Section Two (SSU 2)

'The Ambulance Sections', History of the American Field Service in France, "Friends of France" 1914-1917, Told by Its Members, Volume I (Boston and New York: Houghton and Mifflin Company, 1920)

SECTION TWO

 Yet sought they neither recompense nor praise,
Nor to be mentioned in another breath
Than their blue-coated comrades whose great days
It was their pride to share, ay! share even to death.
Nay, rather, France, to you they rendered thanks
(Seeing they came for honor, not for gain),
Who, opening to them your glorious ranks,
Gave them that grand occasion to excel,
That chance to live the life most free from stain
And that rare privilege of dying well.

ALAN SEEGER

(From a poem written by him in memory of American Volunteers fallen for France, upon the occasion of a memorial service held before the Lafayette-Washington statue in Paris, May 30, 1916)

I
PONT-À-MOUSSON 1915

Pont-à-Mousson, August 1915

In August, 1915, we were quartered in a building which had not been occupied since August, 1914. There were countless rooms already furnished, while those on the first floor had been so cleaned up that the Section, which consisted of twenty-four men, had "all the comforts of home." There was a large mess-hall, kitchen, writing-room, library, general office, dormitory, and a good generous vaulted cellar of easy access. This last adjunct was important, for the town was one of the most frequently bombarded places in the line, and very often big shells that wreck a house at one shot made it advisable to take to the cave. The atelier of the armurier with its collection of tools and fixtures, now served as a perfect automobile repair shop. We had also running water, and, at first, enjoyed both gas and electric lights; but shells eventually put both systems out of commission. Naturally the telephone line got clipped every few days, but was quickly repaired. Behind the headquarters was a gem of a garden containing several species of roses, and, as fortune would have it, new wicker chairs. At first all this seemed too good to be true; we could not realize that such an amazing combination of comforts could exist in the war zone, and still less could we realize it when we looked down the street and saw the German trenches in full view on the crest of a hill fourteen hundred yards distant, where at night rifle flashes were seen. To the volunteers who had hibernated and drudged along at Beauvais some thirty-five kilometres behind the line until April, 1915, it was a realization of hopes beyond belief.

The men in the Section had been billeted in Dieulouard, eight kilometres below, at houses where they slept when not on night duty; but when the French Section was ordered away, a number of the men elected to move up to Pont-à-Mousson and were given excellent quarters in the various vacated residences of the town. Why, instead of just rooms they had suites, and the commander had an apartment in the show place of the town!

THE DAILY SERVICE

The regular daily service was arduous enough in itself, for one was either on duty or on call all of the time. Then there were periods following an attack when the men rested neither day nor night, when one got food only in snatches, and frequently days at a time would pass when one was on such continuous service that there was never a chance to undress. Then there was the other aspect, the ever-present danger of being killed or wounded that one is under at the front, for Section Two worked and lived in a heavily shelled area.

In spite of the danger, the American ambulanciers rendered their service with fidelity at any and all times. A French captain once remarked that, no matter how much the town was being shelled, our little field ambulances could be seen slipping down the streets, past corners, or across the square on their way to and from the postes de secours back of the trenches. I remember one day that was especially a test of the men. The town was being shelled, and it happened that at the same time there were many calls for cars. The Germans were paying particular attention to the immediate surroundings of our headquarters, and the shells were not falling according to any time-table known to us. A call came in, and the "next man" was handed his orders. He waited until a shell burst and then made a run for it. Several cars had been out on calls and were due to return. There was no way of giving them a warning. We heard the purr of a motor, and almost immediately the sing of a shell very close to us. There was an instant of anxiety, an explosion, and then we were relieved to see the car draw up in line, the driver switch off his motor and run for our entrance, holding his order card in front of him as he ran, and just as he entered another shell hit near by. It reminded me strongly of a scene in a "'ten-twenty-thirty" martial play. All the hero needed was some fuller's earth to pat off his shoulders when he came inside.

THE ROUTINE

It is difficult to take any one day's work and describe it in the attempt to give an adequate picture of the routine of the Section, for with us all days were so different.

Six-thirty is the time for bread and coffee, and the long table in the flag-decorated mess-room begins to fill. Mignot, our comrade orderly, is rushing to and fro placing bowls in front of those arriving, and practising on each the few English expressions he has picked up by association with us. Two men of the Section enter who look very tired. They throw their caps or fatigue hats on to a side table and call for Mignot. They have been on all-night service at a hamlet where the most active postes de secours are located.

"Much doing last night?" asks one of the crowd at the table.

"Not much. Had only sixteen altogether."

"Anything stirring?"

"Yes; Fritz eased in a few shrapnels about 5.30, but did n't hurt any one. You know the last house down on the right-hand side? Well, they smeared that with a shell during the night."

"By the way," continues the man in from night service, addressing himself to one across the table, "Canot, the artilleryman, was looking for you. Says he's got a ring for you made out of a Boche fuse-cap, and wants to know if you want a Geneva or Lorraine cross engraved on it."

The men in the Section leave the room one by one to take up their various duties. There are some whose duty it is to stay in reserve, and these go out to work on their cars. Others are on bureau service, and they remain within call of the telephone. Two leave for the town eight kilometres below, where their job is to evacuate from the two hospitals where the wounded have been carried down the day and night before.

FRIENDS AMONG THE FRENCHMEN

IN front of four or five of the low masonry houses a Red Cross flag is hung, designating the postes de secours where the wounded are bandaged and given to the ambulances. An American car is backed up in front of one, and the khaki-clad driver is the centre of interest for a group of soldiers. Some he knows well, and he is carrying on a cheerful conversation with them. It is surprising what a number of French soldiers speak English; and there are hundreds who have lived in England and in the States. Some are even American citizens who have returned to fight for la belle France, their mother-country. I have met waiters from the Café Lafayette, chefs from Fifth Avenue hotels, men who worked in New York and Chicago banks, in commission houses, who own farms in the West, and some who had taken up their residence in American cities to live on their incomes. It seems very funny to be greeted with a "Hello there, old scout!" by French soldiers.

"Well, when did you come over?" asks the driver.

"In August. Been through the whole thing."

"Where were you in the States?"

"New York; and I am going back there when it is over. Got to beat it now. So long. See you later."

A few companies of soldiers go leisurely past on their way up to the trenches, and nearly every man has something to say to the American driver. Five out of ten will point to the ambulance and cry out with questionable but certainly cheerful enough humor, "Save a place for me to-morrow," or, "Be sure and give me a quick ride!" Others yell our greetings, or air their knowledge of English. "Camarade américain," said in a very sincere tone and followed by a grip of the hand, has a very warm friendship about it. Yes, you make good friends that way. Working along together in this war brought men very close. You found some delightful chaps, and then ... well, sometimes you realized you had not seen a certain one for a week or so, and you inquire after him from a man in his company.

"Where is Bosker, or Busker? --- I don't know how you pronounce it. You know, tall fellow with corporal's galons who was always talking about what a good time he was going to have when he got back to Paris."

"He got killed in the attack two nights ago --- pauvre gars," is the answer....

NIGHT DUTY AND AN ADDED SECTOR

A kilometre up the climbing winding road was a lone poste de secours in the woods just off the highway. The approach and the place itself were often shelled. There were times when the drivers were under a seriously heavy fire on night duty; times when trees were shattered and fallen across the road and huge craters made in the soft earth of the adjacent fields. A kilometre beyond was another point of call, and from there one could look directly into one of the most fought-over sections of ground in the long line from the sea to Belfort. It is a bit of land that before the war was covered with a magnificent forest. Now it is a wilderness whose desolation is beyond description.

Section Two performed its duties so well that the work of an adjacent division was given to it, and the little cars began rolling past the last-mentioned poste de secours over to the exposed plain beyond and into the zone of its newly-acquired activities. The American cars literally infested the roads in the day. They buzzed along on calls to the postes, returned from evacuations, and kept so busy trying to accelerate the work that a casual observer might have imagined that a whole division had been annihilated overnight. There are times when men die in the ambulances before they reach the hospitals, and I believe nearly every driver in the Section has had at least one distressing experience of that sort. Early one morning there was an urgent call for a single wounded. The man's comrades gathered around the little car to bid their friend good-bye. He was terribly wounded and going fast. "See," said one of them to the man on the stretcher, "you are going in an American car. You will have a good trip, old fellow, and get well soon. Good-bye and good luck!" They forced a certain cheerfulness, but their voices were low and dry, for they saw death creeping into the face of their comrade. The driver took his seat and was starting when he was asked to wait. "Something for him," they said. When the car arrived at the hospital, the man was dead. He was cold and must have died at the start of the trip. The driver regretted the delay in leaving. Why had they asked him to wait? Then he saw that the ambulance was covered with sprigs of lilac and little yellow field flowers. The men knew that the car would serve as a hearse.

Americans have a faculty of adapting themselves to any service they may be called upon to perform, and many times we undertook on our own initiative various missions that were not in strict accord with our military duties. For instance, after a bombardment, we very often transported dead civilians. During one bombardment a considerable number of women and children were killed. A couple of the American ambulances were on the spot immediately after, and the men were silently going about their sad work. The little children who were accustomed to cry out to us as we passed, gathered around holding to their mothers' trembling hands. They said, "Américains," when they saw the khaki uniforms; but on this occasion their tone was hushed and sad instead of loud and joyous, and had a surprised note, as if they had not expected to see the Americans at such a task.

CURIOSITY AND PRUDENCE

It took us a long time to learn the value of prudence. At first during the bombardments we would rush to the street as soon as a shell landed and look to see what damage had been done. Then, when some éclats had sizzed uncomfortably close to our persons, we became a little more discreet and waited awhile before venturing out. But experience finally discounted the popularity of orchestra seats during an exhibition in which shells larger than "77's" appear.

The men did what was asked and gladly, for there was no work more worth while than helping in some way, no matter what, this noblest of all causes. One did not look for thanks, there was reward enough in the satisfaction the work gave; but the French did not let it stop at that. The men from the trenches were surprised that we had voluntarily undertaken such a hazardous occupation, and expressed their appreciation and gratitude with almost embarrassing frequency. "You render a great service," said the officers, and those of highest rank called to offer thanks in the name of France. It is good to feel that one's endeavors are appreciated, and encouraging to hear the words of praise; but when, at the end of an evacuation, one drew a stretcher from the car, and the poor wounded man lying upon it, who had never allowed a groan to escape during a ride that must have been painful, with an effort holds out his hand, grasps yours, and, forcing a smile, murmurs, "Merci, " --- that is what urged you to hurry back for other wounded, to be glad that there was a risk to one's self in helping them, and to feel grateful that you have had the opportunity to serve the brave French people in their sublime struggle.

EXTRACTS FROM McCONNELL'S JOURNAL

October 26, 1915

The head of the Sanitary Service of the French Government, accompanied by three generals, made a tour of inspection of all the units in this sector to-day.

November 14

We had the first snow of the season to-day. All the morning it snowed and covered the fields and trees with a thick coating of white. In the roads it melted and they became stretches of yellow slush.

November 16

We received a telephone message in the morning asking us to go to the mairie to meet a high official. Four of us went over. A number of large cars were drawn up in the place. One bore the flag of the President of France. We were to meet Poincaré. We formed a line inside the sandbag barricaded arcade. The President and his entourage passed. He stopped in front of us. "One finds you everywhere," he said; "you are indeed devoted." Then he shook hands with each of us and passed on. We wandered on down the arcade to watch the party go down into the shelled area of the town. A sentry standing near us entered into conversation. He addressed himself to Pottle. "Did he shake hands with you?" he asked. " Oh, yes," replied Pottle, who had taken the whole thing as a matter of course. "Bon Dieu! " said the sentry, "he is n't a bit proud, is he?"

November 25

Thanksgiving --- and we celebrated it in the American style. We had purchased and guarded the turkeys, and they were prime. One of our men did wonders with the army food, and it is doubtful if any finer Thanksgiving dinner was eaten any place in the world than the one we enjoyed to-day, only two thousand yards from the Huns.

November 30

The writer, with two others of the Section, was crossing the place after dark. As we passed the breach in the sandbag barricaded roads we were lighted up by the yellow glare coming from the shops next to the mairie. The sentry there on duty saw us. "Pass along, my children, and good luck to you; you are more devoted than we are," he cried out to us. I was startled by the voice out of the darkness and the surprising remarks. I glanced towards the sentry's post, but the light blinded me and I could not see him. From his voice, however, I knew he was old --- one of the aged territorials.

"Oh, no," I answered, for lack of anything better to say.

"Yes, you are. We all thank you. You are very devoted," he replied.

"No, not that, but I thank you," I said, and we were swallowed up in the darkness. Then I was sorry one of us hadn't gone back to shake hands with the kind-hearted old fellow. It seemed to me that it was the spirit of France speaking through him, voicing, as usual, her appreciation for any well-intentioned aid, and that we should have replied a little more formally.

JAMES R. McCONNELL*
*Of Carthage, North Carolina; University of Virginia; was in the Field Service during 1915; subsequently went into the Lafayette Flying Corps and was shot down near Ham, while on a reconnaissance during the Somme advance in July, 1916. The advancing troops found his body several days later.

