Our Part in the Great War

line, and five sections of the American Ambulance Field Service and the Harjes and the Norton Corps work from ten up to twenty hours of the day bringing in their comrades, the French w

hot up with shrapnel and s

of Saint Geoire. For nine centuries his family has been famous. The Duke is a kindly, middle-aged aristocrat, who is very helpful to the American Field Service. He takes the boys on visits to some one of his collection of chateaus. He drives Piatt Andrew on his tours of inspection. He is a gifted and furious driver, and on our dash from Paris to Verdun he burned up a couple of tires. It was a genial thing to see him, caked with

e muddy, unshaved, weary. A couple of base-ball gloves were lying around. One of the boys was repairing a car that had collided with a tree. There

ack and lay against the lung and stomach. The car was shattered. The next man found him. The wrecked car still stood on the road with a dead man in it, the wounded soldier whom he was bringing back. We saw Barbe

erience at Verdun is a continuation of the dangerous, brilliant work they have carried on for sixteen months. These men are veterans in service, tho

he great experiences of life. There was a tired but victori

aeroplanes, a very good-looking young man walked up. Only one thing about his

re. They burned it, cauterized it, wired it, knifed it, and pronounced it a thorough job. And as soon as it was cleaned up,

h a friend, but didn't like the first meal, so jumped overboard and swam back. He sailed by th

, just at the pocket, and just ov

ere else, say at the elbow, it would have been all right. But this neat little hole just

ocket a brown leather wallet. Through one flap the same shrapnel bullet h

t go anywhere," Pierce went on. He is

is left were killed. The stuff passed over his head as he knelt before a tire. The boys have been playing in luck. A dozen fat

e heart of that spark a man burning to death. The spark descended rather slowly, with a spiraling movement, and trailing the heavy smoke. It burned brightly all the way to the horizon line, where

s. So, after watering the car and shaking hands all around, we started off, and straightway the rear left tire went flat, and

ty of Verdun on the road going east to Fort de Tavannes. Wheat was ripening to the full crop in a hundred fi

rough twenty-one months of war. I had caught snatches of it at a dozen points along the line. I had eaten luncheon by a battery near Dixmude, but they were lazy, throwing a shell or two only for each course. But here, just before the sun came up,

oad is a thing of mounds and pits, blown up and dug out by a four months' rain of heavy shells. The little American cars are like rabbits. They dip into an obus hole, bounce up again and spi

hem a pile of stones and plaster, others almost untouched, with charming bits of water view and green lawns and immaculate white fronts. The city remin

e of German fire. But once the guns are f

eutenant and discussing the values of rhythm in prose when the boys shouted to us from the next field. An aeroplane was dipping over an anchored sausage-shaped observation balloon.

time and take ugly hazards and preserve a boy's humor. More young men of the same stuff are needed at once for this American Ambulance Field Service. The

s. More full sections of cars should be given. The work is in charge of Piatt Andrew, who used to teach political economy in Har

he American Ambulance Field Service from a smal

center of the deadliest action since men learned how to kill. The real Verdun is the focused strength of all France, flowing up the main roads, trickling down the side roads and overflowing upon the fields.

st in woods. The story goes in the field service that one of these wee trains runs along on a hillside, and just back of it is a battery of 220's which shoot straight across the tracks at a height of three f

se concourse of horses, the vast orderly tumult, thousands of mixed items, separate things and men, all shaped by one will to a common purpos

e of?" I kept saying t

ls, unpacked the snakes and freaks, and built its house from the ground up. Very swiftly the great tents were slung, and deftly the swinging trapezes were dropped. Ropes uncoiled into patterns. The three rings came full circle. Seats rose

" It was the perfect tribute. So I can give no clearer picture of what Pétain and his five fingers-the generals

Three-ton trucks pounded down upon it and the small cuss breezed round and came out the other side. The boys told me that one of our jitneys

where killing goes on. There is the smell of tumbled masonry and moldering flesh, the stillness that waits for fresh horror. Just as we left the village, the road narrowed down like the neck of a bottle. It is s

ough the seat at just the level of his head. If he had been sitting upright the bullet would have killed him.

," said my friend. "It mig

l we had gone

s our s

ply one more hole in the ground, an open mouth into an in

ting there, and two chaplains, one Protestant, one Roman Catholic. The Protestant was a short, energetic man in the early forties, with stubby black beard and excellent flow of English. The Roman Catholic, Cleret de Langavant, was white-haired, with a long white beard, a quite splendid old fellow with his courtesy and native dign

Red Cross room to the road. We were looking out on 500,000 men at war-not a man of them visible, but their machi

of the Verdun fighting. It was the wounded from Dead Man's Hill for whom we waited. Night by night the Americans wait the

other evening one of our men had his arm blown off while he was sitting

merican doctor

rchlights began to play. I counted eight at once, and more than twenty between the hills. Sometimes they ran up in parallel columns, banding the western heaven. Sometimes they located the knight errant and p

ight till it seemed as if it hit my face, then slowly fell. The German s

a voice out of the tunnel. A French

or a smoke. From the direction of Hill 304 heavy guns, perhaps 220's, thundered briefly. We could hear the drop of large shells in the distance. The Germans threw a few shells in the direction of the village through which we had driven, a few toward the battery back of us. We could hear the whistle of our shells traveling west and

t evening," s

ded with fireworks. It seemed to me a great affair. We spoke of it for days afterward. But here in front of us were twenty miles of exploding lights, a continuous performance for four

ame and said: "Let us go a

bent over to enter the earth cave. "I wil

door," he said; "we mu

om scooped out of the earth. The roof was so low that my casque struck it. A cot f

please use your pocket lamp; mine is getting low and I

e clergyman flashed it on a photog

merican girl from Bensonhurst, L

es from the London Daily Mail and the New York Tribune. One was

, "and this is my visiting card." From a pile

ation R

se of sickness or accident, I wish the visit of a Protestant pastor and the succor of his ministry whether I am undergoing treatment at

me. The little circular is devised by this c

wounded, one "lying case," three "sitting cases." We discharged them