Ambulance 464/Chapter 1

by Julien H. Bryan

The Front from Reims to Verdun, Where Section XII Worked

"AMBULANCE 464"

 

Six weeks ago this morning, my alarm clock got me out of bed at five o'clock, in my little two by four room in the Erie Y. M. C. A. and off I rushed to my daily work, driving stakes and chaining track with the Engineering gang of the New York Central. It had all been very interesting for a few weeks after I left high-school last June. But after six long months it was becoming monotonous and I was aching to get away, to try my hand at something else. Since I was staying out of school for a whole year, waiting until I was eighteen before I entered college, it didn't take much to urge me on when I read a poster saying, "Volunteers Wanted for the American Ambulance Field Service in France." My father was enthusiastic about it. So immediately after the holidays, I left my home in Titusville, Pennsylvania, and sailed on the French liner "Espagne" on the eighth of January, along with twenty other fellows in the same service. We had a wonderful trip, no submarines and very little unpleasant weather. Six of the men, including my cabinmate, joined the Paris Service which works for the big American Ambulance Hospital in Neuilly. The rest of us went to the headquarters of the Field Service on Rue Raynouard, where we are now, waiting to be sent to the front. Soon several of the fellows will leave, to fill vacancies in one of the old sections. But there is a rumor going around that a new section, Number Twelve, is being organized and that our bunch is to be part of it. No wonder that we are all hoping that this is true, for it will be far better to go out with fellows whom we know than to break into the cliques of an old crowd.

We are living just across the river from the Eiffel Tower, in a wonderful old house in Passy. Its grounds, which cover an entire block, have come down from the old Hottinguer and Bartholdi families. Ben Franklin, they tell us, used to stay here when he was in Paris and some of his first kite experiments were made in the park behind the house. All our quarters are downstairs and the upper part of the building has been turned into offices for the business end of the service. Dr. A. Piatt Andrew, Steven Galatti and Dr. Gros have separate offices here. Then there is the mailing department and Mr. Fisher's room, where we go to see about getting our necessary papers. The first thing we did on arriving yesterday was to report at the latter place to receive directions concerning the "Permis de Sejour," which we must get from the Prefecture of Police if we wish to remain in France.

Living in Paris just at present reminds one of the joys of an Arctic expedition. It's terribly cold, and raw and damp besides, and there is such a scarcity of coal that even after the government has carefully divided it among the inhabitants, there is just enough for a few hours' comfort and then a room at 45 or 50 degrees F. all the rest of the day. It is so bad in the quarters here that the ink has actually frozen in my suitcase. Every night there is a mad rush to undress as soon as we hit the bedroom and we make pretty good speed in dressing in the morning, too. Whenever we feel we can't stand it any longer, we pay out fifteen centimes, about three cents in our money, for a ride in the subway which they call the Metro; they tell us it is the only warm place in Paris, in this, their coldest winter in twenty-seven years. The poor, of course, suffer the most. They can't afford to buy much coal when it sells for seventy dollars a ton. And so, daily, it is given out by a special card system at booths all over the city. Every morning crowds of poor women collect hours before the time of distribution, patiently wait their turn, and then go away one by one lugging a fifty-pound sack of the precious stuff.

 

 

Section Twelve is no longer a dream. All the necessary men are here and the twenty-two Fords have just had the last touches put on their ambulance bodies at Kellner's. We have no section leader or chef, as yet, nor have we been given our respective cars; but they tell us we will probably get our orders from the French Automobile Service to leave for the front next week. It won't be long before we get the cars.

From the stories of fellows who are in on permission from different parts of the front it appears that a Sanitary Section consists of twenty to twenty-five ambulances, each of which carries three stretcher or five sitting cases. There are also two big White trucks for supplies, extra parts, and the luggage of the eight Frenchmen who go along as mechanics, cooks and assistants in clerical work. Then they usually have two staff cars, one of which belongs to the "Chef Américain" and the other to the French Lieutenant in charge of the Section. They live in a small town, often a destroyed one, between the front line trenches and the first hospitals in the rear; and for ordinary work they send about five men out each day for twenty-four hour duty at their different posts. These are little first aid stations, usually eight hundred or a thousand yards behind the first line trenches. In hilly country, however, one can often go in a car to within four or five hundred yards of No Man's Land; but in level stretches like Champagne one seldom gets closer than two miles. The wounded are carried by stretcher bearers from wherever they have fallen to a tiny Poste de Secours, in the second or third line trenches. Here they are given quick treatment in the one-room underground hospital, and are rushed on afterwards through the communication trenches to one of our posts. These are underground, too, and are little better than the posts in the trenches. But they can handle more men here and do emergency work, like amputating, if necessary. Besides, when a big attack is on, blessés are brought in much faster than we can remove them and they take care of them here for a few hours, and sometimes for days if necessary. Our work is to load up the ambulances with the assistance of the brancardiers (stretcher-bearers) and carry them back to an evacuation hospital ten or twelve miles behind the lines. These are rather crude affairs and seldom employ any women nurses. When they become crowded or get cases too difficult to handle, they send the wounded to bigger hospitals further back, usually in a nearby city. Such places are twenty-five or thirty miles behind the front and are very similar to our base hospitals. From here patients are sent by train into Paris for major operations or to the south of France to recuperate.