II
PONT-À-MOUSSON --- BOIS LE PRÊTRE

Pont-à-Mousson, June 17, 1915

This is a dear little town with about eight thousand inhabitants. After breakfast I was asked by one of the men if I would like to look about. We turned to the left and entered the famous Bois le Prêtre where the artillery had not been. Here was an officers' cemetery, a terrible, sad sight, --- six hundred officers' graves. Close by were also the graves of eighteen hundred soldiers. The little cemetery was quite impressive on the side of this lovely green hill with the great trees all around and the little plain wood crosses at each grave. As we waited, a broken-down horse appeared with a cart-load of what looked like old clothes, but which was really des morts. I had never seen a dead body until that moment. It was a horrible awakening --- eight stiff, mangled, armless bodies --- all men like ourselves with people loving them somewhere, all gone this way. A grave had been dug two metres deep, large enough to hold sixteen. One by one they were lowered into the grave.

Pont-à-Mousson, Monday, June 28

I had to go to Auberge Saint-Pierre at about two o'clock this morning. It was a sad trip for me. A boy about nineteen had been hit in the chest and half his side had gone. " Très pressé," they told me. And as we lifted him into the car, by a little brick house which was a mass of shell-holes, he raised his sad, tired eyes to mine and tried a brave smile. I went down the hill as carefully as I could and very slowly, but when I arrived at the hospital, I found I had been driving a hearse and not an ambulance. It made me feel very badly --- the memory of that faint smile which was to prove the last effort of some dearly loved youth.

All the poor fellows look at us with the same expression of appreciation and thanks; and when they are unloaded it is a common thing to see a soldier, probably suffering the pain of the damned, make an effort to take the hand of the American helper. I tell you tears are pretty near sometimes.

Tuesday, 5 P.M., July 6

I carried over forty wounded yesterday a distance of a hundred and sixty kilometres and at nine o'clock turned in; to be waked up at two o'clock to go to Auberge Saint-Pierre. The Major was there to receive us, and so interested and appreciative is he that any one of us would do anything for him. Just as I was starting down with a full load I found I had picked up a nail, and a puncture was the order of the day. Two fellows ran forward; explained that in peace time they were chauffeurs, and refused to let me work on it; while the Major made me sit on a fallen tree by the roadside, smoke a cigarette, and talk to him. We are, of course, mere soldiers, but to be treated so kindly and so thoughtfully makes us feel that we must go on forever!

Later I had a German wounded couché given me and I probed out the fact that there were some six or eight French waiting to be taken. "Oh, but he is severely wounded --- take him first! " I shall always remember that in France the German went before the less wounded Frenchmen!

A TRIBUTE

Monday

The Governor, or Prefect, of the Department of Lorraine, sent us from Nancy, for July Fourth, the following tribute:

On this day, when you celebrate your national independence, at the same hour that France in violent combat defends her independence against an enemy whose madness for domination threatens the liberty of all nations, and whose barbarous methods menace civilization, I send you the expression of the profound friendship of the French for your great and generous nation; and seize this occasion to assure you once more of the deep gratitude of the people of Lorraine for the admirable devotion of all the members of the American Ambulance of Pont-à-Mousson.

Pont-à-Mousson, July 26

Our whole Section has been cited by order of the Division. Here is the translation:

The American Ambulance, composed of volunteers, friends of our country, has been continually conspicuous for the enthusiasm, courage, and zeal of all its members; who, regardles of danger, have worked without rest to save our wounded, whose affection and gratitude they have gained.

TWO TALES

Pont-à-Mousson, August 15

Yesterday was a red-letter day for me. The American mail arrived! I was brought back to actualities by the voice of a young French soldier of about twenty-one who stood beside me:

"You have just got some letters?"

"Yes, not even opened them yet."

"All those! You are to be married, perhaps?"

"No, mon ami."

" Surely it is your mother, then, who has written you so often."

"Only this one is from her," I answered. And then a strange silence fell. I did not feel like speaking, for, glancing up, I noticed that he was still looking at that one letter in my hand. Then, after fumbling for a few minutes in his uniform, he pulled out a packet of earth-stained letters, and said:

"These were from my mother; but I can't look for any more. She died last month."

September 4

A sad thing happened the other day to a friend of mine, a poilu who has been helping me to get specimens of perfect, empty shells. I had many a long talk with him. He used to like to tell me about his girl and how happy they were together before the war, and how the day peace was declared, he was going to marry her. Lately I had noticed he looked depressed, and one day I found out the reason. The postman came to the door. He looked at my friend, who had become silent, and shaking his head, said, "Pas encore." My friend became very white, and presently confessed to me that he had had no letters for six weeks. A few days after, I saw him again and asked if he had heard from her. He said "No," very sullenly, and later, over a glass of beer, mentioned that his father had written him that she had been misbehaving herself. The poor fellow seemed stunned with the news. After vainly trying to cheer him up, I went back to dinner. The next morning I did not see him, but the following morning I was at headquarters when an urgent call came for an ambulance. My car happened to be just going, so I took the trip. "Where is the house? " I asked. "Just over there where the man is waving." It was the house of my friend. Need I end the story? A broken man, who had worked valiantly for twelve months under hellish conditions, to defend his country, had shot himself! We lifted him on to a stretcher and I sped away. Life was nearly extinct. I followed him into the operating-room, where he opened his eyes, and I think he recognized me. His lips moved --- but I don't know.

THE SPIRIT OF THE FRENCH

September 8

Yesterday I had a sudden call to fetch three badly wounded, one of whom was in great pain from a wound in the back, and the slightest jostle or bump I knew would cause him great agony. The doctor, pointing to one of the other two, said, "You must get him to the operating-room as quickly as you can." "But," I answered, "I dare not go fast, this poor chap is in such a bad condition." The doctor shrugged his shoulders. But the man who was suffering had heard. "Go as fast as you can, my friend; it won't kill me!" I did so, and the bumps were bad. The poor fellow could not help uttering cries from time to time. But before I arrived at Belleville, the cries had ceased, as the great pain had made him unconscious, while the badly wounded man had died. "C'est la guerre," said the doctor to whom I told the story, as he washed his hands for the operations.

The other day I paid a visit to a neighboring hospital, where one young fellow about my own age had had his left leg amputated. I sat by his bed and chatted with him. He told me of his wife --- they had been a year and a half married --- and of his child whom he had not yet seen. He was so very eager that somehow the pity of it made me turn aside for a second, and look out of the window. Quick of perception, out went his hand to mine. Oh, she will understand, camarade," he said, smiling; she will love me just the same --- she is a Frenchwoman."

How can one help caring for France and French people, they have such a keen appreciation of the value of sympathy and gratitude? Here in the midst of torturing death, they at least are cheerful, and having put aside the barrier of selfishness are wholly simple and direct in their human relations. The fact that on every side there is daily evidence of this attitude, in spite of so bitter and costly a struggle, is high proof of the fineness of their civilization.

LESLIE BUSWELL*
*A young Englishman, who was in the service during several months of 1915. Author of Ambulance No. 10.

III
A NIGHT OF SHELLING

Pont-à-Mousson, May 20, 1915

One evening, about 7.30, after the Germans had been firing on this place and the neighboring villages for some hours, I was called to Bozéville, a village on the road to Montauville consisting of a small cluster of one-story brick and frame buildings constructed in 1870 by the Germans for their soldiers. When I reached this place it was on fire, and the Germans, by a constant fusillade of shrapnel shells in and around the buildings and on the roads near them, were preventing any attempt being made to extinguish the fire. To drive up the narrow road, with the burning houses on one side and high garden wall, thank Heaven, on the other, hearing every few seconds the swish-bang of the shells, was decidedly nervous work and anything but peaceful. But after picking up the wounded, I returned here where conditions were much worse. At this time the Germans were throwing shells of large calibre at the bridge over the Moselle, and to reach the hospital to which I was bound, it was necessary to take the road which led to this bridge and turn to the left about a hundred yards before coming to it. Just as I was about to make this turn, two shells struck and exploded in the river under the bridge. There was a terrific roar and two huge columns of water rose into the air, seemed to stand there for some seconds and the next instant spray and bits of wood and shell fell on and around us. A minute later I turned into the hospital yard, where the effect, in the uncertain and fast-fading light, was ghostly, as earlier in the evening a shell had exploded in the yard and thrown an even layer of fine, power-like dust over everything. It resembled a shroud in effect, for nothing disturbed its even surface except the crater-like hole made by the shell. On one side of the yard was the hospital, every window broken and its walls scarred by the pieces of shells; in the middle was the shell-hole, and on the other side was the body of a dead brancardier, lying on his back with a blanket thrown over him, which gave a particularly ghastly effect to the scene, for what was left of the daylight was just sufficient to gleam upon his bald forehead and throw into relief a thin streak of blood which ran across his head to the ground. Needless to say I left the place as quickly as possible.

TO THE VICTOR BELONG THE SPOILS

Another scene which I do not think I will soon forget happened just after a successful French attack and shows war in a little different light, with more of the excitement and glory which are supposed to be attached to battle. It occurred at Montauville, a straggly little village of one and two-story stone and plaster houses built on the two sides of the road, situated on a saddle which connects one large hill on one side of it with another large hill on the other side of it. The village is used as a dépôt and resting-place for the troops near it. On this particular day the French had attacked and finally taken a position which they wanted badly, and at this time, just after sunset, the battle had ceased and the wounded were being brought into the poste de secours. The tints of the western sky faded away to a cloudless blue heaven, marked here and there by a tiny star. To the south an aeroplane was circling like a huge hawk with puffs of orange-tinted shrapnel smoke on all sides of it. In the village the soldiers were all in the streets or hanging out of the windows shouting to one another. The spirits of every one were high, and they well might be, for the French had obtained an advantage over the Germans and had succeeded in holding it. At this moment a French sergeant entered the town at the lower end and walked up the street. At first no one noticed him; then a slight cheer began, and before the man had advanced a hundred yards the soldiers had formed a lane through which he strode. He was a big fellow, his face smeared with blood and dirt and his left arm held in a bloody sling, while on his head was a German helmet with its glinting brass point and eagle. He swaggered nearly the entire length of the village through the shouting line of soldiers, gesticulating with his one well arm and giving as he went a lively account of what had happened. Thereupon some one started the Marseillaise and in a few minutes all were singing. I have heard football crowds sing after a victory and other crowds indulge in song, but I have never listened to such wild exultation as on this occasion. It was tremendous. I wish the Germans could have heard it. Perhaps they did, for they were not so far away and the sound seemed to linger and echo among the hills for some minutes after the last note had been struck.

CARLYLE H. HOLT*
*Of Hingham, Massachusetts; Harvard, '12. Served in Section Two from February to August of 1915.The above are extracts from two letters written to Field Service Headquarters.

IV
LEAVING PONT-À-MOUSSON

It gave us rather a wrench to leave Pont-à-Mousson. The Section had been quartered there since April, 1915, and we were attached to the quaint town and to the friends we had made there. The morning of our departure was warm and clear. Walking along the convoy which had been formed in the road before our villa, came the poilus who shook hands with each conducteur. "Au revoir, Monsieur." "Au revoir, Paul." "Bonne chance, Pierre." We took a last look at the town which had sheltered us during the most dramatic moments of our lives. Above the tragic silhouette of a huddle of ruined houses rose the grassy slopes of the great ridge crowned by the Bois le Prêtre, the rosy morning mists were lifting from the shell-shattered trees, and a golden sun poured down a springlike radiance. Suddenly a great cloud of grayish white smoke rose over the haggard wood and melted slowly away in the northeast wind; an instant later, a reverberating boom signalled the explosion of a mine in the trenches. There was a shrill whistle, our lieutenant raised his hand, and the convoy swung down the road to Dieulouard. "Au revoir, les Américains!" cried our friends --- a little mud-slopped, blue-helmeted handful, that waved to us till we turned the corner. "Au revoir, les Américains !"

Late in the afternoon we were assigned quarters in the barracks of Bar-le-Duc, where we found an English Section that had been as suddenly displaced as our own. Every minute loaded camions ground into town and disappeared towards the east, troops of all kinds came in, flick, flack, the sun shining on the barrels of the lebels, a train of giant mortars, mounted on titanic trucks and drawn by big motor lorries, crashed over the pavements and vanished somewhere. Some of our conducteurs made friends with the English drivers, and swapped opinions as to what was in the wind. One heard, "Well, those Frenchies have got something up their sleeve. We were in the battle of Champarng, and it began just like this." Round us, rising to the full sea of the battle, the tide of war surged and disappeared. At dusk a company of dragoons, big helmeted men on big horses, trotted by, their blue mantles and mediaeval casques giving them the air of crusaders. At night the important corners of the streets were lit with cloth transparencies, with "Verdun" and a great black arrow painted on them. Night and day, going as smoothly as if they were linked by an invisible chain, went the hundred convoys of motor lorries. There was a sense of something great in the air --- a sense of apprehension. "Les Boches vont attaquer Verdun."

TO PETIT-MONTHAIRON --- NEAR VERDUN

On the 21st the order came for us to go to Petit-Monthairon (the Boches had made their first attack that morning, though this we did not then know), and near by we found a rather unlovely eighteenth-century château standing in a park built out on the meadows of the Meuse. The flooded river flowed round the dark pines, and at night one could hear the water roaring under the bridges. The château, which had been a hospital since the beginning of the war, reeked with ether and iodoform; pasty-faced, tired attendants unloaded mud, cloth, bandages, and blood that turned out to be human beings; an overwrought Médecin Chef screamed contradictory orders at everybody and flared into crises of hysterical rage.

