IN June of 1915 John Paulding Brown, '14, recently returned from Europe, where he had been serving, first with the American Citizens' Relief Committee in London, and then with the motor corps of the American Ambulance Hospital in France and Belgium, was asked by the Harvard Alumni Bulletin to give some account of his experiences. He wrote as follows: (13)

Harvard has been well represented in France since the war began. Aside from the various surgical units sent out officially by the University there have been at least two score graduates and undergraduates who at one time or another during the winter have been in the service of the American Hospital of Paris.

Since September I have been driving one of the ambulances attached to this hospital, working with the British and French armies.

On September 7 we made the first of a series of interesting trips into the environs of Paris, following up the armies as they advanced toward the Aisne. For several weeks we were busy along the Marne gathering in wounded and bringing them back to Paris, till the battles rolled away so far that it was impossible to get any wounded men back to Paris.

Then came a period of three months with the British in northern France, at Neuve Chapelle, and in January we were first attached to the 8th French Army, operating in Belgium.

Probably the most interesting period of all began in April, when we were first sent to Ypres to do the work of a section of military ambulances which had been ordered to another part of the line. We were attached to a field hospital established in a little château near Ypres, and here we stayed for several weeks, until a shell hit the hospital one night and we had to move the entire outfit.

During these weeks at the "petit château," as it was universally called, we worked chiefly at night, going to the first field dressing stations and bringing up the men who had been hit during the day. These dressing stations were always placed in some convenient farmhouse close to the front. At one place, we had to pass within four hundred yards of the German trenches to reach one of them. We always waited until it was dark, and then, one by one, we would start off for the dressing stations. The roads in the region near the trenches are in bad shape, being continually under shell fire, and as we could not have any lights, driving was often very difficult. Several of the cars tumbled into shell holes, and one time we had to abandon a car for two days as the enemy's fire made it impossible to work on it by daylight. However, considering that our cars were doing the same work which in other parts of the line was done by horse-drawn ambulances, we were unusually fortunate. Our American cars were the only motor vehicles which ever travelled along these roads.

The men whom we picked up at the dressing stations were carried back about two miles, well out of riflefire, to the divisional field hospitals. Here they could be operated on, if necessary, before being sent along another six miles to the town from which the hospital trains started.

Almost every night we found wounded German prisoners at the field dressing stations, and those men were treated with every consideration by the French surgeons. All the time I was there I never saw anything but the most generous treatment of prisoners. The French were splendid in the way they looked after wounded Germans, drenched as they were in the blood of Frenchmen. To the army surgeons all wounded are alike.

I remember particularly a German who was brought in one evening by one of our cars. He had been lying between the trenches for four days, and was captured when the French advanced that afternoon. Four days and three nights in the open, under a pouring rain, with a fractured thigh and two serious wounds on his head, had not overcome this soldier; he lay perfectly still on the operating table and never murmured while they cut off his clothes. It was always like this; the German wounded were close rivals to the French in the way they took their pain.

After each attack our work naturally increased, and at such times as during the big attacks of April we were kept busy night and day. On April 24 the poison gas was first used against the French; our little château was full to overflowing for six days, and several nights the grounds of the place were covered with stretchers on which lay the victims of the gas, coughing, and gasping for breath, soaked through after hours of rain. But by morning they would be all cleared away; except those who stayed in the orchard behind the château under rows of little wooden crosses. And then each evening it would begin all over again. This, however, was only the situation in times of very heavy fighting.

No one can go to France without coming back filled with admiration for the way the nation is behaving during these tragic days. Every man and woman in the country seems to be fired with a holy zeal for a war which for them is one of liberty or of annihilation. They are fighting off the invader, and a defeat means the downfall of everything they hold worth while in life. So they set themselves to the task with a resolute sternness which is magnificent to see, confident of final victory, and with it an enduring peace for France and for all of Europe.

THE period covered by the preceding report --- that of the first spring-time in France at war --- is vividly illustrated in a passage from another ambulance driver, Dallas D. L. McGrew, '03, to a friend and teacher in Cambridge. Here the country-side, with its scenes of peace persisting through the sounds of warfare, is spread before the seeing eye.

THIS morning, Sunday the 14 Mars, two of the boys and I took a walk out of the St. Just en-chaussée road, North-East, to see some newly made trenches. The country is exactly like the Valley of Virginia, lacking only the marginal mountains---fertile and splendidly tilled. Five kilometres out of Beauvais in the middle of a swell of ploughed land were the deadly ditches, wattle-walled, with latrines, drains, covered restrooms, and emplacements for mitrailleuses. A hundred metres off they are practically invisible in the sprouting wheat. It was warm and misty, the rhythmic line of trimmed slender trees along the Amiens road quite dim, and wooded hills here and there faint blue in the landscape. Ploughing was going steadily on against the sky-lines, and the whole tender world was flooded by the songs of larks, singing almost frantically. Along the straight road passed an occasional hooded cart with good country people tous endimanchés, and obviously in the state that R. L. S. called "sabbatical vacuity," and consciously virtuous and contented. But all the while you could hear a deep periodic grumbling, way off to the eastward, that sounded like the muttering of a storm. It was the big guns near Roye and Lassigny, twenty-five miles over the waking fields --almost inconceivable --- a strange mixture of heaven and hell. Within a few days now we may move up to it, and then it will be feverish work, mainly at night, driving up unlighted roads to the field dressing stations, getting our gruesome cargoes and wallowing back --dodging ammunition trains of charging great motors, as well as hurrying columns of infantry and artillery --hub-deep in mud, blindly, to the evacuation hospitals at the nearest railway point. Over and over again till daylight, when we shall sleep, patch our racked ambulances, refill with oil and essence, and prepare for the next night's work It's inglorious, unseen drudgery, and wholly necessary. There's no place in it for the man who wants a personally conducted tour of the battle-fields, or a sight of the locked, fighting men. But for the man who is ready to help, obscurely, but faithfully, we have great need, as well as for more cars.