Mr. Fisher took five of us out in the Ford truck Tuesday morning and gave us a short driving-lesson in anticipation of the final test for the French driver's license which we must have before we go to the front. It was comparatively simple for most of us; but some real excitement started when Payne, one of the Espagne men, started driving. He is sort of a queer duck, anyway. The first night he was in Paris he crawled over the picket fence around the Eiffel Tower and was almost shot by a sentry. He did nobly on Tuesday, however. He had barely taken the wheel before we saw that he had never driven much before. He jammed on the accelerator just as we were rounding a corner, headed for a tree, and unfortunately missed it by a few inches, or we would have stopped here. Then he speeded up considerably, and skidded for thirty feet along a trolley-track embankment, scraped the side of an old dray horse and then ducked under its nose just for spite. We finally ended up two miles further on, with Mr. Fisher hanging firmly to the wheel and doing his best to get Payne's feet off the pedals so that he could use his own and stop the machine. . . . Payne now thinks he ought to have another practice lesson before he goes to the front. We agree with him.

We were given the second dose of typhoid and para-typhoid bugs today. Dr. Gros stuck something like a billion and a half in each fellow's arm and we certainly knew afterwards that they were having a grand time all by themselves in there. Everybody feels rotten and some of the men have gone to bed already, although it is only seven thirty. It is para-T, not typhoid itself which makes one's arm so sore a few hours after the injection.

When we first got here, we could do pretty much as we pleased, as long as we saw about our papers and had our uniforms made. But now that the Section is going to leave soon, and since they are shorthanded at Kellner's anyway, the whole bunch goes out there every afternoon and unpacks and mounts Ford chassis. Women and children flock around in swarms whenever we are working on the crates. They watch us like hawks, eager to seize the tiniest splinter which may fall from a broken board. They figure that one good-sized basket of chips will cook a supper which otherwise they would have had to eat cold. We used to sight-see a little mornings; but every big thing like the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower is closed for the duration of the war and it isn't very interesting wandering around the outside of buildings. Entertainment in the evening is not difficult, for many of the big theatres and both the Opera and Opera Comique are still running. Anderson, my roommate on the Espagne, who is now at Neuilly, and I have gone three times already to the Opera, where we saw Manon and L'Etranger. The music was wonderful but I think we enjoyed the comfortable warmth of the building almost as much. Everyone goes, from the poor poilu, in on a few days' furlough, who listens enraptured from his two-franc seat in the fourth balcony, to the bemedalled Russian and Italian officers, who, as guests of the French Republic, occupy the seats in the Orchestra Circle far below. There are usually many women in the audience, but most of them are widows; at least you seldom see one who isn't in mourning for a brother, a son or a husband. . . . Broadway is still lit up after the theatres are out, but here everything is dark. It is against the law to use electricity for illuminating signs or store-windows. I have noticed that some of the fashionable shops are using long tapering candles which probably burn out by themselves in the early hours of the morning.

1. The remains of two ambulances, destroyed by German shell-fire. They were brought into Paris to encourage the new arrivals.
2. The twenty-one ambulances of Section XII, assembled in the yard at 21 Rue Raynouard.
3. One of the many towns which the Boches leveled to the ground in 1914.

1. Winter sport—washing our cars in the river Couzances at Jubécourt.
2. Three little residents of "Rat-hunt" alley, in Jubécourt. All of them have hobnails in their shoes.
3. Ten miles behind the lines, in our dining room, the cowstable in Jubécourt. Every evening a few poilus dropped to sing and tell stories with us.

 

January 31st.

