< Section 3 (Part III) – In the Orient

A NEW REPUBLIC

Just before going up from our first camp, I had a most interesting three days' trip into Albania, driving the Médecin Chef of the Q.G. and the Médecin Chef of Florina Hospital over to Koritza to see the Colonel in command of the troops in that region. Two cars started with us; but after all hands had pushed at them valiantly for hours, they were obliged to turn back on the col of Pisoderi, thirteen kilometres straight uphill from Florina to the summit, 1650 metres high, whence you get a magnificent view over the entire valley of the Cerna. I had no particular trouble in Hill's little touring car, and we reached our destination late that night, after sixteen hours' steady driving over some of the worst roads possible to imagine. At one time we followed the bed of a river, going through it eleven times, and once just escaping trouble as the water drowned the carburetor twice. At Koritza we were royally welcomed, and, as my passengers treated me as a friend instead of a chauffeur, I was the Colonel's guest, dined and lunched with him and his État-Major, and was entertained by the younger officers.

The political situation is extremely interesting here. At the beginning of the war the Greeks overran this part of Albania, but made themselves most unpopular through unjust taxation. Last summer the Venizelos crowd expelled the royalist officials, but proved no better. As the Powers in 1912 pronounced Albania independent, but as the country has had no government since the Prince of Wied was "fired," some prominent citizens of Koritza, mostly retired comitajés, asked Colonel Ducoing's permission to proclaim a republic. He assented, the Greeks were driven out, and a new council was elected, or self-appointed, just before we arrived. The flag of the new republic, dark red with a strange-looking, black-winged creature on it, and having a tricolor ribbon around the staff, had just been hoisted on the town hall. The whole thing is more or less comic-opera stuff, but the inhabitants take themselves very seriously. Since then several other towns have joined the movement. Every one is armed and no one dares go more than a few kilometres from town, as the country swarms with comitajés and the Austrian posts are only a short distance away, ten or twelve kilometres, on a mountain range. Our arrival caused immense excitement, as ours was the second motor car ever seen in those parts, the first being Colonel Ducoing's, in which he arrived, but has not used since. Just lately two of our cars have climbed the pass and are now working over in Albania, one at Koritza, the other farther north near Lake Presba. Hill, with a mechanic, has just returned from a flying trip over there in order to repair an axle, and says the Lord only knows how they can ever get back, as the roads are getting worse every day. In a word, it is all very interesting here and I think we are being extremely useful.

 

JOHN MUNROE*
*Of New York City; Harvard, '13; joined the Field Service on May 6, 1916, serving with Section Three; was Sous-Chef in Macedonia until May, 1917; entered the School at Fontainebleau and became a Second Lieutenant of Artillery in the French Army.

 

V
MONASTIR

 

The work at Monastir, where we were finally stationed, went on all right. In this country you very rarely get up to postes de secours. We evacuated from a town two or three kilometres back, along a flat and on the whole a very good road, twenty-eight kilometres to a village where there was a relay, and where another section took the wounded farther to the rear. The work was very interesting, for it was done mostly over the territory conquered the previous November.

At Monastir we were quartered very comfortably in two good houses. But the resources of the town were somewhat limited and food prices very high; two chickens, for instance, costing 25 francs, and two eggs, 2 francs 20. Then, too, rifle bullets flew about certain of the outlying quarters, "210's" wandered in occasionally, and a good deal of other Boche attention of less distressing variety was often our lot. We had to sneak in at night, in convoy, for the exit of the town was often pounded, and it was, perhaps, the best gauntlet-running ever seen --- on a perfectly straight, open road with an excellent surface, and in the daytime absolutely free of traffic. So, on the whole, we were pretty well off at Monastir. But finally, in January, 1917, we were ordered to fall back, as the place got too lively for the cantonment of the Section, and we established ourselves fourteen kilometres in the rear, at Negocani, a mud village, the houses being of bricks, made of that material strengthened with manure and straw --- the origin of reinforced concrete, probably.

