Ambulance 464/Chapter 4

by Julien H. Bryan

IV
"EN REPOS," AND IN CHAMPAGNE

 

On the first day of June we departed from Ste. Menehould for good and all. Section Thirteen which last month was worked to death in Champagne, has taken our place. We are delighted to be able to try our luck at some real action once more. The little town where we are now staying, Les Grandes Loges, lies on the main road between Châlons and Reims. We shall probably remain here for a week "en repos" and then go up to the front for three or four weeks of heavy action. As usual in the smaller towns our quarters are in a barn and our cars are parked in the courtyard; there is a high hill behind the village, and every day we go to the summit to watch the artillery duels around Mont Cornillet and Moronvilliers, eight miles away. Last evening we saw a German gas attack roll over the French lines; great clouds of a creamy, yellowish vapor, stretching along the lines for a mile or more, were carried forward by the wind and poured into every nook and cranny of our trenches. In the midst of this a great puff of black smoke arose from the hill and a minute later we heard the report. It came either from a mine, or a "420," which the Boches occasionally send over. After we had crawled into bed in the barn, a German aviator shot down out of the sky and played his machine gun up and down the village street. He couldn't have been more than four hundred feet high for we heard the "rack-a-tack" of his machine gun as plainly as if it had been in the court behind the barn. This was a new trick to us, but the old lady who lives next door says they have been doing it all Spring. She tells me she is eighty years old, but every day I see her working in her garden. She is very cheerful and seems to like the work, but she is shy, and hates to have people watch her. The other morning I wanted to take her picture and it took ten minutes of careful persuasion to get her consent.

Today we walked to the canal four miles south of the village and went in swimming. There were a couple of gun boats waiting here, to be sent up towards Prunay; and it gave one a queer feeling, emerging from a dive, to have this awkward steel monitor looking him in the face.

 

Recy is the deadest little town in the Department of the Marne. They are therefore punishing the two-twenty-first, and consequently us at the same time, by billeting us here for the repos. I am afraid that we are going to have a mighty dull month, loafing around the cantonment and taking a malade run once a week.

Sometimes there is a little more than this, however. We were all moping around the cantonment yesterday, when Decupert, the lieutenant's clerk, came in and said orders had just come from Bouy, a place ten miles north of here, to send out fifteen ambulances at once; the Boches were shelling the town, and we had to evacuate the hospital. There was a mad stampede to the cars, and in five minutes fifteen little Fords were racing wildly over the hills towards Bouy. The bombardment was over when we arrived. The Boches appeared to have been testing a new long-range gun, and dropped about forty of the big shells into the town from a battery fourteen miles away; but no great damage was done. One shell which dropped in the courtyard of the hospital, made a crater twenty feet across, but never even scratched the buildings on all four sides. The éclat appeared to have been shot high in air, and fallen harmlessly to the ground some distance away. Bouy is certainly a poor place for a hospital. Besides the big aviation field, it contains a good sized munition depot, and since it is liable to continual bombardment the authorities decided to evacuate all their patients to St. Hilare, even though the shelling was over. We worked at this for several hours, along with a French section. We formed in a long line at the H.O.E. in St. Hilare, waiting for the bulky French ambulances, which had arrived before us, to discharge their blessés. It was a very hot day and the air inside the ambulances was stifling. I gave my two Algerians a sip of water from my canteen, and they were so delighted with it, that I carried it down the line. Finally I came to a couple of wounded Boches, who couldn't resist the temptation of "Ein trinken Wasser," although at first they thought it was poisoned. The average German prisoner I have seen so far has been an ill-fed, stupid-looking, round-headed specimen who looked mighty sick of the war. But these fellows, although rather thin, had bright, intelligent faces. One was nineteen, another twenty, and the third a little fellow who claimed to be twenty-four. I had a long talk with them, while we were waiting, although my own German was pretty well mixed with French words which slipped in unconsciously. They told me they had been shoved into the trenches, near Moronvilliers three days before, along with thousands of other troops in an attempt to check a big French attack, and had been captured when we advanced. When I asked them what they thought of the Kaiser one shrugged his shoulders but the youngest boy said that Wilhelm was all right and claimed that he was really a peaceful soul. He added that the militaristic ministry was the source of most of their troubles. Concerning the cause of the war, they had the peculiar idea that Russia had unexpectedly attacked them in 1914, and they had been forced to resist. When I questioned them about food, they said they had been getting plenty of meat all spring, but that they had very little bread and scarcely any potatoes. The attacking divisions get better food than any other. They told me our entry into the war was a great shock to the German people, and they could see no reason for our doing so. With the Allies backed by our strength now, they didn't think they would win the war, but supposed it would soon end in a draw. They are sure they won't be forced to accept our terms, however. I got a few buttons, from them before I left, as souvenirs.

