, and
what’s more, it had kept time. But a short while ago the clock had
started “skipping.” A party of American boys had just visited the
tower. Upon investigation it proved that one of the wheels was
missing! Sometimes I think the French are very patient with us.
Everywhere we went we came upon German prisoners engaged in
the most leisurely fashion in cleaning up. There are several
thousands of them here and more to come. Verdun is to rise from
her ruins and live once more. Yet she can never be in any sense the
stately city that once she was; for while the business and poorer
portions of the city below the hill are not irreparably damaged, the
finer part with its stately mansions and exquisite specimens of
mediæval architecture is wrecked beyond repair. The most serious
obstacle in the way of making at least some small portions of the
city habitable at present lies in the great difficulty of obtaining
window-glass.
From the Cathedral we went to the Canteen-in-the-Convent. How
the nuns would stare, I thought, if they could see their virgin
precincts in possession of a mob of boys in khaki, white and black,
interspersed with the blue-coated poilus! Across the back of the
building runs a wide terrace, once worn by pious feet of patient
sisters engaged in holy meditations. Here among the lounging boys
stand life-sized carved and colored images of saints and angels.
Their size of course prevents them from traveling to America as
souvenirs, but even so they must stand witness to the irreverence of
young America, for the Angel Gabriel is hideous in a German gas-
mask!
After dinner we went on a trip through the Citadel, that vast
underground soldier-city with its miles of corridors and rooms
enough to harbor a whole army, a little world deep underneath the
earth. We saw the bakery which bakes bread not only for the whole
garrison but for all the troops in the vicinity; the Foyer, a writing and
recreation hall, named in honor of President Wilson; the movie
theatre; and the hospital with its wards and operating room,—what
a nightmare horror I thought to be sick in those damp and dimly-
lighted subterranean caverns! But we were not allowed to see more
than the outer door of the chapel which they say is sumptuous,
since it is enriched by all the costly furnishings and precious images
moved there for safety’s sake from the Cathedral. Nor were we
shown the underground café where, I have been told, an unusually
good brand of beer is sold.
From the Citadel, rumour has it, tunnels lead out to the circle of
forts that form the defences of Verdun, but if you ask a Frenchman if
this is so, he only looks wise and keeps mum.

Verdun, February 25.

I don’t believe there is another canteen quite like my canteen in
the whole of France. It is a canteen for French civilians. The one-
time inhabitants of Verdun and the devastated area beyond are
allowed by the government, it seems, just twenty-four hours in
which to visit their former homes, after which they must return as
there is no food for them here and very little shelter. In return for
many favours the French authorities asked the Y. to co-operate with
them in running a sort of rest-room for these refugees; they
supplying a detail, and we supplying the materials to make hot
chocolate which is given away, and a secretary to take charge. The
canteen is in the Collège Buvignier at the foot of the hill. There is a
dortoir in the building also, in charge of the man who was once
manager of the principal hotel in the city; two long halls full of cots
with straw mattresses where the refugees may pass the night. My
assignment to this canteen is only to be temporary.
The room where my canteen is must have once been quite
beautiful, high-ceilinged with wainscot panelling below and
embossed leather covering the walls above. Even now in its state of
dingy disrepair, with half the panes in the tall arched windows
replaced by dirty cloth, it keeps something of its old dignity and
charm. Beyond the main room is another smaller one, connected by
two doors, in which the detail lives and in which we make our
chocolate.
When I took over the canteen from the man who had been in
charge of it, it was absolutely bare except for four tables and some
backless wooden benches. My first act on assuming charge was to
clean house, my second was to persuade the detail to make the very
watery chocolate richer. After that we proceeded to refurnish and
adorn. We ran a frieze of war-pictures in color, taken from a child’s
pictorial Histoire de la Guerre around the top of the wainscoting,
hung French and American flags from the chandeliers, teased the
French authorities into bringing us some nice upholstered armchairs
for the old ladies to sit in, and, finally, put a little pot of primroses or
snow-drops, dug with a broken tile from a ruined garden, in the
centre of each table. Then a kind secretary bound for Bar-le-Duc
was persuaded to go shopping for us and brought back an array of
French magazines, hand-picked, and an assortment of toys to amuse
the kiddies who must often wait here with their families between
trains, though so far, it must be confessed, it is chiefly the detail who
have been amused by them. And now I am wondering what there is
to do next.
Besides the hot chocolate, we carry on a trade in bread, a huge
sackfull of which is brought us fresh every day from the
underground bakery on the back of a little round-faced poilu; and
we do a brisk business in checking parcels, without checks.
Yesterday a rabbit was left all day in our care. I was sorry for the
poor beast cooped up in the little box and wanted to give it a drink
of water, but the poilus insisted that this would be fatal. Whether
this might possibly be a zoölogical fact, or is just part of the national
prejudice against water, I can’t determine.
At first, remembering my difficulties with the French Army at
Mauvages, I was a little apprehensive as to how my two poilus, Emil
and Guillaume and I might get along. But though I am sure they
think me the oddest creature in the world, and my presence here
unconventional beyond words, yet their behaviour could not possibly
be more courteous, considerate and deferential. They won’t even
allow me to wash the chocolate cups.
“Mademoiselle will soil her hands!”
And they are forever telling me that I am working too hard. “But
Mademoiselle will be fatigued!” Which is so absurd as to fairly
exasperate me.
 Besides Emil and Guillaume we have four soldier friends-of-the-
family, as it were, who also frequent the back room. The canteen is
supposed to be a strictly civilian affair, but we make an exception in
favour of the four camarades, and they repay us by helping chop the
stove-wood which is stacked in a great pile outside the door and is
nothing more or less than the stakes to which were once fastened
barbed-wire entanglements. Each stake still bears two little rings of
wire around it and every few days one has to clear out the
accumulation of barbed-wire entanglements from the chocolate-
stove. Les défences de Verdun the poilus call the wood-pile. The
poilus are all artillerymen from a regiment of “75s.” Guillaume has
brought down three Boche planes, he tells me, and Emil five. One of
the poilus is a handsome brigadier, or corporal, who wears wooden
shoes. I said something about sabots the other day. But don’t they
wear sabots in America? The poilus were astonished to learn that
wooden shoes were unknown among us! There is also a sergeant
who is the aristocrat of our little circle, a dreamy looking lad, a
student of architecture at the Beaux Arts. Yesterday he shyly
proffered me an envelope; in it was a pretty pen-and-ink sketch of
two little girls, one in the costume of Alsace, the other of Lorraine,
proffering bouquets, and underneath was written, “Souvenir of a
Frenchman who thanks America for having given the victory more
quickly.” Our poilu friends are constantly straying into the back room
in order to read the newspapers here and to get a cup of hot
chocolate. Every now and then they all get together and hold a vin
rouge tea party. On these occasions it is evidently a mystery to them
why, though I join them in eating bread and cheese, I always refuse
the vin rouge!
The politeness of the poilus is equalled by that of the clientele.
They are extraordinarily grateful for what little we do for them.
Today an old lady, in spite of anything I could say, insisted on tipping
me with a two franc piece! I spent it buying chocolates and
cigarettes for the poilus at the Canteen-in-the-Convent. Every class
of society flows into my little canteen from gently bred ladies under
the escort of immaculate officers to old men who resemble nothing
but the forlornest vagabonds. The cheerfulness and courage of the
refugees in general is astonishing. One would think that a room full
of people engaged in such a mournful mission would be a gloomy
place, but on the contrary, although occasionally you see a woman
quietly sobbing, at most times we fairly buzz with pleasant
sociability. The women come in with faces bright with excitement.
“Oh the poor Cathedral!” they cry.
“Did you find anything of your home?” I ask. For a moment the
tears swim in their brave eyes. “Rien” they answer shaking their
heads. “Nothing!”
Today an old man in a long white apron smock was the centre of
attention here. He was busy searching the ruins of his house for
buried treasure. Every little while he would come back to the
canteen with the fruits of his pathetic salvaging,—a few silver
spoons, some paint brushes, a bolt of black velvet ribbon,—place
them in a basket and then return to look for more. Two German
prisoners were digging for him. Finally he came back with six
unbroken champagne glasses and a face scored with tragedy. He
had been hoping against hope to recover the treasures in his wine
cellar but he was too late, not a bottle was there left!