THOUGH the motor corps of the American Ambulance Hospital in Paris has received the service of a greater number of Harvard men than any other single agency of relief, there has been since the early months of the War an entirely separate organization, the American Volunteer Motor-Ambulance Corps, which has owed its existence and conduct to a single Harvard man, Richard Norton, '92, and has made for itself and its director an enviable record. This corps began its work under the joint auspices of the British Red Cross and the St. John Ambulance. It was thus primarily an offering of American aid to the English cause. As the War proceeded, it became desirable, under the British Army regulations, to transfer the association of the corps to the American Red Cross, and to place its service at the disposal of the French Army. It is now, therefore, a militarized corps serving a definite division of one of the armies of France. Mr. Norton has received the Croix de Guerre for the work he has done, and after the Champagne battle of September, 1915, was mentioned in the following terms in the orders of the day in the French Army corps to which his ambulance service is attached:

Richard Norton, adjoint au Commandant de la Section Sanitaire Anglo-Américaine pendant les combats du 25 Sept. et des jours suivants, a fait preuve du plus grand dévouement et du plus beau courage, en conduisant lui-même ses voitures de jour et de nuit dans les zones dangereuses et en donnant à toute sa section l'exemple d'une endurance poussée jusqu' à l'épuisement de ses forces.

(Signé:) Le Gen'l. Com. la 2me Armée.

PÉTAIN.

A short and a long letter to his brother, Eliot Norton, '85, present a picture of a single day's work and a review of what the corps accomplished in the course of its first year, and especially in the battle which brought forth the recognition just cited. A later recognition, appearing among the Citations à l'Ordre de l'Armée" in Le Gaulois for July 10, 1916, had reference to the work of the corps as a whole. It read as follows:

LA SECTION SANITAIRE AUTOMOBILE AMERICAINE, No. 7, (sous les ordres de son chef, M. Norton, a fait, depuis plus de vingt mois, constamment preuve de l'esprit de sacrifice le plus complet. A rendu les plus grands services à la division à laquelle elle est attachée en assurant la relève des blessés dans les meilleures conditions. Il n'est plus un seul de ses membres qui ne soit un modèle de sang-froid et d'abnégation. Plusieurs d'entre eux ont été blessés).

June 7, 1915.

THE biggest battle I've yet seen is under way, and we are in the thick of it. It is now 8 A.M. and I've been here since 4. The French are pounding the bottom out of the world in front, and the Boches are doing their best to reply. I write at the dug out at the entrance to the trenches where the wounded wait for us. Batteries are around us and along the road we follow to the hospital. One is some fifty yards from the dug out, and the Boches are trying to find it not entirely unsuccessfully, for about fifty yards from us there has just fallen a shell.

We have three groups of four cars out on this work today; the others are doing the regular evacuations and service de garde --- so we are furiously occupied. Back again from the hospital and waiting for the car to be loaded. It is a wonderful, brilliant summer day, but a strange haze from the bursting shells and torn earth hangs heavily over the fields. The roads are hidden in the clouds of dust raised by the constant tramp of thousands of men and by the shells of the ammunition wagons. There are some mules, too, bringing up the mitrailleuses.

Later. Things are going well. We have taken three trenches and there are pas mal de prisonniers. The poor wounded men we carry are amazingly patient and uncomplaining. In fact, almost the only ones who even murmur are those who have gone out of their minds, and there are but few of these. The prisoners look a bit cast down, but otherwise bear themselves like men and are treated absolutely well. Only one seemed scared, and he was a boy, and wounded at that: he felt better when I told him nobody wanted to scalp him.

We are under a tree now surrounded by a group of some twenty women of the village, stretcher-bearers, and the doctor who manages our dug out. The bombardment is lessening and there are no wounded for the moment.

A couple of batteries of big guns (220) are booming, and their shells shudder over our heads. It's curious to note the different sound different sized shells make. These "220's" sound exactly like a big Catherine wheel when it begins to revolve --- the same jirky whirr. If you are sufficiently near you don't notice this, as I perceived this morning when one that was hidden not fifteen feet from the road I was travelling went off exactly as I passed. I thought the Boches had got me. Taken all in all, it is the most tremendous and interesting and horrible spectacle one could imagine. Overhead the aeroplanes, surrounded by the beautiful, long-lasting puffs of heavy white smoke, the horizon line a few kilometres away---one long string of black or white geysers of smoke according to the sort of shell that explodes, and nearby the volleying, booming, whirring batteries, the ambulances, the fresh and the tired troops, the uncomplaining, pain-sick wounded, and the magnificent, cool, patient, heroic doctors. The Devil take the Boches, but I feel man is a pretty fine piece of work.

Back again to our home camp at Baizieux, all safe and sound, rather to my surprise, as we had a decidedly sultry time this afternoon. As a memento I have a large hunk of a shell which exploded just over the roof of the dug out while I was inside. For some hours the shells were going off all round us making us run for the dug out if near enough, and do a powerful lot of trying to shrink up if we were a few yards too far off to do the rabbit trick. One of the cars got hit by a bit of splintered wood. That was the only real casualty, though some of the cars suffered from being kept going too many hours without a stop.

I must stop now and arrange for tomorrow when we shall probably be very busy again, though doing the night-work. Tonight we were relieved by some French cars. We are all all right, but I want some more volunteers.

P.S. Have just got our lists in, and find we carried just over six hundred today.

LACROIX, CHAMPAGNE,
October 14, 1915.

MY DEAR ELIOT: You will know by this time from letters I have written to L----, that we have been in the midst of the Champagne battle, and you will easily imagine that there has been no time to write to you any careful account of our work, such as I now wish to do.

For the moment the 11th Corps is en repos, after having borne the brunt of the fighting, so that we have a few days in which to rest ourselves, fix up the cars, and gather together various loose ends of work.

As it is just a year since the Corps came into being, it is worth remembering what we started from and what we have developed into. Notwithstanding errors of judgment or accidents, we have accomplished good work. A year ago we started from London with our cars, and not much more than hope for a bank balance. We were wanderers searching for work. During this year we have grown into a corps consisting now of some sixty cars, to which the St. John Ambulance and Red Cross Societies render any assistance we ask, and instead of wondering where we were to find occupation the French authorities have intrusted us with the whole ambulance service of the 11th Army corps . . . . We have carried during the year just under twenty-eight thousand cases, and during the days from the 25th of September to the 9th of October, our cars relieved the sufferings of over six thousand individuals.