The customs at Negocani were very curious. Take this one, for instance! If you were in need of firewood, you would look about until you found a house unoccupied by soldiers, which you then proceeded to demolish --- a very easy task, as it is made of mud --- in order to get the beams; the floors and doors, in most cases, having all disappeared long before our coming. The absence from the village of all civilians rendered the proceeding all the easier. The day before we entered upon our first wood hunt, we found two houses which were still in fairly good condition, set our seal on them, and arranged matters with the commandant d'armes. But the next morning, when we arrived on the spot at eight o'clock, we found that all the doors and floors of one of them had been carried off by a flock of Italians who had reached town during the previous evening.

We were well off in our house, which was big enough for the men to sleep in. It had, on the first floor upstairs, two rooms which were separated by a hallway. I had a room on the ground floor, which was literally right on the ground. The French contingent of our party occupied the other ground-floor room, while the downstairs hall, which was provided with a fireplace, served at night as a sitting-room. An outhouse, with smoky rafters, to which, in a few minutes, with the aid of a pick, we added windows, completed our quarters.

This place was not as interesting as Monastir, but much safer, for at the latter town we were very much cooped up, having to stay within the city limits all the time, as everything outside of the walls was in plain sight of the enemy and some of the outlets were within rifle range. Moreover, there were quite frequent shellings of Monastir so that staying indoors was much to be encouraged. For instance, one shell landed in a little court where some of our cars were parked, got four of them and a poor child who was blown to atoms and parts of whose body were found in and on half a dozen cars. On this occasion my car, unfortunately, was about the heaviest sufferer --- one front wheel, radiator, and water-inlet connection being shot through and through, while the headlight and quite a lot of wiring were cut up. But worst of all, the windshield and top were ruined and a horrible piece of the little child wound round and round the steering-wheel.

This affair was nothing but a coup court; but still the Germans were shelling objectives that were close enough for pieces of shell to fall about us very freely, and, though we knew we were backing out, it was not till we got to Negocani that we felt how glad we were to be out of Monastir, especially as later the entrance to this last town got shelled daily and on this account we had to change the hours of evacuation.

LOVERING HILL

 

A GAS ATTACK ON MONASTIR

Monastir, January 5

We have just had a gas attack here.

We sat there in my car after our lucky and narrow squeak with exploding shells, conversing with each other and with passing poilus. Everything was quiet, and we started to fix ourselves for the night. The straw inside the old Turkish mosque, as we learned from previous experience, was entirely too full of life for comfortable slumber; so we fixed a couple of stretchers out in the front worshipping hall, where air was better, too.

The shelling had recommenced by the time we tried to sleep. Suddenly the obus began to come in faster and faster, their whistles blending one into another until it was all one solid roar and whiz. The explosions sounded like shrapnel, and it was not until a shell broke our window that we learned it was gas. Our masks were out in the cars, and as we ran out to get them we almost suffocated, although we tried to hold our breath. Back in the mosque it was better, as the air was nearly untainted, the windows being air-tight. Fortunately the dozen malades and stretcher-bearers in the mosque were all provided with masks, so in less uncomfortable state of mind, we sat down to wait. There was nothing else to do, of course. All this time the shells were coming in at a fearful rate, all of them landing right in our quarter. Now and then a man would stumble in from the street, choking from the gas and calling for a mask. Pretty soon the doctor appeared in his stocking feet, and he took care as best he could of the asphyxiated.

In the meanwhile things were steadily becoming worse and worse. The streets were a cloud of gas, and inside the mosque it was getting more and more difficult to breathe, when suddenly, as I was standing by the door talking with Petitjean, there came a deafening explosion, which blew down the door and a solid wave of gas caught us in the face. For a moment there was complete confusion, men running every which way and some lying down gasping, coughing, and calling for masks. How they lost them is incomprehensible, for almost every one had a mask on when the shell came. The doctor, who was standing beside me, had his mask off for the moment and got it tangled up in trying to put it on again; but fortunately he was saved by the sergeant-major, who clapped it on the doctor's face. But he was sick for several hours afterwards. At the same time we picked up some masks and put them on the choking men who were lying about. Then the room was plunged in darkness. At this moment, I heard Petitjean calling for another infirmier to bandage him up. The doctor was out of commission, the infirmier unfindable, and I came to the rescue, finding Petitjean in the little room in back. His hand was bleeding badly; but I did my best to fix him up; rather a difficult job, however, because, with the gas-mask on, I could hardly see what I was doing. But I did the best I could under the circumstances. First I poured some alcohol over the hand, and found that the wound was not so serious as I at first thought. But it was painful and bleeding enough. Then, to make sure, I used peroxide which I sponged off with cotton and put on some iodine, bandaging the hand up as tightly as I could in order to stop the flow of blood --- an effective dressing, even if it was not very scientific.

