Diary of section VIII
^^^^ >" 0_ o> <^ s » • , 0 ^^. ^ .C^ * A V '^^^ A ^. 4 o^ -^^0^ ^oK 0 A ■^^0^ 4 o^ c * -0.7 0> o "^ o ^0 V- 6-^ ^c ^„ 0^ b V" : 'K^ ^^^^. <7f/^ DIARY of SECTION VIII AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE « PRINTED ONLY FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION 1917 6? ^ 0 ^\ ^ o y EDITOR'S NOTE The human interest of this record sufficiently justifies pubHcation, but it is printed primarily because its story is typical of the day's work of every Section in the Field Service, and in order that those Americans who have given ambulances and such practical encouragement may better realize how much their cooperation has actually accomplished. There are now nine of these Sections attached to the Armies of France at various points along the Western Front from the Channel to Alsace, and in Salonika. Dur- ing the next few weeks six more are being equipped and sent out. Of the men immediately going over to drive these new cars Chicago University is sending two units of twenty-five men each, and the Universities of Leland Stanford, Harvard, Wisconsin, and California are each contributing a like unit. More than sixty other American colleges and universities are already represented. While all these men quite realize that their work is but a matter of duty to the cause and nation they wish to serve, the mere fact of their presence and voluntary shar- ing of the risk and labor involved has done much to con- vince France of the feeling that really exists for her in this country. However great the help which new circumstances might make it possible for us to render the Allies by men and money, we can never offer any truer evidence of sympathy than by the service of which these pages bear tribute. H. D. S. Boston, Massachusetts February, 191 7 MEMBERS OF SECTION VIII (At time of writing) NAME ADDRESS COLLEGE Donald C. Armour Evanston, 111 Yale Malbone H. Birckhead New York Harvard Jackson H. Boyd Harrisburg, Pa Princeton Thomas B. Buffum New York Harvard Charles T. Crocker Fitchburg, Mass Alden Davison New York Yale Arthur G. Dodge Weatogue, Conn Yale Charles S. Faulkner Keene, N. H Frederick M. Forbush Detroit, Mich Oscar A. lasigi Boston, Mass Mass. Tech. Leslie P. Jacobs Laramie, Wyo Harvard Grenville T. Keogh New Rochelle, N. Y. .. Arthur E. Lumsden Chicago, 111 Austin B. Mason (Chef) Boston, Mass Harvard Bertwall C. Read Bloomfield, N. J Princeton Randolph Rogers Grand Rapids, Mich. .. William B. Seabrook (Diary) . . Atlanta, Ga Newberry M. C. Shattuck Bristol, N. H Amherst Clarence B. Shoninger New York Yale Edward C Sortwell Wiscasset, Me Harvard Aubrey L. Thomas Washington, D. C Princeton George Van Santvood Troy, N. Y Yale CITATION OF SECTION VIII. EXTRAIT D'ORDRE N° 80 En execution des prescriptions reglementaires le Direc- teur du Service de Sante du 6^ Corps d'Armee, cite a rOrdre du Service de Sante du 6^ Corps d'Armee La Section Sanitaire Automobile Americaine N° 8 pour le motif suivant: — "Sous la direction du Lieutenant Paroissien, Robert Charles, et du Commandant Adjoint Americaine Mason, Austin Blake, la Section Sanitaire Americaine N° 8, com- posee entierement de volontaires, a assure remarquable- ment le service quotidien des evacuations en allant chercher le plus loin possible les blesses, malgre un bombardement parfois violent. "S'est particulierement distinguee le 23 juin, en tra- versant a plusieurs reprises la nappe de gaz toxiques sous un feu intense sans aucun repit pendant plusieurs heures pour emmener au plus vite aux ambulances les intoxiques." Q. G. le 4 Aout 1916 P. O. le Directeur du Service de SantS Translation EXTRACT FROM ORDER NO. 80 In carrying out the prescribed regulations the Director of the Sanitary Service of the 6th Army Corps "mentions" in the orders of the day of that service The American Automobile Sanitary Section No. 8, for the reason following: — "Under the direction of Lieutenant Robert Charles Paroissien and of the American Deputy-Commandant Austin Blake Mason, the American Sanitary Section No. 8, composed entirely of volunteers, has been wonderfully efficient in the daily service of removing the wounded, going very long distances to fetch them, despite a bom- bardment sometimes of great intensity. "It especially distinguished itself on June 23, by pass- ing through the sheet of poisonous gas again and again, without respite, under a sustained fire, for many hours, bringing the men prostrated by the gas to the ambulances as speedily as possible." Headquarters, k August, 1916 P. O. The Director of the Sanitary Service DIARY OF SECTION VIII AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE Mourmelon le Grand, Monday, May 2p. This is to be the diary of Field Section No. 8 of the American Ambulance, sent to the front from Paris in the summer of 1916, and begun this day at Field Head- quarters, where we have become a part of the Sixth Army Corps of the Twelfth Division of the Fourth Army. We are quartered nine kilometres behind the front (between five and six miles), and the click of the typewriter is accompanied by the steady booming of distant guns. But there is a preface that must claim place before we tell of our arrival here, or even of our convoy jour- ney