Chapter I: Part 1

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 46261-h.htm or 46261-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/46261/pg46261-images.html)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46261/46261-h.zip)

Transcriber's note:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Characters enclosed by curly brackets is superscript
(examples: N{o} or 15{ème}).

FRIENDS OF FRANCE

The Field Service of the American Ambulance described by its members.

Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company, The Riverside Press--Cambridge

Copyright, 1916, by Houghton Mifflin Company All Rights Reserved

TO

M{R} & M{RS}. ROBERT BACON

In appreciation
of all that their effort
in America
has accomplished for this
Service in France

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION _A. Piatt Andrew_ xvii

LETTER FROM SECTION LEADERS xix

I. THE ORGANIZATION OF THE SERVICE _Stephen Galatti_ 1

II. AT THE BACK OF THE FRONT: DUNKIRK AND YPRES
_Henry Sydnor Harrison_ 6

III. THE SECTION IN ALSACE RECONQUISE _Preston Lockwood_ 21

IV. LAST DAYS IN ALSACE _Everett Jackson_ 51

V. THE SECTION IN LORRAINE _James R. McConnell_ 61
With an introduction by Theodore Roosevelt

VI. AN AMERICAN AMBULANCE IN THE VERDUN ATTACK
_Frank Hoyt Gailor_ 89

VII. ONE OF THE SECTIONS AT VERDUN _Henry Sheahan_ 109

VIII. THE SECTION IN FLANDERS _Joshua G. B. Campbell_ 117

IX. THE BEGINNINGS OF A NEW SECTION _George Rockwell_ 131

X. UN BLESSÉ À MONTAUVILLE _Emery Pottle_ 136

XI. CHRISTMAS EVE, 1915 _Waldo Peirce_ 139

XII. THE INSPECTOR'S LETTER BOX 148

Our ambulances--How the cars reach Paris--_En route_ for the
front--First impressions--The daily programme--Handling the
wounded--The wounded--Night duty--Fitting into the
life--_Paysages de guerre_--Soldier life--July 22 at
Pont-à-Mousson--Incidents of a driver's life--_Three Croix de
Guerre_--From day to day--From another diary--Further
pages--A night trip--An attack--_Poilu_ hardships--Winter in
Alsace--Weeks of quiet--Night--Morning--Stray thoughts--A
gallant _blessé_--Perils of a blizzard--Poignant
impressions--In the hospital--New quarters--The poetry of war.

Champagne, 1914-1915 227

XIII. FOUR LETTERS FROM VERDUN 232

TRIBUTES AND CITATIONS 252

MEMBERS OF THE FIELD SERVICE 337

THE MEMBERS OF THE FIELD SERVICE

DESIRE TO EXPRESS SINCERE GRATITUDE

TO

M. CHARLES HUARD

AND TO

M. BERNARD NAUDIN

FOR

THE INTEREST WHICH

THEIR DISTINGUISHED TALENT

HAS ADDED TO THIS BOOK

ILLUSTRATIONS

_La France Guerrière_ Frontispiece

_Dunkirk, May, 1915_ 6

_An American Ambulance in Flanders_ 10

_An American Ambulance in Ypres_ 12

_Soldiers marching by American Ambulances in a Flemish Town_ 14

_Americans in their Gas-Masks_ 16

_The Col de Bussang--the Gate to Alsace Reconquise_ 22

_Supplies for the Soldiers being carried on Mules over the Vosges
Mountains_ 24

_At a Valley "Poste" (Mittlach)_ 24

_American Drivers in Alsace_ 28

_A "Poste de Secours" in the Valley of the Fecht_ 30

_Sharing Meals at a "Poste"_ 30

_La Terre Promise_ 36

_The Harvard Club of Alsace Reconquise_ 42

_Winter Days in Alsace_ 54

_Effect of German Shells in Alsace_ (_Thann_) 58

_On the Road to Hartmannsweilerkopf, December, 1915_ 58

_Shells breaking on the Côte-de-Mousson_ 70

_Watching an Aeroplane Duel in Pont-à-Mousson_ 70

_In Front of a "Poste de Secours"_ 74

_An American Ambulance Driver_ 74

_On the Road to Bois-le-Prêtre_ 78

_Fontaine du Père Hilarion, Bois-le-Prêtre_ 78

_Loading the Ambulance_ 94

_At a "Poste" at the Very Front_ 104

_Soldiers of France_ 110

_Americans in their Gas-Masks in front of the Bomb-proof
Shelter outside of the Headquarters_ 118