Ambulance after ambulance came from the lines full of clients; kindly hands pulled out the stretchers and bore them to the wash-room, which was in the cellar of the dove-cote, in a kind of salt-shaker turret. Snip, snap went the scissors of the brancardiers who looked after the bath, --- good souls these two --- who slit the uniforms from mangled limbs. The wounded lay naked in their stretchers while the attendant daubed them with a hot soapy sponge and the blood ran from their wounds through the stretcher to the floor and seeped into the cracks of the stones. A lean, bearded man closed his eyes over the agony of his opened entrails and died there. Somebody casually tossed a blanket over the body.

Outside, mingling with the roaring of the river, came the great, terrible drumming of the bombardment. An endless file of troops were passing down the great road. Night. came on. Our ambulances were in a little side street at right angles to the great road, their lamp flares beating fiercely on a little section of the great highway. Suddenly, plunging out of the darkness into the intense radiance of the acetylene beams, came a battery of "75's," the helmeted men leaning over on the horses, the guns rattling and the harness clanking, a swift picture of movement that plunged again into darkness. And with darkness, the whole horizon became brilliant with cannon fire.

"THE HORSESHOE OF FIRE"

We were well within the horseshoe of German fire that surrounded the French lines. It was between midnight and one o'clock, the sky deep and clear, with big ice-blue winter stars. We halted at a certain road to wait our chance to deliver our wounded. It was a melee of beams of light, of voices, of obscure motions, sounds. Refugees went by, decent people in black, the women being escorted by a soldier. One saw sad, harassed faces. A woman came out of the turmoil carrying a cat in a canary cage; the animal swept the gilded bars with curved claws, and its eyes shone black and crazily. Others went by pushing baby carriages full to the brim with knickknacks and packages. Some trundled a kind of barrow. At the very edge of earth and sky-was a sort of violet-white inferno, while the thousand finger-like jabs of the artillery shot unceasing to the stars, and the great semi-circular aureole flares of the shorter pieces were seen a hundred times a minute. Over the moorland came a terrible roaring such as a river might make tumbling through some subterranean abyss. A few miles below, a dull ruddy smouldering in the sky told of fires in Verdun. The morning clouded over, the dawn brought snow. Even in the daytime the great cannon flashes could be seen in the low, brownish snow-clouds.

On the way to Monthairon, two horses that had died of exhaustion lay in a frozen ditch. Ravens, driven from their repast by the storm, cawed hungrily in the trees.

We slept in the loft of one of the buildings that formed the left wing of the courtyard of the castle. To enter it, we had to pass through a kind of lumber-room on the ground floor in which the hospital coffins were kept. Above was a great dim loft, rich in a greasy, stably smell, a smell of horses and sweaty leather, the odor of a dirty harness room. At the end of the room, on a kind of raised platform, which ran along the wall over our heads, was the straw in which we lay --- a crazy, sagging shelf, covered with oily dust, bundles of clothes, knapsacks, books, candle-ends, and steel helmets. All night long the horses underneath us squealed, pounded, and kicked.

I see in the lilac dawn of a winter morning the yellow light of an officer's lantern, and hear the call, "Up, boys, there's a call to Bar-le-Duc." The bundles in the dirty blankets groan; unshaven, unwashed faces turn tired eyes to the lantern; some, completely worn out, lie in a kind of sleepy stupor, while a wicked screaming whistle passes over our heads, and the shell, bursting on a near-by location, startles the dawn.

Later, the back of the attack was broken, and we began to get a little rest. But during the first week our cars averaged runs of two hundred miles a day, over roads chewed to pieces, and through very difficult traffic. In several of the villages there were unusually formidable shell gauntlets to be run.

LONELINESS --- THE VOICE OF THE SHELL

It is night. You can imagine how lonely it is here under the black, star-swept sky, the houses only masses of regular blackness in the darkness, the street silent as a dune in the desert and devoid of any sign of human life. Muffled and heavy, the explosion of a torpedo inscribes its solitary half-note on the blank lines of the night's stillness. I go up to my room, and sigh with relief as my sulphur match boils blue and breaks into a short-lived yellow flame. Shadows are born, leaping and rising, and I move swiftly towards my candle-end, the flame catches and burns straight and still in the cold, silent room. The people who lived here were very religious; an ivory Christ on an ebony crucifix hangs over the door, and solemn-eyed, the pure and lovely head of Jeanne d'Arc stands on my mantel. What a marvellous history, hers! I think it the most beautiful mystic tale in our human annals.

Silence, sleep, the crowning mercy. A few hours go by and morning comes. There is a call, "Monsieur Shin, --- un couché à --- " I wake. The night clerk of the bureau is standing in the doorway. An electric flashlight in his hand sets me a-blinking. I dress, shivering a bit, and am soon on my way. The little gray machine goes cautiously on in the darkness, bumping over shell-holes, guided by the iridescent mud of the last day's rain. A bright flash illuminates the road. A shell sizzles overhead. I reach the poste de secours and find a soldier in the roadway. More electric hand-lamps. Down a path comes a stretcher and a man wounded in arm and thigh. We put him into the voiture, cover him up, and away I start on my long, dark ride to the hospital, a lonely nerve-tightening ride.

The voice of war is the voice of the shell. You hear a perfectly horrible sound as if the sky were made of cloth and the Devil were tearing it apart, a screaming undulating sound followed by an explosion of fearful violence, bang! The violence of the affair is what impresses you, the suddenly released energy of that murderous burst.

When I was a child I used to wander around the shore and pick up hermit crabs and put them on a plate. After a little while you would see a very prudent claw come out of the shell, then two beady eyes, finally the crab in propria persona. I was reminded of that scene on seeing people come cautiously out of their houses after a shell had fallen, peeping carefully out of doorways, and only venturing to emerge after a long reconnoitring.

THE RELIGION OF THE TRENCHES

A new religion has arisen in the trenches, a faith much more akin to Mahomet than to Christ. It is a fatalism of action. The soldier finds his salvation in the belief that nothing will happen to him until his hour comes, and the logical corollary of this belief --- that it does no good to worry --- is his rock of ages. It is a curious thing to see poilus --- peasants, artisans, scholars --- completely in the grip of this philosophy. The real religion of the front is the philosophy of Mahomet. Death has been decided by Fate, and the Boches are the unbelievers. After all, Islam in its great days was a virile faith, the faith of a race of soldiers.

A LETTER FROM VERDUN

The other day I climbed to the top of Vauban's citadel, and looked out over the forts, the buff-brown moorlands and the crumbling villages. To the west, a battle was taking place, dull-colored smoke lay close to the ground, and now and then a shell would break, a pin point of light, in the upper fringes of the haze. What in Heaven's name is to be the end of all this? What is the world to be like which will some day follow this cruel welter of savagery and pain? You know that I reject the pacifist case because I see war as part of the web of life; it is competition distilled to its ultimate essence, and will not be done away with until international competition is under some rigorous and centralized control. Yet how can such a despotism of power be established, and by whom? Certainly war cannot be eliminated from the mechanism of civilization by a folding of hands and a general promise to be good. Yet this sort of thing is civilization committing suicide. Is n't it appalling to think of France, "the land of the idea," being thus compelled to abandon her science and art and to waste her blood and treasure in this unspeakable massacre? We ought all of us, young Boches, too, to be fighting side by side in the endless war men must wage on the various cussednesses of nature. This cheerless life is acid to any one with memories of an old, beloved New England hearth and close family ties and friendships. To half jest, I am enduring war for peace of mind.

How lonely my old house must be when the winter storms surge round it at midnight. How the great flakes must swirl about its ancient chimney, and fall softly down the black throat of the fireplace to the dark, ungarnished hearth. The goblin who polished the pewter plates in the light of the crumbling fire-brands has gone to live with his brother in a hollow tree on the hill. But when you come to Topsfield, the goblin himself, red flannel cap and all, will open the door to you as the house's most honored and welcome guest.

A fusée éclairante has just run over the wood, the "Bois de la mort," the wood of the hundred thousand dead; and side by side with the dead are the living, the soldiers of the army of France, holding through bitter cold and a ceaseless shower of iron and hell, the far-stretching lines. If there is anything I am proud of, it is of having been with the French Army, the most devoted and heroic of the war.

HENRY SHEAHAN*
*Of Topsfield, Massachusetts; Harvard, '09; served from August, 1915, to April, 1916; author of A Volunteer Poilu.

V
EN ROUTE --- 1916

Section Two left Pont-à-Mousson about February 21, 1916, and on Washington's Birthday our French Lieutenant gave us our "order to move"; but all he could tell us about our destination was that we were going north. We started from Bar-le-Duc, where we had spent a few days overhauling and painting the cars, about noon, and it took six hours to make forty miles through roads covered with snow, swarming with troops, and all but blocked by convoys of food carts and sections of trucks. Of course we knew that there was an attack in the neighborhood of Verdun, but we did not know who was making it or how it was going. Then about four o'clock in the short winter twilight we passed two or three regiments of French colonial troops on the march with all their field equipment. They were lined up on each side of the road around their soup kitchens, which were smoking busily, and I had a good look at them as we drove along. It was the first time that I had seen an African Army in the field, and though they had a long march, they were cheerful and in high spirits at the prospect of battle. They were all young, active men, of all colors and complexions, from blue-eyed blonds to shiny blacks, and wore khaki, and brown shrapnel casques.

After that we rode north along the Meuse, through a beautiful country where the snow-covered hills, with their sky-lines of carefully pruned French trees, made me think of masterpieces of Japanese art. In the many little villages there was much excitement and activity --- troops, artillery, and munitions being rushed through to the front, and there were also the consequent wild rumors of great attacks and victories. Curiously enough, there were few who thought of defeat, all sure, even when a retreat was reported that the French were winning; and that spirit of confidence had much to do with stopping the German advance.

At about six in the evening we reached our destination, some forty miles northeast of Bar-le-Duc. The little village, Petit-Monthairon, where we stopped had been a railroad centre until the day before, when the Germans started bombarding it. Now the town was evacuated, and the smoking station deserted. The place had ceased to exist, except for a hospital which was established on the southern edge of the town in a lovely old château, overlooking the Meuse, whither we were called as soon as we arrived to take such wounded as could be moved to the nearest available railhead, ten miles away, on the main road, and four miles south of Verdun. We started out in convoy; but with the conditions of traffic, it was impossible to stick together, and it took some of us till five o'clock the next morning to make the trip. That was the beginning of the attack for us, and the work of evacuating the wounded to the railway stations went steadily on until March 15, during which period it was left to the driver to decide how many trips it was physically possible for him to make in each twenty-four hours, for there were more wounded than could be carried, and no one could be certain of keeping any kind of schedule with the roads as they were then.

THE ROADS ABOUT VERDUN

Sometimes we spent five or six hours waiting at a crossroad, while columns of troops and their equipment filed steadily by. Sometimes at night we could make a trip in two hours that had taken us ten in daylight. Sometimes, too, we crawled slowly to a station only to find it deserted, shells falling, and the hospital removed to some still more distant point of the line. Situations and conditions changed from day to day, --- almost from hour to hour. One day it was sunshine and spring, with roads six inches deep in mud, no traffic and nothing to remind one of war, except the wounded in the car and the distant roar of the guns, which sounded like a giant beating a carpet. The next day, it was winter again, with mud changed to ice, the roads blocked with troops, and the Germans turning hell loose with their heavy guns.

In such a crisis as those first days around Verdun, ammunition and fresh men are the all-essential things. The wounded are the déchets, the "has-beens," and so must take the second place. But the French are too gallant and tender-hearted not to make sacrifices. For instance, I remember one morning I was slapped off the road into the ditch, with a broken axle, while passing a solitary camion, whereupon the driver got down, came over and apologized for the accident which was easily half my fault. Then we unloaded four cases of "seventy-five" shells that he was carrying, put my three wounded on the floor of his car, and he set out slowly and carefully up the ice-covered road, saying to me with a smile as he left, "Don't let the Boches get my marmites while I'm gone." For some time I sat there alone on the road, watching the shells break on a hill some miles away to the north, and wondering when I could get word of my mishap back to the base. Then a staff car appeared down the highway, making its way along slowly and with difficulty, because, being without chains, it skidded humorously, with engine racing and the chauffeur trying vainly to steer. There was a Captain of the Service des Autos sitting on the front seat, who was so immaculately clean and well-groomed that he seemed far away from work of any kind. But when the car stopped completely about halfway up the little hill on which I was broken down, he jumped out, took off his fur coat, and using it to give the rear wheels a grip on the ice, he swung it under the car. As the wheels passed over it, he picked it up and swung it under again. So the car climbed the hill and slid down the other slope round the curve and out of sight. It was just another incident that made me realize the spirit and energy of the French Automobile Service.