Verdun, February 28.

This morning I went out on a truck to Fort Douaumont. This is the
fort which was captured by the Germans, held by them for five
months, and then retaken by the French and marks the enemy’s
nearest approach to the city. Oddly enough the French were the
gainers through this occupation to the extent of a splendid electric
lighting system introduced by the Germans into the fort!
A modern fort does not resemble in the least the idea that one
has of a “fort.” Viewed from outside it is nothing more or less than a
hole in the ground. Once inside we had the sense of being in a
monster ant-hill as we followed our guide through a network of
tunnelled corridors. We saw the room of the Commandant with its
wonderful relief maps both French and German of the Verdun hills,
we saw the war-museum, the Foyer, the store-rooms and engine-
rooms, the magazine rooms where the big shells were stacked like
cord wood, and we climbed up into the turrets of the disappearing
guns. In this strange fort which has been both friend and enemy we
looked through one empty doorway into a pit of ruins open to the
sky, under the wreckage sixteen Germans lay, they said; it was here
that a French shell had broken through. We passed by another door
which bore a sign on it announcing that this was the tomb of five
French mitrailleurs who had been killed by a German shell in the
room within; instead of burying the bodies they had simply sealed
up the door and left them. Then we ducked through a little low door
and climbed up over the hillock which forms the roof of the fort as it
were. All about us stretched the abomination of desolation of the
battle-fields, wracked tortured earth, seared and scarred into a
yellow-grey desert waste. Here and there lay bones, human bones,
sometimes scattered loose, sometimes gathered in a little heap with
a rusty helmet and a broken rifle lying close beside them. Only a few
hundred feet from the road, the man who guided the party told us,
he came yesterday upon two unburied bodies.
To the northeast we could just discern a large wooden cross. A
French officer who was stationed at the fort pointed it out to us.
Here, he said, lay buried no less than twelve hundred French
soldiers. They had been given a line of trench to hold, the officers
were taken from them, they were to expect no reinforcements or
relief. They were left there knowing it was only a question of days or
hours. When the French finally reached the line again every man
was dead. So they left them where they lay and filled the trench in
over them, but each man’s rifle they took and planted upright in the
earth beside him. There is a heroic theme for a poet!
When I reached the canteen again I found a ragged disconsolate
old soul occupying one of the benches. On seeing me he began a
sad recital of sore feet, ending with the petition that I procure him a
pair of rubber boots and emphasizing the point by taking off his
shoes then and there and exhibiting his troubles,—which weren’t
pretty,—to me. I was perplexed, not knowing what to do, when the
friendly M. P. on the beat happened in; so I put the case up to him.
He told me that there was a salvage dump at the station. We set out
together and succeeded in finding an enormous pair of rubber
overshoes, and, what’s more, in getting away with them. The old
man was pleased as Punch, put them on and hobbled off in them.
Tonight someone told me a melancholy tale. An M. P. stationed upon
the hill had spied an old Frenchman going by in a pair of American
overshoes and had straightway held him up and ordered him to
relinquish what was Government property. And the old man perforce
had to sit down in the street and take off his shoes.
Speaking of boots reminds me of the tale told me by a doughboy
the other day; a tale of a pair of tan shoes, handsome, shiny, new
tan shoes which was sold to every man in turn in his whole company
only to be finally purchased as a bargain at thirty-five francs by an
unsuspecting Frenchman. They were beautiful shoes, the boy
assured me, the only trouble was that they both happened to be for
the left foot.
 CHAPTER VIII: CONFLANS—PIONEERS, M.P.’s AND OTHERS