_A "Poste de Secours" in Flanders_ 122

_Waiting at a "Poste de Secours"_ 122

_A Winter Day in Flanders_ 124

_A Group of American Drivers in Northern France_ 128

_The Cathedral in Nieuport, July, 1915_ 128

_Some of the Members of Section IV_ 132

_Approaching the High-Water Mark_ 134

_"Poilus" and Americans sharing their Lunch_ 134

_Richard Hall_ 144

_Richard Hall's Grave_ 146

_An Inspection Trip in Alsace_ 152

_Within Sight of the German Trenches_ 153

_Stretchers slung between Two Wheels on their Way from the
Trenches_ 156

_Evacuating a Hospital_ 158

_Transferring the Wounded to the Train_ 158

_The End of an Ambulance_ 166

_Decoration of Carey and Hale_ 178

_A Winter Morning_ 182

_Alsatian Woods in Winter_ 182

_The "Poste de Secours" near Hartmannsweilerkopf_ 186

_Winter in Alsace_ 194

_What Night Trips without Lights sometimes mean_ 210

_The Dangers of the Road_ 210

_Mule Convoy in Alsace_ 214

_The "Poste" near Hartmannsweilerkopf after a Bombardment_ 214

_One of our Cars in Trouble_ 216

_Coffins in Courtyard of Base Hospital in Alsace_ 216

_Richard Hall's Car after Shell landed under it_ 218

_A "Poste de Secours" at Montauville_ 222

_Saucisse above Verdun_ 232

_At a Dressing-Station near Verdun_ 236

_American Ambulance in Verdun_ 241

_American Ambulance at a Dressing-Station near Verdun_ 246

_A Corner of Verdun, July, 1916_ 250

_Headquarters of the American Ambulance Field Service, 21 Rue
Raynouard, Paris_ 276

_Some of the Men of the American Ambulance Field Service at
their Headquarters, 21 Rue Raynouard, Paris_ 278

_The "Croix de Guerre"_ 278

_The "Médaille Militaire"_ 330

_"Vive la France!"_ 346

PORTRAITS OF MEN "CITED"

_Roger M. L. Balbiani_ 281

_Edward Bartlett_ 281

_William Barber_ 330

_Leslie Buswell_ 283

_Joshua Campbell_ 283

_Graham Carey_ 285

_John Clark_ 285

_Edmund J. Curley_ 287

_Benjamin Dawson_ 287

_David B. Douglass_ 289

_Luke C. Doyle_ 289

_Brooke Leonard Edwards_ 291

_Powel Fenton_ 291

_Stephen Galatti_ 293

_Halcott Glover_ 293

_Richard Hall_ 295

_Dudley Hale_ 297

_Sigurd Hansen_ 297

_Lovering Hill_ 299

_Lawrence Hitt_ 301

_George Hollister_ 301

_Everett Jackson_ 303

_Philip Lewis_ 303

_Walter Lovell_ 305

_James R. McConnell_ 305

_Douglas MacMonagle_ 307

_William T. Martin_ 307

_Joseph Mellen_ 309

_Francis Dashwood Ogilvie_ 309

_Waldo Peirce_ 311

_Thomas Potter_ 311

_Tracy J. Putnam_ 313

_Beverly Rantoul_ 313

_Durant Rice_ 315

_George Roeder_ 315

_Edward Salisbury_ 317

_Roswell Sanders_ 330

_Bernard Schroder_ 317

_James Milton Sponagle_ 319

_Henry Suckley_ 319

_John Taylor_ 321

_Edward Tinkham_ 321

_Donald M. Walden_ 323

_J. Marquand Walker_ 323

_Victor White_ 325

_Walter Wheeler_ 327

_Harold Willis_ 327

_William H. Woolverton_ 329

INTRODUCTION

Les États-Unis d'Amérique n'ont pas oubliés que la première page
de l'histoire de leur indépendance a été écrite avec un peu de
sang français. (_Général Joffre._)

THE following pages, written and edited in the course of active service in France, tell, however imperfectly, something of the experiences of a small group of young Americans who have not been inert onlookers during the Great War.