But the Captain had not solved any of my difficulties. He had been too busy with his own to notice me or wonder why an American ambulance was sprawled in a ditch with four cases of shells alongside. So I waited there about two hours until an American came by and took back word of my accident and of the parts necessary to set it right. In the meantime, about noon, my friend came back in his camion to take up his cases of shells and reported my wounded safe at the railway station. We lunched together on the front seat of the camion, bread, tinned "monkey meat," and red wine, while he told me stories about his life as a driver.

As soon as we had finished lunch he left me, and I waited for another two hours until the American staff car (in other surroundings I should call it an ordinary Ford touring-car with a red cross or so added) came along loaded with an extra "rear construction," and driven by the Chief himself. It took us another four hours to remove my battered rear axle and put in the new parts; but my car was back in service by midnight.

This was a typical instance of the kind of accident that was happening, and there were about three "Ford casualities" every day. But thanks to the simplicity of the mechanism, and to the fact that, with the necessary spare parts, the most serious indisposition can be remedied in a few hours, our Section was at the front for a year --- ten months in the Bois le Prêtre, and two months at Verdun --- without being sent back out of service for general repairs. In the Bois le Prêtre we had carried the wounded from the dressing-stations to the first hospital, while at Verdun we were on service from the hospital to the railheads. In this latter work of evacuation the trips were much longer, thirty to ninety miles; so the strain on the cars was correspondingly greater. As our cars, being small and fast, carried only three wounded on stretchers or five seated, our relative efficiency was low in comparison with the wear and tear of the "running gear" and the amount of oil and petrol used. But in the period from February 22 to March 13, twenty days, with an average of eighteen cars working, we carried 2046 wounded 18,915 miles. This would be no record on good open roads, but with the conditions I have described I think it justified the existence of our volunteer organization, --- if it needed justification. Certainly the French thought so; but they are too generous to be good judges.

Except for our experiences on the road, there was little romance in the daily routine. True, we were under shellfire, and had to sleep in our cars or in a much-inhabited hayloft, and eat in a little inn, half farmhouse and half stable, where the food was none too good and the cooking none too clean. But we all realized that the men in the trenches would have made of such conditions a luxurious paradise; so that kept us from thinking of it as anything more than a rather strenuous "camping out."

FRANK HOYT GAILOR*
*Of Memphis, Tennessee; Sewanee and Columbia Universities; spent parts of 1915 and 1916 in the Service. Later served as First Lieutenant in the American Field Artillery.

VI
IN THE MIDST OF THE BATTLE OF VERDUN

Verdun, May, 1916

For two weeks the Section worked night and day with scarcely time for sleeping and eating, but when our labor slowed up, the men had time to catch up lost sleep. Sleeping quarters were in the loft of a barn between the lane, which was the entrance to the estate, and the chàteau. Due partly to the rainy and damp weather, and the hard work, many of the fellows were on the verge of illness, and at night the loft sounded very much like a consumptive retreat. Every available space was occupied by the sleepers, and a few of the Section found accommodations in a couple of small buildings in the rear of the château, on the edge of the park, a small shack used for storing fishing paraphernalia, and another near by which gave shelter from nothing but the rain and snow. One of the strangest things in that part of the estate was an "Old Town" canoe with a paddle made from a broken airplane propeller which belonged to an aviator from the flying field on the top of the hill. From time to time several of our fellows went canoeing in it on the Meuse which flowed close by.

The meals were served in a farmhouse on the main road, at the head of the lane, these eating quarters being the worst part of our life there. The owners still hung on, though they had been ordered to leave long before, and their presence did not add to the pleasures of the spot. The dining-room was the kitchen and living-room, and at eating times was jammed full of hungry Americans, Frenchmen who were trying to buy wine of the Madame, and the Madame's family of eight very dirty children. A table in the centre of the room was reserved for the Section, though there was scarcely place for half the men.

Plates and table hardware were seldom washed, and it often happened that nothing was cleaned for several meals, while to add to the unpleasantness of the situation, hostlers kept opening and closing a door which was the entrance to the foulest stable imaginable. Possibly there would have been a general "kick" on the part of the Section if it had not been for the fact that we were worn out from the hard work and long hours of driving, which sometimes amounted to over 200 kilometres per day per car.

The cars too were in a sad state and most of them fit for the "graveyard" in Paris. On March 4, one new car and two overhauled ones came out from Paris, and two days later, two more arrived. That night orders were received at eight o'clock to move to Vadelaincourt at once.

Heavy fighting was going on then between Hill 304 and the Meuse and there was such a stream of wounded pouring into Vadelaincourt that the hospital was swamped. There was no room at the château for the freshly operated-upon men, so they were taken at once to other hospitals in the direction of Bar-le-Duc and Révigny. One French sanitary Section and two British Sections had been doing the work, but there were too many wounded for these outfits and Section Two was called upon to help.

The majority of our cars arrived at the chàteau by 10 o'clock, and after throwing duffle-bags and blanket rolls into a barn, the men set to work evacuating and worked steadily at their task for nearly three days with no sleep. The first night every car evacuated to Révigny over the main Bar-le-Duc-Verdun road, which was a continual stretch of holes and ruts, so that no car could go more than fifteen miles an hour, due to the roughness of the road and the dense traffic. After the first four days the French Section and one of the British Sections left, the whole work now falling to our Section Two and to English Section Two. There was still plenty of it, but it could be run more systematically.

AT CAMP

The Section slept in its cars, which were parked on the side of the road near the hospital, and our kitchen was established in one of the rooms of a farmhouse, very close to a barn and a huge heap of manure. The dining-room, which was a sort of "lean-to" against the side of the house, was made of blankets and canvas and not very watertight. For three weeks we lived this way, and then, during a spell of good weather, erected a tent (borrowed from the head French military doctor, who was a very good sort) in a lot across the road from the aviation field. However, most of the Section by that time had found sleeping-quarters in two rat-infested barns, everybody however, taking the unpleasant life philosophically. One of the barns was also occupied by the English Section, and when one night it caught fire near the essence tanks, and burned to the ground, several of the men had very narrow escapes and five of the Americans lost all their blankets.

Night work at a triage on the main Verdun road was now being taken up every other night, in addition to the labor of evacuating from Vadelaincourt, which meant long runs to Froidos, Chaumont, and sometimes Révigny, all, however, interesting in their way.

On April 8th, Frank Gailor ("Bishop") left us to the regret of everybody. "Bish" was one of the most popular men of the Section and told most interesting stories of his work in Belgium at the beginning of the war, when he was a member of the Relief Committee. What his "farewell party" lacked in elaborateness was made up for in the sincere feelings of regret which each man felt.

After eating in our "lean-to" by the manure heap for three weeks, the same French doctor, already mentioned, offered us, as our dining-room, the use of a spare tent which was erected in the field opposite the aviation field. The kitchen, too, was moved into a small tent which was rigged up between two pine trees a few feet from the dining-tent. A table in the form of a "T" was built, and with the addition of a set of shelves, known as the "American Bar," built in one corner, everybody was satisfied with our prandial arrangements. "Bishop" Gailor's farewell party, by the way, occurred in these new quarters, and also took the form of a "housewarming," with speeches by Emery Pottle, Graham, Harold Willis and one or two others. A quintet formed with Pottle, Nolan, Graham, Willis, and Seccombe made its initial appearance on this occasion, and the party broke up at a late hour with everybody more or less convinced that he was the next thing to a Caruso.

For a few days thereafter the weather had been ideal, but a change for the worse took place and the old tents had a hard time. There was no work to speak of and everybody spent the day "under canvas" around a small stove indulging in arguments on any sort of subject, while music by Nolan and Graham, on mandolin and guitar, caused the time to pass away agreeably. For three weeks we had nothing but rain, hail, and snow, and as the tent was pretty old, it leaked in many places. The field and side hill was a mass of slimy mud six inches deep, and ten or twelve men were required to push every car into the road.

The weather became better about the first of May, and as the aviators became more active, we got better acquainted with Navarre, Boillot, and Guynemer. This aviation field, by the way, was one of the largest on the whole front and had every type of plane then used by the French. Navarre was then flying a bright red Nieuport and never failed to give a thrilling exhibition whenever he took the air.

On Sunday, May 21, everybody attended an open-air funeral service for the burial of three aviators, one of whom was Boillot. An altar was erected between two trees and the service, which was very impressive, was largely attended by artillery and aviation officers, some three hundred of whom followed the bodies to the cemetery.

The last of the month the fighting grew worse about Fort de Vaux and Fort Douaumont and the Section worked every night and most of the days at the triage.

TO BAR-LE-DUC FOR REPOS --- AIR RAIDS

The 31st found the Section moving to Bar-le-Duc, where it was to be outfitted with new cars and where it was also supposed to be en repos. But as we took the place of and did the work which an English section had been doing, this was far from being a rest, for during the twenty-seven days there, an actual record of 10,500 men carried was one of the things the men pointed to with pride. It meant that a man was on duty fifty-three hours at a stretch, sleeping at one of three places---wherever he was working --- and then going off duty from 1 P.M. until 8.30 the next A.M.

June 10

The second day in town, the Boche planes raided Bar-le-Duc at 1 P.M. and the Section saw some exciting work. There were many narrow escapes in driving round picking up the dead and wounded, Barclay having the closest call when a bomb exploded back of his car and a huge piece went through the body close to his head. Twenty-four planes were counted in all, and 36 dead and 132 wounded were the results. On June 16 and 17, there were two more raids, but they were not so severe as the first one.

Our living quarters at Bar-le-Duc were in an old building built in 1575 and once a monastery, but now used to quarter troops in. The whole edifice was in the form of a square with a large courtyard inside, where were always every night a hundred or more poilus on their way to and from the front. Towards the end of June was a change of French officers, Lieutenant Maas being replaced by Lieutenant Rodocanachi, who became the most popular commander the Section ever had.

At this period, many men used to have lunch with the Lafayette Escadrille, which was stationed just outside of town, where Victor Chapman was killed on the 23d, and, Balsley badly hurt a few days before. Walter Lovell left on June 19 to enter the training school of aviation. He had made a fine Chef de Section and everybody hated to see him go. Oliver Wolcott was made Chef, but was recalled to the States when the Mexican trouble started, and so filled the post only a week.

BACK TO PETIT-MONTHAIRON

June 27 the Section moved back to Petit-Monthairon, where it did evacuation work until September 2, and where we had a small house with sleeping-quarters, dining-room and kitchen, officers' rooms and bureau which were fairly comfortable. There was not much work to do at this moment so several ball games were played with Section Eight and a Norton Section, all of which we lost, with one exception, but which furnished good fun and exercise. Several more new cars and men joined the Section there, J. M. Walker, our new Chef, being among them.

Sections One and Eight were in Dugny part of this time and a certain amount of visiting was done by all the Sections, Section Four, stationed at Ippécourt, sending a few men over to us from time to time. There were big parties on the night of July 4th and again on July 14. Then, too, Powel received a cardboard Victrola with records and gave evening concerts in the "loft," while we had good swimming in the Meuse along with plenty of mosquitoes. On July 29 we received a Hotchkiss workshop car and a new staff car.

On August 6, Mrs. Vanderbilt, who presented each of us with a box of cigarettes, visited the Section for lunch along with Mr. Andrew: everybody was "all dolled up" after spending the whole morning in brushing, polishing, and prinking in general. On September 2, the Section moved to Rampont and took over the postes at Esnes, and Hills 232 and 272, which Section Four had been working.

Section Four taking over the postes between 272 and the Meuse. Five cars were on duty every night, receiving orders at the telephone station at Jouy, three of the cars going to Hill 272 and the others to Esnes or Hill 232. For about ten days the poste in Esnes was the same old ruined château which Section Four had used, when a new poste was established on the outskirts of the town on the road to Béthincourt, where the cars had to run quite a bit farther through the centre of the town over a road full of shell-holes and wreckage off the buildings.

In September the French, in an effort to straighten their line made an attack on the Mort Homme. The artillery barrage started at 5 P.M., and an hour later the infantry "went over." The whole Section had been ordered to Jouy at 6 P.M. and at 7 P.M. the first call came for cars at Hill 272. Shortly after, the rest of the cars were called and we all worked until daybreak carrying in over 250 wounded.

EDWARD NICHOLAS SECCOMBE*
*Of Derby, Connecticut; served six months in S.S.U. Two in 1916; rejoined the Service in November, 1917, and remained in the U.S.A. Ambulance Service during the war.

VII
AT A HOSPITAL

Petit-Monthairon, August 9, 1916

We are quartered in one of the farmhouses belonging to a château, which is now a hospital. You remember, no doubt, the French farmhouses --- a blank wall on the roadside with only an entrance to the courtyard; a dark kitchen, a few bedrooms and a loft, with a few sheds out back. The loft is divided into two parts. We sleep in one of them on stretchers propped up from the floor by boxes or our little army trunks. Some of the boys don't prop up their stretchers, but I find it better to elevate mine, as the rats run all over the floor and incidentally over you if your stretcher rests on the floor. The fleas seem more numerous near the floor, and there are spiders, too. I've been pretty well "bit up." But yesterday I soaked my blankets in petrol and hung them on the line in the courtyard for an airing, so I think I've left the vermin behind. I also sprayed my clothes, especially my underwear, with petrol, which doesn't make much for comfort, except in so far as the animals are baffled. Flies and mosquitoes are abundant, too. We all have mosquito nets which we put over our heads in the evening, making us all look like the proverbial huckleberry pie on the railroad restaurant counter. The poilus around us have adopted our methods, and you see them sitting about looking in the distance for all the world like Arabs. We are better off than the other Sections, though, for our house is very commodious, and near by we have a river to swim in every day. So it is no effort to bathe.