Jarny, March 2.
I am living in a hospital. Being in the occupied territory, the
hospital has been for the last four years, of course, a German
hospital. Over the doorways are painted such pious mottoes as
“Gruss Gott!” and the theatre, for there is an amusement hall in the
building, is adorned with a back-drop on which a Siegfried-esque
hero overlooks an ideal German landscape wherein a picture-book
castle perches on the top of an impossible mountain. At the other
end of the hall is painted an enormous iron cross. The masterpiece
of the collection, though, is on the wall of the basketball court and
is, naturally, a portrait of His Late Imperial Majesty, although one
indentifies him rather by inference than recognition, for the
countenance having recently served for a pistol target is battered
almost out of human semblance. The main part of the hospital is
occupied by the Y.; in the wings some two hundred ordnance boys
are quartered; we ladies find comfortable lodging in the operating
room. There are five of us here at present, two American girls,
besides myself, and two Englishwomen. These latter are ladies of
high degree, I gather, being related to bishops and other such
personages. They go under the unvarying title of the “British Army,
First and Second Battalions.” According to report they were sent over
here from England to do propaganda work, that is, to create a
pleasant impression on young America and thus help to forge
another link between the two nations etc., but this they indignantly
deny. However that may be, the boys derive a rather wicked joy
from teasing and arguing with the good ladies, and particularly from
filling them full of amazing tales about “The States.” Even the
Secretary can’t resist the temptation to “rag” them, and though they
are usually very patient under his plaguing, today at dinner we
received a shock. In response to one of his more daring sallies, the
Bishop’s sister, fixing the Secretary with an icy eye, lifted one
patrician hand to her august nose, and thumbed it! Which only goes
to show that even an English Lady of Quality has human moments.
And if we on our side must laugh a bit at them, it is plain to see that
they, in their turn, find us infinitely amusing. In fact I half suspect,
since they spend hours every day covering sheets of paper with
close, fine handwriting, that the good ladies are engaged upon
writing a book concerning the peculiarities of their American cousins
when seen at close range. And in view of all the wonderful material
the boys have furnished them, that book should make rich reading.
There are three Y.s here in a little triangle each a mile apart, all
under the same management; Jamy, Conflans and Labry. Within this
triangle, besides the ordnance detachment, there is a regiment of
engineers, two companies of pioneer infantry, a telegraph battalion
and a detachment of negro labor troops.
When the Americans came here last November, the town, they tell
us, was an indescribable mess, the roads choked with abandoned
military material and litter of all sorts. To the Americans as usual fell
the pleasant task of cleaning up. Sometimes I think that if France
doesn’t come out of this war as clean as the classic Spotless Town it
will only be because the Americans weren’t here long enough. And
yet, funnily enough, France being cleaned up by America has often
provided a spectacle analogous to a little boy having his face washed
against his will. At Bourmont, when the Americans sought to make
the town sanitary by a liberal use of disinfectants, a frantic protest
went up from the inhabitants: their wells, they claimed, had all been
ruined! At Gondrecourt the Mayor presented a formal complaint; the
Americans were wearing away the streets, he said, by too much
cleaning! And on the other hand this sort of work proves none too
pleasant a pill for American pride to swallow. Today a young New
York Jew came into the canteen. He was a handsome fellow and in
civilian life evidently something of a dandy. He belonged to the
pioneers and he had been engaged all day, I gathered, in following
about at the tail of a dump cart, picking up tin cans and rubbish.
“My God!” he suddenly burst out. “If my wife could see me now!
My God! if she could see me!”
 One day last fall going down a street I passed a boy who was
engaged in a particularly dirty sort of cleaning. He looked up, caught
my eye, stood grinning sheepishly at me a moment. Then he
drawled, half humourously, half-bitterly:
“And my mother thinks I’m in the trenches!”

Conflans, March 10.

After so many weeks of wandering, I have settled down to a job
again. The last six “huts” in which I have been were in a barracks, a
casino, a private house, a convent, a college and a hospital. This
“hut” is in a hotel. The hotel is situated directly back of the Conflans-
Jamy railroad station. Before the war the hotel was a prosperous and
pleasant place, judging from the photograph which Madame showed
us; its windows filled with real lace curtains all matching! as she
pointed out; the broad terrace in front on sunny days filled with little
tables and crowded with well-dressed people. Now, after four years
of German occupation, it is a melancholy spectacle; ragged, dingy,
half the panes gone from the windows, its front painted over with
staring German signs. There are two entrances, one into the hall
leading to the rooms given over to the Y. the other into what we call
the “Annex,” a little café kept by Madame and Monsieur, the
proprietors of the place. Next to our red triangle sign stares a board
announcing brazenly in red and yellow Vin et Bière; but the irony of
the juxtaposition is quite lost on the French; indeed yesterday
Madame asked me if I couldn’t get her the loan of a truck to go to
Nancy for a load of beer!
Madame and Monsieur have been here all through the German
occupation. The Germans weren’t bad, Madame told me, if one were
very meek and never said a word, but did just exactly as they said,—
she had had some difficulty to be sure, reducing her more temperish
spouse to the proper attitude of meek submission!—but they had
made a clean sweep of everything of value; all her linen that she
had carefully hidden, her copper utensils, everything.
The Y. consists of a canteen room, a reading and writing room,
store-room, kitchen and office. When I first saw the place it was as
uninviting as anything could well be; dark, dirty, ill-smelling, the
walls covered with soiled ragged paper. But now it is very nice; the
dirty cloth in the window frames has been replaced by vitex, the
windows hung with pretty curtains, new electric lights have been
added, and best of all, the walls entirely covered with German
camouflage cloth and decorated with bright posters. This
camouflage cloth is a Godsend; woven of finely twisted strands of
paper, it comes in three colors, a soft brown, a yellowish green and a
dark blue, resembling, when on the walls, a loosely woven burlap. It
was used by the Germans to conceal and disguise military objects
and was left here in large quantities when they evacuated. The
Americans hereabouts use it for every imaginable purpose; for
covering unsightly walls, for curtains, for officers’ mess table-cloths.
Then there are the ammunition bags made of paper cloth which the
boys use for laundry bags. “When in doubt, camouflage,” is the
motto. I chose brown for my canteen and now it is on the walls I
feel that no millionaire could ask for anything prettier. Only I
wonder; will they ask me to join the paper-hangers’ union when I
get home?
Besides running the dry canteen, we serve hot chocolate free
every night for all comers here, filling up their canteens so the boys
can take it away with them, and run a free lodging-house. Every day
we have boys coming into the canteen asking for a bed. So after
nine-fifteen we stack all the chairs and tables at one end of the
writing-room, and bring out canvas-cots and blankets from the
store-room for our lodgers. There is only one unfortunate feature of
this scheme; the lodgers become so attached to their blankets that
they are all too apt to carry them away with them the next morning!
A man secretary and I are to run the hut together; a minister in
the states, here he answers to the unvarying title of “Chief.” The
“Chief” I find at present chiefly remarkable for his trousers. These
are garments with a past apparently and a present of such a sort
that in the company of ladies he is only rendered at ease by
assuming a sitting posture. If compelled to rise he backs out of your
presence as if you were royalty or goes with the gesture of the little
boy who has been chastised. Outside the house, no matter how fine
the day may be, he goes discreetly clad in a raincoat.
“I must,” declares the Chief at least six times a day, “go to Toul
and get a new uniform.”
“Amen,” say I under my breath.
Besides the outfits stationed in town there are some twenty more
in the neighborhood which draw their rations here at the railhead
and then there are the leave trains on their way to or from Germany,
whose passing, like a visitation of locusts, leaves the canteen
stripped and bare. The negro labor troops in the vicinity supply quite
a new element. Sometimes this takes the form of a bit of humour.
Last night I had drawn several cups of cocoa ahead of the demand
when a darky lad came shyly up to the counter and pointed to one.
“Please ma’am,” he asked, “am dat cup occupied?”
There is one fat and genial little darky who is a constant
customer, always he comes in munching a sandwich or an orange or
some other edible bought from a street-vendor.
“Eating again, Jo?” asked the Chief today.
“Why Boss,” expostulated Jo, “I only eats one meal a day! But
dat,” he grinned, “am all de time!”
“Shines” the boys invariably call them.
Tonight we were amused to see a negro corporal, who, not
content with the chevrons on his sleeve, had sewed an additional
pair on his overseas cap!