Few in number and limited in their activities, this little band of American ambulance drivers in France is of course insignificant when compared with the tens of thousands of young Frenchmen who crossed the ocean as soldiers and sailors to help America in 1777. To the valor and devotion of these Frenchmen we owe our very existence as an independent nation, and nothing that Americans have done for France during these last hard years of trial can be thought of--without embarrassment--in relation with what Frenchmen did for us in those unforgettable years of our peril from 1777 to 1781.

The little group of Americans told of in this book who, during the past two years, have dedicated valiant effort and, not unfrequently, risked their lives in the service of France, can best be thought of as only a symbol of millions of other Americans, men and women, who would gladly have welcomed an opportunity to do what these men have done--or more. For, notwithstanding official silence and the injunctions of presidential prudence, the majority of Americans have come to appreciate the meaning, not only to France, but to all the world, of the issues that are to-day so desperately at stake, and their hearts and hopes are all with France in her gigantic struggle. They share with the world at large a feeling towards the French people of sympathy, of admiration, and, indeed, of reverence, such as exists towards the people of no other country; and millions of them, like these volunteers of the American Ambulance, have been tortured by a longing to have some share with the people of France in defending the ideals for which, as they feel, America has always stood, and for which France is now making such vast, such gallant, and such unflinching sacrifice.

The service to France of Americans, whether ambulance drivers, surgeons, nurses, donors and distributors of relief, aviators, or foreign _légionnaires_, when measured by the prodigious tasks with which France has had to cope during the past two years, has indeed been infinitesimally small; but their service to America itself has been important. They have rendered this inestimable benefit to their country. They have helped to keep alive in France the old feeling of friendship and respect for us which has existed there since our earliest days and which, otherwise, would probably have ceased to exist. They have helped to demonstrate to the chivalrous people of France that Americans, without hesitating to balance the personal profit and loss, still respond to the great ideals that inspired the founders of our Republic. They have helped France to penetrate official reticence and re-discover America's surviving soul.

When all is said and done, however, the _ambulanciers_ themselves have gained the most from the work in which they have taken part. It is a privilege even in ordinary times to live in this "_doux pays de France_," to move about among its gentle and finished landscapes, in the presence of its beautiful architectural heritages and in daily contact with its generous, sensitive, gifted, and highly intelligent people. Life in France, even in ordinary times, means to those of almost any other country daily suggestions of courtesy, refinement, and thoughtful consideration for others. It means continual suggestions of an intelligent perspective in the art of living and in the things that give life dignity and worth.

The opportunity of living in France, as these Americans have lived during the past two years of war, has meant all this and more. It has meant memories of human nature exalted by love of country, shorn of self, singing amidst hardships, smiling at pain, unmindful of death. It has meant contact with the most gentle and the most intelligent of modern peoples facing mortal peril--facing it with silent and unshakable resolve, victoriously resisting it with modesty and with never a vaunting word. It has meant imperishable visions of intrepidity and of heroism as fine as any in the records of knight-errantry or in the annals of Homeric days.

Nothing else, surely, can ever offer so much of noble inspiration as these glimpses of the moral grandeur of unconquerable France.

A. PIATT ANDREW
_Inspector General of the Field Service_

THE publication of this book presents an opportunity of showing our appreciation of the extraordinarily successful work of A. PIATT ANDREW in reorganizing and furthering the work of the Field Service of the American Ambulance.