We carry the wounded from the château to the trains. Some trips are about seventeen kilometres one way, and others are more. As the roads are well used, they are rather bumpy; so you have to go very slowly. You can't dash at full speed with wounded. It is slow work, for, in addition to the necessity of making the trip as easy as possible for the blessés, you have to dodge in and out among the transports, which usually fill up the roads. There is a steady stream going and coming --- horses, mules, and auto-trucks.

I never saw so many --- thousands of each kind. Then there is no lagging or loafing; you blow your whistle and the driver of what is ahead of you gives you six inches of road, you squeeze through and take a chance that the nigh mule on the team coming the other way does n't kick. You well know how dusty the roads are. But we have to drive right ahead regardless of it; so you can imagine what sights we are when we get back to our farmhouse --- scarecrows, each one. The dust is powdery and comes off easily, however, so one can get comfortable in a short time.

The blessés are a quiet lot, especially after you give them cigarettes. I always pass around the cigarettes before starting, for then I'm sure those en arrière will be still. Every now and then you have a "humming-bird," that is, a blessé who is so hurt that the least jar pains him and he moans or yells. You can't help him any, so you just have to put up with it. However, I don't like "humming-birds," for you feel, when you are carrying them, that you hit more bumps than you really do.

THE POILU'S AMATEUR THEATRICALS

I went the other day to a show in Trayon where some of the troops are en repos. It was wonderful, for there, right within range of the Boche guns, the French soldiers were giving one of the best musical performances I have ever seen. Among the performers --- men who only a little while before had been in the trenches --- were professional musicians, singers, and actors. It was not amateurish at all; in fact, it was highly professional. The theatre was fitted up more or less like the stage at the Hasty Pudding Club of Harvard. There was an amateurish back-drop, however; but everything else savored of the real Parisian touch. Among the audience were generals, colonels, underofficers, poilus, and five of us. We were invited, inasmuch as we had lent some of our uniforms for the actors. I saw my cap walk out on the stage on a fellow with a little head, so it did n't even rest on his ears, but rather on his nose. The soldiers who could not get in thronged the courtyard and cheered after every song or orchestra piece. The orchestra was made up of everything in a city orchestra, including a leader with a baton. You see each regiment is bound to have professional men in it and they get up these shows. On the whole, it was one of the most impressive sights I've seen, and on top of it all, there was a continuous firing in the near distance. Imagine it, if you can!

We have a cook and a servant, --- one of the poilus who is quartered here, too, and who earns a few sous on the side by serving us, --- also a French lieutenant who is really the head of the Section, a maréchal des logis, and a few other French retainers. They sleep in the same loft with us, and every night they chatter very late, kid each other about the fish they caught or did not catch in the river during the day, laugh and giggle at each other just like children. They are awfully amusing. By the way, all the poilus who are en repos fish, although there are only minnows in the streams about here. To-day I asked several how many they caught, and they said they were only fishing to pass the time. It seems to be a great diversion, for they all do it. Besides fishing the poilus en repos trap foxes, hedgehogs, rabbits, and other animals and then train them. Over across the road in one of the courtyards are two of the cutest little foxes I have ever seen, which play around and are just like little collies until we show up, when they scamper off and get behind a box or a stove and blink at us. We tried to buy one of them, but the owners are too fond of them to let them go.

They all bathe, too, every day --- the poilus. We go in with them, the mules, and the horses. Probably somewhere else in the same river the Boches are bathing. Such is life. We are extremely lucky to get a chance to wash at all and I'm afraid when we move from here --- for we shall soon be moved to poste duty --- we shan't have the comforts we are now enjoying.

I'll write again soon, but now I'm going to bed, --- that is, roll up in my blankets on my stretcher, for there is an early call for to-morrow morning, which means getting your machines over to the château at six o'clock, all ready for the day's work. It's great fun and I am awfully glad to be here. Moreover, there is a satisfaction in knowing that you are helping and that the French are very appreciative, from the poilu up to the highest officers.

CHARLES BAIRD, JR.*
*Of New York; Harvard, '11 ; served in both Sections Two and Three; the above extracts are from letters.

VIII
IN AND AROUND VERDUN

Petit-Monthairon, July 23, 1916

Here we are in this quiet little French village. We move something over a hundred sick and wounded men a day from one hospital to another, or to the hospital trains that take them out of the military zone. I don't find the occupation trying. The men we carry have had hospital treatment and most of them are not in extreme pain; a fact that makes it easier for the drivers when the road is rough, as it generally is. The road service, however, is really excellent. Gangs of men are breaking stones all the time and steam-rollers crushing the stones into smooth hard highways. But the traffic is so enormous that it's only a week or two before the road is worn into little ridges, much like the waves in Florentine paintings.

The dust makes an added complication in driving. A convoy of camions raises a cloud of dust through which you can't see for five minutes after they have passed. This slows us up, for it makes it dangerous to cut around slow-moving vehicles. Even on your own side of the road you are n't entirely safe. To-day I was running along when out of the dust, perhaps twenty feet in front of me, I saw the radiator of a truck. Legally, I would have been justified in keeping on; but he was shut in by a forage convoy; so I did n't stay to argue the matter, but took to the fields, blessing the lightness of my car which made it possible for me to negotiate a pile of road material and a cultivated field.

I am getting quite blasé to the sights of the road, --- paying little attention to ammunition trains or soldiers on the march; but I still slow down when an aeroplane rises near me or when a fair-sized bunch of German prisoners go by.

September, 1916

Went up to my poste de secours with my orderly. It was a mean night, gray and dark. We started early so as to get a little twilight and ran about a mile. Then I heard the whistle of a punctured tire. By the time we had that fixed it was really dark. Nevertheless we went the next mile to the central poste (Jouy) without trouble. Here we waited.

It is a dull place ---a little tiny village, headquarters for our division; after eight-thirty, no lights allowed in the streets or showing from the windows. One of our cars is always there on piquet duty. The two drivers of this car were playing checkers inside their ambulance by candle light. We watched them for awhile, then we went into the poste, which is merely a recording and telephone centre. The sergeant on duty sat at a desk reading a French novel. Another man was at one end of a bench with "Alice in Wonderland." He did n't do it from choice, he explained, but because he could n't find any other book in camp which he did n't know through and through. I sat on the other end of the bench and did exercises in French subjunctives.

A little after midnight a 'phone call for a car at Esnes came in. We were rather hoping it wouldn't, for it had begun to rain very hard outside, and it was impossible to see your hand before your face. However, we went out and got started. It was n't so terribly hard, though our eyes ached from the strain of constantly trying to see what we could n't possibly see. But we got along up the hill and along the level, passing innumerable artillery teams. It was hard to make out the road here and I was glad when I saw a gleam of light ahead and heard the clink of harness. I thought it was a driver lighting his pipe and steered for the light. In a minute my companion yelled and jumped; and my right wheel dropped down. I had run over a wall at the side of the road and my front axle was resting on the ground and the whole car was so canted that there seemed every chance of its toppling over at any moment. On investigation I found that the light I had seen was by the edge of an artillery caisson which had gone all the way down the bank!

We could n't do much by ourselves, but some teamsters came along and joined us heartily as French soldiers always do. We were really too few for the job, but we lifted with all our might and actually did get the car back in the road again. So we once more drove on in the rain, creeping ahead at low speed, however. I remembered the road pretty well from the night before, and finally pulled into our poste (Esnes). Luckily our wounded were n't so badly off and were able to sit up. We started back, passing long lines of soldiers returning from the trenches, who were very spooky in the black. But a minute or so later my right wheel dropped into a shell-hole where a big obus had just exploded. I was glad there were plenty of soldiers at hand. All of these who could find fingerhold lifted and the car pulled out. It seemed incredible but nothing was broken.

We got along slowly after that without accident. About two miles from the poste central it began to rain torrents and we could see nothing. It took real resolution to push on. I've seldom been so relieved over anything as when we made out dimly the houses of the village. From there on to the sorting hospital (Claires Chesnes) we could use lights and my one flickering gas burner seemed fairly to blaze. It had taken us three hours to do twenty miles.

Fromeréville, October

I went up and got three men with no more trouble than dropping both rear wheels in a shell-hole as I turned around; but I got some poilus to push me out and returned to headquarters about 2 A.M. However, I had n't much more than gone to sleep before there was a 'phone call for Marre, which, is a long way over dark and lonely roads. I wallowed through a number of shallow shell-holes, turning over one spring-hanger thus pushing the body against one wheel and creating a contact brake, bad for the tire. Leaving the poste I dropped two wheels into a shell-hole and had to get my blessés out and have them help push. About halfway to the poste I ran out of gas. I put in a gallon from my reserve, and when I had got it in, found from the smell that it was kerosene. We were not far from a French battery and the road was fairly pock-marked with shell-holes; so, although there were no shells coming in at the time, I thought it better not to stay there, and ran on on the kerosene. You can do it on low speed, apparently. I got down to headquarters absolutely dead tired. Now I am home again also dead tired.

Later

I've seen any number of regiments on the march and never yet heard the men singing or the bands playing. In Paris this may seem a little cold and uninterested, but here where the real work is done it is wonderfully impressive --- suggestive of endless determination and reserve strength. Now, determination and reserve strength without hysteria is just what France is showing. I am the more struck with this because severe fighting is going on close to us and I have been in the midst of the wounded coming into the big evacuation hospital. There were n't enough ambulances to go around and great crowds, with bloody bandaged heads and arms, came in the big motor trucks that carry the soldiers up to the line. All last night I saw them coming in, grim and suffering and uncomplaining. It was one of the great uplifting experiences of my life. I have seen nothing to match it for sheer courage, moral as well as physical. There is n't the rawest, most provincial driver in our work who has n't expressed the most unqualified admiration for the French poilus. Certainly, as I looked at them last night, they seemed to me sane, entirely sane men, terribly brave and unbeatable.

The rumors are that the victory was impressive and that Fort Douaumont is ours again. It's a fine achievement if true; but that seems less important to me now than the spirit I've seen. Out here at the front one does n't worry about the French Army.

JOHN R. FISHER*
*Of Arlington, Vermont; Columbia; entered the Service in May, 1916, and a year later was put in charge of the organizing of the Field Service Training Camp at May-en-Multien. Later Mr. Fisher became Captain in the U.S.A. Ambulance Service.

IX
THE LAST DAYS OF THE BATTLE OF VERDUN

Rampont (near Verdun), October 6, 1916

We are located here in the woods, overlooking Rampont, between Sainte-Ménehould and Verdun, near Nixeville, and about twelve miles from Le Mort Homme, Hill 304 and Hill 272. Already I have had some wonderful experiences during these three weeks at Verdun. During the attack a fortnight ago, we certainly had a time of it. In addition, the loss of Kelley and the injuries to Sanders, of Section Four, over at their poste at Marre, was a terrible tragedy to us. Both boys I knew and talked with only a few days before the affair happened.

The attack lasted three nights, and we had many interesting adventures. The main stunt is to keep on the road. Out of eighteen cars, four were "in bad"; either their drivers tried to climb trees or walls, or else supply wagons with excited drivers kept to the middle of the road, and, of course, side-swiped the little Ford into a ditch. Seccombe and Struby managed to ditch their cars nicely. Iselin had a most wonderful "stunt" with his. After climbing an embankment, it fell over on its side, all four wheels in the air; but to our amazement, it "chugged" off nicely when righted by a dozen husky poilus, always ready to help Americans. Well, I had a little difficulty myself finding the road, as I had made previously only one trip up to 272, which is about twelve miles; and without lights on the dark highways, with much traffic going up and returning, it is sometimes by pure luck that a fellow gets by.

Many drivers as well as their horses get excited, and when passing "Dead-Man's Turn" and "Shell-Hole-Hollow" everybody has steam up. In addition, when half the route has been gone over, the batteries are at our rear, so that, with the racket from the trucks, the roar of the guns, and the whistling of the shells through the heavens, it certainly does seem as though hell were let loose. Then, too, the landscape all about us is so desolate! Montzéville and Esnes are terribly shot up --- trees cut down, not a house standing complete, and debris filling the streets; so that in a general state of depression our thoughts continually rest on our tires, expecting at any moment a blow-out, which means a half-hour's job in the "God-forsaken burg," as we call it.

I have had an interesting "twenty-four hours"' service, which proved to be thirty-six hours, during these few days that our division has been en repos. We were kept on the go, each making 300 kilometres. Our two cars made several trips to the many surrounding towns between here and Vaubécourt, Révigny, and Bar-le-Duc. Back here far behind the lines, it is quite a pleasure to be able to drive at night with lights. Révigny, by the way, is approached via the Argonne --- a picturesque country it is still, though there are the many destroyed villages and towns, and farms dotted with graves of the fallen heroes of the Marne.

The other night it was raining in torrents when I struck Bar at 1 A.M., with one malade, a victim of a mad dog's bite. Much to my surprise the entrée pour malades was apparently closed, so there was nothing for me to do but climb up over the parapet, Jean Valjean style, and rouse the sleepy brancardier, who hastily opened the porte, and then I made my get-away in the long trip back to Rampont, some fifty-five kilometres.