There were two German aviators next to these Algerians who had been brought down by Guynemer from about twelve thousand feet. Their machine had turned over again and again in their fall but they managed to catch themselves a few hundred feet from the ground. Of course they landed with terrific force anyway; but luckily right side up, and now, although their skin has turned blue from the fall, and though the shock itself almost killed them, they will live.

 

This continued repos stuff is absolutely degrading. We won't be good for anything after the war. We do nothing except loaf, loaf, loaf all day long and perhaps once a week go to Vadenay or St. Hilare, for a few malade calls. Just for fun I have written an outline of all I did today, dividing it up according to hours. Here it is:

7:30—Breakfast gong, an old shell case, sounds and we pile out of our cars to the "salle à manger" for oatmeal and prune confiture.

8:00—All is well. Breakfast is now over and the poker crowd have started the day's game. The bridge fiends are playing behind Tenney's car and two fellows are shooting craps. Gilmore and I are matching pennies and Stanley is trying to feed a raw egg to our new mascot, a young red fox.

9:00—It is getting warmer. I have gone to my car and started a letter home.

9:15—It is much too hot to write. I have given up my letter for a book in French on artillery.

9:30—Artillery is dull, especially in French. I am now reading one of Ring Lardner's latest in the Saturday Evening Post.

10:30—It got so hot that I fell asleep on the last page of the story. Reading is too strenuous for me today.

11:00—I loafed, fooled around and monkeyed for half an hour. I spent part of this time in planning how to waste away the afternoon.

12:00—I took a picture a few minutes ago while sitting in my car. I could have gotten it much better if I had moved but it was too much trouble.

1:00—By dint of great effort OttKann and I covered the entire two hundred yards between the cantonment and the canal in a little less than twenty minutes and gazed upon the barges which are being towed along by man and woman power. Work like that would kill us (or do us a whole lot of good).

1:30—Mosquitoes and bugs pestered us too much by the water so we sauntered rapidly back to the quarters and watched the poker game for a while. They are out for an endurance record today, trying to beat the one of fourteen hours and eight minutes made at Ste. Menehould, when they played until Bob, the old waiter, brought in the "Quaker Oats" at breakfast.

3:30—I fell asleep about two o'clock while I was attempting to decide whether I would finish my letter home or start a new story.

4:30—When climbing out of my car I noticed that one of my tires was flat. I think I shall pump it tomorrow. Number One spark-plug is also on the blink, but there is no use changing it until I have to go out sometime in a hurry.

This is what we do every day. No one has any pep. I think I'll go crazy, if we don't get out of this soon.

 

Section Twelve is fast becoming the most religious of all the American sections at the front. It has its Sunday morning service in English with a Protestant minister from the French army in charge. A week ago Saturday one of the workmen in the artillery repair shop near by, dropped around to the cantonment and suggested our having a service every Sunday. He had been preaching in England for some time when the war broke out and when he found he couldn't get in the army as a chaplain he enlisted in the artillery. For several Sundays now we have been gathering together in the "Salle à Manger" tent and with the aid of a hymn book and a Bible which I brought along we have gotten on splendidly. He preaches well, is very sincere, and makes really very few grammatical errors.

Sammy and I are trying to find a way to get to Reims before we go up to the front again. It is only twenty-five miles, but we don't seem to be able to work it. We wouldn't be allowed to take a car that far and since dawn to dusk is our limit for hikes during our days on duty, it is hardly possible in this time to walk fifty miles, and see the city itself. Moreover, the Boches have been punishing

1. Getting the village children ready for a photograph. The little fellow in the center is holding the pup "Montzèville," our section mascot.
2. Both eyes out and both arms torn to pieces by shellsplinters.
3. A. Piatt Andrew, director of the Field Service and Major Church, U. S. A., visiting our section in Champagne.

1. The French "sausage" or observation balloon. The small bags in the rear act as rudders, and keep the balloon always with the wind.
2. Soldiers unloading cylinders of hydrogen, used to inflate the balloon.
3. The great motor truck and steel drum which reels in the 7000 feet of thin wire cable by which the balloon is raised and lowered.

it severely lately. Yesterday they dropped in two thousand five hundred shells and the day before an even two thousand. This wouldn't keep us away, however, if we could find the means of quick transportation.