Today we started all the new Ambulances and drove them down into the park below the house. Here they were carefully lined up and examined to see that no part of the equipment was missing. Then after dinner Mr. Fisher assigned each one of us to a car and gave us its number. Mine turned out to be four hundred and sixty-four, and the name plate on its side read "Schenectady Ambulance." It was very kind of the people in Schenectady to donate the machine, but it is certainly a terrible pet name for an automobile to have. There are a lot of Americans who don't know how to pronounce the word Schenectady, to say nothing of the queer noises the Frenchmen make trying to say it. Already it has been called everything from Shenickadaydy to Skinneckodidy. The motor seems to be O. K. I took it around the block for a trial run after dinner and had no trouble with the engine. A taxi collided with me up on Rue Raynouard, however, when I was completing the test, and smashed in my side-box pretty badly. The big machine turned from a narrow alley into the main street without sounding its horn and I couldn't stop in time after I saw it. The damage done was very slight, and it will only need a new box which can be easily replaced.

I wore my uniform for the first time this morning. It gives you the most wonderful feeling to be able to ride in the Metro and walk around down town without having every soul in Paris stare at you as if you were some terrible slacker.

 

They gave us our chef the day before yesterday. He is Harry Iselin of Section Two; and tonight, they had the farewell banquet in honor of Section XII. Dr. Gros and Dr. Andrew both made interesting speeches afterwards. Mr. Simonds, War Correspondent of the New York Tribune, spoke for a few minutes, and after him came the finest talk of the evening, perhaps the most touching words I have ever heard. It was given by Monsieur Hughes Le Roux, a famous French journalist and adventurer. He told us in almost perfect English how he had lost both of his sons early in the war and he bravely described how one had died and how he had barely managed to get to his bedside and hear the story from his own lips before he passed away. He showed us why the work of the American Ambulance meant so much to him and he made every man who had come from a mere desire for adventure, feel that it was really his duty to help France. A few toasts to the two nations followed this, and with them came the end of a pleasant evening.

Every time I start a letter home something unexpected happens and I put it off another day. Yesterday when I was reading the Paris Edition of the New York Herald, I got so interested in the account of our probable break with Germany that I bought a Daily Mail and a Matin besides, and spent all the time when I should have been writing, bickering with the fellows over the news. Then on Friday the new men from the liner Chicago arrived and when I was introduced to one of my cousins from Pittsburg whom I hadn't known was coming over, I didn't bother with letter-writing any more that day. Unfortunately he was seized with pneumonia yesterday on his way back from Bordeaux in a convoy of Fords. He is now in a serious condition at the American Hospital in Neuilly. His chances are said to be about even. Bliss, another Ambulance man, died last week from the same disease.

The "Ordre de Mouvement" for the Section has just come. Unless the Eiffel Tower falls on our cars during the night, we shall leave here at noon tomorrow.

 

Section XII left its comfortable (?) quarters in Rue Raynouard today, after a grand review and military send off by Capitaine Aujay, the Frenchman who directs all the Automobile work in Paris. He delivered a thrilling speech in French which none of us understood until it was carefully interpreted afterwards.

It took us several hours to get out of Paris, for we had to go eastward across the whole city. Several of the cars had engine trouble and one received a bad bump from a street car. Otherwise nothing unusual happened. By the time we came to Champigny, a little village twenty kilometers from the city, it was noon, and we stopped there for lunch. It was a funny meal, served in a queer little café. First a loaf or so of stale bread and some wine appeared and after a long wait some prime ribs of horse. This appeared to be the last course, but as we were about to leave, in came a plate of rice and a minute later some cheese and jam.

In the afternoon we started up at a faster pace than before, with orders to keep the cars about fifty yards apart. It was extremely cold, and the bitter wind, which was blowing directly against us, seemed to go right through our heavy mackinaws. Now and then someone would stop, to change a spark plug or a tire, or perhaps to put in a little oil. Often, when he tried to pass another machine in order to get back to his old position in the convoy, a heated scrap would arise. Sometimes they raced for two or three miles, trying to push each other off the road. And before the afternoon was over, the cars were strung out in a line four miles long, with each driver jealously guarding his position while he kept it, and madly attempting to get it back again if it were taken away.