You have been kept fairly well informed of the general course of our work through the summer. Our last very busy time was, as you know, at Hébuterne. This was followed by some weeks of less exciting, but equally necessary, work. In the middle of August we were ordered from the region of Amiens to Châlons-sur-Marne, where the recent fine advance has been made. The work here, owing to the nature of the country is much more difficult than it was before. It is a chalky, deserted region, with but few poverty-stricken villages. In large measure these were entirely or mostly destroyed during the Battle of the Marne. For this reason the housing of the volunteers, and the garaging of the cars is by no means easy to arrange. As a matter of fact, the cars stand in the open fields or in the pine woods, where aeroplanes cannot see them, and at present all our men are under canvas.

An account of what we have had to do since the Battle of Champagne began will make clear to you the general circumstances of our work, the irregularities of it, the difficulties of it, and the satisfaction of it. For some weeks before the recent battle began, we knew from all sorts of evidence that a big movement was on foot. The movements of troops by night and day, the great numbers of aeroplanes and captive balloons, and general rumor, all pointed to this. It was not, however, until we were sent from the region of Amiens to this district that we knew where the attack was to be made. And it was not until we had been some three weeks stationed within a few miles of the line here, that we had any inkling as to exactly when, or at exactly what spot, the blow would be delivered.

For two weeks before the battle began we had been stationed at Somme Vesle, a small village some fifteen miles behind the trenches. When, however, we were sent forward our base became the village of La Croix in Champagne, where two large hospitals had been erected. Seven of the ambulances were stationed here to do the work of these hospitals, two others were placed at Somme Tourbe where are other hospitals, and where the trains come, five were sent to La Salle, a village beyond Somme Tourbe, one to St. Jean still nearer the lines, and finally two groups of seven each (afterwards increased to ten or more according to the needs) were sent to the woods where we camped out in tents and dug outs and carried the wounded of the 21st and 22nd Divisions from trenches Nos. 7 and, which had been dug for the purpose of bringing them out of the firing line.

The whole countryside had been most carefully prepared. One main road had been cut from St. Jean over the rolling chalk hills to the villages of Herlus and Mesnil, which were between the French batteries and the front trenches, and from which other roads ran further north. Besides this main road, there were many tracks and trails over the chalk desert, and these, as the days passed, became more and more clearly marked. This main road and the tracks were all very well while the weather was good, but the instant the rain began to fall, which it did the first day of the battle, and continued off and on for many days, they became as near impassable as could be. It was not only the enormous amount of traffic which made driving difficult, but the slightest rain turns this chalky soil into a mixture so slippery that a car standing quiet on the crown of the road would not infrequently slide gently but surely into the gutter, which was of course deep in mud. At night we had to drive without lights, which increased our difficulties. That none of the ambulances were bagged or seriously injured speaks well for the driving of both volunteers and chauffeurs.

Besides the making of the road above mentioned, which is called the Piste Grosetti, narrow-gauge railways had been laid to carry munitions and other supplies to the fighting line, and for miles the land was scored with deep-dug trenches. These had been placed most carefully, so that, for example, the "brancardiers" brought the wounded from the firing line by one trench and returned by another. All praise should be given these brancardiers, who for the first days had often to bring the wounded on stretchers or two-wheeled "brouettes" several kilometres. Alter the first day we began to push the ambulances further to the front, for the roads and trails were no longer under rifle fire, though subjected to frequent shelling. For three days before the 25th of September an incessant cannonade, continued by night and day, showed that the region round Tahure was the one selected for attacking the Germans. It was on the twenty-fourth that we received final orders to move up to the lines, and to station our cars at the field hospitals and the trenches. We sorted out the cars and men according to their various capacities for the work, as far as we could foresee it. I took one group on the night of the twenty-fourth up to the lines. The other trench group was in charge of Messrs. J. B. Barrington and J. H. Phelps, two splendid workers and delightful gentlemen, and while during the following days I kept an eye on their group as well as on my own, I did so, not because of the faintest lack of confidence in their management, but merely because I was responsible, of course, for the general running of the work, and because I talk French more easily than they do. But even on the days when it was impossible for me to see them, I never had the slightest feeling that they would not manage as well as was humanly possible.

Before we actually took up our positions I had been over the ground to get the lay of the land, to see where the various trails --- they were scarcely more --- led to, in order to know how best to direct the ambulances on their various errands. The country was absolutely packed; I can scarcely find any word to suggest a picture of how packed it was with troops and munition trains. There was every sort and description. On the rolling land, over which the trenches, cut in through chalk soil, ran like great white snakes, the batteries of every sized gun were innumerable. I cannot tell you how many guns there were, but, in a radius of half a mile from where my ambulances stood the first night, there were at least a dozen batteries of various calibres, and they were no thicker there than anywhere else. We tried to sleep on the stretchers for an hour or two before dawn of the twenty-fifth, but when you have a battery of "150's" coughing uninterruptedly within less than one hundred yards of where you are resting, to say nothing of other guns to right and to left of you, one's repose is decidedly syncopated. On the morning of the twenty-fifth the cannonade slackened, and we knew afterwards that the three previous days' work had battered the German lines into a shapeless mass, and that the French infantry had made good the chance they had been patiently waiting for all summer of proving to the world their ability to beat the Germans.

It is curious to realize how little one knew of what was going on, though one was in the midst of the fighting. Even the soldiers could tell you practically nothing. We could only judge from scattered bits of evidence, such as the movements of the balloons and batteries, that everything was going well, as you already know by the newspapers it did. It is entertaining to read the accounts of one or two newspaper correspondents who were allowed after the fight to go over the won trenches. One of these wrote an account in the London Morning Post, that in a way was very good, but no one of us who was here all through the battle thought it took place as the correspondent described it. He certainly speeded things up considerably. We are in no position to tell what troops did the best work, but every one knows that the Colonials under General Marchand did splendidly, as did the 11th corps which was along side them.