through the Valley of the Marne — a preface written at Paris on wood and steel, with hammer, chisel, and file by the members of the section, laboring for days side by side with French mechanics and carpenters in the great shops of Kellner et Ses Fils, building and equipping the ambulance bodies and helping mount them on Ford chas- sis— a labor of love which went with whirlwind speed, for we were building our own cars, and we knew that each screw driven home to its socket by blistered but will- 1 2 DIARY OF SECTION VIII ing hands meant that we were that much nearer the day of our departure for the front. * * * "Non palma sine pidvere" was a proverb that applied, in Roman days, to war as well as to Olympic games, and "Pas de gloire sans graisse" would make an even more appropriate motto for our section. We came expecting to don steel helmets, and were handed greasy overalls. We accepted the overalls willingly, and now we have the helmets, but let us tell of the overalls first. It was about the first of May that our section as- sembled at Paris in the general headquarters of the American Ambulance Hospital in the suburb of Neuilly- sur-Seine. The men were ready, but the cars were not. The chassis were standing in line in Kellner^s great Car- rosserie works, near Sevres, a couple of miles beyond the Bois de Boulogne, awaiting the construction of the wooden bodies which were only half completed. Kellner was short of men and we went to Kellner's. Within twenty-four hours men among us who had never swung anything heavier than a mashie were working at forge and anvil, making heavy iron braces and hinges; others drilled holes in the wood and iron; still others screwed and riveted the parts together. The sturdy women who were working by the hundreds in the place of men who had gone to the front stopped building bomb cases and handling heavy tools to watch us for an instant from time to time and bring us little sprigs of lily of the val- ley, "le miiget qui porte honheitr." The French carpen- ters, who soon learned that we could work as well as they, and faster, became our friends and frequently in- AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE O vited US to share the coarse bread and red wine which they kept loose in the same box with their tools, by way of refreshment between meals. In eight days we had completed the work, and in another twenty- four hours a squad switched to the paint shops and covered the cars with the official battleship- gray. On Saturday, May 20, moving pictures were taken of the section at work in the shops, and on Sun- day morning, May 21, the twenty cars were standing in line in front of the hospital at Neuilly, completely equipped and ready for the field. Among the men of our section who worked as labor- ers and mechanics at Kellner's were many who had never handled tools before — the section includes profes- sional men, business men, university students, Rhodes scholars, a minister of the Gospel, a winner of golf tour- naments, and even a dramatic and musical critic. Yet none of us felt it strange to be working in sweat and grease. Indeed, our metamorphosis seemed a slight thing when some of us learned that in the great historic porcelain works of Sevres immediately across the river all art had ceased for the time being, and the men whose brains and hands had only a short time before been en- gaged in designing plates and vases of marvellous grace and beauty were now one and all occupied solely with the rude labor of constructing immense rough earthenware jars and acid-containers used in the manufacture of high explosives. No matter what experiences may come to us later we shall never forget those days — the early morning rides from Neuilly through the Bois, the trees in leaf and 4 DIARY OF SECTION VIII flower, the silent lakes with here and there a single swan — a splotch of white on the black surface of the water beneath tall cypress groves; perfect beauty, perfect peace; but the illusion is broken in an instant by the sound of a bugle — war is everywhere in France, even in the Bois ; five minutes later we swing into the river road to Sevres, passing huge convoy trucks covered with im- mense, bulging canvas tops, occasional armored autos, aeroplanes mounted on auto frames being carried to and from the aviation ground across the river — another five minutes and we are in the shops amid the clanging anvils, rasping drills, the clattering noise of a thousand files and hammers; the swan and cypress trees a thousand miles away from our thoughts, the red forge-fires burning. No, we shall never forget Kellner's. * * * All things come to him who waits. They told us we would probably start Sunday morning. They told us we would be sure to start Sunday afternoon. They told us to be ready without fail Monday morning. They promised there would be no disappointment Tuesday morning. It wasn't their fault, but by Tuesday after- noon we decided that maybe we would never get away, and stopped giving each other farewell dinners. Wednes- day morning, May 24, we started. We could not really believe it ; but it was true. We shook hands with every- body and were photographed by everybody who had a camera, and started in convoy for the military camp at