It was quite dark when we entered Montmirail, but we could not help seeing the ghastly ruins of the place, which the Germans had leveled in their advance before the Battle of the Marne. The staff car, which had gone on ahead, found an old dance hall where we could spend the night, and a place nearby in which to park our cars. We drained our radiators hurriedly, and had supper at a little café. Then as soon as we got back to quarters most of us took our blankets from our cars, and turned in without undressing.

 

I learned a hard lesson last night about sleeping. Never make your bed on a slope. I had fixed mine on the straw, with one end considerably lower than the other, and when I awoke this morning I was actually five feet lower down the hill than when I went to sleep. I had, moreover, slipped out into the cold air half a dozen times during the night.

It was mighty hard work starting the cars this morning, on account of the stiffness of the motors and the extreme cold. There were a number which we could not start at all by cranking, and we were obliged to tow them up and down the road in high speed, until they were warmed up. This took some time and it was almost eleven o'clock before we left the village.

Late in the afternoon we stopped outside of Bar-le-Duc and were delayed there thirty minutes because of a long convoy of supply wagons which had just entered the city. We thought we heard some big guns in the distance while we waited and a number of aeroplanes flew overhead. Two or three were low enough to enable us to see the red, white and blue targets on each wing. All of the Allied planes use this as an identification mark. Now we entered the town, and everyone, feeling tired and hungry, thought that our drive was over. There was no room for us in Bar-le-Duc, however, and we had to push on to a little place called Longeville; and although it was only five kilometers off, it was as tiresome a ride as I have ever taken.

We left the machines at length in a muddy sidestreet for the night, and then wandered off to get our supper and straw for bedding.

 

We slept in an old barn to which we had been detailed the first two nights, but the close atmosphere drove us to our cars. I have made a regular little cabin out of mine. A good-sized bundle of straw, spread over the floor of the car, makes a fine mattress and for my heating and lighting system I have two kerosene lanterns. I am writing now sitting up in bed, and with my mackinaw on, since the heaters are not always too efficient. Pretty soon it will become stuffy and then I will throw back the canvas flap and the side windows and go to sleep.

On Monday we shifted all the cars to a new parking place behind the village church. Iselin had us move them here so that we might have a better location in case we were not ordered to move immediately.

Yesterday I saw a wedding in this church. It was a sad affair. The bride was a great, strong peasant woman and the groom a sickly, little chap who could not get into the army. The whole bridal party, father, mother and all the relatives were dressed in deep mourning and the only happy persons in the entire church were the altar boys who played tug of war with the Priest's robe and fought over the stick in the incense pot.

The food is much better now. We have taken possession of the Café near the canal and have rigged up a temporary kitchen in the woodshed. Harry ran across the Quaker Oats box recently and every morning we have oatmeal which is a lot better than prune jam on stale army bread. This bread is certainly remarkable stuff. It comes in freight cars from the interior and is usually two weeks old before we get it. It is often brittle, like a piece of wood, and is about as palatable as soft pine. However, it is supposed to be nourishing and I think that it is really more wholesome than our own American white bread.

 

We have been attached to a division, the 132nd, so the Lieutenant told us tonight. It is only a few miles away, near Brillon, and tomorrow or the next day a few cars will be called out to do evacuation work. I presume it will be to carry a few sick or accident cases and perhaps to get acquainted with the different regiments of the division. Everyone is working hard on his car so that it may be in tiptop shape if he is detailed to go. It will be a great relief to have something to do. So far we have just hung around the Café, waiting for the next meal to come. We play poker, read, or practice French on the cook; and once or twice a day the mandolin and the guitar get going and we have some singing. And if you grow tired of sitting indoors all day, you can take long walks among the hills overlooking Bar-le-Duc and the Ornain. But even this has become tiresome and we joyfully welcome the idea of getting to work.

I was very dirty when I finished going over my car and since I had not washed for five or six days, I filled my basin full of nice hot radiator water and took an outdoor bath. The weather was quite chilly and before I had finished a group of wondering children had gathered around. They were amazed that anyone should wash in the open or even bother with keeping clean at all in such weather. I shall never forget how they looked in their black aprons with their clumsy school packs hanging over their shoulders, as they stood beside my car. I pestered them with simple little questions, just to help my French; and oh, how they laughed when they found I didn't know an easy word like "cat" or "barn."

Almost every day now we hear the big guns along the Saint Mihiel sector; and tonight some very heavy shelling is going on. The nearest guns are about twenty miles away.