 

I am on duty here for the second time. We are supposed to spend our twenty-four hours carrying malades suffering from indigestion and earache to the H. O. E. at St. Hilare. But luckily for us there are not many such cases and we spend most of our time in the village. We are the first Americans that have ever been in the place, at least since the war began. The woman at the Epicerie almost embraced me this morning when I called to buy a pound of figs; and then she wanted to know if I didn't think the war would end right away, with us in it. She was actually so glad to see me that she put an orange in with the figs as a present.

There is a saucisse just behind the town and we watch it by the hour. It is attached to the ground by a thin wire cable which is reeled in and out at will upon a big steel drum. This is operated from an auto truck, designed especially for this purpose. And whenever the pilot thinks an enemy aviator is coming after him, he signals to those below; and they bring him in at a terrific rate. Sometimes he comes down so fast he appears to be falling. The pilot whom we saw killed near Dombasle last March would not have lost his balloon and incidentally his life if they had started to bring him down at full speed before the Boche was upon him.

I thought, as I lay on my stretcher last night and the dull echoes of the distant "tir de barrage" in the Mont Cornillet Sector were gradually putting me to sleep, "would one year from today see France in civilian clothes again; and when twelve months had passed would No Man's Land be under cultivation once more?" I wonder if it will.

 

The brancardiers think that we are soon going to move to Suippes or some place near there. If this rumor is true it will mean a lot of hard work for us. I am afraid, however, it won't last very long for me personally. For my time expires on the eighth of July and I will very likely leave the section then. I am expecting a cable from home, telling me whether or not I can enter Aviation or go down to Salonika in the Ambulance Service there. If the family disapproves of both of these things, I presume that I shall have to go home.

There is a little mouse who lives in the wall of our dining-room whom we have nick-named Napoleon Xenophon. He is a master of strategy and the combined efforts of the entire section have not yet resulted n his capture. Harrison and Tenney formulated the brilliant scheme yesterday of placing a string noose over the mouth of his home; and patiently waiting, one on either side, until the villain should emerge, they intended to jerk the cord and crush in his neck from the terrific pressure. But although they stayed there for several hours and got him to come out quite frequently by using bread for bait (something an American mouse would turn up his nose at) the clever little animal never waited long enough in the noose for them to pull it shut. Several times it seized the bread and returned to its hole before they could jerk the string. And at last, when they were really developing some speed with their trap, the mouse appeared at a side entrance to his home and laughed at them.

The 221st had a big entertainment last evening in the town hall. The big event of the evening was a boxing match between a French middleweight and Kid Crowhurst of the American Ambulance. They fought on a tiny platform not more than ten feet square, and our veteran mechanic almost broke up the performance when a clean right hook from his mighty arm sent his opponent sprawling onto a chair off stage, on which lay the violin of the musician who came next on the program. The instrument was ruined; and although the audience didn't object at all, the fight was stopped in the next round.

Mike O'Connor, one of the new men, and I walked into Châlons the other morning. He stopped at the Hospital "Militaire" to consult a doctor about something. While I was waiting for him outside I got into conversation with one of the patients, a young fellow not over eighteen, who I learned was a second lieutenant in the Artillery. He had studied at Fontainebleau and had been wounded about two weeks ago, during the big offensive near Auberive and Moronvilliers. He spoke English well and told me all about himself and his family. He lives on the Rue Boissiere in Paris, only a short distance from Rue Raynouard. His captain told him before he left that he would be cited, so that he will very likely get his "Croix de Guerre." I had to leave him when O'Connor came out; but I promised to call again and also to look him up in Paris, since there is a chance that he may be home on furlough when I come in the eighth of July.

Tenney, Harrison and Sinclair left the Section today. They are going to join Section Ten now in Albania.