Versailles. Lieutenant Commandant Charles Paroissien headed the procession, and Chief of Section Mason brought up the rear. AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 5 We arrived at Versailles without incident and were packed, along with hundreds of other convoys, under the trees on the main avenue facing the palace entrance. Each man stood at attention beside his car while the line was inspected, and afterwards we left our cars and stood in military line with other troops for a second personal inspection. The inspecting officers seemed pleased, and we caught a whispered word to the effect that we ap- peared to be the kind of men who could be counted on to ''condiiire tres serieusement." lasigi and Girdwood were singled out for special attention because of their service medals from the Ambulance, and were com- mended for coming back to France to enter the service a second time. We had been told that we would probably leave Ver- sailles the same day, but in the light of the unavoidable repeated delays at Paris it is not strange that we had a thrill of surprise when the announcement came after luncheon that we had been assigned to the military park at Chalons-sur-Marne, and were to proceed there at once. And so our first real convoy journey began, to the accompaniment of a heavy, driving rain. In the first car rode Lieutenant Commandant Paroissien, with his French chauffeur, Thibaud, and his secretary Yves Mo- reau, who bears the title of "Marechal du Logis"; two other French soldiers are permanently attached to the convoy; Brigadier Boncharel, orderly to the Comman- dant, and Trooper Salaude, the cook (it is rather a pity that he cannot drop the "u" and make himself into Salade, for the only thing we lack to complete our gas- 6 DIARY OF SECTION VIII tronomic content is something fresh and green). After the pilot car the twenty ambulances followed, with Keogh as file-leader for the first ten and Dodge file- leader for the second ten. Charlie Faulkner, who. knows more about cars than any other half dozen men in the section, tailed the procession with his " camionette," while Section-Chief Mason, driving the staff car, held a tentative position in the rear, whizzing to the front of the convoy when necessary and scouting back and for- ward as occasion arose. Through the driving rain we went for several hours, the only stops being for one or two punctures. We were travelling nearly due east, entering the Val- ley of the Marne by way of the high road to Provins, where we were to spend the night, and traversing one of the great agricultural sections of modern France. For the first afternoon's run we were not in the military zone proper and saw few convoys or soldiers, but what we did see impressed us more profoundly with the strength of France than any military spectacle could have done. Every inch of ground as far as the eye could reach for miles and miles of plains and gently rolling country was under cultivation, the intensive cultivation which only a few farming sections in America can show; green fields of wheat and grain, fruit trees in flower, farm houses in perfect order, huge barns and granaries bulging with last year's yields ; signs of plenty at the present moments, and assurance of rich harvests for the coming fall. It is true that there were not so many men in the fields as in normal times, but old men, boys, and women were working everywhere, and we were told that at planting AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 7 time and harvest men are always sent back in sufficient numbers, easily spared from the front, to help in the farm work. On we went for miles and miles, along splendid roads, lined on each side by double rows of shady trees, some- times through green wheatfields shot with flaming red poppies, then entering forests and emerging again after a few miles into the cultivated fields. Late in the afternoon the rain passed and the sun ap- peared. Punctures were infrequent, stops were few. Village after village loomed in sight and then disap- peared behind us, the streets always filled with children waving and shouting welcome and farewell — until at length, toward twilight, the cathedral-crowned hill of Provins came into sight. There we entered the military zone and slept for the first time on straw pallets in a caserne, rolled in the blankets provided for us before we started, and which we keep as our personal property while we are at the front. The beds were hard, but sleep was sweet. Thursday morning. May 25, we were up and away on the road to Chalon, entering further into the Valley of the Marne, travelling the very road on which German Uhlan raiders had entered France, to be driven back in the great battle that saved Paris and stopped the German advance in the early months of the war. Soon we began to see wooden crosses dotting the field by the roadside, sometimes a single grave, sometimes a cluster, sometimes a field full of them. Each cross is made from an upright piece of, pine sapling about five feet high, with a cross piece of the same wood about 8 DIARY OF SECTION VIII three feet in length, the bark still on them, and the name, when there is a name, inscribed on a small plank nailed to the centre. Some of