I tried developing a few films last evening in the loft in the barn. It was certainly working under difficulties. The temperature of the room was a couple of degrees below freezing and although I had some luke-warm water when I started, it went down to forty five degrees while the films were developing. Of course, I spoiled a number of mighty good pictures which I had taken on the ride out from Paris. I managed to save just two or three mediocre negatives out of the whole lot.

We got our gas masks and helmets today. I came a little late and had to be content with a big affair which comes way down over my ears.

1. Section XII making a short halt, while in convoy from Dombasle to Waly.
2. The old church at Dombasle. The images escaped unharmed in the bombardment.
3. Our quarters or cantonment in Dombasle. We have the best house in the village.

1. Road repairers at work, cleaning up the ruins of Dombasle. They tear down the walls and use the debris to fill up the ruts.
2. Ray Williams of Wisconsin, next to a "Put out your lights" sign, about eight miles from the front lines.
3. Camouflage on the Esnes road, screening us from Mort Homme.

 

"Ott" Kann and Gilmore have just left the car. We have been enjoying a delightful afternoon tea together, consisting of sardines, petit beurre and Radiator Water Cocoa. The latter we made by running the motor fast for a few minutes until the water began to boil and then pouring it into a cup of prepared powdered chocolate. Aside from the mineral water flavor, it was very good.

On Thursday we had our first evacuation work. I rode along with Cook to learn the roads to the different villages in which the division is stationed. We drove to Brillon which is about eight kilos from Bar-le-Duc and finding no cases there we went on to Haironville where we picked up two assis (sitting cases) and a couché (a stretcher case). The latter was in bad shape and we had to drive back very carefully. We dropped all three cases at the big hospital in Bar, and then speeded home by the canal road.

I drove Number 148, the Supply Car, today to get the section ravitaillement from the military storehouse near the Railroad station. We were obliged to wait an hour and a half to get our rations of bread, pinard, cheese and meat and a small box of coal for the kitchen. The engine got cold in the meanwhile and I had quite a time starting it. The old bus is in bad shape anyway, for the brake band is about worn off and I can't go into reverse at all.

After dinner I wrote a long letter home. Phillipe, the French sergeant saw it and made me mail it in two separate envelopes. There is some military rule that no letter shall weigh over twenty grams, the equivalent of about four average sheets.

 

My first real trip alone was successful. I took the flivver to Bar this afternoon and from there over the hills to Lisle-en-Rigault. They wanted me to take seven assis here and though five is usually our limit, I crowded six inside and had one sit up in front with me. Counting myself, this made eight people which is a pretty heavy load for any Ford, especially for one of our ambulances with its long overhanging body. However, it pulled very well over the bumpy little road leading to the main, Bar-le-Duc to St. Dizier, highway. As usual, since they were all malade cases, I left them at the H. O. E. in Bar. Then I had to return to Lisle and go on from there to Saudrupt where there was an officer with a severe case of mumps. While he was getting ready to leave, I got into conversation with some poilus standing near. Several of them had studied English in school and most of them knew a little German. We got along remarkably well and I was greatly surprised to learn that they did not object to speaking allemand, as they call German. One young chap became quite interested when he learned that I was an American (everyone around here be lieves that we are English, on account of our uniforms) and after giving me his name and address, made me promise to write to him. Tony Cucuron was his name. He was rather surprised when I told him that we were volunteers; but when I said that we not only received no pay except the poilus' five cents a day, but had paid our own passage over and had bought all our equipment ourselves, he wouldn't believe me. He could not understand why we should leave our pleasant homes in America to come into a war like this, even though it were to help France.

Crowhurst, the mechanic, ground down 148's valves today and also scraped out the carbon. Afterwards he did the same thing to Powell's car. Most of the others, however, he won't have to touch for some time yet.

This afternoon Williams and I walked into town. We wandered around for some time, until a Patisserie with some pretty cream tarts in the window, caught our eye. We spent all we could afford here. Just after we left we ran across a couple of Section IV men. They are having some heavy work up in the Argonne, about fifty kilometers north of here and not far from Clermont.

Iselin was not feeling well when he went the the rounds with the Mèdecin Chef today and when he came in tonight they found he had Scarlet Fever. Benny took him into hospital in Bar where he will be taken care of. Everyone is quite worried about it, however, for not only may the stuff spread through the section, but we will be without a chef for five or six weeks; and this is rather a serious loss, because we are very likely to move up to the front in a few days and one of us will have to take charge.