 

Sammy Lloyd and I hiked about twenty miles yesterday. We rode with Craig as far as Bouy and then went a-foot towards Mourmelon le Petit where Section Fourteen is quartered. (Sammy came over on the Chicago with a number of their men.) We walked along an old Roman road for a while and passed the monument commemorating the defeat of Attila and the Huns. It seemed rather a coincidence that sixteen hundred years later the same Huns are being again defeated within a few miles of the spot. We arrived at Mourmelon at three o'clock and the fellows there were kind enough to take us out to their posts, when they changed shifts two hours later. They go through Prosnes which is a badly wrecked place, and they have two little stations called Constantine and Moscow at the foot of Mont Cornillet and Mont Haut. They have had some hot times here. Even today the last part of the road had a number of fresh shell holes. Near their abri I photographed some dead Boches which the French have not had time to bury yet. The odor there was frightful. One of the fellows who had been on duty said that a German shell had fallen among the bodies during the night and mangled them more than ever. He also told us of the new use which the Germans have for their dead. Instead of burying them, a process which is expensive and certainly very inefficient, they collect several thousand bodies, load them onto freight cars and take them to a factory some distance behind the lines. Here they are put into a big machine like a sausage grinder and when the residue has been chemically treated they are able to extract a considerable amount of glycerine from it. This of course is very valuable to them in the manufacture of high explosives. The dead men are all supposed to be very patriotic and probably nothing pleases them more than to look down (or up, I don't know which) from their new homes and see that they have helped the Fatherland to the end. We were not able to stay here very long; we had to go back on the car returning to Mourmelon. And after eating supper with their section there, we set out on our long journey to Recy. Sammy took with him a German machine gun belt containing five hundred bullets which one of Fourteen's men sold him. We couldn't walk very fast with it and didn't get home until midnight.

About ten of us rode up to the Russian Hospital near Mourmelon le Grand this morning to attend the funeral of Paul Osborne, the Section Twenty-eight man who was killed near Prosnes a few days ago. A protestant Army chaplain, the only one I have seen in France, paid the last tribute over his body. They buried him with military honors. Old Glory was draped over the coffin, and his coat with the Croix de Guerre which they had given him, was placed upon it. We marched away before the body was lowered into the grave, as is the custom at such funerals.

 

We packed up our belongings this morning, threw the heavy stuff into the White truck and the G. M. C., and the rest in the ambulances, and bade Recy a joyful farewell. One o'clock found the whole convoy in our new cantonment at Ferme de Piemont, three miles south of Suippes. We are relieving Section Eight. They have been here seven weeks and gone through some very interesting work but no real big attacks. Tomorrow we take over their posts and they go back to Dommartin or Châlons with their division. There are four front line posts, Pont Suippes, Jonchery, Bois Carré and Ferme de Wacques, and a relay at both Suippes and Cuperly. Besides this, three cars are always on call at the cantonment. This means ten fellows a day for the work and consequently twenty-four hours on duty and twenty hours off, for every man.

From the woods behind the quarters we can see Mont Cornillet, Mont Haut and the ridge above Moronvilliers, a few miles northwest of us. Our division will not be on the hill at all but will occupy the trenches from Auberive, at its foot, to a point near Souain and Ferme de Navarin. This means eight thousand troops holding a front of less than two miles.

 

Once more at a post, once again waiting for blessés with old 464. I arrived at seven this morning, relieved the Section Eight man who was here and as soon as he had gone I chased over to the brancardiers' abri for a bite to eat. But alas, their supplies had been delayed somewhere on the road and they didn't expect them before night. This wasn't a very bright outlook for the day, with nothing to eat until suppertime. Luckily I had a loaf of bread in the side-box of my car and by breaking it into small pieces and calling each one by a different name such as creamed potatoes, waffles, salad and bisque ice-cream, I had two very enjoyable meals on the front seat of my ambulance.

The general of the Seventy-first Division came here in his staff car very early this morning, for a promenade in the trenches. I talked with his chauffeur for a few minutes and learned that he does this every day, in order to keep in touch with his men. Later on, since there was not a sign of a blessé, I strolled off towards the "premières lignes." But r stumbled across a battery of "75's" before I had gone very far and found a young "aspirant"

1. Reserve soldiers, forty to fifty years old, arranging and taking inventory of a pile of 12 inch shells.
2. The two huskiest workmen in the crowd lifting one of the 450 lb. shells.
3. An artilleryman putting a time shell into the breech of an anti-aircraft "75," which, although mounted on an automobile, fires twenty-eight shots a minute.

1. The famous hanging clock in the ruined church at St. Hilare le Grand.
2. The fallen bells and the praying angels in the church at Suippes. The whole steeple has been shot away.
3. One hundred poilu graves, each marked with a little tri-color tin target and "Mort pour la France."