the crosses stood over barren mounds, some were covered with flowers, but beneath them all, marked or nameless, lie men who died to save France. May their sleep, too, be sweet. * * * It was near noon of the same day that we entered the outskirts of Chalon and stopped in a suburb, between high, dust-covered walls, while the commandant and sec- tion chief scouted into the city to make arrangements. In half an hour they came back with bread, canned meat, and wine, announcing that we were to have lunch on our cars and then proceed to the barracks. By this time friendly crowds had gathered around us in the street, and a dear little old lady, with white hair and rosy cheeks, came out of her house on the corner to give us all black coffee. An hour later we entered the gates of an immense triangular caserne with hundreds of other cars parked in the drill-ground, and became a part of the French army. Straw mattresses were given us, each man shouldering his mattress and carrying it to a second-story room in one of the old wings of the caserne which had once been occupied by Napoleon's men, and the Russians of the present war had left their record on the walls, the sol- diers of the Little Corporal leaving painted inscriptions of their victories, and the Russians decorating the plas- ter walls with cartoons and silhouettes of camp and bar- racks life. It developed toward 2 a.m. that former ten- ants of the sleeping quarters had left other and more AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE ^ intimately personal souvenirs, and before the night was fully over half of our section, led by Chief Mason in person, covered from head to foot with bites, figured in our first and what we hope will be our only retreat. They spent the rest of the night in their cars, itching and scratching and waiting for the dawn. * * * On Friday, May 26, just forty-eight hours after leaving Paris, we arrived, after an eventful run of twenty kilometres from Chalon, at Mourmelon le Grand, a village situated in the plains of Champagne, about twenty-five kilometres southeast of Rheims, and about nine kilometres behind the trenches. This is to be our headquarters as long as the Sixth Army Corps, of which we are a part, remains in this sector. Just outside the village is a long avenue, lined on each side with one-story brick and stone buildings, con- structed especially to house the soldiers, and in two of these structures we have our offices, dining room, and sleeping quarters. Our sleeping room is a long, hall- like room with plaster walls, high ceiling, and concrete floor. It was absolutely bare when we entered it. We have made beds by elevating stretchers a foot or two from the floor on wooden supports, and have driven nails and old bayonets into the wall on which to hang our clothing and roosacks. Old benches and old pieces of matting we have appropriated until the place is reason- ably comfortable. Our cars are parked in a line at right- angles to the avenue, backed against one of the buildings. Mourmelon le Grand is in itself an uninteresting vil- lage. Built in the plain, its houses are ugly, uniform, 10 DIARY OF SECTION VIII plastered affairs, laid out with the mathematical regu- larity of a Kansas prairie town; there is no chateau, no buildings or ruins of mediaeval times, and the church is devoid of architectural or artistic significance. But all that Mourmelon may lack in intrinsic interest is more than made up for by proximity to the front. We hear the big guns booming, and on a quiet night can even distinguish the popping of the machine-guns and the rifles. Observation balloons are close by, and nearly every day the German Fokkers circle- over our heads, ap- parently more bent on observation than on throwing bombs. The anti-aircraft guns hidden in every direction in the fields always open up on them, and it is a beauti- ful sight to see the flash of fire and puff of white smoke as the shrapnel shells explode at the rate of sometimes ^ dozen a minute in the air more or less near the aviator. Sometimes they come to drop bombs, and on those occasions every man is ordered to hide in the bomb- proofs, or at least get within doors or under trees where he can't be seen. When the aeroplanes first came the soldiers and civilians alike, instead of being afraid, used to crowd into the streets and open fields to see the sight, and now, to keep the Germans from spotting garrisoned villages as well as to protect life, the general staff has issued an order punishing with fifteen days in jail any person in Mourmelon who is so careless as to let himself be hit by an aeroplane bomb. On Friday night, the first night of our stay here, the Germans tried to take a small position in the little woods near St. Hilaire named "Y Greque," and for a short time there was heavy artillery firing from the French AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 11 guns. As darkness came on we not only heard the booming of shells and the rattle of machine-guns but saw the whole sky in the direction of the lines illumined by the flares and rockets. The French flares go high, are fairly bright, and last a comparatively long time, while the German flares go not quite so high, flare noticeably brighter