But before I had finished with Petitjean, I was told that another man had been completely knocked out by the gas, and that the only way to save him was to rush him over to the hospital in hope of finding some oxygen.

This I immediately decided to do. There was still a lot of gas on the street; but I had to take my mask off to drive. I finally got the asphyxié over to the hospital; but no doctor was to be found, there was no oxygen, and everything seemed hopeless. So, as a last resort, I tried artificial breathing; but the poor fellow died while I was working on him, and I had to take his body back to the mosque, where, in the meanwhile, a gas shell had come in through the outer door and exploded in the anteroom, not ten feet from where John and I made our beds earlier in the evening; and when we collected our bedclothes next morning, they were covered with débris and saturated with gas. At this point a slight breeze sprang up, which made breathing possible again; the doctor came to, and though awfully sick, stuck to his job, thereby saving the lives of several men, while I spent most of the time making coffee over an alcohol lamp, coffee being a great relief to men who have been gassed. All this happened with bewildering rapidity in less time than one takes to write about it.

John was great. While I was fixing up Petitjean, he got his lantern and quieted the men, who were mostly intoxicated by the gas, and did not know what they were doing. His chief work was to make them keep their gas-masks on, which saved more than one of them. Altogether the shelling lasted about three hours, during which time thousands of these gas obus came in, with the result that two hundred civilians were killed and many left dying. Few soldiers lost their lives, thanks to the gas-masks.

John and I did not begin to feel the effects of the gas until the next day, and then were uncomfortably sick. It takes a long while to get the gas out of one's system, and the continual smell and taste of the stuff is sickening for days. My clothes and blankets still smell of it, though they have been out in the breeze for forty-eight hours. After this I will take high-explosive shells with all their éclats in preference to gas.

J. MARQUAND WALKER

 

OUR SECTOR EXTENDED

Toward the end of January we took over another segment of the line, a section southeast of Monastir, collecting our blessés from a village called Skocivir, situated on the banks of the Cerna, some twenty-five kilometres from Negocani. Skocivir was the highest point reached by wheeled transport, though some fifteen kilometres back from the line. From here munitions and ravitaillement were carried into the mountains on muleback, the wounded coming out by the same torturing transport. A few kilometres before reaching Skocivir we passed through the town of Brod, the first Serbian town retaken by the Allies after the great retreat of 1915, the point at which the Serbs first reëntered their country. Here the Cerna was crossed by two bridges. Through the pass beyond poured French, Serbs, and Italians to reach their allotted segment of line. The congestion and babble at this point was terrific.

We saw much of the Italians. Long lines of their troops were constantly marching forward, little men with ill-formed packs. As soldiers they did not impress us, but they had a splendid motor transport --- big, powerful cars well adapted to the Balkan mud and handled by the most reckless and skilful drivers in the Allied armies. The men were a vivacious lot and often sang as they marched.

 

"AN ARMY OF OLD MEN"

In marked contrast were the Serbs, "the poor relations of the Allies." For the most part they were middle-aged men, clad in nondescript uniforms and with varied equipment. They slogged by silently --- almost mournfully. I never saw one laugh, and they smiled but rarely. They were unobtrusive, almost unnoticed; yet when a car was mired, they were always the first to help, and withal they were invested with a quiet dignity which seemed to set them apart. I never talked with a soldier of any army who had seen them in action but who praised their prowess.

The going, or rather ploughing, beyond Brod was particularly atrocious, and it frequently took from two and a half to three hours to cover the fifteen kilometres. At one point the way was divided by two lonely graves which lay squarely in the middle of the road, the traffic of war passing and repassing on either side. Brod service was particularly uninteresting, as the point at which we collected our blessés was too far back of the line to offer the excitement afforded by being under fire, save when there was an air raid. Then, too, the roads were so congested and in such terrible condition that the driving was of the most trying sort, and it frequently meant all day evacuation without one hot meal. Our work at this time was particularly heavy; we were serving three divisions, the one back of Monastir, the Brod division, and the division in Albania. In short, we were covering the work of three motor Sections.

