Strange to say it seemed a great relief to be back in the midst of destruction again.

Grant's boredom in camp is broken up by volunteering for KP and a road trip.

Tuesday, December 10, 1917:

Still at Sandricourt with no signs of departure in the near future. Sections have come and gone, but we stay on forever keeping the camp in shape and doing the work of a day laborer. Brownie has gone and we miss him. A California man has taken his place in the barracks and we have nothing in common.

On Monday, Dec. 2, Eric Astlett, “Pinard Joe,” “Mac” McGuire and myself volunteered for Kitchen Police. This regular detail consists of pealing potatoes, carrots and onions, cutting and carrying wood for kitchen fires, serving meals, washing dishes and helping the cooks generally. It’s the dirtiest, rottenest, hardest, longest and most thankless job on the place, but it pays well in eats, gives one a good stand in with his section cook and is a relief in its regularity. We have volunteered for another week and were readily accepted because the cooks don’t like to be continually breaking in new recruits. We get up at 5:45, start right in working and don’t quit until 7:30 at night. We are relieved from every other work--morning roll-call, noon recall and mess-call, French class, evening recall and retreat. There are three French women and one Frenchman cook who do the kitchen work and preparation of meals. Then there are the various American section cooks who have a kitchen of their own and help out the meals by supplying such side dishes as an occasional salad, pies, baking-powder biscuits, stews, etc. We are really eating very well indeed out here. We K.P.s stand in well with the cooks by working hard and long. With the women we are all “Mon cher.” The French are very willing to do anything for an A.R.C. man so that in the kitchen we stand ace high. The Allentown men don’t get far and I’m afraid are making a reputation in this section which is somewhat of a slander on the true American character.

Last Wednesday, Dec. 4, the monotony of this camp life was broken by the departure of 20 Ford ambulances for the front to replace a section of Fiat cars there. Noyon is located about 50 km northwest of Soissons, but still in the Department of Oise. The famous St. Quentin district is almost directly north about 50 km. So that while the district is now comparatively quiet the ruins are many and exceedingly complete in places. The Germans were forced to evacuate this territory not more than nine months ago so that there is much which has been left untouched since the evacuation. Strange to say it seemed a great relief to be back in the midst of destruction again. The sound of guns was like sweet music and more than one “conductor” on that convoy longed to be left there to once more share the risks of those brave French warriors. We left Sandricourt at about 9 A.M. and reached Chantilly by noon and ate our lunch there. Chantilly is the famous racing center of France and hence has become pretty well filled up with English horse breeders and jockeys. Practically every one speaks English there so we had a fine half hour there. We didn’t have time to see the course. Racing has practically passed out now of course, but some of the horses are still there and the track is ever kept ready.

Many funny things happened in the morning. Most of us had become accustomed to running automobiles so knew nothing of the mysteries of a Ford. The parade had hardly started when Hap Ahlers tried to scale a rock pile in his car and all hands had to turn-to to get him off his perch. While passing through the town of Beaumont, Horn Snader ran down a hearse on its solemn way to the cemetery followed by quite a line of sorrowing ones. It was really awfully funny to an unprejudiced onlooker and still funnier to hear him tell the story, but to those nearest and dearest ones it didn’t seem so funny. The Sergent de ville threatened all kinds of punishment and had poor Snader nearly wild when our lieutenant showed up and smoothed the matter over. Fortunately the car was not much damaged.

We arrived at Noyon about 4 o’clock and left the cars in an auto park there. We took a 5:50 train to Paris where we spent the night leaving at 7:40 the next morning for Sandricourt. It was great sport and I hope we may repeat it in the near future.