than the French, and go out much more quickly. It was to the tune of this bombardment that we turned in for our first night's sleep at the front. During our first day at Mourmelon, Friday, May 26, none of the men went out on duty. Section-Chief Mason and Lieutenant Commandant Paroissien made a trip to the front to inspect the pastes de secours we were to handle, to look over the roads, and to make the acquaint- ance of the ^'Medicin divisionaire.". * * * Lx^ On Saturday, May 27, Section 8 received its bap- tism of fire. Three cars were called to St. Hilaire, our evacuation post eight kilometres from Mourmelon and about two and a half kilometres behind the first-line trenches. Dodge, Seabrook, and Shattuck drove, and with them went lasigi, Davison, and Section-Chief Mason. St. Hilaire, a village which has changed hands sev- eral times and now finds itself in front of the French batteries in easy sight and range of the German guns on the slopes opposite, is what the poilus call a ''mauvais coin." It is a mass of ruins, but evidently was once a charm- ing spot, and the approach by the road from Mourmelon is still beautiful, though the fields on both sides of the 12 DIARY OF SECTION VIII route are scarred with bomb-craters and honeycombed with abandoned trenches. For practically the entire dis- tance the road is protected from German observation by a screen formed of pine limbs and small pine saplings strung on wires and rising well over the top of the tallest auto truck. This road is in easy distance for the German artil- lery, but there is only one point which they have been shelling during the past month, to wit, the abandoned farm of St. Hilaire, three kilometres back from the village and now nothing more than an abandoned mass of crumbled masonry. However, no shells fell as we passed the farm, and in another five minutes we turned a curve and caught our first sight of a French village totally destroyed by heavy-artillery fire. The approach is through a grove, over a lovely little stream with a picturesque mill at the left, and one emerges rather sharply from the trees into full view of the town. To one who had never before seen the effect of heavy high- explosive shells the scene was appalling. Some among us had seen big floods, fires, tornados and railroad wrecks, but there is no form of devastation on earth that can compare to a town deliberately and completely wrecked by continuous artillery fire. On one side of the street the houses were blown into shapeless masses ; the stone was not only scattered, but often crumbled into dust ; the iron was tortured into fantastic shapes ; the woodwork was ashes ; on the opposite side were wrecks of houses with one wall or one triangular corner stand- ing; others had holes blown through them big enough for a two-horse team to drive in, yet still upright; here AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 13 and there a single house had escaped destruction, but served only to emphasize the devastation around it; the roof of the church is gone, one half of the nave and entire transept is crushed in, and the tower is tottering ; it was as if the huge hand of some demon from the clouds had lifted the entire village to unthinkable heights and in wanton rage dashed it back to earth. These impressions crowded on us in the instant that we were traversing the village to reach the entrance to the trenches and bombproof shelters in which the evacuation poste is located. The entrance is immediately beside the road, emerging from the village behind a half-destroyed house that furnishes shelter from Bosche binoculars if not from their big guns. The sergeant on duty was standing in the road at the entrance to his dug- out, smoking a pipe, and half a dozen of his stretcher- bearers were sitting around under the trees. There had been little if any firing that morning. They told us they had several '"blesses" (even the Americans and English call them that in France) to be transported back to the hospital near Mourmelon, and we made ready to load them into Dodge's car. While we were still talking a German shell, and then another, and still another, screamed high over our heads and exploded somewhere in the woods behind St. Hi- laire. In another instant the French batteries located a few hundred yards behind us opened up a terrific bom- bardment, while more German guns joined in the duel. The fire was not directed at St. Hilaire. The enemy was firing just over our heads to the woods 300 and 400 yards behind us, "feeling" for the batteries they knew were masked among the trees. 