Saturday August 26, 1916

We started off at 3:40 a.m. on our 36 mile march to St. Omar. We are in heavy marching order so we are making the distance in three days. We started off in absolute darkness, but we were done our day's march by 9:30. On the way we marched through Abeele, a town of about 25,000. The batt'ns split up on the other side of the town and companies then went off every company to a farm. We just got over the borders of Belgium into France and stopped at a fine old farm. This farmer had two fine big brick barns with the usual Belgian tile roofs. The fellows could buy 3 fried eggs, bread and butter and beer for a franc (20 cents). A Belgian pig such as this farmer raises is almost the size of a pony, with big ears covering its whole face, regular beef-steaks. Flemish horses are wonderful. They are very heavy and high spirited, and powerful looking. It is common to see them using stallions for ordinary cart work. But O my! Everything in the way of Belgian wagons is almost ridiculously heavy and massive.