During all these days the enemy continued to rain his fire upon Monastir. Gradually, but none the less surely, the city was withering away. Here a house, there a shop or bazaar, became a mass of débris. Huge holes gaped in the streets; tangled wire swung mournfully in the wind; once I saw a minaret fairly struck, totter a second, and then pitch into the street, transferred in a twinkling from a graceful spire into a heap of brick and mortar, overhung by a shroud of dust. Though perhaps half of the city's forty thousand inhabitants had fled as best they might, as many more remained. Generally they stayed indoors, though the flimsy walls offered little protection and there were no cellars. When they emerged, it was to slink along in the shadows of the walls. Scuttling, rather than walking, they made their way, every sense tensed in anticipation of the coming of "the death that screams." If Verdun had seemed the City of the Dead, Monastir was the Place of Souls Condemned to Wander in the Twilight of Purgatory. The fate of the population civile was a pitiable one.

In a world of war, they had no status. Food, save the farina issued by the military, was unobtainable, and fuel equally wanting. Scores were killed. As for the wounded, their situation was terrible. Drugs were too precious, bandages too valuable, and surgeons' time too well occupied for their treatment. Their case would have been without hope had it not been for a neutral, non-military organization of the Dutch which maintained in Monastir a small hospital for the treatment of civilians. This hospital, established in a school, did splendid work, and its staff are entitled to high praise and credit.

For this hospital, one morning, I got the strangest load my ambulance ever carried --- four little girls. As I lifted their stretchers into the car, their weights seemed as nothing. Three were couchés; the fourth, a bright little thing, wounded in the head by H.E. éclat, sat by my side on the driving seat and chatted with me in quaint French all the way to the hospital.

Meanwhile the days grew perceptibly longer and the sun, when it appeared, had a feeble warmth. A new Section coming out from France relieved our cars in Albania, and Giles and the others coming back from Koritza reported that the city was under frequent plane bombardment and the population demoralized.

For some time the talk of an attack on Hill 248 and the line back of Monastir had been growing. There seemed little doubt now that such an attack would shortly be launched with the object of driving the enemy back and freeing the city from artillery fire. Daily our fire grew more intense. The roads were congested with upcoming troops and new batteries going into position. Word came in that the Section was to hold itself in readiness to shift quarters to Monastir. Then, at last, one night came the order to report for action in the city.

ROBERT WHITNEY IMBRIE*
*From Behind the Wheel of a War Ambulance. Courtesy of Robert M. McBride & Company of New York.

 

VI
THE SECTION GOES TO GREECE

 

Section Three was relieved from the Monastir sector May 26, 1917, and moved to Florina about twenty kilometres back. Here orders were received attaching the Section to the French Provisional Division which was moving into Greece to settle once and for all the ever-present Greek threat at the Allied lines of communication in Macedonia.

We started to join the Division on May 31, going that day as far as the English hospital for Serbs at Vertekop, via the main road from Monastir to Salonica. The first village passed through 'was the hillside town of Banica; thence up over a pass by the battle-field of Gornitchevo, where the Serbians and Bulgars fought in October, 1916; on to Ostrovo (at the northern end of the lake of the same name) and Vodena. From there on to Vertekop it was easy rolling, mostly downhill.

On June 1 we rolled to Topsin, passing through the ancient town of Yenidze Vardar. At Topsin we went into a cantonment near the training-camp of the recruits for the new army of Venizelos. Our camp was the most inhospitable-appearing affair, situated as it was in the midst of a broad, barren, sandy stretch of homeless land which offered neither shelter from the June sun nor anything else. Here the rumor got out through the usual medium that we would remain several weeks and then be attached to the new Greek Army. But the rumor proved baseless when Lieutenant Dérode returned from Salonica (which was only about seventeen miles away) with orders to move "on to Athens" early the next morning.