Conflans, March 14.

My family at the hut consists of the Chief, Harry, Jerry and Slim.
Harry and Jerry are as nice lads as one could find anywhere, but
Slim is the bird that hatched out of the cuckoo’s egg. Lean, uncouth,
according to his own claim, “the tallest man that Uncle Sam’s got in
his army,” with an inordinately long neck and an Adam’s apple so
prominent as to give him the appearance of an ostrich in the act of
swallowing a perpetual orange, “Slim Old Horse” as the boys call
him, seems to me at times more like an animated caricature of the
middle west “Long Boy” than a being of flesh and blood and bone.
How he ever became attached to the Y. is a point on which nobody
seems certain, but here he is and here he sticks in spite of every
effort to dislodge him. I fancy his “Top Kick” was only too glad to get
rid of him and when he discovered Slim’s inclination toward the Y.
simply let him go and washed his hands of him. Slim’s health is
uncertain. Most of the time he only feels well enough to sit in the
office and eat or “chaw.”
“I started in ter chaw terbaccer,”—he talks with a nasal twang
which is impossible to reproduce,—“when I was a kid four years old;
when my daddy an’ my mammy found it out, they sure did start ter
raise hell with me, but I says to ’em; ‘All right, have it your way, but
then it will be whisky and rum fer mine, when I’m twenty-one!’ So
my mammy says ‘Let ’im chaw.’ An’ I’ve chawed ever sence.”
“I’ve only got one lung,” he remarked the other day, “and that’s a
little one.”
“Slim,” I urged, “I’m worried about you. You oughtn’t to be here.
You ought to be in the hospital where you could be properly cared
for. Go to your medical officer and tell him from me that he must
send you to the hospital.”
Slim reluctantly departed. I dared to hope we had seen the last of
him. But before the afternoon was over he was back on his old
perch. He had brought some little pills back with him. Just wait, I
thought, until I meet that medical officer!
Slim seldom feels attracted to the meals at the mess-hall. So he
sits in the office and lives chiefly upon cheese, Y. M. C. A. cheese
purchased to make sandwiches for the canteen at a cost of a dollar
and a quarter a pound. Sometimes he fries himself eggs, taking
whatever mess-kit, Harry’s or Jerry’s or mine, happens to be handy
and never, in spite of anything I can say, will he wash it up after
him! Sometimes Harry and Jerry and I decide that instead of going
to mess we would like to have a supper-party at the canteen
ourselves, and then the question is, how to get rid of Slim?
“Slim, it’s getting near chow-time,” we say, “I’ll bet they’re going
to have mashed potatoes and brown gravy tonight. Isn’t that ‘Soupy’
I hear going now?”
 But Slim refuses to budge any more than a bump on a log, so we
usually have to end by inviting him. But if I find Slim a burden, how
must the Chief feel toward him? For Slim has appropriated the extra
cot in the office, which also serves as the Chief’s bed-room, and so
has fairly camped down on him. And the Chief is a gentleman of
nerves and delicate perceptions.
“He gets up in the middle of the night,” confided the Chief to me
today in an almost awe-struck voice, “and he goes for the water-
bucket and drinks a half a pail without stopping. He makes a noise
just like a horse swallowing it.”
I have given up trying to do anything with Slim. Nothing that I
can say seems to make the least impression on him. Slim is a
married man, yet yesterday I caught him embracing Louise,
Madame’s cross-eyed maid of all work, in the passage-way. I
undertook to reprove him.
“Why that ain’t nawthin!” he turned a blameless and unabashed
eye upon me. “That’s jest a man’s nature.”
This is the first time that I have eaten regularly from a mess-kit
and I am learning things. I have learned that the aluminum mess-
cup draws the heat from the hot coffee so that it is impossible to
drink out of one until the liquid has become half-way cold, and that
it is most unappetizing to have to wash one’s mess-kit afterwards in
a pail of greasy soap suds in which a hundred odd other mess-kits
have already been bathed. I used to tease the boys with their mess-
cups in the chocolate line by telling them that I could tell just how
recently they had had inspection by the shine on their mess-cups,
but now whenever I look at the state of my own cup I think I won’t
have the face to ever tease them that way again! I have also learned
that cold “gold fish” or “sewer carp,” as the boys call their canned
salmon, is just as bad as they say it is, and that slum made of hunks
of bacon, potatoes, onions and unlimited water is no easy thing to
swallow. But this sounds ungrateful and I don’t mean to be, for the
cooks are nice as can be and never say a word no matter how late I
may be. While as for the boys, they put on all their company
manners for me.
 Here at the hut we are busy building an addition in order to
enlarge our restaurant business. This is in the shape of a room on
the terrace. The Germans had kindly built a roof over one end, a
detail from the ordnance detachment at Jarny is enclosing the sides;
we are to have three real glass windows looking out onto the street
and a door connecting the terrace-room with the present canteen.
This afternoon the detail ran out of lumber; the Chief managed to
get the loan of a truck to fetch some more. He asked Slim to go with
the truck. The afternoon wore away, neither Slim nor the truck
appeared, the detail, disgusted, sat and twiddled their thumbs.
Nobody could understand what had happened as the lumber yard
was just around the corner! Jerry went out to search. There was no
trace of Slim or the truck to be found. About five o’clock he turned
up. He had gone to Mars-la-Tour he told us coolly. We had been
talking of going to the commissary at Mars-la-Tour for canteen
supplies, and that great goose had gotten into his head that the
lumber was to be obtained there! At least that is his explanation. But
Harry and Jerry insinuate darker things:
“We didn’t know you had a girl in Mars-la-Tour before,” they
tease. “Oh Slim, you old devil, you!”
I wonder now, just what was he up to in Mars-la-Tour all
afternoon?