It is curious that only three or four incidents of the twelve hard days' work stand out clearly in my mind. The rest is but a hazy memory of indistinguishable nights and days, cold and rain, long rows of laden stretchers waiting to be put into the cars, wavering lines of less seriously wounded hobbling along to where we were waiting, sleepy hospital orderlies, dark underground chambers in which the doctors were sorting out and caring for the wounded, and an unceasing noise of rumbling wagons, whirring aeroplanes, distant guns coughing and nearby ones crashing, shells bursting and bullets hissing. Out of this general jumble of memory one feature shines out steadily clear; it is of the doctors. Patient, indefatigable, tender, encouraging and brave in the most perfect way, they were everywhere in the forefront and seemingly knew not what fatigue meant. There were the two divisional doctors, Vachaise and Couillaud, who besides attending to their manifold duties did everything possible to render our work successful. There were MM. Nieger and Daunoy, heads of the hospitals at Croix in Champagne and Somme Tourbe, who saw to it that at any hour of the day or night there was something hot for us to eat and drink and looked after any of us who were knocked up. There was M. Deschamps who helped Barrington and Phelps. Then there was L'hoste, my friend of Hébuterne days, who with his corps of assistants and brancardiers was always encouraging his men, who were in danger the whole time, by an example of cool courage and intelligent, quick work that could not be surpassed. If the nurses are the angels of this war, these doctors are the apostles "who lift up this world and carry it to God." Doubtless there are others on the other side of the line, but those mentioned I have seen and known.

One of the incidents I have referred to which stands out clearly in my mind is of a nightmare drive to Herlus. I received orders late one evening to take two cars to this village at 1 A.M. Not being able to find the divisional doctor to tell him that I considered it impossible to take ambulances by night, without lights, in the pouring rain over the shell-holed road which led to the village, I had to try it. Mr. Joseph Whitwell with his car and chauffeur accompanied me. On my car, I had George Tate, a most capable man. As he is a better driver than I am, he held the wheel while I (so it seems now) spent my whole time wading through knee-deep mud trying, by the faint light of an electric lamp, to find the way round shell-holes and bogs, or pushing the car out of the gutter. It shows how difficult the journey was that to cover the six kilometres there and back took us two hours and a half. We had the satisfaction of getting the wounded safely to the hospitals, and perhaps it was not entirely low-minded of us to be pleased next morning when we heard that some French cars had refused to make the same journey.

Another very distinct memory is of a morning spent with Mr. Joseph Phelps in a dug out at Perthes, the village where the advanced French lines were the first day. We had been sending cars to the village for two or three days, though the Germans still occasionally shelled it, but one evening, hearing they had begun again, I had a strong feeling that the position I had picked for the cars was insecure. It was all right for the men who could go to earth, but they couldn't take the cars with them, and our service would have been hampered had the latter been blown up. So at dawn Phelps and I took the ambulance down to the village, and left it a couple of hundred yards outside the ruins of the place, where the banks of a trench gave it some protection. Then we walked down to the poste de secours to tell the doctor in charge where the car was to be found when he needed it. There were one or two slightly wounded, and, while we were waiting for others, the Germans began to shell a battery which was some forty yards directly behind the poste de secours. For a short time they threw small shells and shrapnel at us, but as they hadn't got the range, everyone went on with his ordinary occupations, the most ordinary being rolling cigarettes. In fact, if the American Tobacco Kings had any sense of justice, they'd give me the best ambulance to be bought to make up for the cigarettes we smoked that morning. It wasn't long before the Germans corrected their range, and then they began to send over big shells which drove us rapidly underground, blew up a horse ambulance just beside us, filled the entrance to our cave with dirt and splinters, and made us wonder just how long our luck would last. However, they did no damage to the battery, which continued to give as good as it got; so the Germans, apparently tiring of the game, tried to smother us with gas-shells. We fixed masks on the wounded and on ourselves, and after about two hours the Boches let up and we were able to take a long breath and express our feelings of the man who invented this dirty way of fighting. Nobody was really any the worse for the experience, though our throats and eyes troubled us for a day or two. When, however, the chance came to call up the ambulance and take the wounded, I found that a large shell had exploded exactly on the spot where on the foregoing days I had stationed the cars. So far during this fight not a car has been injured by bullet or shell, except one which received a slight hole from a hand grenade which an over-excited Frenchman threw down in a stable yard, and thereby wounded some of his companions.

Still another picture that rises in my mind, as I write, is of one cloudy morning, when, after a very tiring night, I was sitting on the roadside watching a rather heavy bombardment near by, and suddenly through the din rose the sweet clear notes of a shepherd's pipe. It was the same reed-pipe I have heard so often on the hills of Greece and Asia Minor, and the same sweetly-sad, age-old shepherd music telling of Pan and the Nymphs, and the asphodel meadows where Youth lies buried. The piper was an ordinary piou-piou, a simple fantasin, mon vieux Charles, with knapsack on back, rifle slung over his shoulder and helmet on head strolling down to the valley of death a few hundred yards beyond. Nor is this the only music I have heard. One night a violin sounded among the pines which shelter our tents, and I strolled over to find a blue-clad Orpheus easing the pain of the wounded and numbing the fatigue of the brancardiers with bits of Chopin and Schubert and Beethoven.

Such are some of the impressions of the battle seen from this side of the line. Others I have formed since the main fight ceased, in the lines previously held by the Germans. I went over some of their trenches the other day and have never seen anything so horrible. Although, as prisoners have told us, they knew they were to be attacked, they had no idea that the attack would be anything like so severe as it was. Those I have talked to said it was awful, and that they were glad to be out of it. Their trenches were very elaborately constructed, many of the dug outs being fitted up with considerable furniture, the dwellers evidently having no notion they would be hurriedly evicted. After the bombardment there was nothing left of all this careful work. The whole earth was torn to pieces. It looked as though some drunken giant had driven his giant plough over the land. In the midst of an utterly indescribable medley of torn wire, broken wagons, and upheaved timbers, yawned here and there chasms like the craters of small volcanoes, where mines had been exploded. It was an ashen gray world, distorted with the spasms of death --- like a scene in the moon. Except for the broken guns, the scattered clothing, the hasty graves, the dead horses and other signs of human passage, no one could have believed that such a place had ever been anything but dead and desolate. The rubbish still remained when I was there, but masses of material had been already gathered up and saved.