The next day we rolled by noon to a town called Gida, and after a long halt on the hot, dusty road outside the town, we headed for Katerini. Arriving there in the early evening, after having skirted the seacoast for many kilometres, we drew up in the yard of an old monastery. Here we were billeted for over a week, during which period and much to the regret of all, Charley Fiske, and R. B. Montgomery, their time having long since expired, returned to France. Their places were taken by John d'Este (who later became Chief of Section after the Section returned to Monastir) and James Keogh.

There were French troops in reserve at Katerini, the temporary front line being out in the direction of Elasson, which was southeasterly beyond the wooded hills back of Mount Olympus.

Our stay here was well taken up with washing voitures, changing wooden bodies for lighter canvas ones, and making other preparations for a campaign around the interior of Greece. Frequent trips were made to the sea at Scala Katerini, distant about seven kilometres. Here the swimming was excellent, and the sea-food dinners were "elegant."

The country between Katerini and Larissa, which is the chief city of Thessaly, was reputed to be filled with roving royalist comitajés who were the heroes of many a rumored skirmish with French outposts. So the ambulanciers were armed --- hardly to the teeth --- with automatic .32 calibre pistols. To be sure that every one got acquainted with this weapon of emergency, we had target practice out in the field back of the monastery. After twenty-five of us had fired one round per person, one hole (maybe two) appeared on the target. Whatever the number of hits, it was assured that every one knew his weapon and an attack on an ambulance section convoy (complete, with one White truck and a trailer-kitchen which served as a kennel for "Salonique," the cook's dog) was not to be feared (by the comitajés).

As a further assurance against a surprise attack, each person was given seven rounds of ammunition, which was to be strictly accounted for and returned to Hill on making the next étape.

On or about June 12, 1917, we moved on to Larissa, passing up the heavily wooded slopes back of Mount Olympus, following the valley of the Mavroneri River. Near the crest of the divide, the village of Petra was passed, and from there on it was nice rolling down to the town of Elasson.

After making Elasson, we caught up with the main body of the Division which was strung all along the road, winding up the Maluna Pass --- the entrance to Thessaly. We passed the little Indo-Chinamen who were struggling up the steep mountain with their huge packs and little peaked sun hats; Senegalese, spahis, Chasseurs d'afrique, French Artillery, and lots of French infantry. The English troops involved in the affair went by sea, so we did not come in contact with them. Russia also contributed troops, but they came after things were settled.

Passing down the Thessalian slope from the Maluna Pass, the holiday-bedecked town of Tirnavos was reached during a heavy rain. Allied flags were flying, though drenched; and bunting of all colors showed signs of not being weather-proof. Hastily prepared pictures of General Sarrail, President Wilson, General Joffre, and others of note were hung from wires stretched across the streets and in the windows. The pictures looked as though several days before they had been likenesses of other persons and had been touched up in a hurry to show how loyal Thessalians were to the Allied cause. These same unique bits of portraiture appeared later at Larissa and Volo.

From Tirnavos it was a short run across the wheatfields which stretched for many kilometres each side of the road to Larissa. We reached this town around five or six O'clock in the evening. There were crowds of citizens in the streets and all were looking in wonderment at the composite make-up of the incoming troops. The spahis had not long since rounded up the treacherous evzones (Greek infantry) who, after a formal surrender, offered resistance to the advancing French troops and then fled out across the wheatfields. The Spahis charged across the country and after a brief skirmish brought in a goodly number of prisoners, not, however, without losing twelve killed, officers and men.

We occupied the recently evacuated Greek barracks, and they were all too recently vacated, which we found much to our discomfort. Our barrack was near the one in which the captured Greeks were imprisoned.

Every now and then the Chinese guards, would walk out a group of prisoners, who, upon being addressed by the French commander through an interpreter, would give three cheers for Venizelos and the Allies, and at the same time sign up in Venizelos's Army. Thereupon they would be marched to the station by the ever-vigilant Chinamen and shipped to Salonica. and I hope to Topsin. Thus we saw loyal royal Greek troops transformed by a few well-chosen remarks into loyal Allied soldiers.