Conflans, March 19.

Why is it that all the world loves a rascal? What is the secret of
the fascination that outlaw and free-booter have exercised from
Robin Hood down to Captain Kidd? Is it because each one of us, in
our secret hearts, would like to go and do likewise, if we only dared?
Of all the minor piracies committed by the A. E. F. in France, none, I
think, are so picturesque as those of the — Engineers.
The — Engineers are a railroad regiment. My first acquaintance
with them was last summer. A company of these engineers was
located at a station on the Paris line just north of us. It was a point
at which supplies for the American front were transferred from the
standard gauge to the American narrow gauge; in order to effect
these transfers the — Engineers had a switch of their own. Now
freight trains in France are quite unguarded and so at the mercy of
marauders. Indeed the losses in transit have been so serious that
since the armistice it has been the custom to have cars containing
American goods “convoyed” to their destination by soldier guards.
Last summer of course the men could not be spared for convoy duty.
So it was the easiest thing in the world for the — Engineers to “cut
out” a Y. or a Red Cross car, side-track it, and lighten the load at
their leisure.
“I went through their company store-house while I was there,” a
Q. M. sergeant told me, “and it was as well stocked with delicacies
as the store-rooms of a big hotel back in the States.”
No wonder there was such a dearth of supplies at Abainville last
summer!
But it was after the — Engineers moved into the occupied area
here following the armistice that they performed their most
notorious exploits. Assigned to run a stretch of railway in
cooperation with the French, a certain amount of friction was
inevitable from the start, the red tape in the French railway system
exasperating the Americans as much as our more direct methods
scandalized the French. Finally the French protests at the Americans’
disregard for the formalities of railroading moved the engineer
officers to stricter discipline. “I’ll hang the next man of you who runs
a train out of the yards without a pilot!” declared one captain. After
that things went more smoothly,—on the surface. Then came the
Dance.
Now unfortunately for the — Engineers there is an extra large M.
P. force here at Conflans under a Major whose greatest delight in life
is the detection and punishment of both major and minor infractions
of the law.
The Dance was quite an affair over which the — Engineers had
spread themselves and to which the French fair sex was generally
invited. When the party was about to begin, however, it became
evident that the feminine partners afforded locally were all too few.
Some bold soul had a bright idea; a train-crew forthwith hurried
down to the yards, commandeered an engine and a couple of cars,
and, in spite of the horrified protests of the French railroad men, ran
it to a nearby town. Here they filled up the train with girls from the
village and were about to start back again when a detachment of M.
P.s, rushed up in autos from Conflans, broke in upon the scene. A
sanguine scrimmage ensued, resulting in a victory for law and order.
In the meanwhile, back at the dance hall the engineers were
waiting in impatient expectation for partners. Among the invited
guests were two friendly M. P.s, old soldiers, with genial dispositions
and several wound stripes to their credit. When word reached the
party that the M. P.s had prevented the arrival of the
“Mademoiselles” the engineers were furious. “Kill the M. P.s!” went
up the cry. Catching sight of the red-arm bands on their two
innocent guests the crowd started for them with the evident
intention of making a beginning then and there. Heaven only knows
what would have happened if the two M. P.s, by affecting an exit at
the double-quick, hadn’t immediately made their escape, unharmed
but badly scared.
The most notable exploit of the — Engineers occurred not long
afterwards. It is referred to as the Affair of the Serge Uniforms. One
fine day, not very long ago, it was noised abroad that a car full of
tailored serge uniforms, consigned to and paid for by officers of the
Army of Occupation in Luxembourg, was standing down in the yards.
The idea of going home in an officer’s serge uniform from which, of
course, the braid on the cuffs had been discreetly ripped, made a
strong appeal to the boys’ imaginations. When the time came for
that car to be sent to Luxembourg it was found to be quite empty.
But for once the Engineers had gone too far. The M. P. Major took
the war-path. Word flew around the camp that a strict search was
being conducted. The possessors of the incriminating uniforms must
get rid of them and get rid of them quick. Some hid them in out-of-
the-way places, between the floors and ceilings in the half-ruined
houses; others frantically ripped the uniforms to pieces and burned
them in the barracks stoves. The camp, they tell me, was full of the
stench of scorching woolen. Still others got rid of them by planting
them among the possessions of their innocent neighbors. One
company postal clerk, a most upright and blameless lad, to his
horror discovered one of the fatal uniforms stuffed in a mail-bag
lying at his feet. Before the search party had made its rounds most
of those serge uniforms had been safely disposed of; a few, a very
few were found.
But now, having been baulked in his attempt to bring the culprits
to justice, it is common rumour, that the M. P. Major is lying low,
waiting to “fix” the — Engineers.

