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Let- well, I don’t know exactly what he was raving about during the night, but it certainly wasn’t of home.
Hit the pike again at 9 o’clock next morning, and after passing through several large towns, came to Pont-a-Cellee. we
knew we were to stop there /three nights end two days, it was clearly up to us to see that we got into a good billet. Sill Maguire was on the advance party, so at the first opportunity, I flagged him and he gave me the "high-bcll" to beat it for No 53-. We did. Sam, Jack,
Let and I, and for cnee in his life, at any rate, our friend Bill proved to be a good picker. It had been raining all day, and we were soaked through, so you may imagine how thankful we were to be shunted into a fine warm kitchen, our equipment carried into another room, boots rand puttees removed, furnished with wooden clogs, then seated around the stove, and a seemingly endless chain of cups of coffee dished up to us. Boy howdy,' some joint,’
The family consisted of the mother and father, a girl about 20, another 9, and one boy 21, due to report for the army in a few days time. They sure treated us "white1* too. We used to draw our rations from the kitchen, and then eat with them. What they did with our rations, I don’t know. Maybe the bully beef went into the ham
burg steak we.had one day for dinner. Certainly our break never put in an appearance, always the brown. And a very welcome, change it was too, LcrdyJ but we had some swell meals there. That first evening we got around baked rabbit, liver and onions, boiled potatoes and some other vegetable, the name of which I don’t know, but I did justice to it alright. "Now",Merci didn't go in that house,- found that out early in the game. Bio with that restriction removed, you can imagine hGW much grub four fellows hungry for home cooking could shift. They were no slouches either, so we didn't attempt to camouflage our appetites.
Next morning we opened up ourcanteen in the front room of - the house. Just before we left Mons, we dragged down sboutn 6C0 francs worth of chocolate from the Lev. canteen, so had quite a supply on hand when we started up. Sugar having been a very scarce article during the war, candy of any kind was practically Unobtainable, so J when we trotted out half a dosen packages of chocolate for the folks, we were the "candy kids" alright, and. no mistake. On top of that I think we must have sold them and their relatives about 5^ francs worth. Not supnosed to sell to the "civvies," but in a case like that we could hardly do otherwise.
The last night of our stay, after we had packed all our stuff, the oldman cleaned all the stuff out of the room, and when we finished supper, all hands adjourned to the front room, to trip the light fantastic. A concertina player was requestioned from some9 where in the neighborhood, and with his aid we had one grand, old time. I'm no dancer myself, as you know, but I did. my bit that night. No "airy fairy Lillian" stuff, you know, just the plain old fashioned stepping-on-toes kind. Around ten o'clock we beat it to the kitchen for a snack, then on with the dance till 2 A.M. when we decided that
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