The following notice, issued to the army on October 1st will give you a notion of the vast quantities of material that were captured.

GROUP OF THE ARMIES OF THE CENTRE
(Bulletin of Information. To be distributed to the Troops)

In the battles of the 25th, 26th, 27th, and 28th of September, 1915, we took 20,000 prisoners, of whom 18,000 were not wounded; we captured from the Germans 121 cannon, of which 34 were of large calibre, without counting trench cannon (bombthrowers, etc.).

These cannon will be placed upon the Esplanade of the Invalides.

We have taken a great number of rapid-firing guns, and material of all kinds,

We will do still better in the future, and we will gloriously avenge our dead.

In this notice no mention is made of some very interesting gas machines that were taken. They were of two sorts, one for the production of gas, the other to counteract its effects. The latter were rather elaborate and heavy but very effective instruments consisting of two main parts; one to slip over the head, protecting the eyes and clipping the nose, the other an arrangement of bags and bottles containing oxygen, which the wearer inhaled through a tube held in the mouth. There were several forms of these apparatuses, but the most interesting point to note about them is that one had stamped upon it the words: "Type of 1914---developed from type of 1912, developed from type of 1908," thus showing that seven years ago the Germans had decided to fight with gas.

Of the men who were with us during this time it is impossible to say that one did more than another. All worked with unflagging energy and zeal. Though their food was irregular and their sleep scanty, they bore their trials with a good-humoured steadiness that made one's own work easy. Of the volunteers probably J. B. Barrington, the two Whitwells, the two Phelps, Bucknall, and Coatsworth did the hardest work. Of the chauffeurs Reeves, Tate, Gibson, and Baker (an ex-captain of the Army Service Corps, and of whom I shall certainly have more to say if he stays with us) were untiring and most helpful. In fact, everyone worked absolutely to his limit.

There is little more to tell you. Our 11th Corps has been withdrawn for a short time to rest, and this gives us time to make up our lost sleep and get the cars in good condition for the next heavy work.

Your loving brother,

DICK.

THE work of the fighting men, and of those who care for their broken bodies, is but a part of the story of modern warfare. The setting for the offerings of life must be prepared more carefully than any stage scene. In a diary kept by F. C. Baker, '12, of the Cyclist Service in the British Army, published in the Harvard Graduates' Magazine, a picture of the hard physical labor involved in the making of trenches, and of the conditions under which the work is done, may be found.

About June 10, 1915.(14)

WE have been kept well occupied, supplying working parties to assist "sappers." The work we have been doing has been mostly on one small part of the line, where there is a very pronounced local salient. Across this salient a second line of trenches is being made in case of any need of giving up the apex of the salient. A line of this sort is known as a "switch," and it more or less cuts along the salient and joins up with the present fire-trenches on either side. Most nights we have been working on this switch, either digging or improving trenches, or putting up wire or carrying up material. Some of the ground covered by this line can be seen from the German line, so work cannot be carried on there by day; moreover, an aeroplane would soon spot any working party and have it shelled right away. Being able to work only by dark has meant regular hours, almost like the routine hours of a peace-time job. We start off in the evening in time to get our digging tools and get up to the work just as sufficient darkness arrives to afford cover, and leave again as the first light begins to show itself. This "switch" is by no means healthy, as it is very liberally distributed by all the bullets coming over our fire-trenches from the other side. Such fire is called "overs," and, of course, is not aimed at one, but is just as good at doing damage, when it hits, as aimed fire might be. Being a salient, the middle part of the ground gets overs from the flanks as well as the front. If there is a lot of fire corning from the German trenches, we have to quit work until it cools down a bit. It is rather a thankless job, it seems to me, as we are losing quite a few men at it, and get very little in return but candid criticism from rather self-satisfied R. E. subalterns.

On the other hand, there are most distinct and pleasant advantages attached to it. There is a pleasant ride back in the early hours of morning, some welcome sleep, and then the day to one's self. When carrying stuff up to the "switch," we ride to an R. E. dump or store, load limbers with the required material, go with the limbers as far as it is safe for them to go (which is about a mile and a half behind the lines), and then unload the stuff. Each man takes as much as he can carry, and the journey is made to the place where the stuff is wanted. It is slow going, some of it through communication-trenches, and usually only about four journeys can be made, at the most, before dawn appears. I will try to describe the surroundings, seen as our party is digging. The line of the fire-trenches for miles around can be made out by the flares which continually go up (a kind of rockets fired from a pistol, which give out a ball of bright light as they burst in the air and show the ground in front of the trenches to those holding them). You can see that the line here forms a rough arc of an arch. There is the continuous noise of rifle-fire from the trenches around and the curious snaps like small explosions which bullets make as they come past when they have been fired from not very far away, the noise of an occasional trench-mortar firing, and perhaps some guns firing and shells bursting on one side or the other. A "flare" will go up close at hand, and it will show for a second the ground around one --- long grass, broken trenches here and there, with the earth from them piled in front or behind, mostly old trenches, some fairly straight and some zigzag communication-trenches. There is a short glimpse of the trench we are working, with our men outlined in it, putting up sandbags or filling them, or digging at the sides or bottom of the trench, all bending as low as they can to keep out of harm's way, then beyond them, perhaps, some barbed wire as far as one can see for the moment, or the ruins of a cottage.

Our track, when carrying material, has often taken us through the remains of a little village. This village must have been very beautiful at one time, with a quaint little main street and a church in the middle of it. We have been through it on more than one night when the moon has been very bright, and in such a light its ruins were a weird and quite a picturesque sight.