Conflans, March 23.

The — Engineers have left. They are on their way to Le Mans,
presumably the first stage of their journey home. Their departure
was not unmarked by incident. At the last moment, when they had
all entrained and were ready to pull out of the station, the M. P.
Major sallied forth, court-martials in his eye, to search the trains for
contraband. But he had reckoned without the Colonel of the
engineers who flatly refused to allow any such procedure. Being
outranked by the Colonel, the M. P. Major was seemingly helpless.
Then, however, the Colonel made a bad mistake. There were two
train loads. The Colonel left with the first. The second, being left
without any protector of sufficiently high rank, fell an easy prey to
the Major. He searched to his heart’s content, discovering several
articles of unlawful loot and, one unfortunate clad in one of the
notorious serge uniforms! The train was held in the yards while the
M. P. Major indulged in an orgy of court-martials.
On the morning of the departure the captain of the motor unit
where we had messed stopped in to speak to me. He came by
request of the boys to bring an apology for any careless language
which might have been uttered unwittingly in my hearing! Then the
captain of another unit called to tell us, sub rosa, that, forced by
shortage of transportation, he was leaving behind an over supply of
rations which would be ours for the fetching. We fetched accordingly
and found that we had fallen heir to dozens of loaves of bread,
sugar, coffee, canned meat, canned tomatoes, hard bread, soap and
unlimited beans. What to do with these surreptitious stores is now
the embarrassing question. One simply can’t offer the boys hard
bread, tomatoes plain or scalloped, in the canteen, no matter if one
should dress them with all the sauces of Epicurus and serve them on
gold-plate. Yet they mustn’t be wasted. What’s more, the fact that
they are in our possession must be kept absolutely dark, lest we get
the kind captain into trouble. I feel something like the man who was
presented with a million dollar check and then found he couldn’t
cash it.
With the — Engineers went Harry, Jerry, and Slim. I couldn’t
believe until the last moment that Slim was actually going. His
departure almost compensated for the loss of Harry and Jerry. But
though gone, he is not forgotten. This morning a lad came into the
canteen. He would like his watch please, he said. I looked blankly at
him. He explained; several days ago, just as he was leaving on a
long truck-trip, he had broken the strap of his wrist watch.
Happening to be in front of the Y. just then, he had brought it in and
left it for safe-keeping “with the Y. man in the office.” The Chief
knew nothing of it.
“What did the Y. man look like?” I questioned.
He described him. It was Slim. We have searched every nook and
cranny of that office, hoping to come upon the missing watch, in
vain.
“I’ll come in again,” said the boy. “Perhaps by that time you will
have found it.”
But personally I am sure that that watch is now on its way to Le
Mans, en route for the States. Was there ever anything more
wretchedly embarrassing?

Conflans, March 27.

This is a curious world. Six “Relief Trains” pass through here every
day bound east, loaded with food for Germany. Meanwhile in the
little half-ruined hamlets within a stone’s throw of the tracks the
French villagers, for whom no provision has been made, are famine-
stricken.
Lieutenant A. came in from the little town of Pierrefond which lies
between Conflans and Verdun yesterday.
 “They have nothing to eat there,” he told me, “but the weeds they
dig up in the fields for salade and the frogs they catch in the
marshes. When the days are cold the frogs bury themselves so deep
in the mud that they can’t be caught. There is one old gentleman
who told me today that he had existed for weeks entirely on a diet
of turnips. They come to me and beg pitifully for a bite of something
from the mess-kitchen, but I don’t dare let them have it, as that
would be, of course, strictly against regulations.”
I thought of those bushels of beans in the store-house. It was
taking a chance of course, because after all it was government
property and nothing else, but I told the Lieutenant that if he was
willing to run the risk, I was; then I put it up to the Chief.
This morning the Lieutenant came in with a flivver. We drove over
to the store-house and loaded it up with army beans, issue coffee,
sugar, rice, onions, potatoes and soap. Then we filled a special sack
with canned soup, “gold fish,” corn meal, canned tomatoes and corn
syrup for the old gentleman who had lived on turnips. I felt he had a
special claim on our sympathy.
We reached Pierrefond after a long drive in a stinging rain. It was
a quaint pathetic village with a pretty little church whose tower had
been sliced off as neatly as by a knife. Was it a German or a French
shell which had done it, I wondered. We drew up in front of the
Mayor’s house. He came out to greet us, showed me a list of the
seventy-three inhabitants of the town; men, women and infants in
arms. All the supplies were to be duly weighed and measured and
distributed, so much per capita. While they were unloading the
flivver we stopped in at Madame C.’s for coffee and compliments,
and to dry out by her hospitable fire. Everyone made pretty
speeches, of course, and Madame bestowed on me a delectable
bouquet of wall-flowers and daffodils. Poor things! It’s little enough
one can do for them. This will keep the wolf from the door for a
short while perhaps, but after that, what then?
Pierrefond, like Conflans, was occupied by the Germans for four
years. Now there is a young half-German population growing up,
even as many as three to one family. The villagers accept the
situation with tolerant humour; “Souvenirs Boches,” they call the
children.
As for the rest of the rations, I made jam sandwiches with the
bread and bestowed them together with hot chocolate on a hungry
leave train. What to do with the “Charlie Horse,” as the boys call the
canned roast beef, was a puzzle. Finally I made a paste of it mixed
with bread crumbs, tomato soup, a few weenies and some ham
scraps, pickles, parsley, onion and an egg,—we had six assistants in
the kitchen and each added an ingredient,—put it between slices of
bread and christened the result “Liberty Sandwiches. Guaranteed to
contain neither Gold Fish nor Corn Willy.” The boys ate and
wondered and came back for more.