 

Farewells were said to Longeville and the old Café this morning. We headed directly north on the Verdun Road and pretty soon we began to see things we had read about at home. Here were the remains of a village, shot to pieces in 1914. The streets were quiet. Not a soul was left in the place. Again we would pass a group of young German prisoners with P. G. (prisonnier de guerre) written in huge letters on their backs; or perhaps some imported "Indo-China" laborers at work repairing the road. Once in a while a big gun would boom northeast of us. Now and then we would see a group of aeroplane hangars with their audiphones and anti-aircraft "seventy-fives." But the most interesting thing of all was when we stopped at a cross-road to watch one of our regiments go by. They were marching slowly when they drew near, for their packs were heavy and they had been walking steadily since sunrise. But the fine young manhood which fills the ranks of our own army was no longer there. Here was a lad of seventeen, barely able to walk twenty miles a day, let alone to carry his sixty pounds of equipment that distance; and beside him strode a tall gaunt man of forty whom the long march had fatigued even more than it had the youth. As they passed us, their band broke out with a lively air and every soldier there straightened up immediately, and unconsciously quickened his step. And I shall never forget how they cheered and sang when the band played the "Marseillaise." Company after company took up the strain, and before long it had spread far down the valley, to the other end of the regiment.

We entered Vadélaincourt about noon and parked our cars at the entrance of the big aviation field there. Two minutes after we arrived every fellow in the section was out exploring the grounds. There were no officers around and since the workmen seemed to have no objections to our examining the machines, we went into every hangar and looked them all over. There were only three types here, the Farnam observation plane, and two fast little machines, the Spad and Nieuport. All of these were biplanes but some distance down the hill were six or seven monoplane tents. Lundquist and Gilmore got a couple of empty bombs as souvenirs. They are a yard long, look like great steel cigars, and are rather awkward to carry around.

The guns sound extremely clear now. We are about fifteen kilometers from Verdun and ten from

the Meuse. From the rumors floating around it seems that a big drive is coming. We will probably move on in a day or so to a point closer to the lines.

The fellows are demanding that I "douse the glim" in the hayloft where we are sleeping. I'll have to stop here.

N. B. Morning of March 1st. They called me out on guard duty at four o'clock and for two hours I tramped around the cars, in the dark. When the day broke shortly before six I started memorizing the car numbers and their owners. I had them all by heart in less than an hour. As for the guarding itself, all I did was to scare away a few rats.

Four letters came from home today. They were dated February 10th, and took exactly eighteen days in transit.

 

We had been only two days in Vadélaincourt when orders came to move on to Jubécourt, a village about four miles away. So off we went. Now we have all the cars lined up on the main square, and, as at Longeville, we are obliged to sleep in them because of the rats in the stable where the Frenchmen stay.

It is still very cold. Last night after most of us were in bed, Frazer put on his pajamas just to see how they felt again. But he got so cold in doing so that he crawled out onto the roof of his ambulance, intending to exercise a bit up there. The space was too limited, however, for any violent exertions; and so when he looked over to the next car, just six feet away and saw beyond it all the other machines extending in a long row almost to the road, he decided to do a little steeple-chasing. He began by landing on Cookie's car with a terrific thump, and continued on his rather uncertain journey all the way down the twelve ambulances. It may have been great fun for him but it completely ruined the peace of mind of the occupants of the other cars, for most of them were sound asleep and didn't seem to enjoy

at all the little earthquake which shook all their belongings down from the rack on top of them. Ten minutes later when the pajama clad athlete emerged from his cabin again and tried his dash over the roofs of the cars for the second time, his former victims were ready for him and he was obliged to make a hasty retreat through a "tir de barrage" of soft mud and snow.

Although we can't sleep in the old stable we have fixed up a dining-room and kitchen there. In the former we have two stoves and some tables and benches which we made from the planking of the second floor. And since there are really no more malades to carry here than before, we spend most of our time in this room.

Two German planes crossed the lines today in the direction of Bar. But they soon changed their direction when the French anti-aircraft guns began to pepper them. They were up almost twelve thousand feet, slightly out of range, I think. It was most interesting to watch the shrapnel break into great puffs of white smoke, sometimes rather near them but more often a long way off. I guess the guns do little more than keep them high up; and one of the Frenchmen said that the seventy-five nearest us had brought down only one German machine during the whole war.