Those of us who were in the service before his arrival and have continued to work under him have been able to judge the effects of his efforts, and to realize the amount of activity, patience, and tact necessary to overcome the numerous difficulties which presented themselves. It was through the confidence placed in him by the French military authorities that the small American squads, after reorganization to army standards, were allowed to take positions of trust at the front. As a result of his untiring efforts in America funds were raised and cars donated to continue and advance the work.

No more striking proof can be given of the change in value to the Army of our Service, and of the change in the attitude of the authorities towards it, than the recent request of the Automobile Service to the American Ambulance for other Sections. When Mr. Andrew began his work we were seeking an opportunity to widen our sphere of work. Now the efficiency and usefulness of the service are such that the Army has requested that it be increased.

We all owe much to Mr. Andrew: his devotion to the cause has inspired all those working with him.

LOVERING HILL
_Commander of Section III_ (_Alsace_)

EDWARD V. SALISBURY
_Commander of Section II_ (_Lorraine_)

H. P. TOWNSEND
_Commander of Section I_ (_Flanders_)

FRIENDS OF FRANCE

I

THE ORGANIZATION OF THE SERVICE

APRIL 1915-APRIL 1916

DURING the first eight months of the war the American Ambulance continually hoped to extend its work to an Ambulance Service actually connected with the armies in the field, but not until April, 1915, were these hopes definitely realized. The history, however, of these first eight months is important; its mistakes showed the way to success; its expectations brought gifts of cars, induced volunteers to come from America, and laid the basis upon which the present service is founded.

A gift of ten Ford ambulances, whose bodies were made out of packing-boxes, enabled the American Ambulance, at the very outset of the war, to take part in the transport service, and as more and more donations were made small squads were formed in an attempt to enlarge the work. These squads, each of five cars, were offered for service with the armies, but owing to their inadequate size were in every case attached by the Government to existing services well in the rear. So there were small squads at Saint-Pol, Amiens, Paris Plage, Abbeville, Merville, and Hesdin, attached to British or French Sections, and they were engaged in evacuating hospitals, work which clearly could be better done by the larger cars of Sanitary Sections already attached to these hospitals.

In April, 1915, through the efforts of A. Piatt Andrew, who had then become Inspector of the Field Service, the French authorities made a place for American Ambulance Sections at the front on trial. A squad of ten ambulances was sent to the Vosges, and this group attracted the attention of their commanding officers, who asked that it be increased by ten cars so as to form it into an independent Sanitary Section. As soon as this was done, the unit took its place in conjunction with a French Section in an important Sector on the front in Alsace.

With this initial success a new order of things began, and in the same month a second Section of twenty cars was formed and was stationed, again in conjunction with an existing French service, in the much-bombarded town of Pont-à-Mousson.

In the meantime, two squads of five cars each had been working at Dunkirk. These were now re-enforced by ten more and the whole Section was then moved to the French front in Belgium, with the result that at the end of the month of April, 1915, the Field Service of the American Ambulance had really come into existence. It comprised three Sections of twenty ambulances, a staff car, and a supply car--Section Sanitaire Américaine N{o} 1, as it was called, stationed at Dunkirk; Section Sanitaire Américaine N{o} 2, stationed in Lorraine; and Section Sanitaire Américaine N{o} 3, in the Vosges.

The story of the next year is one of real achievement, in which the three Sections emerged from the test with a record of having fulfilled the highest expectations of proving their utility to France. Section 1, having given an excellent account of itself in the long-range bombardments and air-raids at Dunkirk, was rewarded by being intrusted with important work in Belgium at Coxyde, Nieuport, Poperinghe, Elverdinghe, Crombeke, and other _postes de secours_ in that Sector of the French front.

Section 2 had to win recognition in a region already served by a French Sanitary Service and to which it was attached to do secondary work. The Section not only accomplished its own work, but made it possible for the French Section to be withdrawn, taking over the _postes de secours_ on the line, and finally becoming independently responsible for an area renowned for its continual heavy fighting.

The record of Section 3 is slightly different. It first successfully took over the existing service, and then, pushing on, opened up to motor transport hitherto inaccessible mountain _postes de secours_.