THE following letter differs from its fellows, in this collection, in that it was written, not by a participant, but by an observer of an important branch of relief work in France, in which Harvard men have borne a leading part. In October of 1915, Langdon Warner, '03, recently returned from France, was asked to contribute to the Harvard Alumni Bulletin an account of the work of the American Distributing Service, and his letter appeared in the issue of October 20. It has the advantage of saying what Cross and Greeley and the others would never have said for themselves. One of them, in a private letter near the beginning of the war, wrote in a vein so characteristic of the spirit which took many men to Europe and kept others there that a few of his words may well be cited:

I hope at least I can speak of my desire to help, without sounding as if I overestimated its value. Everything has some importance, and I should hate to think of going home to an ordinary life while there is a chance to do my share.

Don't think I am trying to be heroic! I am just finding out how strong my feelings are for right and justice. I wish I could tell you of something certain or already accomplished, but I can only hope to explain to you why I don't come home.

Warner's letter is as follows:(15)

You asked me for a word to the Bulletin about Harvard men in France and something of the work they are doing. There are many there ---with the army and out of it --- doing all sorts of things under different organizations, as well as privately. One could not see a tenth of the number.

The little group that I saw most included several Harvard men. They have been doing work which is so important that their friends at home should know more about it. As I write this, comes the shocking news that my classmate Bob Cross is dead, and Russell Greeley, '01, lies in hospital with a broken hip; they were on duty, hurrying supplies to a French hospital. Last night came a cablegram from the remaining four in their distribution service telling of the pressing need for supplies and money, most of all money, to meet the needs of the thousands of wounded left behind by the new offensive action of the last fortnight.

Briefly, this is what these few Americans have been doing for the last fourteen months. Organized by the wife of Robert Woods Bliss, '00, they have used funds supplied by her for the instant relief of the most obvious necessities in the hospitals of France. They call themselves the American Distributing Service. The work has been done in a way that has entirely won the hearts of the French, and they have managed to avoid appearing as critics of the volunteer and army hospitals and the other services.

The French organizations are admirable and have proved their adaptability, since the terrible times after the victory of the Marne, to the present. These young men have been a part of it all, and have been permitted to carry a burden which, except in times of unbelievable stress, would never have been trusted to foreigners. The Ministry of War had sent a circular letter to the hospitals of France giving the staffs permission to tell their needs to the American Distributing Service.

The hospitals have been personally visited by members of the Service, and in the Paris headquarters are the detailed reports concerning them, a bulky set of folders, growing weekly, with added lists of supplies that have been hurried out to each. This headquarters, given the American Distributing Service by the Paris Préfet de Police, has been turned into a great depot for materials; but the most impressive thing about it to the visitor is that the shelves are for the most part empty. In these days supplies are not kept long on hand. The floors above are turned into living rooms for refugees, and in another part the homeless women work on shirts and bandages and pyjamas made from cloth supplied by the Distributing Committee, who turn them over to the hospitals as soon as they are finished.

Surgical instruments, bolts of cloth, sacks of sugar and coffee, hospital socks and slippers, and bales of underclothes are barely sorted before they are away on one of the overworked motors, either direct to a nearby hospital or to the railway where they are carried free on government pass to more distant points.

Four of the staff are continually on the road visiting hospitals and keeping in touch with their requirements, writing or telegraphing back to headquarters for urgently needed shipments. All work is done in French, by Americans so thoroughly in touch with the country they serve that there is no hitch, no sense of patronizing outside aid for a proud and sensitive people. Best of all there is no red tape. The staff can buy in Paris what they decide to give away, and the money is accounted for on their own carefully-kept books. That is why they want funds which are readily convertible into supplies of any sort, though they are glad to get bolts of cloth suitable for shirts and pyjamas, or gauze and cotton and antiseptics.

I have by me, as I write, ninety-nine pages of typewritten statistics covering the distribution during last August alone, when 44,587 articles were sent out, including material for operating rooms, surgical instruments, clothing of all kinds, sterilizing apparatus, bandages, linen, etc. The list of hospitals helped is now well over seven hundred, and the committee are getting into touch with fresh ones every day.

There is no other organization in France on the same footing, and no other American organization for hospital relief was formed so early. They have been hard at work since August, 1914.

Other Americans are doing work more exciting, and more dramatic, and better known: but it would be difficult to find any group of men who are rendering better service behind the scenes. The most cautious international lawyer could not accuse them of violating letter or spirit of our carefully studied American neutrality by their ministrations.

Now comes the news that Bob Cross, '03, is killed on duty, and Russell Greeley, '01,(16) is disabled, but the service is going on full blast. There has been no public appeal for money, but three weeks ago they told me that they are now reaching the point where such an appeal must be made if the work is to be kept up.

I should like to write of Bob Cross ---perhaps the most conscientious fellow we knew --- who, after exploring and hunting on repeated dangerous expeditions in the Arctic, met death on a French highway rushing supplies to the wounded. But this work of his and of his friends speaks clearly enough for Harvard College to know the rest.

[The personnel of the American Distributing Service has been as follows: Russell H. Greeley, '01, Director (disabled); Geoffrey Dodge (Yale), Secretary; Horace B. Stanton, '00; B. B. Moore; Gerland Beadel; Charles Robert Cross, Jr., '03 (killed).]

ANOTHER letter to the Bulletin, this time from an active worker with the motor service of the American Ambulance Hospital, brought the welcome intelligence that Harvard men were meeting in a spirit of Harvard fellowship, even near to the battle-line. On February 12, 1916, Stephen Galatti, '10, wrote from Paris as follows: (17)

THE Harvard Club of Alsace Reconquise came into being on the night before the Yale football game and performed, as such, three official acts, namely: to send a telegram to Percy Haughton(18) advising him how to beat Yale by Joffre tactics; secondly, to drink the health of the team after said game; thirdly, to have their photograph taken. The first act was censored by unsympathetic officials, the second was successful, and the third I enclose for your judgment.