It is a great life, full of interesting happenings here with the soldiers; long trips, including many irregular and unexpected daily episodes; sometimes eating at camp, often at a field hospital kitchen; always finding a way out of a tight fix, even though for a moment all looks black; while things are made all the better by the fact that we have some bully good fellows here, the spirit and the work of the squad being such that it is a great satisfaction to be a member thereof.

Neuilly, December 13, 1916

On October 23 last, during a bombardment in a French village, Fromeréville, I was hit in the leg by a fragment of a shell which exploded a few feet in front of my car. Fortunately the car was empty, as I had just returned from a trip to the field hospital, and was turning about to load up again at the poste de secours. Fortunately, too, the éclat did not fracture the bone. Quickly stopping the car, which was but a few minutes, away from an abri whither I managed to crawl, the doctors applied a bandage, and a few minutes later I was on a stretcher. Afterwards I was informed that two brancardiers were killed and eight of us in the town wounded. Mine was the only car on duty at the moment of the bombardment as my comrade had left sometime before on a call to a village ten kilometres back. After three weeks at the small field hospital, during which time the piece of shell was extracted, I was brought to our hospital, the American Ambulance here at Neuilly, where I am making such progress that I am trusting to resume active service with my Section at Verdun very soon, if by the will of God I am able.

WILLIAM H. C. WALKER*
* Of Hingham, Massachusetts; enlisted in the Field Service, December, 1915; became a member of Section Two, at Pont-à-Mousson; wounded at Verdun, October, 1916; left the Field Service, August, 1917, and enlisted in the Canadian Field Artillery; honorably discharged from the Canadian Forces, December, 1917, in consequence of physical disability.

X
MUD AND RATS AT RAMPONT

Until November 8, the Section continued to wallow in the mud of Rampont, and it was "some mud." It clung in great clots to our shoes, thence to our puttees, our overcoats and to everything we possessed, including ourselves. It was on this date that we packed up and moved to Ville-sur-Cousances, where, for living quarters, we had barracks, large and airy; so airy in fact that we soon found that our beds were the only warm places. The "General" clung to his tent which he pitched off to the cast in the windiest place he could find, and yet managed to keep himself warmer than any one else in the outfit; and five o'clock always brought a hungry crowd to his tent-flap clamoring to be admitted for tea. These barracks would have been passable enough had we been the only creatures present, but we were far from being alone in our glory. Rats were our rivals; rats of all sizes, small, large, fat and thin. They were present in ever-increasing numbers, making our days doleful with discoveries of half-eaten cakes of chocolate, biscuits, and cheeses, and our nights hideous with an uproar that sounded like Charlie Chaplin in a tin-can factory. Olympic games were their specialty, followed by social dinners at the Ritz, as MacIntyre's store of supplies might have been aptly termed.

Our postes remained the same, Marre and Hill 272. The weather also remained the same, --- rain, sleet, snow and high winds. Roads were about the only thing that changed and they grew worse and worse. Because of the bad weather we had plenty of work to do, --- ten cars on duty regularly with extra cars on call and frequently the White truck. Under the circumstances, Diemer, the American mechanic, and Saintot, the French mechanic, were kept busy changing broken rear axles, broken rear springs, broken front springs, broken radiators, bent mud-guards, and all other parts that came in contact with foreign bodies on dark, rainy nights. The crowning achievement of these mechanics was the changing of an entire rear axle at Marre, in the pitch darkness of a rainy night, without a single light to help them, as Marre was exactly six hundred yards from the Boche lines and of course no lights could be used.

MORT HOMME --- GLORIEUX --- LA GRANGE-AUX-BOIS

On December 28, the Boches "pulled off" an attack on the Mort Homme which kept us fairly busy for one night; but outside of that there was little to note other than the routine work, during which we were looked after with infinite kindness by the non-commissioned officers of the G.B.D., who, every morning at 3 A.M., at Marre, shared with us drivers a five-course dinner, --- and a very welcome meal it was, after a long night's work. At Fromeréville, whatever they had was ours and we were as members of a large family. These are things which none of us will ever forget.

On January 10 the Section moved for a short repos to barracks at Glorieux, and had perhaps two or three calls a day to camps where the different regiments of the division were located; but the greater part of our time was spent in Verdun walking about the city.

On January 19, 1917, we again packed up our ever-increasing and never-decreasing baggage and fled over icy roads to La Grange-aux-Bois in the Argonne, where we were allotted two large rooms, one good, the other bad.

The Section being divided at this time into two squads, it was quite obvious that one squad would inevitably draw the poor room, and as violent argument seemed imminent, the "General" and Harry Iselin decided to flip a coin for it. Much to our disgust, the "General," with true British nonchalance, lost the toss, and those of us who were in his squad started out immediately to locate other and better quarters. Most of us were successful --- Conquest, Struby, Heilbuth, and I getting palatial chambers with electric lights and a southern exposure. Without boasting I should say that we had discovered the Fifth Avenue of La Grange-aux-Bois. MacIntyre and Wheeler contented themselves with what might possibly be called Madison Avenue, while the "General," Bigelow and MacLaughlan --- and I make this statement with no reservations of any kind whatsoever --- lived in a snug little rat-infested attic on the Bowery.

WORK IN THE ARGONNE

From this time on our life was an easy one. We had only two main postes, one up in the woods, Sept Fontaines --- later changed to Chardon, the other in a beautiful valley at the Abbaye de Chalade. For the first few days we worked another poste, Le Chalet, nearer the lines, but the Germans as usual became most unpleasant and nearly "finished off " several of our cars as well as several of our drivers.

As there was practically no work here, it was decided to send cars there only on call from La Chalade, with the immediate result that there were no more close "squeaks,"---at least not for some time. The Boches picked a quarrel with La Chalade and shelled the district intermittently, but beyond planting a few shells in the buildings and peppering one car with éclats, succeeded in doing no damage. During our five months' rest cure in the Argonne, the only casualty suffered by the Section occurred in the afternoon of April 25, when Raymond Whitney was bitten in an unmentionable part of his anatomy by a large black dog. This severe wound was cauterized at the hospital amidst the cheers of the assembled drivers.

As the spring advanced, rumor as to our leaving the Argonne followed rumor. First we were to go to Saint-Mihiel, then to the Champagne, and finally- we were relieved by Section Nineteen, which arrived on May 25th when we were put en repos to await further orders.

JOHN E. BOIT*
*Of Brookline, Massachusetts; Harvard, '12; joined Section Two in May, 1916; became Sous-Chef; subsequently was a First Lieutenant, U.S.A. Ambulance Service.

XI
THE SUMMER OF 1917

From La Grange-aux-Bois we were ordered to Dombasle-en-Argonne; and great was the rejoicing; for after five months of inactivity and monotony, the prospect of active service was a pleasant one. We reached Dombasle on June 25 without incident, and after turning out Section Fifteen, took up their quarters in a large building at the edge of the town. They had fixed up the place to the nth degree of comfort, with a shower-bath, garden, pavilion, and in fact all the modern conveniences. Hence it was with a well-satisfied air and an anticipatory smile that we settled down in what seemed the best quarters we had ever had. Before Section Fifteen left, the members assured us of "easy work" and a "quiet time enjoyed by all," and left us to the working out of our own damnation.

THE EX-VILLAGE OF ESNES

There is no use describing the ex-village of Esnes to those members of the Field Service who have seen it; and as a corollary, there is no use in describing it to those members of the Service who have not seen it, for they have had it described to them ad infinitum and ad nauseam. Suffice it to say that Esnes was our poste and it lay under the Côte 304 and in full view of the Mort Homme --- and the seeing was fairly good in those days. We have never yet found out whether our friends of Section Fifteen were amusing themselves at our expense or not, about the prophesied "quiet time" which we were to have there. Anyway, shortly after our arrival we found ourselves in the midst of one of the nicest little parties ever given on the Verdun front, and there are those who claim that they have seen "some parties" on said front. It seems that the Boches had been meditating the prospective taking-back of various portions of Côte 304 which they had lost previously and elected June 29 as the most propitious time to try to do so. Whatever faults the Boche may or may not have, and we do not claim that he is without them, one of them was not to let things stagnate on the Verdun front. So for the next three days we had ten cars continuously on duty, and what is more, they were running continuously.

This at the front. Meanwhile, events at the rear were not entirely devoid of interest. The Section, or rather the part of it which was not up at the poste was at supper when something suspiciously like an arrivée was heard in the immediate vicinity. The "older" men looked at one another, the rookies looked at the "General," who went on with his soup. A second came in, still closer; then a third which knocked the plaster from the ceiling, a generous piece of which fell in the "General's" soup. He rose, calmly looked round and muttered, "Well, I'll be damned," --- and left those parts. He did n't run, for that would have been undignified, but he simply left --- and he was n't the last to reach the shelter of a neighboring and friendly haystack some hundred yards off out in the open. --

We moved camp that night with never a sigh for our late palatial and very unhealthy quarters. What with Boche attacks and French counter-attacks, we found little time to do anything but eat, sleep, and work, and for the entire period from June 29 until July 18, when our Division, the 73d, finally ended that particular chapter of Verdun history by making one big and very successful attack, retaking all the ground which had been lost and taking many prisoners, the Section did all the evacuations for these several attacks and won for itself a Divisional Citation --- the second from this Division.

THE DEATH OF HARMON CRAIG

For us, the most tragic part of the whole summer came on July 15, when Harmon Craig was killed at Dombasle. After having gone over some of the worst stretches of road in the whole sector for three weeks with a smile on his face and a jest on his lips, he was wounded at his poste, by the side of his car while it was being loaded, and died six hours later as bravely as he had lived. He was buried in the cemetery back of Ville-sur-Cousances, and as he was laid to rest, the guns behind Montzéville, roaring out a last farewell, sped the 73d over the top to avenge him.

A PEACEFUL REPOS AT LIGNY-EN-BARROIS

On July 23 we received our orders to leave, and with as much joy as we had arrived a month before, we packed up, and after a last visit to Craig's grave, set out for Nançois-le-Grand, a village of several hundred inhabitants seven kilometres from Ligny-en-Barrois, where we arrived, after a dusty run of several hours.

The quiet of the little town was as grateful to our nerves as the beauty of the surrounding country to our eyes, accustomed to desolation. After a month of hard work, it was good to lie in our cars, for we lived in our cars, which were drawn up in a field, happy in the assurance that five or ten of us would n't have to hurry up to the front and after thinking great calm thoughts, serve the best interests of the country by drifting off to sleep, not to awaken until 10.30 the next morning. It was good to lie under the trees and meditate, or simply to lie under the trees. It was good to stroll in the dusk and finally wind up a perfect day with a perfect omelette. In short, it was Paradise!

Then after a week of this pastoral life, as the charms of the succulent omelette gave way to those of the fragrant grape, wine and wassail became the order of the day. Who can adequately describe the farewell parties of Walker, or do justice to the entertaining which Whitney furnished on that occasion? Who can describe the farewell parties of Whitney and Whytlaw and the eloquent farewell speeches, made on these occasions, or the still more eloquent responses by MacIntyre, that "prince of bon vivants"? What pen could picture the joys of whympus hunts, commenced precisely at 12.01 P.M.; Of crap games commencing at reveille (10.30 A.M.) and lasting until taps (12.30 A.M.); of swimming parties in the canal, which invariably ended at the Café de la Meuse at Tronville? Who can declare our elation at the decoration of Whitney, Ames, and the "Mec," a condition of affairs which naturally called for another party? And finally, how can we relate how deeply our hearts were touched when we found that our cars had been decorated by the girls of the village as the short weeks of repos came to a close on August 16?

We left for Sommaisne that day, and I think we may say with truth that our departure was regretted by the entire village; certainly we regretted departing, and look back on those five short weeks as on a pleasant dream of golden sunshine, green hills, and France in summertime. We remained at Sommaisne three days, after which we followed our new Division, the 48th, to Souhesme.

HENRY D. M. SHERRERD*
*Of Haddonfield, New Jersey; Princeton, '17; enlisted in the Field Service in May, 1917; served in the U.S.A. Ambulance Service until the end of the war.

XII
IN LINE AT VERDUN

Ville-sur-Cousances, Thursday, June 28, 1917

We were now brought face to face with the reality of the coming offensive, and began to appreciate on what an enormous and terrifying scale a modern attack is carried out. As soon as we reached the main road we came upon an endless line of camions all rumbling along in the darkness, each filled with infantry to its uttermost capacity, the men being jammed in like cattle. There were also guns, huge guns such as I have never seen in the Argonne. For three hours we kept passing this solemn parade of men and cannon. At each cross-road were stationed officers and sentinels with shrouded lanterns who directed and urged on the procession. Most of the men were riding in silence, many even managing to sleep in their awkward positions; but occasionally we passed a camion whose crew was chanting some weird song of war or love. I am told that this concentration of men has been going on for many days. Here at Cousances the whole atmosphere is impregnated with the vague imminence of an approaching offensive.