Besides our dining room tables we have put up two stoves in the center of the room. The larger of these makes ideal toast out of army bread which we find loses much of its oak-like firmness and becomes fairly palatable when cooked this way. But, as so frequently happens in America, a company has been formed which has a complete monopoly on the toast producing parts of the stove. The Jubécourt "Toast Trust" as the organization is called, is composed of six members. Every day before each meal one of them saunters in and takes possession of the army bread refinery. He starts work immediately and makes about twice as much toast as they need. It is rather slow work and the independent companies seldom get a show before the meal is half done. Occasionally when a director of the trust gets careless and leaves a vacant place, one of the outsiders sneaks on a fresh piece of bread. Then when he goes away, he takes two or three pieces and the trust wants to sue him for trespassing and burglary.

I'll have to stop writing now. My lamp has been flickering for some time, and now, it has gone out entirely.

 

To the tune of a mouth organ attempting everything from "Melody in F" to "O, du lieber Augustine," and the noise issuing from a stud poker game going on at the other end of the room, I sat down to write this evening. It is pretty bad here, but worse in my own car. Five new men came yesterday to take the places of some of our fellows who are sick. Powell and Haven have pneumonia and Harry Iselin is still ill with scarlet fever. And since there are always a couple of chaps laid up with grippe or tonsilitis, we can make good use of them.

Today we had for breakfast what André, the cook, calls "Quawcour Ats"—(oatmeal). This was followed by the usual stale bread and jam. About once a week we get a little butter, and last Sunday morning we were given one fried egg apiece upon a square inch of ham. I believe I enjoyed it more than any meal I have ever eaten. For dinner we had some rather tough Irish stew, which André says he used to make for Baron Rothschild, with pinard and cheese for dessert. Supper was a three course meal with army bread soup, boiled lentils

1. Morning exercise in front of the Poste de Secours" in Montzèville. The dugout is on the right.
2. Four Boche "150's" (6 inch shells) exploding behind some carefully concealed batteries near Montzèville, after passing directly over our heads.
3. Afternoon tea at Post Two in the Bois (forest) d'Avocourt. We sleep in the shelter behind the four poilus. My car is in the background.

1. The château at Esnes. Behind it lies Hill 304. Our post was in the wine-cellars underneath. In the foreground are six wooden crosses.
2. A caisson for "75" shells, which a Boche shell finished near the church.
3. The ruins of the church in Esnes.
4. The road through the village. The water is a foot deep in places here and conceals all the fresh shell holes.

(a concoction which tastes likes oats), and chocolate mush as the big items. I have just returned from the regular nightly rat hunt. It is a pastime not very well known in America but very popular here at the front. Every evening we collect our clubs and flashlights and raid an old barn near the river. Two or three of us usually rush in together, flash our lights about until we spot a rat and then fall upon it with our sticks. It takes a good clean shot to kill one and we consider ourselves lucky if we get two or three in an evening.

 

You can talk all you want about the good old spreads at boarding school and college, but when you put five husky young fellows, two gasoline blowtorches, three bottles of champagne and every edible from canned chicken to welsh rarebit into one little Ford ambulance you come pretty close to approaching the infinity of fun. This was the kind of celebration we had tonight in Gilmore's car; and it lasted until the early hours of the morning. There were Lundquist and Dunham, Chauvenet and Gilmore, and I, packed into the rear end of 443. It was the queerest party I have ever attended. In the first place our legs were all tied together in a knot in the center. Gilmore himself, owner of the banquet hall and master of ceremonies sat at one end and made army bread toast for the Welsh rarebit. He cooked it on a piece of brass shell casing, hammered out flat, with the blow-torch underneath it to supply the heat. Lundquist mixed the egg sauce for the lobster salad, while Dunham opened the cans of sardines, peas, and chicken. Chauvenet had to test the champagne after he had uncorked one bottle and my job was to butter the hardtack which we had stolen from the kitchen, and also to see that the smaller torch which was boiling the water for the chocolate didn't tip over into Lundquist's lap. We ate course after course of stuff which Gil had gotten at some time or other from the Epicerie. But cocoa, lobster, champagne, welsh rarebit, peas and hardtack don't work too well together, the bunch became more and more uproarious, and the party almost ended in a rough and tumble contest with the lighted lamps as weapons.

General N———, the commander of our Division, passed through the village this afternoon and reviewed the Section. Our orders were to stand motionless beside our cars and to look straight ahead. But the general was a good natured old fellow and spoke to several of the men as he passed, instead of marching formally by, funeral fashion. If they do any attacking, he will lead the 132nd when they go up to the front.