14 DIARY OF SECTION VIII "They are not firing at us," explained the sergeant, "but a shell timed a fraction of a second early, or fired a fraction of a centimetre lower, might land here by acci- dent, so we had better get our blesses loaded and away." The few more minutes we remained, however, were ample to furnish experiences we shall never forget. Scarcely had the sergeant ceased speaking when a Ger- man shell fell far short of its mark and short of us, too, in the field beyond St. Hilaire ; another broke to the right a hundred yards or so above our heads, and a third and fourth broke so close that the fragments sprayed the road where we were standing. One of our party picked up a jagged piece still sizzling hot from the explosion. Then the Bosche gunners readjusted their range, and the shells began to break again, as they intended, in the woods behind. Descriptions of how one feels under shell fire are always inadequate and malapropos, because every man feels differently. Close observation of the men of our section on this and subsequent occasions seems to show that they are alike in only one respect — they all hold their ground. For instance, there is one of us, a man of unquestioned courage, who "ducks" his head and shoulders every time a shell screams over his head; it seems to be an involuntary muscular reaction. Another becomes garrulous, laughing loud and keeping up a rapid fire of jokes, possibly like the negro who whistles as he traverses a graveyard. Another man in the section turns quite pale, yet keeps his hand and voice as steady and his eye as clear as one of Napoleon's grenadiers. It may possibly all be summed up in the comment AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 15 often made in other wars that a man who is not afraid of a big shell is simply a fool, and that courage consists not in foolhardy nonchalance, but in standing your ground and doing your duty. The noise of an artillery duel has been described by thousands of writers, yet it comes as a surprise to each man who hears it for the first time. The crashing re- ports of the French soixante-quinze, the roar of the bigger guns, the sharp crack of the small shells, and the muffled boom of the exploding bombs — all these can easily be reproduced in the imagination, by simply multi- plying the din of any practice cannonading you may have happened to hear at close range in time of peace. But what nobody can describe is the shrieking and screaming of the shells as they fly through the air over your head before bursting. It cannot be described, because there is no sound with which it can be compared. It is a sound which has no place in things human — a shrieking, cre- scendo scream from the shells that are arriving — the last diminishing wail of a lost soul from the shells as they depart — all mingled at times in an ear-splitting, high- keyed symphony of hell in which the bursting bombs and rumbling guns furnish the deep bass tones. Well, after all, they weren't firing directly at us, and we all got back to Mourmelon. * * * But for some of us the day had only begun. On beyond St. Hilaire, two kilometres further in the barren land between the batteries and the first line infantry trenches, deep in the bowels of the earth is the furthest poste de secoitrs, St. Souplet. From that lonely 16 DIARY OF SECTION VIII shelter the French ''hraiicardiers" wind their way through the labyrinth that leads to the line and bring back the wounded on stretchers. It was from this post that there came a call in the late afternoon. Keogh was sent with his car, and riding with him were sent Thomas and Seabrook. The cannonading had ceased as they went through St. Hilaire, and only an occasional far-distant shot broke the silence as they left the ruins behind and entered the barren fields. All was dead level except the screen at the left of the road. The fields were bare and stony, pock-marked with shell-craters, seamed with connecting ditches to and from the trenches. The grass was sear and withered from continued gas attacks, yet here and there a flame-red poppy survived — ''les fleurs des tran- che es,'' which many a soldier has sent back from the brink of death to the wife or sweetheart who is still waiting for the letter which will never come. Two kilometres of flatness and desolation, and a small, painted board stuck a couple of feet out of a trench entrance informed us that we had arrived. We left the car in the road behind the screen, possi- bly seventy-five yards from the entrance to the poste, which is in the field to the right. Thomas and Seabrook went to the poste, while Keogh remained at his car to do a moment's work on the en- gine. All was quiet, and the hrancardiers, emerged from the trenches, were smoking their pipes and watching the sun set behind the German lines, plainly visible on the hills beyond. It turned out that there were more blesses than one AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 17 car could carry; but some of them could sit up, and it was decided to crowd as many of them on the car as possible, leaving Seabrook at the poste until another car could be sent out. One of the more badly wounded men was carried to the car, and the others were to walk to it. The brancar- diers were short of stretchers and asked Seabrook to go and help Keogh open the two stretchers which were folded in the car. As Keogh and Seabrook were unloading the stretch- ers to open them on the ground a German ''77'' broke in the field to the right, more than two hundred yards dis- tant. It seemed to be a stray shell from out of the silence, dropf)ed there by hazard. But in an instant an- other dropped within a hundred yards, and then they began to come thick and fast. They were shelling the poste. One of the stretchers was jammed and wouldn't open. The shells were exploding in the air and on the ground from thirty to fifty feet from the car and the fragments were whizzing in all directions. The two men were crouching fiat on the ground, still working with the stretcher, and finally got it opened and in place. They yelled back to the poste, and two stretcher-bearers start- ed to the car carrying those who were the most seriously wounded. They seemed a long time getting there. Thomas, who was aiding the other wounded to walk from the trench to the car, says that when a shell broke over the stretcher-bearers' heads they dropped the stretcher to the ground and ran back to the shelter of the trench, leaving the wounded man for a moment, but returning 18 DIARY OF SECTION VIII to him a moment afterward and carrying him to the car. The car was loaded and got away safely, with Keogh driving, Thomas on the seat with him, and Seabrook going back across the field to the post to wait for the next car as had been previously arranged. The shelling continued, and all the remaining men entered the bomb-proof dug-out, which a ''77''' shell couldn't have penetrated even if it had landed squarely on top. It was then about 6.30 p.m. For an hour the shells continued to come, breaking over and around the poste, raining many splinters and small fragments near the dug-out entrance. About dark the firing ceased. Five minutes afterward the French green flares went up, announcing a German gas attack. It turned out that the gas was from asphyxiating bombs, but the men were compelled to keep their masks on for about an hour. The gas was not very heavy, and every little while a brancardier would loosen his mask, put his nose at the door for an instant and then quickly readjust his mask again. "Ca pique encore," he would whisper, and all would settle down to another fifteen minutes' waiting in the stufify gloom of the underground cave. Finally the man at the door lifted his mask a little, then tore it from his face with a sigh of relief and ex- claimed, ^'Ca ne pique plus" In the meantime the shelling had been resumed, but was intermittent and seemed to be directed further AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 19 toward the right, though occasional shells still fell near the poste. In addition to the blesses already in need of attention, other brancardiers brought in an artilleryman who had been struck squarely in the face with a piece of shell casing, and was in a frightful condition. He had a chance to live, they said, if he were taken to the hospital in time. By that time it was nearly ten o'clock. The expected second car had not come — blocked, it turned out afterward, by a combination of engine trouble and a misunderstanding about where it was needed. The 'phone wires were down. Seabrook went to awaken the sergeant of the poste, who was in another dug-out a hundred yards away, and asked if it would be best to go back on foot to St. Hi- laire to get an ambulance. "If you are willing, I will give you a hand-cart and a brancardier to help you, and you can take the wounded man in the cart to St. Hilaire, where you will probably find one of your cars stationed," responded the sous- officier, "and that will be quicker." So they swung the wounded artilleryman on his stretcher between the two wheels of the "poussette" or hand-cart, and, with three other wounded men stagger- ing behind, started in melancholy procession on foot for St. Hilaire. Flares and rockets were still illuminating the sky along the trenches behind; a slight stench of gas was still in the air. Sometimes the road was in darkness, sometimes lighted by the glare. Occasionally shells shrieked overhead. 20 DIARY OF SECTION VIII The three wounded men fell behind, too weak to keep pace with the cart, and often it had to stop and wait for them to catch up. The wounded artilleryman could neither speak nor see, but was conscious and could understand what was said to him. The road was rough, and his moans were piteous ; when the cart stopped for a moment, he seemed to be pleading for something, but there was nothing to do but go on. At St. Hilaire they found Rogers on duty with his car, and the four wounded men were transported back to the hospital, with the artilleryman still alive. * * * Calm follows storm on an artillery front, and on one of the quiet mornings an officer consented to show us the batteries in the woods behind the evacuation post. Though many of the guns were quite close by they were so skilfully screened by trees and brush-heaps, that we could never have found them without a guide. Birds were singing, the trees were glistening from a flurry of rain; the sun was again breaking through the leaves around the silent monsters of destruction that yesterday had been. We surprised the lieutenant of the nearest battery, engaged, like Candide, in cultivating his garden. He had cleared a tiny spot, a few yards wide, facing the en- trance to his bombproof dug-out, and had planted lettuce and radishes, with rows of flowers between the vegetable beds. He had even built a little wooden bench where he could sit and smoke his pipe and dream of his real vege- table garden in Provence — for he was a son of the Midi. AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 21 One of his men was darning socks ; another was mend- ing a shirt ; a