This region is totally different from the Argonne where we were before. The country is barren and deserted and the fields of stubble stretch for miles along the white and dusty roads. The sun is burning everything and the thick white alkali dust gives all objects a gray and withered appearance. We no longer see the beautiful rich green of the Argonne vegetation. Everything seems baked and dead. Every three or four miles one comes upon a small ruined village, now deserted. The whole region has been blasted by shells; nowhere does the country fail to remind one of the terrible struggle that has been going on for so long in this sector. Cousances, itself nothing but a group of wrecked houses, is quite close to the front, and there is certainly much more activity here than in our former sector.

Putting it literally, this Section was baptized in fire as soon as it reached here, for to-night about eight-thirty a despatch-rider came tearing up to the bureau on his motor-cycle and said that the Boches were attacking at Hill 304. So instantly we began to hustle around and prepare for heavy work.

Harper and I were the first to leave, he being the driver and myself orderly. As we passed out of Cousances we saw several artillery field pieces hurrying up the road toward the first lines, and later passed two battalions of the 346th drawn up by the roadside and ready to be sent ahead. A heavy rain was falling and frequent flashes of lightning lit up the country; but the night was not very dark and we had little difficulty in keeping on the road, which is well screened all the way. But of course we could not use any lights. French batteries on both sides of us were firing steadily, and the whistle of the departing shells was incessant; but we heard no Boche shells coming in. At the poste we found the Lieutenant hurriedly giving directions to the fellows, and heard that the French were to counter-attack at daybreak.

HELL'S CORNER

No blessés had come in as yet but many were expected. Before long Whytlaw came down with a load and Harper and I started up to relieve him. I had heard a lot about the danger of this poste, and in no detail was it exaggerated. The road is covered with stones which have been hurriedly thrown into shell-holes, and there were also many new holes which had not been filled in. For over a mile after making "Hell's Corner" we are in plain sight of the Boche trenches. We can see their star shells start from the ground, and it seems as if they exploded directly over our heads. The road is being shelled all the time but one can never go fast on account of the danger of these shell-holes. We passed trucks, and some squads of infantry which were difficult to see in the darkness. By this time the din of the cannonading was terrific and the bursting of the Boche shells occurred at no very comfortable distance.

The road grew worse and worse, and finally it became almost impassable. I doubt if any car but a Ford could ever make that trip at night. I did n't go sightseeing at all, but having reached our destination, made a fairly straight line toward the abri, where we learned that Bixby's car had just been smashed by a shell while standing in the yard and would be useless for the rest of the night. We were also told that the Boches had just dropped in some gas bombs, and we were ordered to be sure that our masks were in readiness. Ray and I, the first to go back after having a brief smoke in the shelter of the abri, carried an assis and two couchés. We breathed a lot more easily after once gaining "Hell's Corner," and accomplished the rest of the trip without mishap. It was after two when we got back here. But as a counter-attack was expected we had to await word and be ready to start out again any minute. So both of us simply crawled into our car and managed to fall asleep very easily. We slept soundly until the Lieutenant woke us and told us to go to bed as we probably shouldn't be needed.

HEAVY WORK DURING AN ATTACK

Sunday, July 1

It is now three days since the attack commenced and it appears to be still going on. There are Boche attacks and then French counter-attacks, then artillery duels, and then more attacks. As close as we are to the lines, we know very little of what happens, or who is winning. The losses have been terrible on both sides, but this does not mean that the attacks have failed. Our Section has been working at a terrific pace. I am so tired that the events of the past few days seem all confused and even unreal. It is such a wonderful relief to be sitting way back here in perfect safety and with no responsibilities that I feel as if I had just recovered from a long sickness. I slept quite late Friday after the hard work of the night before, and after rising had little to do for the rest of the day; both sides had ceased activities for the time, and we heard but little firing until evening. But we were warned to be prepared for a large dose at night, as the French were scheduled to attempt a rush on their lost positions.

About 6.30, just after the dinner gong had rung and as I was leaving my room, there was suddenly a "swish-bang" and a big shell exploded on the opposite side of the road, about fifty yards from our headquarters. Of course I flopped on the ground as soon as I heard the warning whistle, and then rising, proceeded with more or less undignified hustle for the abri under our main building. Everybody else thought of the very same place and joined in the general stampede. In about three minutes another came in and we could hear the éclats flying about outside and clipping pieces of stone off the houses. After a few more shells the Boches let up on us for awhile and we went upstairs and began dinner. But we had n't finished our soup before they started dropping again, the first one so startling us that we spilled more or less soup around the room. We continued eating, however, until suddenly there was a terrific explosion followed by a horrible crunching sound of falling bricks and plaster. A shell larger than the others had struck the house, or what remained of the house, directly opposite our building. It would have been foolish for us to remain where we were, because our building, already tottering from the effects of many shellings, might bury us alive if one of those big marmites ever landed squarely on it. The abri was also a dangerous place, being very poorly made and liable to cave in upon us. The safest place, therefore, was out doors; so we all streaked for a field which was well removed from all the crumbling foundations which made up this village and which are ready to fall almost from the mere concussion of a large shell. We gathered behind a large haystack where already several others had collected, and waited. The shells came in regularly, every once in a while striking some building and reducing it to still further ruin. One landed about thirty yards from the big tent where twenty of us sleep and we later found over a dozen rips in the canvas, some big enough to admit one's body. No shells came near enough, however, to do any damage; but at every explosion one had to lie flat in order to avoid the flying éclats.

At seven-fifteen, the time set for those on duty to start for the poste, the shells were coming in about every minute. So there was nothing to do but to streak for our cars which were in front of the main building, near which the majority of the shells were landing, and to make as quick a get-away as possible. The "General", and Reed left first and the last we saw of them they were hurrying very ungracefully over the rough field to where the cars were, about 250 yards away. The Lieutenant then told Newcomb and myself to get ready and to leave as soon as the next shell landed. So we lined up as if we were runners waiting for the sound of the starting pistol, and, as soon as the "R-R-ang" came, in we legged it. One shell came in while we were running and we both went down on our bellies. We gained the house before the next one landed and then waited for it. It came in too close for comfort and then I went out and cranked my car while Newcomb ran back to his shack for his coat.

Just as I got the motor started I received one of the biggest scares of my life. A shell came in and burst so close that I thought surely it had me. I was just getting into the car and so could not flop. I was hit by the flying earth and falling stones thrown up by the shell, which struck the car in several places, one piece even striking and glancing off my helmet. Newcomb, who then appeared, looked surprised to see me still alive; and before the next shell landed, we were well down the road and both joined in a long-drawn-out sigh of genuine relief.

The French attack had now fairly commenced and on all sides of us the batteries were pounding away. Not for a moment did the screeching of shells and the roaring of guns cease. At one point John Ames and I clambered up on a ruined house and took a look over the country. It was a view I shall never forget. Our task is comparatively small, and we are prepared to do it faithfully. Nine cars are lined up ready to cover the attack, and the drivers and their orderlies stand waiting orders. The Lieutenant is here directing us and planning the shifts and reliefs.

The road which we have to go over is the most damnable stretch I have ever known. As fast as the old shell-holes are filled in with stones, new ones are made. As we drive along in the darkness, straining our eyes to keep the car out of holes and ditches, the noise of the French batteries and German shells is deafening. Far down the road we see a flash followed by a roar. It is German shrapnel and we crouch instinctively in our seats as we realize that in another minute we shall be passing over that spot. In back of us is an explosion and flying rocks and earth are scattered about the slowly moving car. We can't go faster because of the condition of the road, although instinct cries out to us to open the throttle and streak for our destination. We plod slowly along, trying to talk unconcernedly and longing for the termination of the ride.

We pass through the town and enter the driveway of a fallen château, the cellar of which is now used for a poste de secours. This driveway is about fifty yards long. To look at it one would say it was impassable, but over those rocks and stones and through the shell-holes we go. This is the most dangerous place of all, and so often do the shells fall that no one ever ventures out to repair the road. We have to slow down practically to a standstill, and crawl and bump our way along. How I hate the sight of this place. It is all so cruel and relentless --- the wrecked houses, the torn-up roads, and the huge shell-holes, some of the older ones half filled with stagnant water. Here and there a wagon which has been struck sprawled by the roadside. It is a scene of sickening desolation.

I made the first trip to Esnes with Newcomb as orderly. It had not yet grown dark, so we easily passed by the shell-holes. When we reached Esnes we had to take our gas-masks from their cases and wear them about our necks, ready to put them on when passing through the gassed area. They served us well, and in less than two minutes we could remove them and breathe fresh air again, but our eyes burned from the poisonous fumes. The odor of the stuff left us horribly depressed. It has a sickeningly sweet smell like that of over-ripe fruit and makes one's lungs feel as if some heavy weight had been imposed on them.

THE DAY AFTER THE ATTACK

It is the day after an attack that our hardest work takes place. The wounded men are brought in continuously and we have more than we can handle. In this instance, I had to stay on all day. I grew dizzy with the monotony of the work. Several of my wounded were Boches and I found a little comfort in managing to get from them a steel helmet and a couple of buttons as souvenirs. The attack was something of a failure and every one was horribly low-spirited. Some of our blessés were frightfully mangled. The dead at the poste were so numerous that many were lying around the yard uncovered and. uncared-for. It is sights such as this that have a terribly depressing effect upon one's morale.

I thought I could go back and rest at seven o'clock after having worked twenty-four hours without any sleep, with only a little cold canned meat to eat. I was tired, and, moreover, felt very low-spirited. But word came that another big attack was to be made that evening, so I had to stay on and work. Some of the other fellows who had been on duty much longer than myself simply had to leave and return for rest. At nine the artillery duel commenced and it was worse even than the firing of the previous evening. Some large naval guns opened up on the German positions and it seemed as if the earth must split open so great was the shock of the explosion. At eleven the Boches started shelling and we all retired to the abris. The shells were big ones and the éclats from them flew for almost a quarter of a mile. Going up to the lines under that bombardment was no simple task. I managed to get an hour's sleep about four in the morning, dozing off as I sat in the abri waiting for my turn.

About five I went up and upon returning saw a terrible sight. A caisson or artillery truck had been hit by a shell about four o'clock and three men had been killed and one wounded. Of the six horses, four were killed, and the other two untouched. This happened right on our road over which we had been going back and forth all night. The dead men were terribly disfigured and presented a horrible sight. When I reached my destination with my load I found Whitney there asleep. He had brought down a load and was so fatigued that he had to have a short nap before returning to work. We both decided that we could not go on and so asked for men to relieve us. There were several fresh men just starting, so we drove to the camp and both rolled in for a long sleep. I had driven thirty-five hours with three very scanty meals of cold canned meat and bread and less than two hours' sleep. When I got back, my brother Jack reminded me that it was my birthday.

Monday, July 2

Slept most of yesterday and feel greatly rested. Am scheduled to work to-night. At noon to-day Whytlaw came in. He says that the Boches are shelling every car that goes by "Hell's Comer." Dresser's car was pierced, just over his head, several times by éclats, but he was not touched. This morning when about eight shells dropped in at once the aumônier was badly wounded, and my brother took him to the hospital in a critical condition. All the cars have had narrow escapes and have been hit by flying earth and stone.

A SHORT REST

Ville-sur-Cousances, Wednesday, July 4

It certainly is a relief to be back here again after twenty-four hours in that hole. It is great to feel perfectly safe all day long and never to hear an obus or smell any gas. I was orderly this time and it was a terrible job. It is no joke spending twenty-four hours in sight of Mort Homme. Monday night the Boches shelled us, dropping in "210's" every minute. A poilu was wounded in front of our abri. I was in the room when his wound was dressed. The air outside was so thick with dust that had been kicked up that we couldn't see the cars. I don't mind admitting that my knees were shaking when we got a call to go up. I rode up with Reed and though only one shell came in on the trip, it was a big one and not too far away. I managed to get three hours' sleep although they were shelling all around us. Four of us were cooped, two in a bed, in a little black, stuffy room in the cellar of the château.

As you come around "Hell's Bend," you get an excellent view of Mort Homme. It is a fearful place and one can always see there the smoke from shells rising and floating slowly away. There are no trees, no houses, no sign of any living thing on that bare shell-racked stretch of land. Several new holes were put in our road to-day, but we had no really narrow escapes. The château where the poste is located has been hammered again and again by shells. Most of its western wall is still standing, and it is behind this meagre protection that we pull up and leave our cars. Only the cellar of the house can be used and very few ever venture out of the court, where our cars are, for more than a minute. Not fifty yards from where we sleep is the morgue, a room where the dead are placed when brought in from the trenches. Sometimes when the losses have been great, the corpses are piled one upon the other until the room is so full that many dead are left on stretchers in the court. We certainly are being continually impressed with the most horrible side of war.

Monday, July

We are expecting a French attack within a few days; so huge guns go rumbling toward the front. The attack when it comes will be enormous.