Conflans, March 30.

In our back yard a detail of German prisoners is busy cleaning up;
already they have made quite a transformation. Madame must have
a garden. I wonder, as I watch them, what their state of mind may
be; their phlegmatic faces give no hint. Did some of these very ones,
perhaps, make merry in this self same café, only six months ago,
when they were conquerors?
Madame tells me how, when the German officers were living here
at the hotel, they ate off priceless old French plates, which,
apparently quite ignorant of their value, they had carried off as loot.
Madame, coveting these treasures, tried to arrange an exchange
with the mess orderly, offering a number of modern dishes in return
for one antique; but the mess orderly, fearing that some officer
might notice the substitution, hesitated and before they could come
to an agreement the precious plates, with the rough handling
accorded them, had all been broken to bits.
Some of the boys seem to think that the French don’t give their
prisoners enough to eat. The Germans, they say, when they get the
chance, will wait outside the mess-hall door and seize eagerly the
leavings in the mess-kits that the boys are about to throw away.
“Maybe it’s just because they’re greedy,” I say. “Surely they look
fat enough!” And then a picture comes back to my mind, the picture
of a Red Cross train seen while waiting at Pagny on my way to Paris
last January, a train full of French prisoners who were being brought
back from Germany, so weak from starvation that they lay on
stretchers or sat pressing against the windows faces as wan and
white as spectres.
The German prisoners, according to the boys’ repeated stories,
are by no means a humble or repentant lot. They’re not beaten for
good, the prisoners invariably declare. Just as soon as the Americans
have gone and things have calmed down a bit, they are coming back
to France again, they say, and this time they will settle matters with
the French for good and all!
Last night a train load of German prisoners in box cars pulled into
town. When the doors of the cars were opened it was found that
one of the prisoners had died on the way. The dead man was
wrapped in a blanket and left lying on the freight station platform. A
“shine” from the labor battalion happened along in the dark, tripped
and fell flat over the body. He came into the canteen in a state of
nerves, quite prepared, evidently, to see a ghost in every corner.

Conflans, April 2.
The latest member of our household is something quite new in
the way of details. He is a Salvation Army man and a very nice fellow
indeed. A year or so ago he was beating a big drum in front of
Gimbel’s Store; then he was drafted to come to France with the
pioneers; now he has applied for a discharge in order to join his
organization over here; and while waiting for his release he is
proving himself an invaluable aid in the canteen. Now more than
ever, since The Salvation Army, as everybody calls him, has joined
our force, I have been longing to realize a dream which I have
cherished ever since I came to France,—to make doughnuts for the
A. E. F. I have the recipe, I can get the materials, the stove is the
sticking-point. At present our cooking equipment consists of a hot
water boiler and a wretched German range which is really fit for
nothing but the scrap-heap. As the boys say, I have lost more
religion than I ever thought I had over that stove! So while we hope
and hunt for a doughnut-stove we are specializing in sandwiches and
puddings. The puddings are my special pride as I worked out the
ideas for them myself and, as far as I know, they are served in no
other canteen. There are four of them; Coffee Jelly, Raspberry Jelly
(made with the “pink-lemonade” fruit juice) Chocolate Bread
Pudding, and Blackberry Bread Pudding. The bread-puddings are
baked for us, by kindness of the cooks, at a nearby mess-kitchen.
The only trouble with the puddings is, that there never is enough!
But lest anyone should think that I take this as a compliment to my
culinary skill, I must explain that the boys would eat anything you
offered them, I believe, just as long as it was sweet and was a
change. And then there is perhaps a quaint psychological factor too.
“A man don’t like to eat food that’s cooked by a man,” a lad
confided to me the other day. “Anything that’s cooked by a woman
tastes better.”
So if a boy does leave any scraps of pudding on his plate it
bothers me unreasonably.
“Somebody didn’t like his pudding,” I remark mournfully to the S.
A. as I pick up the dishes. This amuses him. Last night as we were
clearing up before we closed he marched up to the counter,
deposited a tiny wad found on one of the tables in front of me.
“Somebody,” he declared in a tragic tone, “didn’t like his chewing-
gum!”
Nor can I boast, as a cook, of a record of unvarying success. On
more than one occasion I must admit to having scorched the cocoa,
and once, not many days ago—to my shame be it said!—I ruined a
ten gallon can by putting in salt instead of sugar!
Here at Conflans we have an unusual amount of competition in
the light lunch line. The other day a French fried potato booth, like a
hot-dog booth at a country fair at home, established itself on the
terrace just outside our door. Now a hungry doughboy can take the
edge off his appetite with a paper full of hot French fries in return
for a franc at any hour of the day.
Also in the street below the terrace are many little stands where
oranges and sandwiches made of rolls and slices of sausage are on
sale. The rivalry between these stands, it appears, is acute.
Yesterday, hearing a hubbub, I looked out to see a comic battle in
progress, the proprietors of two neighboring stands, a fat frowsy old
woman and a little ragged man like a weasel, pelting each other for
all they were worth with rotten oranges while half the A. E. F., it
seemed, stood around and cheered. Nor did matters settle down to
calm until a gendarme and intervention appeared on the scene.
This morning I stopped in at the little French store around the
corner to buy half a dozen eggs to make a custard sauce for my
chocolate bread pudding. When the man gave me my change I
noticed he had overcharged me by twenty-five centimes.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“That,” returned the shopkeeper, “is because you picked them out
by hand.”
Some canteen ladies can cook and wait on the counter and open
milk-cans and wash the chocolate cups and yet keep spotlessly and
specklessly clean. But I have come to the conclusion that as long as
I live in Conflans, with its air full of smoke and soot from the train
yards, and its water so hard that it curdles the soap,—and
sometimes the milk in the cocoa too, that I will have to content
myself with being godly and leave the cleanliness till a happier day.
We have been having a regular plague of inspectors and
investigators of late. Last night just as I had my final bout with the
last chocolate container, a major and a lieutenant colonel wandered
in, evidently in search of scandal. The lieutenant colonel fixed a
piercing eye on me.
“So you are the only ‘white woman’ in this part of the world at
present?”
“Well,” I said looking at my fingers smudged with cocoa, “tonight
I should say that I was a pale chocolate-colored woman.”
“I noticed that your face was dirty,” coolly returned the
gentleman. I hurriedly excused myself in order to consult a looking-
glass. Sure enough, there on my nose was a large smudge of soot! I
must have got it the last time I stoked the chocolate-stove.