With the three Sections thus established, it is interesting to note why they have been a recognized success so shortly after their possible usefulness was appreciated.

In the first place, an admirable type of car was selected. Our light Ford ambulances, stationed as they were in Belgium, in Lorraine, and in Alsace, faced three separate transportation problems. At Dunkirk they found the mud no obstacle; at Pont-à-Mousson they outgeneralled the _ravitaillement_ convoys; in the Vosges they replaced the mule. They were driven, too, by college men or men of the college type, who joined the service to be of use and who brought to the work youth and intelligence, initiative and courage. There have been to date in the Field Service 89 men from Harvard, 26 from Yale, 23 from Princeton, 8 from the University of Pennsylvania, 7 from Dartmouth, 6 from Columbia, 4 from the University of Michigan, 4 from the University of Virginia, 18 American Rhodes scholars from Oxford, and representatives of more than thirty other colleges and universities. Twenty-eight men have already been cited and awarded the _croix de guerre_.

In November, 1915, at the request of General Headquarters, a fourth Section, made possible through the continued aid of generous friends in America, took its place in the field. In December, 1915, Section 1 was moved to the Aisne. In January, 1916, Section 3 was transferred to the Lorraine front, in February Section 2 was summoned to the vicinity of Verdun at the moment of the great battle, and in March definite arrangements for a fifth Section were completed.

So April, 1916, finds the three old Sections still on duty at the front, the fourth already making its reputation there, and a fifth being fitted out. Confidence has been gained; we have learned our parts. The problem of the future is, first, to maintain efficiency, and at the same time to be ready to put more cars and more men in the field. Our vision is to play a larger rôle in behalf of France, and with the continued coöperation of the donors of ambulances and the same spirit of sacrifice on the part of the men in the field, it should be realized.[1]

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 the _Croix de Guerre_ or the _Médaille Militaire_. (_November, 1916._)

II

AT THE BACK OF THE FRONT: DUNKIRK AND YPRES

IN June, 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.

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 beheld a 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, of _arrivées_ and _départs_; 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 the _postes de secours_ and 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 "fighting machine," 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 the _Service 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 with a 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 their working--of war-time. Nor does it seem necessary to add that the risk of the _ambulanciers_, 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 charming _poilus_ who 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.

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 the _poilus_ in 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 precious _sacs_, 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 their _gosses_, 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 the _poilu_, 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 groanings of 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.

Personally I think that my sharpest impression of war as a whole came to me, not along the _postes de secours_ or under the guns at all, but at the station _place_ in 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 unending stream, 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.

The English, so returning to Poperinghe _gare_, were very 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, the _hôpital d'évacuation_, they were of course long since exhausted. Thus it was that wounded _tirailleurs_ and 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 the _asphyxiés_. 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 the same 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 with _réfugiés_. 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.

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 fixed themselves 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 quite superfluous 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 recommande_ ESSENTIELLEMENT _aux 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 COEURS.

_Les ruines seules seront allemandes, la terre restera française
et après la_ VICTOIRE, _nous nous retrouverons_ PLUS 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.

_Vive_ Dunkirk forever, and _Vive 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 these men 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

III

THE SECTION IN ALSACE RECONQUISE

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

THE trenches 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 mules in 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!

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 fresh from 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 of _vin ordinaire_ and 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 her _ambulancier américain_ a cup of that great Vosges remedy, linden tea. I inquired about lunch. But it was no use, there was nothing for 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.

Around the railway station is a group of temporary tents, where the wounded are given by the ladies of the _Croix Rouge_ a cup of coffee or a glass of citron and water before being packed into the _train sanitaire_ to 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 an _ambulancier_. 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. An _infirmier_ tapped him on the shoulder and, telling him that a _blessé_ wished to speak to him, led him 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's _galons_ as 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 is _trop 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 stopped _en route_ by 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 the _volontaires 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 bring _me_ back 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 the _service 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 immediate powers 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 quickly _trains sanitaires_, to rush to any one of a half-dozen villages which are sometimes shelled.

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 working to 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 N{o} 3, 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.