(cadet) there named Lucot. When he learned that I was an American, he was just as anxious to talk to me as I was curious to examine the battery. He took me around to the officers' abri and introduced me to his captain and two lieutenants. After they had shown me several of the guns and carefully explained the mechanism of each and also of the machine which sets the time-fuses, they took me down into the deep munition dugouts where they pointed with great pleasure to a number of American made shells. Then they did something entirely unexpected. They invited me into dinner. I knew this would be a thousand times better than my menu of army bread, and since there was very little chance of blessés arriving at the post for two or three hours, I accepted at once. The meal was served in the captain's abri, with ten feet of carefully laid earth and logs between us and any Boche shells which might break outside. I was kept pretty busy through it all, trying to eat and answer their countless questions. They wanted to know how many troops we had in France, if our men would actually get into the trenches this fall, if their "75" wasn't better than our American three-inch gun and of course a lot of things about the Ambulance Service. When I had a chance I would question them about French and German time fuses or perhaps the range of different guns; but I didn't have many opportunities to do this. Very often throughout the meal, we touched our glasses and drank the health of the "Capitaine" or some other member of the party; and, as usually happens over here, the last toast was to "the speedy ending of the war." After lunch they told me they wanted some bright American girls for their marraines. So It wrote down the names and addresses of four of my friends at home whom I thought would be willing to correspond with them. Then I described each one in turn and let each officer pick the one he wanted. It was very funny the way they debated about the girls. They decided that Lucot should take the youngest, who was very intelligent and quite small, because he also was young and small, although he didn't come up to the intelligence standard; the captain preferred the tall and sedate brunette because his grandmother was tall and sedate. The lieutenants had a terrible dispute over the remaining two, one of whom was a marvelous dancer and the other very beautiful. They ended the argument at last by throwing up a two-franc piece and calling the pretty girl heads and the dancer tails.

After dinner, Lucot showed me the road which the ravitaillementwagons use at night when they go up to the second and third line trenches. I don't believe the road to Esnes itself was ever in such terrible condition. As far as you could see it wound on with little holes, medium sized holes and real "420s" everywhere. It is just about like walking from one hole to another. Occasionally when we would come to one of the really big ones, there wouldn't be any road at all, only a great crater thirty feet across and easily fifteen deep.

I was obliged to return to the post at two o'clock and Lucot was kind enough to walk back with me. On the way I took a few photographs of a big mine which exploded in March 1915 when the French made a three-mile advance here. We walked all through the former Boche trenches and the old "No Man's Land" which is only a couple of hundred yards from the battery. Our conversation was very peculiar, for everything he said was in English, which he had studied for five years, and I answered him in French, as well as I could.

There were no blessés during the afternoon but I stuck pretty close to the post on account of the rather long time I had spent at the battery. I am writing by my petrol lamp in the brancardiers' abri.

 

Everybody in the section is hopping mad. Here's the biggest celebration of the year coming off in Paris today. The first of our troops to arrive in France will parade and the whole city will be wild with joy; and they won't allow a single one of us even a forty-eight-hour furlough to see it. All the other sections are sending in ten or twelve men apiece but we will have to fool around out here and be satisfied with a bottle of champagne apiece, and an omelet for breakfast. I won't even get this, for I am on duty here at Jonchery while the rest are having the treat at the cantonment in Ferme de Piemont.

This post is a relay on the way to Pont Suippes and is worked in the same manner as Esnes and Montzèville used to be. I started out at the former yesterday morning and have gone back and forth many times since then. At Pont Suippes we have to leave our cars in one particular place or they will be spotted by one of the dozen German sausages which are busy from dawn till dusk just across the lines. One of the Generals' chauffeurs stopped his machine recently in an unprotected place near the bridge and while waiting there alone was killed by a balloon-directed shell. The Frenchmen showed me where it all happened. Afterwards, I bickered with them for a lot of time-fuses which they had dug up from some neighboring shell holes. I gave one fellow a dollar Ingersoll watch for five perfect fuses, including two aluminum ones for which he had been obliged to dig down four feet into the earth. While we were bargaining, a brancardier came towards us with a huge eel which he had caught in the stream of "Suippes." He skinned it in the abri, and we had "eel à la tranchée" for lunch. It wasn't a bit bad.

While I was taking a few snapshots of the shell holes around the abri and in the little cemetery across the road, I ran across a young artillery lieutenant. I could see that he hadn't been out of Fontainebleau long and I thought perchance he might know Lucot or Bernard LarLenque, both of whom studied there last year. He let out a great yell when I mentioned the latter's name, and seizing my hand, told me that Bernard was his cousin. His own name was Christian Thurneyssen. Of course he wanted to know all about him, where I had met him and how he was getting along. Only the day before he had learned that Bernard had been wounded. We had a long talk together, and in the end I promised to look up his family when I went into Paris. I will probably leave the section next week. Consequently I am gathering a lot of souvenirs to take back home with me. Gilmore said the fine lot he lugged all the way back to Italy with him, when he was on his permission, was not appreciated by his family. He had thought they would go wild over the fuses and helmets but they hardly looked at them. There was some excuse for them, however, because they had been seeing things like these ever since Italy entered the war. I think it will be different in America; anyway, I am taking back a couple of hundred pounds of junk. This evening I added a Boche canteen, a common soldier's flashlight and one of their trench knives to my collection. I got them from a poilu who didn't want to give them up at all, because his permission was coming soon; but when I explained how interested the people in America would be in them and parted with my fountain pen, a compass and one of my many Ingersoll watches, to help with the persuasion, he yielded.

Last night I watched the "tir de Barrage" of a German attack and I was happy. A terrific bombardment started just an hour ago a couple miles north of us and the sky overhead was made brilliant by bursting shells. Then several of our own nearby batteries began hammering away in answer to the red fire "Artillery Wanted" signals sent up from the first line trenches; and gradually every available gun along our front got into action. From all sides came the glare from the mouths of busy seventy-fives. And with it all were the star-light shells which broke forth behind the curtain of fire and showed to us, as we stood upon the sand-bags over the abri, a great wall of smoke. Now and then, when a slight lull came between the roar of the shells, we could hear the familiar rat-tat-tat of the machine guns. The thing kept increasing in volume until every battery was going to its limit; and as I watched it, I pictured the first line trenches turned into inferno; and I was glad I was not there.

I had a few hours sleep afterwards in a stuffy little underground room where six of the brancardiers bunk. But they called me out at midnight when the blessés from the attack began to come in. After three or four runs to Suippes I ended up here at Jonchery at five this morning. But instead of going to bed as I should have, I spent an hour trying to chip off the compression of a Boche "210" which had fallen near my car. It had certainly been put on to stay, for I broke my Ford screw-driver prying on it. I had to be satisfied with a mere six inch piece because my monkey wrench which was the only tool left that might have worked, wouldn't fit into the groove.

I had breakfast with the undertakers who are the only people besides ourselves in the village. There are no brancardiers here since it is a relay station; and so we eat with them. They are a queer lot, simply four old soldiers who can't fight any more, who have been detailed to bury all the dead from one of our regiments, the two hundred and twenty-first. They showed me the record which they keep of the bodies and it contained the names of twenty soldiers who have been killed during the six days the division has been in the trenches. I had no idea that the mortality would be so low along an average front like Champagne at the present time. For this means less than one man in ten killed in a whole year of fighting. I told them that I was going back to America soon and they gave me, to take along a souvenir, one of the little red, white and blue targets which are placed on the grave of every French soldier.

The town seems to have received two very heavy bombardments since the war began. While I was wandering around taking pictures, after I left the members of the cemetery department, I came across a house, not so badly wrecked as the others, from which, if I climbed up onto the roof, I thought I might get a good view of the trenches. The stairs leading up to the second floor had been shot away; and as I was hunting for some projecting timber by which I might pull myself up, my eyes fell upon two inscriptions scrawled upon the plaster. The first one said that five people, probably those who had been living in the house, had been killed here in March, 1915. And from the one below it, I gathered that three soldiers who had been passing through the village and had stopped in the house over night, had lost their lives in a bombardment in July, 1916 . . . . I went upstairs afterwards and was surprised to find a crop of hay growing in the front bed-room. Then I climbed up on the roof and took several photographs of Mont Haut when a lot of shells were breaking upon its summit. I got another rather interesting picture during the morning. This was of the church in St. Hilare le Grand, between here and Pont Suippes. Most of the steeple has been shot away but the old clock is still hanging there, suspended only by the cement on one side. We know the exact time the building was shelled, for the hands point to half-past one.

My twenty-four hours were up an hour ago, and no one has come to relieve me as yet. I can't complain though, for I would be late too, if I were having a good breakfast.

 

Mike O'Connor and I have been out here all day and only had one run apiece. The post here is a "tirage," where all the blessés from the other posts are left and then taken by the men on duty there to the hospitals at Cuperly and St. Hilare au Temple. If these become overcrowded they are sent on to base hospitals at Châlons or Bar-le-Duc; and from there any cases which require special attention or a long period of recuperation are sent into Paris by train. Like all the other towns near the front, Suippes has been shelled considerably and occasionally even now the Boches drop in a few obus. They take particular delight in banging away at the railroad station, for though the inhabitants have been forced to leave the village, all the military supplies for this sector are brought up here by train. A poilu was killed here only yesterday by a "210." Mike and I got permission for a few minutes off about noon. We walked over to the church which was unharmed, with the exception of the belfry which had been torn away. The four bells were lying where they fell, in front of the altar, and the statues of two angels, kneeling in prayer, stood behind them. It was such an odd scene that I took several photos of it. Then we found some poiluswho had a number of vases they had painstakingly hammered out from brass shell casings. I gave one of my Ingersolls for a pair of seventy-fives, decorated with a sort of grape-vine design, and five francs for four cute little "37" vases. Then we each bought a briquet, modelled after the French army canteen and exceedingly well put together. They told us it took a whole week to make one; but it keeps them busy during those periods when they almost go crazy from the monotony of the life.

There is a large field between here and Ferme de Piemont where they have machine-gun and hand-grenade practice. Stanley, Sammy Lloyd and myself walked there last Sunday and looked the place over. We got into conversation with some soldiers and soon they were telling us how to throw hand-grenades. We claimed that the American method, the baseball way, was much better and proved it by hurling one of the cast iron bombs about the size of a lemon, fully fifty feet farther than their best mark. But they explained and rightly enough, too, that their over-arm method never tires one very much; whereas ours does, after very few throws.

 

Since our arrival here I have been aching to visit the captured Boche trenches near Auberive which the French took in their recent Champagne offensive. And so when I learned from "Chef" Coan, after I came in yesterday, that I wouldn't be on duty at Bois Carré or Pont Suippes again before I left the section, I arranged matters so that Mike O'Connor and I could start out early and bum around for three or four hours before it was time for the other car to come in. We left the cantonment at four this morning, missed a couple of shells rather nicely near the Mourmelon fork and arrived at Bois Carré just as the first German sausage was popping up over the horizon. I intended to head for Auberive which is about a mile from the post and although now in French hands is nevertheless only a few hundred yards from the present lines. But somehow we got into the wrong boyau and wandered several miles out of our way before we realized where we were. We had to give up the Auberive scheme altogether and go north towards Moronvilliers. But there was no direct route to the old German lines here and we were obliged to crawl through a lot of unfinished trenches and others blocked with barbed-wire. Finally it got so bad we were forced into the open for several hundred yards. This would have been quite safe a mile behind the front lines at La Harazee, where it is very hilly; but in this flat country you can be seen two or three miles away, and at one mile you are taking somewhat of a chance. It was exactly an hour and a half after we left Bois Carré that we saw the first sign of old German occupation. This was a large pile of hand-grenades which were unmistakably Boche. Then came an Abri with "Sicherheithier" written on one of the timbers and I noticed that it was quite carefully built. It occurred to me as I read the words, how strange it was that the people of Goethe's race should be our enemies in a war like this. Now we ran into an old supply station where barbed-wire, shells and trench torpedoes lay scattered around. Across from this, but still in the trench, was a grave, marked by a simple wooden cross. And I noticed that the name inscribed upon it was German and that he belonged to the foreign legion of the French Army. They lost a good many thousand men when they took Mont Cornillet and Mont Haut here. I picked up a Boche helmet a little farther on; the wearer had been killed by a shell splinter which penetrated the steel. The blood had rusted it and we could see traces of it quite plainly. Unfortunately we had to return to the post before eight-thirty so we had very little time there. We took as many souvenirs as we could carry, including two unexploded torpedos and an Austrian "88." Just as we were leaving, we asked one of the poilus who was at work putting the trenches into shape once more, if he had seen any "77" cartridge cases lying about. And instead of giving us an empty one, what did he do but pick up a whole loaded shell and slam it against the side of the trench until it came apart. Then he dumped all the powder out on the ground and gave us the casing.

On our way back we had a close call. We had gone only a short distance when we found we were heading straight for a battery which the Boches were shelling. There was no other way to the post except by a long detour; so we decided to chance it, figuring that we could get past in the four minute interval at which the shells seemed to be coming. But we weren't quite quick enough and a big fellow just as we got there. Éclat shot by us and over our heads and a few seconds later twigs and small branches from the nearby trees began to patter down around us. We didn't stop here, not even long enough to take a picture. As soon as we arrived at the post we dumped the souvenirs into the rear of Frutiger's car.

1. A German helmet which the author found near Auberive, in Champagne. The soldier wearing it was instantly killed by a large piece of shell, similar to the one shown below. The inside is covered with blood. It is interesting to note that this helmet is of tempered steel and can resist two or three times as much pressure as the French or American. A "32" revolver bullet, fired at twenty feet, made no impression on the German helmet, while a similar shot pierced the front and back of a French helmet.
2.Two types of briquets-cigarette lighters. Both were carefully hammered out by poilus "en repos" from bits of copper compression bands and brass shell casings. The wick, concealed by the cap on the right (lower picture), is fed by gasoline, within the briquet.

1. A pill box or German machine gun post, made of solid concrete. In daytime the slits are covered with burlap sacking.
2. The entrance to another German machine gun post. The roof is composed of two feet of steel rails, corrugated iron and heavy timber.
3. J. T. Lloyd of Cornell in a "210" shell hole. The Boches, firing from twelve miles away, missed the railroad tracks (in the background) at which they were firing, by ten feet.

I was to ride back to Ferme de Piemont with him and he left shortly afterwards. Like some of the poilus, we have the craze for unloading everything we think would make a good souvenir. Every day somebody brings in a hand-grenade or a new kind of fuse and there is always somebody foolish enough to monkey with it. I suppose we have carried five or six poilus already, wounded as they were taking something apart and yet we go right ahead with it. Today Payne offered Frazer the revolver which he borrowed from the little armory in the barn at Suippes if the latter would unload his big Boche torpedo. And although he had only two days more to spend in the section and didn't know a single thing about the construction of the affair, since it was German, he put it in a vise in the tool-room, and took it apart with a pipe-wrench. It could have gone off just as well as not and he wouldn't have been any the wiser. It doesn't wound like a hand grenade, it kills.

GERMAN TRENCH TORPEDO

The base is made of iron, so molded that the torpedo will break up into 98 squares. It can be shot either from a gun or catapult. It is exploded when the percussion cap on the extreme right strikes the ground. The tin rudders in the rear keep it from turning over in the air.

This is the same torpedo, the unloading which is described in the diary of July 8, 1917. Although this particular type weighs only five or six pounds, there are some in use which are one hundred times as heavy.

 

It's a true saying that a Ford will run anywhere you take it. Frutiger ran his machine into a tree on the Suippes road, but instead of climbing it as the Ford joke-book would have it, the car bounded over to the opposite side of the road and laid there for several minutes on its back with the rear wheels spinning around at a great rate, before he was able to shut off the motor. Then he waited until a couple of Frenchmen came along and with their help turned it right side up again. After this he thanked them and rode off as though nothing had happened.

Sammy Lloyd told me some time ago of the munition depot over the hill, and so this morning we took our cameras and walked up there. About twenty soldiers were working on a pile of twelve inch shells ("280's") when we arrived, arranging them in long rows and covering them afterwards with a sort of pine-bough camouflage. They thought it fine to have their pictures taken; and I got the two strongest men in the crowd to lift one of the big projectiles for me while I took the photograph. They managed to hold it up several seconds although it weighs four hundred and fifty pounds.

Then their sergeant showed us the whole depot, and told us that although they had 50,000 shells stored there, they were so carefully concealed that the Boche aviators couldn't tell them from common underbrush.

 

Benney and I left the Section for good today. He goes to Avord to enter the Aviation School and I am going home by way of England. I'd a thousand times rather stay in France until the war's over but the family doesn't agree with me. Both of the last two cables from America read "Home." Therefore I must go home to argue it out. We have been packing most of the morning and getting our souvenirs so mixed with our clothes that they don't look suspicious. I have two hundred and sixty pounds of stuff which I hope I can get in all right. We are waiting for the camionette now to come and take us into Châlons. I have finished saying goodbye to the fellows and have just snapped a last picture of a group of them together in front of Ray William's car, smoking their good old Bull Durham. As for old 464, I patted her radiator in a last fond caress and gave her a final drink of water five minutes ago. Dear old "Shen-ick-a-day-dy," as the poilus call her.