boy, who looked scarcely more than twenty, was amusing himself tossing chunks of bread to a puppy ; others were reading books or laughing over last week's funny papers from Paris. "So you find an opportunity to enjoy life even here," one of us said to a grizzled veteran, and, with a smile that was half sigh, he responded : ''Mais il le faiit. On est tue si vite." Returning to the dug-out at the evacuation post, two of us were invited to remain for luncheon, a ''dejeuner dans les tranchees" The dining room, a cave six feet under ground, presented a strange combination of luxury and dirt. On the wall hung a stained Louis Quinze mirror in a tarnished gold frame; a tapestried arm- chair, mud-stained and with one leg replaced by a pine board, was at the head of a plank table blackened with grease and smoke. There was a bottle of champagne, but the cups and plates were of battered tin. The place was lighted by a four-wicked gasoline lamp suspended from the ceiling. It looked like a relic of the Roman catacombs, but, as a matter of fact, had been ingeniously made by inserting four German rifle-cartridge shells horizontally into the sides of a small tin bucket which had contained marmalade. One of us carries the lamp back to America as a gift-souvenir. The attention of our host was somewhat divided between us and a cat who was nursing her kittens on the straw in a corner. The tiniest kitten, christened "Microbe," was brought to the table and introduced to the visitors. 22 DIARY OF SECTION VIII "The old cat is a wise one," they told us, "and knows every ruse of the trenches. You will see her on the roof in the sunshine after dinner. She only blinks her eyes for our soixante-quinze shells no matter how hot and fast they are flying — she knows the sound — but when the Bosches begin to reply she is back underground quicker than any of us." "They do not often send anything bigger than the '150' high explosives in our direction," continued the speaker, "but let me show you where we all go on the few occasions when the marmites are dropping." "Marmite" is the name they reserve for the huge Krupp shells, the "Jack Johnsons" that make a hole in the ground as big as a two-story house. They led us by a winding underground passage to an inky-black cave, the roof of which had thirty feet of solid virgin earth between it and daylight. We were groping along the wall while the sous-officier was feeling for his matches, when an agonized screech rent the darkness. Our guide gave vent to a frightened grunt and leaped back as if bitten by a snake. He had planted his foot squarely in the stomach of a sleeping stretcher-bearer. "Diantre! I thought I had received a marmite in the belly," he grumbled, and rolled over to sleep again. * * * On May 30 and 31, the sky overcast with clouds, and rains frequent, they began to move the Sixth Army Corps (of which we are a part) away from the Mourmelon sector, replacing it with fresh troops who came tramp- ing and rolling through the village by the thousands, on foot and in auto trucks, while the men and machine- AMERICAN AMBULANCE FIELD SERVICE 23 guns of our corps departed, mud-stained and weary, for eight days of repose in villages behind the lines, prepar- atory to being sent — to Verdun some say, to La Somme ^ say others. We expected our section to be moved on the morning of June 1, but on the afternoon of May 31 the sun came |i| i out, the sky cleared, a number of Bosche planes flew over Mourmelon and got safely back to their lines — and from our general staff came word that no more ' troops could move by daylight. Soon after, a formal order came to our section instructing us to leave Mour- melon at 2 a.m. and repair to the stable and backyard I of the Widow Cueux, in the village of La Veuve, where we had been billeted. We filed out of Mourmelon in the darkness, run- ning without lights, but by two-thirty the dawn was red tiis (so much further north is France than our United States), and it was broad daylight at 3 a.m. when we reached La Veuve, turned down a narrow side street, found the Widow Cueux's, parked our cars under the ^ sycamore trees in a yard that extends into the open fields, ti and had our breakfast of black coffee, army bread, cheese 1 and marmalade, after which we rolled into our cars, wrapped in blankets, to nap until lunch-time. * * * June 2. It is not because we are tired, but simply because we belong to the Sixth Army Corps that we find ourselves ^'en repos." We are now an integral part of the corps, and where it goes we go. In the meantime. La Veuve is not such a bad place for a prolonged picnic. It is true that the village is squalid; it is also true 24 DIARY OF SECTION VIII that the mayor had to order the removal of huge quan- tities of stable manure from the Widow Cueux's prem- ises before its barndoors opened to receive us; it is true that a score of our own huskiest lads had to work with shovel and wheelbarrow to make the yard habitable — but the squalor of La Veuve has its picturesque qualities; the green fields are beyond, and even barnyard smells, when mingled with the fresh sweetness of field flowers and grass, have certain rustic charm, as Virgil said in his Bucolics, reminiscent of childhood summers long ago. 