Resting again, and getting my car in good condition. My last period of work was very easy. I had only one trip, which came about 3.30 A.M. On my last drive up, with Ames as orderly, we played tag with a half-dozen shells, one digging a big hole in the road five seconds after we passed over the place. There is a great deal of activity on Mort Homme and we could see shells landing continually, the black smoke rising slowly from the scarred hillside. Arrived at our destination, we ate beside the morgue, and the odor was sickening. Moreover, the room is very unprotected and often we are forced to interrupt our eating long enough to drop when a shell lands somewhere near. But the bedroom is worse. In a little dark hole where the sun and fresh air never penetrate, we are two in a bed, one above the other, with loose straw for mattresses. The straw is damp and "earthy" and is alive with fleas. Everybody is beginning to be troubled by fleas, even those who have been insisting that they were never bothered by these pests now scratching and scratching with the best of us. This is where we sleep when a lull gives us a short repos; but one can't sleep there, one merely drops, if fortunate, into a spasmodic and feverish sub-consciousness. The inconvenience of resting two in a bed combined with the noise of the shells outside, make complete rest an impossible luxury. I shall never forget those moments as we lay there waiting for our next call. Nor shall I forget some of the conversations we had, embracing all possible topics, but usually falling somewhere between the horrors of war and the pleasures that we promised ourselves when it should be over.

On the road last night three more men were killed and eight wounded. Between ten o'clock and one the road was shelled heavily because of the ravitaillement which goes up to the lines at that time. Naturally this is the moment when we least enjoy trips. Two more cars, my brother's and Freer's, were hit by éclats last night when a shell burst in the courtyard.

THE IMPEDIMENTA OF ATTACK

Tuesday, July 10

Just as I got into bed last night I was called out to go for two blessés at a distant town. It was pouring and there was no moon; so the trip was not too pleasant, especially since the road was new to me. Boit had a narrow escape at the cross-road to-day. Everything is in a fever of excitement here, for the attack is due to start to-night or to-morrow morning. Over 4000 big guns are clustered on this bank of the Meuse ready to drench the German lines when the word comes. The bombardment will probably start to-morrow and as I am going up to the poste to-night I will be present at a wonderful and mighty spectacle. The roads will be riddled by German shells. They have been shelling all around here to-day and shells landed in the road this side of the place. Section Sixty-Seven with the big Fiat trucks will carry the wounded on portions of the way, thereby helping a great deal.

Thursday, July 12

The attack has not yet begun, although the Lieutenant said to-day that everything was in readiness. The recent rain has caused so much mud that assaulting the hill would be a difficult job. I have been at the poste for twenty-four hours, but there was very little work. I had two trips during the night which kept me from sleeping, but then I had a good long rest, not stirring from eight in the morning until eight at night. There were many French aeroplanes up directing the fire. A German spy was caught in the lines this morning. He had a uniform of the 346th Regiment which had been replaced by the present regiment; so that he was quickly spotted. He will be shot to-morrow. Did not get chummy with any shells except once during lunch, when five landed just outside our eating-room. One was very close, exploding right in the courtyard. But the earth was soft after all the rain and the éclats did not spread. However, we all did the "Kelleys" and finished our meal in the cellar. Last night the Boches shelled our front line trenches. With "210's" they pulverized the place. Fifty men and an officer were buried when a shell closed up an abri, and as yet they have not been rescued. No one can find where the abri was located, the place is so changed. The French positions on Mort Homme and on 304 are now absolutely untenable. From their higher positions the Boches can sweep our trenches at will with their big guns, those on Mort Homme having a side range on the French trenches in front of the Hill. The sun has been out all day and the country is getting a good drying; so the artillery may open up at any time. Fifteen new batteries were set up just outside of here last night. Freeborn, our Chef, who has been away for a month, returned to us yesterday. He is very popular and we were all glad to see him again.

We are the third section to have covered this poste since Christmas and as yet not a man has been hurt, so that, considering our country is at war, we get off pretty easily. It is fascinating work especially during an attack when all the batteries are blasting away in one prolonged roar. When I stand at our poste and hear that terrible din, I take my hat off to the line of men at the very front who are charging bravely across "No Man's Land" in disregard of those murderous shells. The men in the infantry are the bravest in the war and I think that this war calls for more real bravery and endurance than any that has ever been fought.

HARMON B. CRAIG*
*Of Boston; Class of 1919 at Harvard; was killed on July 15, 1917, the day following the last entry from his diary given above. Engaged in loading an ambulance with wounded, at Dombasle, an eight-inch German shell fell close to the spot where his car was standing, killing three men outright and wounding two others. Craig, who received a very severe wound in the right thigh and three or four smaller ones in other parts of the body, was discovered lying in an abri --- how he reached it is not known --- and was directing the attendance of the other wounded whom he considered more vitally hurt. When finally taken to the hospital, it was found necessary to amputate his right leg. But he was too weak to recover from the shock. General Corvisart, who commanded the Sixteenth French Army Corps where Craig was serving, thus refers to him in an official citation: "This American volunteer was a very conscientious and cool driver, who, on every occasion when under the fire of the enemy's artillery, showed devotion to the wounded and disdain of danger, while displaying the greatest energy in accomplishing his duty on June 28 and 29, on a highway which was being bombarded." Craig's brother, John, also served with distinction in the Field Service and later became an artillery officer in the French Army.

XIII
AFTER THE FRENCH ATTACK AT VERDUN
AUGUST, 1917

During the third week in August the long-expected French effort to regain Hill 304 and Mort Homme took place, and our Section was moved up for the attack. It was a dusty ride we had from Sommaisne to Souhesme where our proposed cantonment was---a field behind some barracks housing a few troops of our new Division. It was an interesting sight to see the different soldiers prepare to leave for the trenches. They did not seem at all dispirited; indeed one swarthy Arab with ribbons denoting the several decorations on his breast grinned broadly and caressed his gun-butt with a lean brown hand. Then tents were dug out from the recesses of the Rénault and we set them up. Supper came next and after that the first ten cars were called out to take their stand at Sivry-la-Perche, the camp of a French sanitary section with whom we were to work. Boit, Sous-Chef, was in charge of the party. I managed to squeeze in through the kindness of the Lieutenant and rode with him in his staff car. The night passed without any untoward event obtaining. In the morning all guns seemed to cease and we were ordered to the postes, and glad we were to go. The ground being familiar to many of us, we helter-skeltered to the postes, but found to our surprise that what we had known as front line postes were no longer such. The French storming troops had been so successful that we evacuated the wounded from what is known as Chattancourt Ravine, a devilishly difficult bit of manoeuvring even for Fords; but we managed as usual to go through with whatever was asked of us. Boit and I stayed up at this place and assisted the stretcher-bearers. So engrossed were we in the task of loading and getting off the various cars that we noticed with surprise, when a lull in the coming in of wounded gave us time to look round, that there was no one there but we two and some two hundred Boches, --- prisoners who had been doing brancardier work. I remember Boit glancing at me in a funny way and I'm sure I appeared scared when I whispered, "Good Lord, Winnie, what'll we do if they start for us?" " Run," he replied, and at that we both laughed and spent the rest of the morning ordering the Boches hither and thither to our vast satisfaction. It was an amusing situation.

For two days we worked this ravine and then, the French positions having been consolidated, we had regular postes. One was at Ferme-la-Claire, and the other at Chattancourt Station, or what was left of it. In the near distance could be seen Cumières, which the French had taken, and which looked like anything but a town, hardly a stone left standing upright, and near the entrance of the village several great holes made by the French "400's." Shelling was intermittent here and, at first, gas attacks not infrequent. The La Claire poste was given up after a few days and all the wounded were handled from the Chattancourt poste.

We kept four cars on duty, three at Marre and one at the station, the others relieving successively as trips became more frequent. During the first few weeks of September, the Boches showed an extreme antipathy to Marre. At all hours of the day or night they bombarded the town. During the first real bombardment, our fellows had to roam the streets, having no abri to take shelter in. Many cars received éclats and two were quite demolished. it was an exciting period. The Boches seemed to delight in shelling the place just as reliefs arrived and many a wild dash was made through the "Place de l'Opéra," as we called the main square of the town.

About this time rumors became current of the "taking over" by the U.S. Army of the Field Service and many of the arguments, pro and con, anent the proposition awoke echoes. It seemed to be the consensus of opinion that we had earned the right to be a free body and not to lose our identity in the vastness of enlistment. However, came to pass the inevitable, and on September 26, 1917, at Sivry-la-Perche, old S.S.U. Two became a U.S.A. Ambulance Service Section and thirteen members signed up as enlisted men in the U.S. Army. It was a sad affair and we did n't relish it a bit; but we knew that our Section whatever they might make it, would do business as S.S.U. Two and try to continue in the confidence of our kindest Allies, the French.

EWEN MACINTYRE, JR.*
*Of Boston, Massachusetts; joined Section Two of the Service September 30, 1916; later First Lieutenant, U.S.A. Ambulance Service.

XIV
SUMMARY OF THE SECTION'S HISTORY
UNDER THE UNITED STATES ARMY

Section Two, now Six-Twenty-Six, was attached to the 48th Division, made up of zouaves and Algerians on August 17, 1917, and stayed with the same Division right up to the time of going home. From the above date we worked for three months on the left bank of the Meuse above Verdun, and then changed over to the right bank, with postes at Vacherauville, Bras, and two postes nearer the lines which were only abris. While we worked on the left bank, our cantonment was a barn near Sivry-la-Perche. On December 1, it was changed to a school building at Glorieux. We stayed on the right bank for a month, and then the Division went en repos near Wassy, which town was the cantonment for the Section. After three weeks the Division was ordered south, and eventually reached a point south of the Toul sector and was placed in reserve. We were cantoned in the village of Bettoncourt from January 26 to February 8. Then we moved to Nancy, where we were cantoned in the hospital barracks at Essey from February 8 until March 15

After making a number of moves in a general northerly direction, we finally reached the front at Soissons, and took over the lines in front of Coucy-le-Château on April 11, 1918. We were cantoned in abris on the hillside above the village of Fontenoy. Postes were established in Pont Saint-Mard, Mont Givry, Trosly, and the Ferme Bonne Maison. The Division was drawn from the lines on May 8, as Algerian fever was spreading so rapidly that there were scarcely enough officers to carry on the work. The Section was cantoned at Pernant, near Soissons, from May 8 to 15, and then moved north, as the Division was ordered into reserve back of Arras. We were cantoned at Saint-Pol, where the nights were made unpleasant by the many air raids. After the one which took place on the night of May 29, in which the Section was in the centre of the bombarded zone, we moved into a near-by wood.

On June 3 the Division was ordered en réserve north of Meaux, at Acy-en-Multien, where the Section was cantoned until the 11th. The Division then took part in the counteroffensive which started on the morning of June 11 in the Montdidier sector. The cantonment for the Section during the attack was Grandvillers, and postes, as the line advanced, were established at Wacquemoulin, Neufvy, and the evacuations were to Saint-Remy and the château at Ravenel. During the attack the top was blown off one car, and two men, Newcomb and MacKenzie, were wounded. MacKenzie died two days later at the hospital in Beauvais. The Section went en repos on June 13, spending its time in the woods near Crépy-en-Valois.

On July 10, the Division took over the line in the woods, relieving old Section Four's Division. We worked the line just in front of Longpont. We took part in the Foch counter-attack of July 18. The Division stayed in until the morning of July 20, but the Section worked several days after that, helping old Section Four, and doing some evacuation work to Crépy-en-Valois. The Division was en repos until August 18, the Section being cantoned during that time in Chavres, Vivières, Chavres again, Grand Champ, Eméville, Chelles, and Pont Chevalier. The Division attacked again on the morning of August 20 in the Aisne and Oise offensive, being in line at Moulin-sous-Touvent. It stayed in line until September 1, when the lines were established in front of Coucy-le-Château. As the lines advanced, we had postes in Nampcel, Blérancourdelle, Blérancourt, Saint-Paul-aux-Bois, Trosly, and numerous abris in the hillsides between these two places. Shaw, Kendall, and McCreedy were wounded during this attack, and Iselin, Bender, and Russell.

On September 2, the Division went en repos near Coulommiers, the Section being cantoned at Chauffry. We left September 21 for a sector in the Champagne. We followed the attack of the 26th, and went into line on the 29th, where we stayed until October 16. As the line advanced, postes were established at Perthes, Tahure, Aure, Mars-sous-Bourcq, Semide, Contreuve, Grivy, and Loisy. The Section was cantoned along the road until October 12, when it took a cantonment near Semide, where it stayed until October 18. All evacuations were made to Bussy-le-Château. The division was en repos from October 16 until November 1, near Châlons-sur-Marne. We were cantoned at Saint-Germain la Ville. In November the Division went en réserve back of the lines near Vouziers. We were cantoned at Semide until the 7th, and then moved up. staying at Le Chesne, Grandes Armoises, and Chémery. It was while we were in Le Chesne that the Armistice was signed. The Division was just about to take over the line north of Chémery.

After the Armistice we followed the Germans through Belgium and Luxembourg, stopping at Pouru-Saint-Remy, Florenville, Étalle, Belgium; Hermiskiel, Boppard, and Nassau, Germany. We crossed the Rhine during the afternoon of December 14 and were cantoned in Bad Nassau, where the Section appropriated a hotel. We stayed here until ordered in to Base Camp on March 5, 1919. We took our cars to a town near Mainz and turned them over to a new Section. Our Division was disbanded on the day we left for Base Camp, March 5.

EDWARD N. SECCOMBE*
*Of Derby, Connecticut; served with the Field Service in Section Two, 1916, and in the U.S.A. Ambulance Service during the remainder of the war.