After the Greek King had acceded to the Allies' demands, on or about June 13, it became a certainty that there would be no active campaign in Greece, so it was a question of time, as to how long it was necessary to keep troops on the ground after the abdication. Several cars rolled each day, carrying only a few sick soldiers, and it is doubtful if we carried more than fifty during the expedition. Before we quitted Larissa, leaves were granted to Volo, which had been a base of supply for German submarines, where the most remarkable feature was the abundance of outdoor moving-picture shows. These shows were given on the quai from dark till dawn. Some of the Section made excursions to the Vale of Tempe which is not far from Larissa.

By the end of June most of the troops had evacuated Thessaly and we started back to Macedonia July 1. On this return hike we went over the Sarantoporen Pass to Kozano; thence, after a night on a barren hillside where the tinkle of goat-bells assumed the sonority of fire alarms, we proceeded through Eksisu and Sakulevo to our new sector beyond Brod (which is east across the valley from Monastir). The Section now became attached to the Serbian Army and had for cantonment a clump of tents on the hill above Skocivir looking down the valley across the Cerna.

CHARLES BAIRD, JR.*
*Reminiscences based on an unpublished diary.

 

VII
THE BOMBARDMENT OF MONASTIR, 1917

 

Monastir, August 17, 1917

Along in the afternoon the intermittent bombardment of Monastir, which had been going on all the morning, suddenly increased in volume, until at four o'clock the noise of the bursting shells became a continual rumble, and tongues of flame mingled with the smoke and dust clouds which continuously shot up over the house-tops of the city.

The greater part of the Section was grouped on a hillside near camp, whence we could watch the bombardment. Two of our cars were on duty in the city, but we had no news of them. Immediately after dinner, Tracy and I, having been assigned to twenty-four hours' duty in Monastir, left camp. The bombardment seemed to increase in violence as we approached the unfortunate city, and fire was sweeping the eastern quarter. As we drove up the Grande Rue, which practically cuts the city in half, we could see that the eastern part of the town had suffered most.

In the Grande Rue the confusion was indescribable. Women with babies in their arms and with little children clinging to their skirts, and men carrying grotesque burdens of household possessions hastily salvaged, ran hither and thither in an agony of terror. Others cowered in their doorways, fearful of the open, while several knelt directly in our path, beseeching us to take them to a place of safety. Men even jumped upon the steps of the ambulances from which we forcibly dislodged them.

Arriving at the hospital we found it undamaged, being well to the north of the city, and nearer the Bulgar and Boche positions. There we relieved Sinclair and Russell, who then left for Florina with wounded, and being the last to leave, were forced to quit the town by a circuitous route through the western section, as shells were again falling in the Grande Rue.

Tracy and I were at once despatched to the offices of the hospital, which were located a little to the east of the Grande Rue. We found the building intact, though surrounded by flames. Tracy took the books and records in his car, while I went to the other end of the city to the English hospital for civilian Serbs, accompanied by an old Serbian woman, who had had her leg blown off. I found the Grande Rue still passable, though some of the buildings lining it were in flames. Shells were now falling to the west of the street.

Having delivered my wounded, I returned to the G.B.D. Hospital, where Tracy was preparing to make another trip to the offices. He left a little later, brought back the last of the salvage from that building, and reported that the fire was gaining headway in the Grande Rue, which he thought was impassable because of fallen débris. This was not the case, however, as Grenville Keogh, who had been sent for to help handle the emergency calls, came through it soon afterward, though his celluloid goggles were ignited by a burning fragment of wood, and one of his eyebrows went with them as they fizzled up in smoke.

As no more calls came, we remained at the hospital, and at eight o'clock the firing dropped to an intermittent cannonade. This continued until midnight, when we found that east of the Grande Rue, the city was practically destroyed. Incendiary bombs as well as high-explosive had been used, and fire and shell had done their work thoroughly. The French military authorities estimated that two thousand shells had fallen between four and eight o'clock that evening.

CHARLES AMSDEN*
*Of Farmington, New Mexico; Harvard, '19; served with Section Three from April to October, 1917; subsequently a Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Service.

 

VIII
LAST DAYS OF SECTION THREE IN THE ORIENT

 

On September 2 it was reported that the Italians, operating just across the valley on our right, had taken Hill 1050 and that the Senegalese were attacking on the plain at the foot of Rostanni. About noon we were warned of a coming counter-attack and told to be ready to evacuate from two new postes. Accordingly, that evening, the two staff cars, each with four ambulance drivers, made a tour of the postes, so that at least some of the boys might be familiar with all the roads.