The reason for bringing this to your notice is that it may perhaps show you that Harvard is playing an important rôle in the work of the American Ambulance Field Service. There have been seventy-three Harvard men so far associated with it, and, as it happens, the largest proportion have been with the Section working in Alsace. This Section was sent there in April, and after ten months service has been transferred to another army. While there, it had the opportunity, owing to the character of the country, to become the pioneer in evacuating wounded over those mountains by automobiles, the little Ford cars replacing mules, as fast as an extra few feet could be added to the width of the paths. In June, during an attack, the Section proved that an efficient evacuation of wounded could be made over one mountain road, and later, in October, and again in December, at Hartmanswillerkopf was able to cope with the difficult conditions. In the period between these attacks the daily service over many mountain roads, covered with mud, snow, or ice, was performed regularly, and reduced the hours of transport for the wounded in one run from five to two hours, and in others from three to less than one hour.

With the moving of the Section to another army, the Harvard Club of Alsace Reconquise ends its active career (but expects to have even more active meetings in New York or Boston). It was perhaps only a name, but its members enjoyed the name as signifying that Harvard was there too in reconquered territory, and they feel that its unique position among many Harvard Clubs may interest your readers.

R. Lawrence, '02, with D. D. L. McGrew, '03, and Lovering Hill, '10, as assistants, was Section-leader from April to July; on the departure of the former two, L. Hill, '10, with H. M. Suckley, '10, Durant Rice, '12, and A. G. Carey, '14, as assistants, was appointed to its head.

The following is a list of members:

THOUGH the letter from Waldo Peirce, '07, to Professor C. T. Copeland, from which the ensuing passages are taken, bears a later date --May 1, 1916 --- than that of some which follow, it describes the scene in which the Harvard Club of Alsace Reconquise had its being. It is accordingly printed here --- not only for its revelation of the activities of members of this unique Harvard Club, but also for its vivid picture of nature torn asunder by war.

I SPENT the winter in Haute Alsace --- around a certain old nubbin---"a protuberance of terra firma," à la Dr. Johnson --- called Hartmanswillerkopf. I wish to God I were still there. When I was there I usually wished I were anywhere else in the world. The bottom of a sewer to the armpits and over in liquid manure would have seemed a wholesome and savory situation provided the sewer were profound enough and the manure resistant enough to defy obus, and all their kind. To see the old nubbin itself --- spur of the Vosges concealed between the parallel spurs --- one must grind up the old mule paths --- since broadened into fair wood roads --- quite close. Leave the main artillery, go out towards a battery or observation "poste," crawl into an old shell hole, and where the trees have snapped like straws to the obus, take a good look through. Below you are still trees, but as the ground rises au face, they dwindle and disappear, as disappears all vegetation in great altitudes, or diminish towards the north --- quietly, quietly towards the icefields. Here, however, no great altitude, nor any ice-fields. First come the maimed trees, then the skeletons of those dead with their boots on, then a bare stump or two --- a few ankle bones --- then nothing. Before the war all was forest ---and a damned thick one at that. Then, all our timber, grown to its prime, lulled into a false security, sun-basking en beau temps, buffeting and jostling their neighbors in the wind --crash one day out of a clear sky! . . . The nubbin, the old ridge, the spur, the razor-back, whatever you call it, loses its pelt; after its pelt, its hide after that, its whole scorched anatomy is drubbed, hammered, ploughed, furrowed, ripped, scoured, torn, shattered --consult dictionary of synonyms --- and beplastered with every calibre of obus that whines. For they whine, the bastards, they whine to tell you of their coming, and give the flesh a moment to goose itself in, and damned pagans like some of us to find a religion.

No Moslem ever curved his vertebrae with a quicker parabola at the sight of Mecca --- or the antics of the Sun. No armadillo or ant-eater ever entrenched his proboscis in the ground with the despatch of our hero at the whine of an obus, to all intents and purposes about to land between the eyes. Mud, manure, down into it, nose first, and make thy world therein, while she whines and whines overhead! Sometimes the whining becomes a drone, feebler and feebler ---perhaps she isn't going to make the grade. You help her on her way with every muscle in your prostrate form. Once I drove into an abri, side of the road, and stuck at the entrance --- a damned narrow passage, not for maternity girdles --- leaving two friends outside, alternately pushing and pulling in vain. l was known as the human bondon (hung) thereafter another man, the human "magnet," attracting always tons of metal . . . . Another man is called the human "earth-worm," always to be found in a cellar or gutter . . . . I have hit cellars too, consoling good nuns --- sisters of charity of German stock, i. e., Alsacians --- who gave me underclothes of the dead, gratefully received, for my sympathetic attitude. One was killed one day of bombardment in the valley. I wear still a good khaki jersey she gave me. I've forgotten her name --- probably Ursula.

I started out to give you a description of our mountain. I left you peering through the gap in the trees --n'est-ce pas? ---Eh bien---before you, the old scalped nubbin --- the most awful monument of war I have seen. It's inhabited, this mass of terra infirma --- muy, muy inferma --- as the Spaniard would say --- (this being Cervantes tricentenary, have to heave in a bit of old Castillian). There are small ants of men who crawl about amid its boils, ruptures, and gaping sores. Some are French, some Boches. The lines are about a yard apart at the top, for no one side can hold it against the other, though taken and retaken many times. Thus they live together --- only in the fear of killing one's own lies their security. It's a sort of terrific altar of war against the sky, drenched with a thousand sacrifices, rising grim and naked, and scarred alive---the valley and her slopes tree-covered. It was always a spectacle that chased the red corpuscles in my veins down into my heels, and brought every white one to the surface. The last time I looked at it, perhaps we were seen --- we were three --- the obus began whining at us from somewhere in Bocheland --- I measured my length . . . as I will measure it again. Somewhere on the Vosgean steep . . . there must be a perfect mold --- the life-mask of one Peirce, conducteur d'ambulance. 1 have not seen the old nubbin since.

STILL another picture of the life led in the Vosges by the group of Harvard men who formed the Club of Alsace Reconquise is found in the diary of Tracy J. Putnam, '15. It would be possible to draw upon its pages, not only for experiences in the winter mountains, but also for summer days in Dunkirk and its vicinity. Here there is space but for the journal of seven days, on the last of which occurred the funeral of a comrade killed in service --- Richard Hall of Ann Arbor, a graduate of Dartmouth, much beloved by his fellows at the front.

MONDAY, December 20th.

