II

Stephen Galatti

Assistant Inspector

[1]Since the writing of this chapter three more Sections have gone into the field and an eighth is in process of formation. More than fifty American colleges and universities have been represented, and more than fifty members of the service have received theCroix de Guerreor theMédaille Militaire. (November, 1916.)

End of Chapter Decoration

AT THE BACK OF THE FRONT: DUNKIRK AND YPRES

InJune, 1915, it was the pride of the Section in Flanders, Section 1, to feel that it had come closer to war than any other division of the American Ambulance. In June, 1916, the point of pride is to know that those first intense experiences have long since been duplicated and eclipsed. The competitive principle does not enter, naturally; the significance is that in this twelvemonth the service of the Americans has been steadily extended and vitalized. And in attempting to express here something of the whole through one of its parts, I need only suggest that the initial adventure in the North, comprehending in a few crowded weeks a fairly full range of experience behind the lines, perhaps still stands as typical and illustrative of all the rest.

DUNKIRK, MAY, 1915

In Dunkirk we witnessed, and within our powers tried to cope with, what yet remains, I believe, the most sensational artillery exploit in history. It is remembered that the little cars of the Americans often ran those empty streets, and pursued those deafening detonations, alone. Here, at our base, we shared the life of a town under sporadic, but devastating, bombardment; forward, in Elverdinghe, we shared the life of a town under perpetual, and also devastating, bombardment; still further forward, in Ypres, we behelda town bombarded from the face of the earth in a single night. We shared no life here, nor yet in Nieuport, for there was none to share. In the salient around Ypres, we played for many days our small part in that vast and various activity forever going on at the back of the front. Here we saw and learned things not easily to be forgotten: the diverse noises of shells going and coming, ofarrivéesanddéparts; the stupendous uproar of the "duel" before the charge, which makes the deepening quiet of a run-back come like a balm and a blessing; the strange informality of roadside batteries, booming away in the sight of peasant families and every passer; the silence and the stillness, and the tenseness and the busyness, of night along the lines; the extreme difficulty of hiding from shrapnel successfully without a dug-out; the equal difficulty of driving successfully down a shell-bitten road in darkness like ink; the glow against the sky of a burning town, and the bright steady dots of starlights around half the horizon; the constant straggle of the evicted by the field-ambulance's front-door, and the fast-growing cemetery at the back-door; the whine and patter of bullets by thepostes de secoursand the business-like ripple of the machine-guns; the whir of Taubes, the practical impossibility of hitting them from the ground, and the funny little bombs sometimes dropped by the same; the noises made by men gone mad with pain; the glorious quiet of men under the acetylene lamps of the operating-table; "crowd psychology," and why a regiment becomes a "fightingmachine," and how tender hearts are indurated with a toughening of the skin; the high prevalence of courage among the sons of men; drawbacks of sleeping on a stretcher in an ambulance; the unkemptness of Boche prisoners; life, death, and war, and the values and meanings thereof.

Such things, as I know, passed into the experience of Section 1, in Flanders. And these things, and more, have similarly passed into the experience of scores of young Americans since, in their life and service behind the lines of France.

It is the composite experience which the following pages narrate; it is the composite service which the mind holds to with most satisfaction. We were theService Sanitaire Américaine: a proud title, and we wished, naturally, to invest it with the realest meaning. That in this year 1915-16, the American service has been rendered efficiently and even valuably, this volume as a whole attests, I think. That it has been rendered with the requisite indifference to personal risk is also, I hope, supported by the record. A transient in the service, who by no means bore the burden and heat of the day, may be permitted, I trust, to say these necessary, or at least these interesting and pertinent, things with complete detachment.

I remember the hour of Section 1's "baptism of fire." We stood in the lee (or what we hoped was the lee) of the Petit Château at Elverdinghe, while German shells whistled over our heads and burst witha wicked crash about the little church, the typical target, a couple of hundred yards away. (What interest we felt when a fragment of shell, smoking hot, fell almost at our feet, and what envy of the man who gathered in this first memorable "souvenir"!) We were just down from Dunkirk; we were greener than the grass that blew; and that the novel proceedings were acutely interesting to us will never be denied. Perhaps each of us secretly wondered to himself if he was going to be afraid; certainly all of us must have wished, with some anxiousness, that those strange whistles and roars would turn themselves another way. And still, when the young Englishman who ran the ambulance service there appeared at that moment and asked for two cars to go down the road to Brielen (which was to go straight toward the trouble), it is pleasant to remember that there was no lack of volunteers, and two of my companions were cranking up at once. There was never any time later, I am sure, when the sense of personal danger was so vivid in the minds of so many of us together.

Every ambulance-driver must have his bad quarters of an hour, no doubt—and some of the worst of them may concern, not himself at all, but his car or his wounded. And if it is said that these young Americans, amateurs and volunteers, have acquitted themselves well in sometimes trying circumstances, there is no intention to over-emphasize this aspect of their service. A volume might be written on the developmental reactions—all but mathematical in theirworking—of war-time. Nor does it seem necessary to add that the risk of theambulanciers, at the worst, is small in comparison with that of those whom they serve, and from whom in turn they get their inspiration—the intrepid youths in the trenches.

We came to know these youths very well—the gallant and charmingpoiluswho have so long carried the western front upon their shoulders. We sincerely admired them; and on them largely we formed our opinions of France, and of the war generally, and of war.

AN AMERICAN AMBULANCE IN FLANDERS

From the standpoint of observation, indeed,—and doubtless it is observation one should try to record here,—I believe we all felt the peculiar advantage of our position to have been this, that we mingled with the soldiers on something like equal terms. We were not officers; we were not distinguished visitors dashing up in a staff-car for an hour of sight-seeing. We were rankers (so far as we were anything), and we were permanent; and in the necessities of our work, we touched the life of the common fighting man at every hour of the day and night, and under almost every conceivable circumstance. We were with thepoilusin the hour of rout and disaster; we were with them in the flush of a victorious charge brilliantly executed. We crawled along roads blocked for miles with them, moving forward; we wormed into railroad stations swamped with the tide of their wounded. Now we heard their boyish fun, and shared their jokes in the fine free days off duty; and now we heard,from the unseen well of the jolting car, their faint entreaty,Doucement, doucement!We saw them distressed by the loss of their precioussacs, or elated by the gift of a button or a cheese; we saw them again, in silence and the darkness beside the Yser, very quiet and busy, with the ping and whine of many rifles; and again we found them lying on straw in dim-lit stables, bloody and silent, but not defeated. Now they gave us tobacco and souvenirs, and told us of theirgosses, and helped us tinker with our cars, about which some of them, mechanicians in happier days, knew so much more than we did; and now they died in our ambulances, and sometimes went mad. We saw them gay, and we saw them gassed; we found them idling or writing letters on the running-boards of our cars, and we found the dark stains of their fading lives upon our stretchers; we passed them stealing up like stalwart ghosts to action, and we left them lying in long brown rows beside the old roads of Flanders.

And to me at least it seemed that the dominant note and characteristic quality of thepoilu, and all his intense activity, was just a disciplined matter-of-factness, a calm, fine, business-like efficiency, an utter absence of all heroics. Of his heroism, it is superfluous to speak now. My observation convinced me, indeed, that fortitude is everywhere more common and evident, not less, than even rhapsodical writers have represented. There seems literally no limit to the powers of endurance of the human animal, once he is put to it. Many writers have written of the awful groaningsof the wounded. I must say that, though I have seen thousands of wounded, the groans I have heard could almost be counted upon the fingers of my hand. Only once in my experience do I remember seeing any signs of excitement or disorder. That was in the roads around Poperinghe, in the first threatening hours of the second battle of Ypres. Once only did I get any impression of human terror. And that was only a reminiscence, left behind by women and children in the tumbled empty houses of Ypres. But in all the heroism, unlimited and omnipresent, there is observed, as I say, little or no heroics. That entire absence of drum and fife, which strikes and arrests all beholders at the front, is significant and symbolic. These men muster and move forward to the risk of death almost as other men take the subway and go downtown to business. There are no fanfares at all, no grand gestures, no flourishes about the soul and "la gloire."

It is true, no doubt, that the ambulance-driver views the scene from a somewhat specialized angle. His principal association is with the sequelæ of war; his view is too much the hospital view. Yet, it must be insisted, he becomes quickly and strangely callous on these points; and on the whole would be less likely to overstress the mere horrors than someone who had not seen so much of them. On the other hand, as I have suggested, he has extraordinary opportunities for viewing war as a thing at once of many parts and of a marvellously organized unity.

AN AMERICAN AMBULANCE IN YPRES

Personally I think that my sharpest impressionof war as a whole came to me, not along thepostes de secoursor under the guns at all, but at the stationplacein the once obscure little town of Poperinghe, on the 23d of April, 1915.

That, it will be remembered, was a fateful day. At five o'clock on the afternoon before (everybody was perfectly specific about the hour), there had begun the great movement now known as the Second Battle of Ypres (or of the Yser). The assault had begun with the terrifying surprise of poison-gas; the gas was followed by artillery attacks of a ferocity hitherto unequalled; Ypres had been wiped out in a few hours; the Germans had crossed the Yser. Thus the French and English lines, which were joined, had been abruptly pushed back over a long front. That these were anxious hours for the Allies, Sir John French's report of June 15 (1915) indicates very plainly, I think. But they were far from being idle hours. To-day the whole back country, which for weeks had swarmed with soldiers, was up. For miles around, Allied reserves had been called up from camp or billet; and now they were rushing forward to stiffen the wavering lines and stem the threatening thrust for the coast.

At three o'clock on this afternoon, I stood in Rue d'Ypres, before the railway station in Poperinghe, and watched the new army of England go up. Thousands and thousands, foot and horse, supply and artillery, gun, caisson, wagon and lorry, the English were going up. All afternoon long, in an unendingstream, they tramped and rolled up the Flemish highroad, and, wheeling just before me, dipped and disappeared down a side-street toward "out there." Beautifully equipped and physically attractive—the useless cavalry especially!—sun-tanned and confident, all ready, I am sure, to die without a whimper, they were a most likely and impressive-looking lot. And I suppose that they could have had little more idea of what they were going into than you and I have of the geography of the nether regions.

This was on my left—the English going up. And on my right, the two streams actually touching and mingling, the English were coming back. They did not come as they went, however. They came on their backs, very still and remote; and all that you were likely to see of them now was their muddy boots at the ambulance flap.

Service Sanitaire as we were, I think Section 1 never saw, before or since, such a conglomeration of wounded as we saw that day at Poperinghe. Here was the rail-head and the base; here for the moment were the Red Cross and Royal Army Medical Corps units shelled out of Ypres; here was the nervous centre of all that swarming and sweating back-of-the-front. And here, hour after hour, into and through the night, the slow-moving wagons, English, French, and American, rolling on one another's heels, brought back the bloody harvest.

SOLDIERS MARCHING BY AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN A FLEMISH TOWN

The English, so returning to Poperinghegare, werevery well cared for. By the station wicket a large squad of English stretcher-bearers, directed, I believe by a colonel of the line, was unceasingly and expertly busy. Behind the wicket lay the waiting English train, steam up for Boulogne, enormously long and perfectly sumptuous: a super-train, a hospital Pullman, all swinging white beds and shining nickel. The French, alas, were less lucky that day. Doubtless the unimagined flood of wounded had swamped the generally excellent service; for the moment, at least, there was not only no super-train for the French; there was no train. As for the bunks of the station warehouses, thehôpital d'évacuation, they were of course long since exhausted. Thus it was that woundedtirailleursand Zouaves and black men from Africa, set down from ambulances, staggered unattended up the station platform, sat and lay anyhow about the concrete and the sand—no flesh-wounded hoppers these, but hard-punished men, not a few of them struck, it was only too manifest, in the seat of their lives. This was a bloody disarray which I never saw elsewhere, and hope never to see again. Here, indeed, there was moaning to be heard, with the hard gasp and hopeless coughing of theasphyxiés. And still, behind this heavy ambulance, rolled another; and another and another and another.

On my left was the cannon fodder going up; on my right was the cannon fodder coming back. The whole mechanics of war at a stroke, you might have said: these two streams being really one, these men thesame men, only at slightly different stages of their experience. But there was still another detail in the picture we saw that day, more human than the organized machine, perhaps, and it seemed even more pathetic.

Behind me as I stood and watched the mingling streams of soldiers, the little square was black withréfugiés. Farther back, in the station yard, a second long train stood steaming beside the hospital train, a train for the homeless and the waifs of war. And presently the gate opened, and these crowds, old men and women and children, pushed through to embark on their unknown voyage.

AMERICANS IN THEIR GAS-MASKS

These were persons who but yesterday possessed a local habitation and a name, a background, old ties and associations, community organization, a life. Abruptly severed from all this, violently hacked off at the roots, they were to-day floating units in a nameless class, droves of a ticket and number,réfugiés. I walked up the platform beside their crowded train. A little group still lingered outside: a boy, a weazened old man, and three or four black-clad women, simple peasants, with their household goods in a tablecloth—waiting there, it may be, for the sight of a familiar face, missed since last night. I asked the women where they came from. They said from Boesinghe, which the Germans had all but entered the night before. Their homes, then, were in Boesinghe? Oh, no; their homes, their real homes, were in a little village some twenty kilometres back. And then they fixedthemselves permanently in my memory by saying, quite simply, that they had been driven from their homes by the coming of the Germans in October (1914); and they had then come to settle with relatives in Boesinghe, which had seemed safe—until last night. Twice expelled and severed at the roots: where were they going now? I asked the question; and one of the women made a little gesture with her arms, and answered, stoically: "To France"—which was, as I consider, the brave way of saying, God knows. As the case seemed sad to me, I tried to say something to that effect; and, getting no answer to my commonplaces, I glanced up, and all the women's eyes had suddenly filled with tears.

And outside the English were still going up with a fine tramp and rumble, nice young clerks from Manchester and green-grocers' assistants from Tottenham Court Road.

I have never forgotten that the very last soldier I carried in my ambulance (on June 23, 1915) was one whose throat had been quietly cut while he slept by a flying sliver of a shell thrown from a gun twenty-two miles away. But it will not do, I am aware, to over-emphasize the purely mechanical side of modern war, the deadly impersonality which often seems to characterize it, the terrible meaninglessness of its deaths at times. Ours, as I have said, was too much the hospital view. That the personal equation survives everywhere, and the personal dedication, it is quitesuperfluous to say. Individual exaltation, fear and the victory over fear, conscious consecration to an idea and ideal, all the subtle promptings and stark behavior by which the common man chooses and avows that there are ways of dying which transcend all life: this, we know, must have been the experience of hundreds of thousands of the young soldiers of France. And all this, beyond doubt, will one day be duly recorded, in tales to stir the blood and set the heart afire.

And the fine flourish is not altogether wanting even now. As some offset to the impression of pure blood and tears, let me quote a document showing that the courage of France still sometimes displays itself with the dash of purple. Before me is a copy of the official proclamation of the Mayor of Dunkirk, posted through the town after the stunning surprise of the first bombardments. It runs as follows:—

DUNKERQUOIS

Les Bombardements que nous venons de subir ont fait surtout des victimes dans les rues.Je recommandeESSENTIELLEMENTaux habitants de s'abriter dans les caves voutées et de ne pas se fier même à des écarts de tir assez longs pour sortir.Dunkerquois, nous avons à supporter les risques de la guerre, nous les supportons vaillamment.Notre ville peut avoir à payer son tribut au vandalisme de nos ennemis comme d'autres villes,NOUS GARDERONS HAUT LES CŒURS.Les ruines seules seront allemandes, la terre restera françaiseet après laVICTOIRE,nous nous retrouveronsPLUS FORTS, PLUS RESOLUS ET PLUS FIERS QUE JAMAIS.VIVE DUNKERQUE TOUJOURS ET VIVE LA FRANCE.[2]

Les Bombardements que nous venons de subir ont fait surtout des victimes dans les rues.

Je recommandeESSENTIELLEMENTaux habitants de s'abriter dans les caves voutées et de ne pas se fier même à des écarts de tir assez longs pour sortir.

Dunkerquois, nous avons à supporter les risques de la guerre, nous les supportons vaillamment.

Notre ville peut avoir à payer son tribut au vandalisme de nos ennemis comme d'autres villes,NOUS GARDERONS HAUT LES CŒURS.

Les ruines seules seront allemandes, la terre restera françaiseet après laVICTOIRE,nous nous retrouveronsPLUS FORTS, PLUS RESOLUS ET PLUS FIERS QUE JAMAIS.

VIVE DUNKERQUE TOUJOURS ET VIVE LA FRANCE.[2]

[2][Translation]People of Dunkirk:The bombardments to which we have been subjected have caused many casualties in the streets.I most emphatically urge all persons to seek shelter in vaulted cellars, and not to trust even to intervals in the firing long enough to go out.People of Dunkirk, we have to put up with the hazards of war, and we are doing so courageously.Our city may have to pay its tribute to the vandalism of our foes, like other cities; we will keep our hearts serene and high.The ruins alone will be German, the soil will remain French, and after the Victory, we shall meet again, stronger, more determined, and prouder than ever.ViveDunkirk forever, andVive la France!

[2][Translation]

People of Dunkirk:

The bombardments to which we have been subjected have caused many casualties in the streets.

I most emphatically urge all persons to seek shelter in vaulted cellars, and not to trust even to intervals in the firing long enough to go out.

People of Dunkirk, we have to put up with the hazards of war, and we are doing so courageously.

Our city may have to pay its tribute to the vandalism of our foes, like other cities; we will keep our hearts serene and high.

The ruins alone will be German, the soil will remain French, and after the Victory, we shall meet again, stronger, more determined, and prouder than ever.

ViveDunkirk forever, andVive la France!

And the best part of this ringing manifesto, as it seems to me, is that it is all quite true. Dunkirk will live long, and so will France; and after the victory the citizens will find themselves, we cannot doubt, prouder and more resolute than ever.

In the immense burden which France is bearing, the sum of the service of the young Americans has been, of course, quite infinitesimal. As the most generous and sympathetic persons are always quickest to appreciate the intentions of sympathy from others, it is pleasant to know that the French, characteristically, have not been unmindful of even this slight thing. But, it is truly said elsewhere, the real gainers from this relationship have been the Americans. Not only is this true; it seems to me there can be no surprise in it. There can be hardly any of thesemen who did not set out from home, however unconsciously, for his own good gain; hardly one who did not feel that if he could but touch this memorable making of history with however small a hand, if he could but serve in the littlest this so memorable cause, he would have a possession to go with him all his days.Quorum parva pars fuerunt; and—from the little Latin all schoolboys remember—hæc olim meminisse juvabit. This is theirs; and it is enough. But should any of them covet another reward than what they carry within themselves, I think they have it if this log-book of their Service seems to show that within their powers they have deserved the fine name here bestowed upon them, the Friends of France.

Henry Sydnor Harrison

End of Chapter Decoration

THE SECTION IN ALSACE RECONQUISE

"Mon corps à la terre,Mon âme à Dieu,Mon cœur à la France."

"Mon corps à la terre,

Mon âme à Dieu,

Mon cœur à la France."

Thetrenches in this part of the Vosges are cut along the brows of heights which directly overlook the Rhine Valley. From these summits can be seen, beyond the smoke which deepens the mist above the famous cities of Mulhouse and Colmar, the shadowy boundary of the Black Forest and the snow-topped mountains of Switzerland. A few yards behind the mouths of the communication trenches are the first dressing-stations, everywhere and always one of war's most ghastly spots. Paths make their way from these dressing-stations down the mountain-sides until they become roads, and, once they have become roads, our work begins.

Nowhere else are foreign soldiers upon German soil. Nowhere else, from Ypres to Belfort, do the lines face each other in a mountain range of commanding summits and ever-visible village-dotted valleys. Nowhere else can one study in history's most famous borderland both war and one of those problems in nationality which bring about wars. And surely nowhere else are Detroit-manufactured automobiles competing with Missouri-raised mulesin the business of carrying wounded men over dizzy roads.

Until our light, cheap cars were risked on these roads a wounded man faced a ten-mile journey with his stretcher strapped to the back of a mule or put on the floor of a hard, springless wagon. Now he is carried by hand or in wheelbarrows from one half to two miles. Then in one of our cars there is a long climb followed by a long descent. And over such roads! Roads blocked by artillery convoys and swarming with mules, staggering likely as not beneath a load of high-explosive shells! Roads so narrow that two vehicles cannot pass each other when both are in motion! Roads with a steep bank on the one side and a sheer drop on the other! Roads where lights would draw German shells! Roads even where horns must not be blown!

THE COL DE BUSSANG—THE GATE TO ALSACE RECONQUISE

Indeed, these roads seem to stand for our whole work. But they do not by any means represent our whole work, and it is necessary, if one wants to convey a comprehensive idea of our life, to begin at our base. This is a village twenty-five miles to the rear, but strategically located in relation to the various dressing-stations, sorting-points, base hospitals, and rail-heads which we serve, and, in this war of shipping-clerks and petrol, one of those villages which is as much a part of the front as even the trenches themselves. It is a "little, one-eyed, blinking sort of place." It is not as near to the fighting as some of us, particularly adventurous humanitarians freshfrom New York and Paris, desire. But, picturesquely placed on the banks of the Moselle and smiling up at the patches of hollow-streaked snow that, even in late July and August, stand out on the tops of the Ballon d'Alsace and the Ballon de Servance, it is a lovely, long-to-be-remembered spot and every one in the Section quite naturally speaks of it as "home."

We are billeted in some twenty-five households as if we were officers, although our rations are the rations of a common soldier and our Section rules are unfailingly to salute officers and even to make ourselves scarce in hotels and cafés frequented only by officers. Our lodgings range from hay-lofts to electrically lighted rooms; but the character of our welcome is always the same—pleasant, cordial, to be counted upon—"You are doing something for France and I will do what I can for you."

One of the fellows, for instance, is quartered over a café. It is a little place, dirty and unattractive. Before the war an American tourist dropping into this café would probably have been sold a bad grade ofvin ordinaireand been charged too much for it. But the other day the chap who is billeted there was a little under the weather and I took his breakfast to him in his room. I found the café full of customers who had not been served. The woman of the house was upstairs giving herambulancier américaina cup of that great Vosges remedy, linden tea. I inquired about lunch. But it was no use, there was nothingfor me to do. She was going to fix him some lunch if he felt like eating it, and his dinner, too. Was not her husband away fighting and had not her eldest son been marked down as missing ever since his company took a German trench last June?

Perhaps it is not surprising that we should be so received in a town where we have been living now for six months, where we are the best patrons of the biggest hotel, the most valued customers of half the shops. But this hospitable reception is by no means confined to our base. Everywhere we meet with a courtesy and with a gratitude which bring with them a very satisfactory sense of doing something worth while and having it appreciated.

Imagine, for instance, a small town surrounded by mountains that, sloping gently up from its main street and railway station, are checkered for some distance with houses, green fields, and straggly stone walls, while hidden in their tree-covered summits are trenches and batteries of 75's, and here and there hotels where before the war tourists stopped and to which now the wounded are carried. But on this day a thick gray mist hangs over the town like a half-lowered curtain. The guns rest because the gunners cannot see. The mist hides entirely the tops of the mountains, gives the generally visible houses and stone walls a dim, unshaped appearance, and makes hardly noticeable a procession of gray motor ambulances coming out from the tree-line and making their way down into the town.

SUPPLIES FOR THE SOLDIERS BEING CARRIED ON MULES OVER THE VOSGES MTS.

At a Valley Poste.AT A VALLEY "POSTE" (MITTLACH)

AT A VALLEY "POSTE" (MITTLACH)

Around the railway station is a group of temporary tents, where the wounded are given by the ladies of theCroix Rougea cup of coffee or a glass of citron and water before being packed into thetrain sanitaireto begin their long journey to the centre or south of France. The ambulances evacuating the hospitals draw up among these tents under the orders of the sergeant in charge. Four or five French ambulances arrive and are unloaded. Then a smaller car takes its place in the line. It has a long, low, gray body with two big red crosses painted on either side. Beneath the red crosses are the words "American Ambulance," and a name-plate nailed to the front seat bears the words "Wellesley College."

The driver, after clearly doing his best to make a smooth stop, gets down and helps in lifting out the stretchers. One of the wounded, as his stretcher is slid along the floor of the car and lowered to the ground, groans pitifully. He had groaned this way and sometimes even screamed at the rough places on the road. So the driver's conscience hurt him as he pulled some tacks out of his tires and waited for the sergeant's signal to start. It was his first day's work as anambulancier. He could still see every rock and every rut in the last mile of the road he had just driven over and he wondered if he really had been as careful as possible.

But he was saved from reproaching himself very long. Aninfirmiertapped him on the shoulder and, telling him that ablesséwished to speak to him, ledhim to one of the tents. It was the man about whom he had been unhappy, now more comfortable, although evidently still suffering.

"You are very kind, sir," he said in English that might have been in other circumstances quite good, and disclosing a lieutenant'sgalonsas he gave his right hand to the driver. "You drive carefully. I know, for I have a car. I don't like to cry—but I have two broken legs—anything hurts me—but it is really decent of you fellows to come way over here—it really istrop gentil...." And the driver went back to his car marvelling for the first of many times at the sense of sympathy which had made that pain-stricken officer think of him at all.

One wet night not long ago, the writer was stoppeden routeby a single middle-aged soldier trudging his way along a steep road running from a cantonment behind the lines to the trenches. Embarrassed a little at first and pulling at his cap, this man said that he had heard in the trenches of the American Ambulance; that a friend had written back that he had been carried in one of them; that this was the first time that he had had an opportunity of shaking hands with one of thevolontaires américains. Then, as I leaned over to say good-bye, he shook both my hands, offered me a cigarette, shook both my hands again, saying, "une jolie voiture," and, pointing towards where in the black distance came the rumble of guns, "Perhaps you will bringmeback to-morrow."

If that man, by the way, had asked me for a lift, as is usually the case when you are stopped like that on the road, my orders would have been to have refused him, to have said, "C'est défendu" and to have driven on. The Hague Conventions forbid carrying any soldiers in ambulances except those who are wounded and those in theservice sanitaire. It is, putting it mildly, unpleasant to have to refuse a man a ride when he is wearily facing a long walk and you are spinning by in an empty ambulance. It is doubly unpleasant when you feel that this man would do anything for you from pushing your car out of a ditch to sharing a canteen. And yet, whenever we have to perform this disagreeable duty, the conversation usually ends with a "Merci quand même."

Indeed, discipline in a French soldier seems to be able to maintain itself remarkably from within. Officers and men mingle probably more unrestrainedly than in any army in the world. A soldier when talking to an officer does not stand at attention after the first salute. Privates and officers are frequently seen in the same room of a hotel or café, and sometimes even have their meals in messes that are scarcely separated at all. But these encroachments upon military formalism seem to go no deeper than the frills of efficiency. Orders are obeyed without "reasoning why," and, as in all conscript armies, the machinery of punishment is evolved to uphold authority at all cost. Officers have wide and immediatepowers of punishment, and the decisions of courts martial judging the graver offences are swift, severe, and highly dreaded.

But, returning for the moment to Saint-Maurice, we park our cars in the public square, on a hillside, along the fence of the curé's yard and against the walls of an old church, where their bright red crosses flame out against the gray flaking stone, and, on a cold morning, it is always possible to save a lot of cranking by pushing them down the hill. About half the Section on any given day are to be found at the base and "in bounds," which means the square, the hotel where we have our mess, or the room where one is billeted. These men compose the reserve list, and are liable to be called at any minute when they must "roll," as we say, instantly. The rest of the Section are on duty in detachments of from one to eight cars and for periods of from twenty-four hours to a week at various dressing-stations, sorting-points, field hospitals, and so forth. The men on reserve are used to reinforce these places, to fill up quicklytrains sanitaires, to rush to any one of a half-dozen villages which are sometimes shelled.

AMERICAN DRIVERS IN ALSACE

Often, when the fighting is heavy, not a man or a car of Section 3 is to be found at Saint-Maurice. The repair car even will be driven to some crossroads or sorting-point where our ambulances bring the wounded from several dressing-stations. And Mr. Hill will be away in the staff car dropping in upon the widely separated places where his men are workingto see that all is going well or to know the reason why.

Mr. Lovering Hill, at the outbreak of the war, was practising law in New York City. He had been educated at Harvard and in Switzerland, and, speaking French as well as English, and thoroughly understanding the French temperament and people, he immediately enlisted with the American Ambulance of Neuilly as a driver. In six months he was promoted to the rank of squad leader, and, since last July, ranking as a first lieutenant in the French army, he has been in charge of the work of Section Sanitaire No3, succeeding Mr. Richard Lawrence, of Boston, who had been compelled to return to the United States. Mr. Hill believes in never letting the reins of discipline drag, and yet he gets along famously with all except those who have a habit of recalling in some way that they are volunteers.

A French lieutenant and an official interpreter are also attached to the Section. We are partly under the control of the Sanitary Service and partly of the Automobile Service. The Frenchpersonnelare a link between the Automobile Service and our unit, and they are busy from morning until night keeping abreast of the required reports, for five-day reports must be made on the consumption of gasoline, the number of miles run, the number of wounded carried, the oil, carbide, and spare parts needed, the rations drawn, and, in great detail, any change inpersonnel.

There are no orderlies or mechanics attached to our Section and each driver is responsible for the upkeep and repair of his own car. We do as much of this work as possible in the square where we park our cars. So we patch tires, scrape carbon, and change springs while the church bell rings persistently and mournfully for masses and funerals and while the people who sit and watch us from their shop windows laugh at our language as much as if they understood it.

In general charge of this work and of a blacksmith shop that we have turned into a workroom is a so-called Mechanical Department composed of the two drivers who know the most about automobiles. And so successfully has the system worked out that, laymen though most of us be, none of our "Chinese Rolls Royces" or "Mechanical Fleas"—as an English Red Cross corps in the neighborhood has nicknamed our Fords—has been so severely "punished" that its repair has been beyond the power of its driver instructed and assisted by the Mechanical Department.

A "POSTE DE SECOURS" IN THE VALLEY OF THE FECHT

SHARING MEALS AT A POSTE

We receive the one sou a day, which, in addition to allowances to wife, if any, and to children, if any, is the wage of a Frenchpoilu. We draw, as has already been mentioned, an ordinary soldier's rations: plenty of nourishing but rather solid bread, which, with the date of its baking stamped upon it, comes in big round loaves that we hold against our chest and cut with our pocket knife in truepoilufashion; rice or potatoes, generally rice; coffee, sugar, salt, andsometimes fresh meat, but ordinarily canned beef, called by the French privatesinge, or monkey meat. At our own request we get the cash equivalent of our wine and tobacco allowances, and this is used to help defray the expenses of having our food cooked and served in the best hotel the town offers. But with these exceptions—French tobacco especially may be put in the category of acquired tastes—we take and eat everything that is given to us with a very good grace. And although it is possible, especially at Saint-Maurice, to add variously and cheaply to this diet at one's own expense, it probably is a fact that those of the Section who, in a spirit of "playing the game" all the way through, have stuck to the rations weigh more and feel better than when they first took the field, in spite of the constant drenchings one gets and the stretches of work without sleep.

The hours of our meals—served by the untiring, red-cheeked Fanny—are a little more American than military for those taking their turn on the reserve list "at home." But Mr, Hill's rule requires military punctuality on penalty of washing the dirtiest car in the square. This is also the punishment inflicted upon any one who does not get his car properly ready for morning inspection, who is not in his room by nine o'clock, who has any trouble on the road from an insufficient supply of "gas" or oil, who is tardy in handing in reports, or breaks in any way the rules from time to time posted in the mess-room.

"In a word, you are military and not military, but I am going to pay you the greatest compliment in my power, by treating you as I would any French soldiers under my command," the Commandant in charge of the Automobile Service of the army to which we are attached said to us on one occasion. And it has been the clear purpose of our two chiefs—first Mr. Lawrence and now Mr. Hill—to live up to the responsibilities of that compliment. This is mainly done by example and through the force of a very realesprit de corps, but washing another man's car has been found a useful daily help for daily disciplinary needs.

Away from our base, in our nomadic dressing-station-to-hospital existence, we are often pretty much "on our own." This part of our life begins in a valley reached through a famous pass. Starting from the valley of the Moselle easy grades along a splendid highway crowded with trucks, staff cars, wine carts, and long lines of yellow hay wagons, bring one to a tunnel about three hundred yards in length. In the middle of this tunnel is a low white marble stone with a rounded top that until a year ago last August marked the boundary between France and Germany. To an American driving an automobile in the dim tunnel light this stone is simply something not to be hit. To the French who have fought so bravely that it may no longer stand for a boundary it is a sacred symbol. I have seen theeyes of returning wounded glisten at the sight of it. I have heard companies of chasseurs, as they passed it going to the trenches, break into singing or whistling their famous Sidi-Brahim march.

Beyond this tunnel the road, wrapping itself around the mountain like a broad, shining ribbon, descends into a fertile commercial valley in sweeping curves sometimes a kilometre long: on one side are high gray rocks where reservists seem to hang by their teeth and break stones; on the other, a sheer drop into green fields, behind the tunnel-pierced summit, in front the red-roofed houses of several Alsatian villages nestling against yet another line of mountain-tops. And along this road we have made our way at midnight, at daybreak, in the late afternoon, running cautiously with wounded and running carelessly empty. We are at home, too, in the villages to which it leads, with the life-size portrayals of the Crucifixion that are everywhere, even in fields and nailed to trees in the mountains, with the gray stone churches and their curious onion-shaped towers and clamorous bells.

The appearance of an American Ambulance in the villages is no longer a novelty, sentries let us pass without a challenge, school children do not any more rush over to us at recess time, or soldiers crowd around us and say to one another, "Voilà la voiture américaine." And we have friends everywhere: the officer who wants to speak English and invites us so often to lunch with him, the corporal of engineerswho was a well-known professor, the receiving sergeant who was a waiter at the Savoy Hotel in London, theinfirmierwho was in charge of the French department of one of the largest of New York's publishing houses.

But cooks are the people we cultivate the most assiduously. It is forbidden to leave your car and eat in a café. Besides, the time of day when we are hungriest is the time—maybe midnight or early morning—when no cafés are open or when we are marooned on some mountain-top. For single cars and small wandering detachments there are only informal arrangements for "touching" rations. So we depend upon the good-will of the chief cooks and we seldom go hungry. But the stanchest sustainer of every American Ambulance driver presides over the kitchen of the largest sorting-point in the valley. We call this cheery-voiced, big-hearted son of the Savoy mountains, who before the war washed automobiles in Montmartre, "Le Capitaine," "Joe Cawthorne," "Gunga Din." He is never tired or out of spirits. He never needs to sleep. It will be a rush period. We will leave our ambulances only to get gasoline, oil, and water while the wounded are being discharged. "Le Capitaine," too, will be up to his neck in work, cooking a meal for a hundred people, hurrying out at themédecin chef'sorder, soup for thirty and tea for twenty more—and still he will find time to run out to our cars with a cup of coffee and a slice of cheese. The only occasion on recordof anything from "Joe Cawthorne" but a word and a smile of cheer was once when one of the fellows, who felt that to his coffee he owed his escapes from sleeping at the wheel and running off the bank, and therefore his life, returned to America, first giving "Le Capitaine" an envelope with some money in it. "Jamais, jamais" he said, returning the envelope and viciously picking some flies out of hiscoffee chaudron.

There is no place like the front for the Long Arm of Coincidence to play pranks. I have known two university football stars to meet for the first time since their gridiron days on a shelled curve of a narrow road—each in charge of an ambulance and each down in the road driving some wandering cows out of their way. I have known two young men to celebrate the Fourth of July on their voyage over to do ambulance work, in a way that drew forth the gentle rebukes of a Protestant minister who happened to be a passenger on the same boat. They left him on the docks at Liverpool and, along with his advice, he passed out of their minds until two months later one of them met him in a general's car in Alsace. He stopped and told this fellow that he was preaching a series of sermons at the front and invited him to come and hear him the next Sunday in a near-by town, adding that among other things he thought he would touch upon the question of "War and Temperance."

Speaking of the Fourth of July reminds me thaton the national French holiday of the Fourteenth of July, I saw General Joffre in never-to-be-forgotten circumstances. He was spending this day in Alsace, and when early that morning I approached a little village in an empty ambulance, I was stopped by a sentry and, after being asked if I had wounded aboard, told that General Joffre was making a speech in the town square and that I would have to wait until he had finished before I could get through.

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