Conflans, April 7.
 The M. P.s live in the hotel next door. Naturally we see a good
deal of them. I try to treat them extra nicely because I feel sorry for
them. They can’t help being M. P.s any more than they can help
being unpopular. And though many of them go about with a chip on
their shoulders and an attitude of I-don’t-give-a-tinker’s-damn, still
to know that you are anathema to the major portion of the A. E. F.,
to be publicly referred to as Misery Providers, Mademoiselle
Promenades, and Military Pests, besides being made the subject of
songs such as; Mother take down your service flag, Your son is only
an M. P., must be galling to the most insensitive.
Just as soon as the armistice was signed the doughboys started in
to pester the M. P.s with the classic taunt:
“Who won the war?—The M. P.s!”
For a long while the M. P.s could think of no more crushing
rejoinder than the time-honored;
“Aw, go to hell!”
But lately some bright soul has hit upon a bit of repartee that
goes far to salve the M. P.s’ self-respect. Now if a soldier is so rash
as to jeer; “Who won the war? The M. P.s!” the response comes
instantly:
“Yep! They chased the doughboys up front!”
There are two M. P.s from the detachment next door who have
lately joined themselves to our family. Like Slim, they came
unsolicited, and like Slim, they stick. They are known respectively as
the Littlest M. P. and the Fattest M. P.
The Littlest M. P. is a pest. I feel sorry for him because he is so
young and has no mother; otherwise there would be no tolerating
him. He hangs about the canteen from morning until late at night
under pretence of assisting us, and eats and eats and eats and eats.
The other day I heard him proudly averring that he hadn’t taken a
meal in the mess-hall for two weeks, and I believed him. Yet when
you ask him to do any particular piece of work, like filling up the
wood box or fetching a pail of water, in return for his board, he
always has some perfectly good reason for not doing it. Besides
which, he has no morals. The other day he confided to me
triumphantly that the reason that they didn’t put him on guard work
was that they knew he would take money to let men into cafés at
prohibited hours. He went on to tell me about the town of S.
“That was a good place, you could get twenty-five francs for
lettin’ a feller into a café out of hours there.”
I have tried to find out what he does in return for Uncle Sam’s
dollar a day and have discovered that his job is sweeping out the
halls in the M. P. Hotel.
“But I skip about twenty feet at each end every time, so it don’t
take me more’n ten minutes.”
Yesterday morning he came in with an air of righteousness
rewarded.
“I told ’em I’d got to have help on that job,” he announced, “so
they put another feller on too.”
This morning I got so exasperated with him that I told him in
unmistakable terms that we could dispense with his company. He
disappeared, and I congratulated myself that we were rid of him.
But at supper-time he bobbed serenely up again.
“Some fellers would have got sore if you’d spoke like that to
them,” he told me with a magnanimous air, “but I just took it as a
joke.”
Now what is one to do with anybody like that?
The Fattest M. P. is the most unleavened lump of good-nature I
have ever known. He is, I understand, a notorious poker-player and
his breath, to my embarrassment, betrays the fact that he has a
weakness for Conflans beer. Besides which, he really takes up quite
too much room behind the counter. Yet in spite of all this, he is such
a simple soul and is so anxious to help that one hasn’t the heart to
send him away.
Yesterday I thought I was going to be arrested by an M. P. I had
gone over to Verdun in an army flivver to get some stock. Turning
the corner into Conflans on our way home we were halted by the
upraised billy of the M. P. on duty.
“Sorry, Buddy!” he called to the driver, “but you can’t do that!”
Then, approaching, he got a closer view, turned red as fire and
stammered;
 “Beg your pardon, Miss. Made a mistake. That’s all right, driver,
you can go on.”
Later he sent apologies to me at the canteen. It is, of course,
against regulations to allow civilian women to use army
transportation. The M. P., catching sight of a skirt, had taken me for
a Mademoiselle on a joy-ride.

Conflans, April 7.
We must start an Orphans’ Annex here, the boys tell me. Three
nights ago as it was drawing on toward closing time the Chief called
me into the office. By the table stood two young boys, about
fourteen and sixteen I judged them; each carried on his shoulder a
little sack which evidently contained all his worldly possessions. They
were German boys from Metz; they had just come in on the train.
Why had they come? we asked them. They had come to join the
American army. But they were too young! He was eighteen, declared
the elder. He dug into his pockets and produced documents. I looked
at two of the papers, they appeared to be the birth certificates of his
father and mother. Had his parents given their consent? He nodded.
“And you really are eighteen?”, “Ja! Ja wohl!” It was hard to believe,
—he was so small. We stared at them a bit helplessly. Then, finding
our German not quite adequate to the occasion, we called an
interpreter. But to all the interpreter’s questioning the boy returned
the same unvarying answer. He had come to join the American
army! As for the younger one, he merely stood and smiled and
looked as guileless as a young angel. Whatever the elder one’s
intention might be, I was sure I could divine the younger’s. He, I am
certain, had set his heart on being an American “mascot.” And he,
for all his innocent and engaging air, had most patently run away
from home!
We told the boys that we would put them up for the night. I
busied myself in getting them some supper and then—another waif
appeared! A little French lad of thirteen, with a peg-leg and a crutch,
he came shyly hobbling into the office, and the face he lifted to us
was one of the sweetest, the most sensitive and appealing that I