AFTER dinner walked out over the moonlit fields, the great guns booming at intervals. Returning, met a soldier fully armed, and somewhat tipsy. He demanded my name and business, but would not divulge his own; as he had the gun, I gave way. Soon we became very chummy; he told me he was an agent de liaison, coming to Mollau to see his girl, and asked me in to have a drink with him. If I had been a spy I could have had all his papers.

Continued back to the billet, absorbed in contemplation. Was seized by the telephonist; some one wanted urgently to speak to Hill and Triffault. Found both with some trouble.

The message was, seven cars to Tomans, two to Freuenstein, one to Pastetenplatz, five to Moosch. The attack is on! the attack is on!

SUNDAY, December 21st.

COLD, cloudy. Terrific bombardment.

An atmosphere of ill-suppressed excitement. Galatti, Mellen and I went up to Freuenstein, arriving about ten. The road was full of troops and wagons --- many, staff cars. At the post we found ourselves in the midst of a group of batteries of various sizes, firing incessantly. Occasionally the two "370's" in the valley would go off, and we would hear the shell tear past over our heads.

No work in the morning or early afternoon, as the attack did not begin until noon.

We three walked to the boyau leading to the trenches on the Sudelkopf, and cautiously peered over the ridge at Hartmanns. A terrible sight! There was a band of trees stripped bare by shell-fire, from the valley to the crest. Shells were landing momently on each side of the line, and sending up a little or a big cloud of smoke. We saw one torpedo, rising and falling slowly, wavering from side to side like a bird, and finally bursting.

A company of soldiers passed us, going to the trenches. They stopped to load; then went on, stooping behind the parapet. It did not seem possible that any of them could go down to that shell-dotted hillside and return alive; I wonder if any of them did.

We walked down to the ridge again, mostly on our bellies, through the light wet snow, past two telephonists nervously following a wire, past a trench with the hand-grenades laid out, past the path to the castle, and so back to the post. The mediaeval castle of Freuenstein is on the top of a little hill. It would be an interesting place to visit; only the Germans found a "75" battery in it, and knocked it to pieces, and always look on it now with suspicion.

We returned to the post. As I have said, there was no work for some time; standing still, it was cold, and a light snow was falling; no place to stay; and no meals were provided for us. We at last found a cabin which kept the wind off, and I went to sleep. Woke up hungry and cold; the others had found a travelling kitchen, and we got something to eat.

Just before dusk, prisoners and wounded began to come in. One of the former could speak French, and a crowd collected to hang on his words. The Germans were pleased enough to be prisoners. They had better be! The chasseurs do not take prisoners; they shot about twenty who wished to surrender today.

The French were successful everywhere, as far as we can find out, in this first attack. They have got to the valley of the Sudel ridge.

I rolled last, about five. Blessés, French and Germans were coming in quickly, some hung in blankets for want of stretchers. One or two men had pneumonia from the gas. The three I took down were all rather low.

We have to descend by the Bittschwiller road, like all the rest of the traffic. A good idea, but poor in practice, especially as the B---- road is so difficult.

Road from Tomans down, icy and slippery; Mellen unable to descend with only one chain, wagons everywhere in trouble. I reached Moosch in safety, however.

WEDNESDAY, December 22.

WARMER, thaw, rain, mist. Somewhat less bombardment.

Woke, much refreshed, to find a thaw setting in, with mist and rain. After a little work on the car, rolled up the hill. Blessés coming in rather more slowly, but still fast enough to keep us busy.

Last night Hill and the Divisionnaire were down near Bains-Douches, when they came across a body of Germans, unarmed but unguarded. So they had to act as guards; marshalled them, and marched them to the post, Hill giving commands in German.

Trips to Bains-Douches and Heerenfluh; shells rather close.

On one of my trips to Moosch was able to pick up a peau de mouton, and some Boche boots; much needed, for both my pairs are soaked through.

The hospital is getting more and more crowded.

The corridors are so full of stretchers that it is almost impossible to move along them. There is room for only six stretcher cases in the salle de buage, and there is a rule against removing any of them into the hospital until all have been entered on the books. Six cars waited two hours to be unloaded, the poor wretches inside crying to be unloaded. And everyone has been expecting the attack for two weeks!

Bad news from the trenches: the Germans have counter-attacked in force, and retaken most of their losses. Worst of all is the disaster which has befallen the 152nd, one of the finest "attacking regiments "in France. They were on Hartmanns; after a terrific bombardment, the signal was given to charge. The Germans gave little or no resistance, but fled or surrendered. They passed two trenches, and were attacking the third, when a large body of Germans appeared behind them, having reached the first trenches by a subterranean passage. There were no reserves; all but less than a company of the 152nd were killed or captured. That has been the universal complaint: no reserves.

However, the number of German prisoners is between one thousand and one thousand five hundred, with more killed. The French losses are very large also.

We have to go by the Bitschwïller road again. But when it is muddy, it is not so bad, for the mud acts as a brake. We are not supposed to have headlights, although some do. Suckley told the driver of a staff car this; the driver took one look at the precipice, and said: "Si vous pouvez descendre sur cette route sans flares, vous êtes plus malin que moi." And he went on.

Slept three hours at Tomans.

THURSDAY, December 23d.

RAIN and mist. Bombardment by the Germans.

After a slight lull in the morning, work began again. Rolled pretty steadily.

The Germans are firing on all the towns they can reach in the Thur: Thann, the Willers, Moosch, St. Amarin, Wesserling, and Hüeseren. Two large ones hit in the yard behind the baths at the 16-7(19) while Douglas was at the hospital; they have closed it. A good many people, soldiers and civilians, have been killed.

There has been heavy shelling on the Bains-Douches road also. Doyle was sent down to the post there, but the marmites were so thick that he had to retire to the abri. He only stuck his nose out once in the course of the day --- and just then a shell went off near the door of the dug out, and struck him in the arm. Douglas was sent down at twilight when the shelling let up a little, and he was relayed to the Sources, with great honor. The missile went down to the bone, but did, not cut either nerve or tendon; somewhat painful, but not serious, and so romantic!

But the shortage of men is serious. