Our Part in the Great War

ened to them in this strange new life of war. These notes, sometimes in pencil, sometimes written with the pocket fountain pen, they sent to their chief, Piatt Andrew, and he has

hill crest was taken and retaken. Here, too, is the one sector of the Western Front where the French are fighting in the enemy's country. Alsace has been German territory for forty-three years. The district known as Haute Alsace is a range of mountains, running roughly north and sou

, Jr., says

er side. This little village is a few kilometers behind the trenches, and is sometimes bombarded by the Germans. The roads up the mountain are very steep, particularly on the Alsatian side. They are ro

e transported in wagons or on mule-backs, two stretchers, one on each side of the mule. Two of us tried this method of travel and were nearly sick in a few minutes. Imagine the wounded-five hours for the trip! That so many survived speaks well for the hardihood of the "Blue Devils." Now with our cars the trip takes 1? or 2 hours. We get as close to the trenches as any cars

rk. The two back fenders have been removed, one by a rock in passing an amm

a comrade back. They express curiosity as to our exact military status. The usual thing when we explain that we are volunteers is for

s of the conditio

had decided to accept our services. We were to draw our food, wine, tobacco, automobile supplies, such as tires, oil, gasoline, from the Seventh Army, as well

ng, coffee, sugar and a little wine. For soldiers on duty there are field kitchens, fire and boilers running on wheels. But billeted men h

r as long as fifty hours without sleep, and no one had t

n in charge of this section. He has received two citations, two Croix de Guerre, which he doesn't wear, because he knows that the Western Front is full of

writes Henry M. Suckley of Harvard, 1910. In that quiet statemen

er 10 miles of mountain, 5 up and 5 down, to

Emerson,

gh to lean up against a tree before slipping very far over the bank, and within ten minutes ten soldiers had lifted the machine, and put it back on the road, ready to

0-foot level, blown down by a gale. So they used a new road

the joys of this drive on a dark night when you have to extinguish all lights, and when the speed of the car cannot be reduced for fear of not making the grades. The first aid post, called Silberloch, is but 200 or 300 yards from the famous crest which has been the scene of many fierce combats. The bursting of shells has taken every bit of foliage from the wooded crest, carried pines to the ground, so that only a few splintered stumps

's School car th

they had the man waiting. He was wounded in the abdomen, and in great pain. We started down over the terrible road; at every pebble he would groan. When we reached the worst place of all, where the road had recently been mended with unbroken s

p the incline, and before they lost speed would be practically carried to the crest on the shoulders of the pushers-mules, with their drivers hanging on th

winter i

nd he came out to crank his car and carry them off when he was ordered back to safety. A few moments later a shell landed close to the 'abri.' It struck a man and killed him. A flying piec

me, Jack C

ff the road between two trees, over three piles of rock, through a fence and into a

car. It is the little Ford, Number 121, given by Mrs. Richard Trowbridge of Roxbury, Mass. In that particular car you have carried 500 wounded men, you have gone into the ditch, stuck in the mud, and scurried under shell-fire, shrapnel has torn the cover, and there is the mark of a rifle-bullet on the wheel-spoke. You have slept at the wheel and in the chassis, after hours of work. You have eaten luncheons for two months on th

utlive "A Message to Garcia." For this job of the jitneys is more than carrying orders; it is bringing wounded men over impossible routes, where four wheels and a motor were never supposed to go. Mr. Ford with his ship accomplished nothing, but Mr. For

all night." To "keep rolling" is

ring with one hand, holding bread and cheese in the other. The first lull I slept an hour and a half, the second night there was no lull and I drove until I went to sleep several times at the wheel. Then I took three hours' rest and went on. Gasoline, oil and carbide ra

sts in patching tires, scraping carbon and changing springs. Any idea of ambulance work is off the mark that thinks

nd, warmly wrapped in blankets, one can

less than 10 kilometers in

onstruction make our cars the most comfortable

machine-made war to be dashing and picturesque. You must fight destructive machinery with still cleverer engines of relief. The inventive brain must operate as well a

n by the boys. Canned beef is called

abreast, steaming in their own cloud of sweaty vapor? Why else descend slopes with every brake afire, with three human bodies as cargo, where a broken drive s

ray trousers, spiral puttees, and the jaunty soft

American Ambulance that he will go home with a feeling of great satisfaction at having been able to help out

neral of the Division-General Serret"-brought down f

individually the Croix de Guerre. This section served two divisions of the second French Army and had a battle front of from seven to ten m

d a week, and a milea

his arm crankin

it so close as to jump his car up. One car came in from service in July with 23 shra

ong waits and frantic activity: dullness and horror alternating. Nine members of the ambulances were in the house against which a shell exploded. A soldier was killed and one mortally wounded. The Americans were thrown in a heap on

the cars. Great courage was displayed by McConnell, who was active in this work even when not required to be so, and who was hit in the back by a fragment of shell, sustaining, however, no further injury tha

the American section, "Composed of

ssions that come to the men

, within a space of a dozen yards of

shape of a sentry, the night scents of the f

with danger of death as a daily habit; on the other, within half an hour's walk, most of the comforts of civilization. We come dow

cerned appearance, as though havin

ture. I like the rough-neck way of the American Ambulance. There has been a snobbish attempt made to describe these young workers as belonging to our "best families," representing the "elite" of America.

working together. We are living the real army

nd the streets during the overhead shelling of forty-five minutes, picking up the dead and wounded. Almost all the cars were hit by fragments of shell. This prompt aid under fire endeared

red, in a condition of what seems to our inarticulate Northern stolidity as exc

hat the Americans have done. Your work was e

Lorraine, Major Humbert, brother of the Commanding General of the Third Division, stopped three of us, Americans, and said he wished to tell us, as

r, when gas was used for the first time by the enemy. It is a flat country and they ran close t

dirty kiddies." The cars receive pet names of Susan, and Beatrice, and The Contagious Bus. The Contagious Bus, Car 82, driven by Hayden, carried 187 contagi

alted his machine at the end of the road, and walked down to the poste with the 'Medecin Auxiliare.' Shrapnel began to break near them and they were forced to put in the next few minutes in a ditch. They were forced to lie down five times that morning in this ditch, half full of mud and water. The red-headed girls still c

o'clock. Kenyon plays the violin very well, and Day and Downs are at home with the piano. Toasts were drunk all the way fro

trenches, eight kilometers from our post. The car roc

of the roads leading to this village, and of the Ambulance itself, this evacuation has been effected night and da

il 26, five cars on duty. In those four days each man got seven

minutes, I smoking furiously, and the English nurse sin

hour. They took a minute and a half to arrive. The French outposts at the German lines telephoned that one was on its way, and the sirens of Dunkirk, twenty-one miles away, blew a warning. This gave the inhabitants a minute

them des

to see if any one had been hit. I had three dead men and ten terribly wounded-soldiers, civilians, women. The next d

s of 200 yards of the cars, with

l said of the Du

s, but always found one of

d in a Dunkirk hospital. One of

id the wounded man, f

e. The man was too far spent to ta

ez le

ered. It is difficult to put in public print what one comes to know about these young men of ours, for they are giving something besides effi

en driving up in the Alsace di

the war. The pleasantest thing that is going to happen to me when this thi

d let's have dinner together

on the mountain. Fran?ois is the second cook at the Kni

vice, Section Three. Ralph Blumenthal, the Princeton All-America foot

ame, Forty-fifth Count of the name, stooping at the left to repair