At seven the following evening the repair car and ten ambulances started for the G.B.D. in Monastir, Lieutenant Dérode and I immediately following with the staff car. On arriving, we designated four men for the Ravine d'Italienne, a poste of the 76th Division; four for the Roumanian poste of the 30th Division, and leaving two at the G.B.D. to see to the unloading of the cars there, and the evacuation back to Holeven and Florina if necessary.

At eight o'clock it was sufficiently dark to start, and the cars left for the postes. At the Ravine d'Italienne, we parked the cars in the lee of a stone bridge and were joined by three brancardiers.

Brush fires, started by exploding shells, blazed on the mountains on either side, and farther up the valley the fields were afire just behind the Bulgar front lines. All the French artillery, from the little mountain batteries up in the hills to the big "210's" in the outskirts of Monastir were pounding away, and the Bulgars were replying, though to a less extent, and apparently directing their fire down into the town. The heavens seemed a writhing, shrieking waste of sound, but all of a sudden, about nine o'clock, the firing ceased, emphasizing the deep stillness of the night, broken only by occasional rifle-fire and the sharp rat-ta-tat-tat of the mitrailleuses out ahead. Then the moon came up over the mountains, bathing everything in a soft white light, and for the moment making us and our cars seem frightfully conspicuous.

In a few moments Lieutenant Dérode appeared for a final inspection and to warn the boys under no circumstances to bring in cadavres. About quarter of ten the cars began to roll steadily, and as they returned, after evacuating their loads at the G.B.D., were directed, according to the last reports of the number of blessés, to one poste or another. Along toward 2.30 A.M. things commenced to slacken, and all cars but three, one at each poste, and one at the road junction, ready to move up, were sent in. All three came in before daybreak. At the G.B.D. the Médecin Divisionnaire instructed us that the hospital must be evacuated before evening, so we telephoned to the cantonnement at Bistrica and got all remaining cars rolling. By noon our work was pretty well cleaned up.

This was the last real activity of Section Three. From then on we kept our usual programme; two cars at the G.B.D. in Monastir to answer calls from the postes, and each morning the required number of cars to evacuate back to Holeven, Velusini, or Florina and occasional calls from a radius of thirty kilometres. On September 6 and 28 we received two new batches of men as replacements, a number of the old members returning to France. We kept busy building mud and stone houses for winter quarters, improving our road out as far as the main road, and giving all the ambulances a thorough overhauling. On October 8 we got news from the Parc d'Autos at Salonica that we were to be recalled, and on the 9th came fifteen French drivers, whom we were to break in on our Fords and work. As soon as they took over the service we prepared to leave.

At noon on the 16th, Lieutenant Dérode called the whole Section together, and in a few words of heartfelt thanks, and regret at parting, bade us good-bye; and read the following order from the General Commanding the 76th Division, to which the Section had been attached:

Au moment où les conducteurs américains de la Section Sanitaire A.U. 3 vont quitter l'Orient pour aller continuer leurs services sur le sol français, le Général Commandant l'Armée Française d'Orient adresse ses félicitations au Chef et aux hommes composant le personnel de cette Section, pour l'intrépidité, l'entrain et le dévouement dont chacun d'eux a donné le plus beau témoignage au cours des opérations de guerre qui se sont succédé depuis Décembre 1916 dans le secteur de Monastir.

Grâce aux qualités d'endurance, de bravoure et de sang-froid dont ce personnel a fait preuve dans maintes circonstances, de nombreux soldats français, souvent grièvement blessés, ont pu recevoir rapidement les soins nécessaires qui leur ont sauvé la vie.

En s'éloignant de la Macédoine, où les volontaires américains ont fait apprécier leur concours si précieux, ces vaillants auxiliaires emportent avec eux les regrets unanimes, la gratitude de tous nos blessés et la reconnaissance de l'Armée Française de l'Orient.

Signé: REGNAULT

 

JOHN N. D'ESTE*
*Of Salem, Massachusetts; Harvard, '10; joined the Field Service in September, 1916; served in Section Eight and as Chef of Section Three until November, 1917; subsequently a Second Lieutenant in U.S. Artillery.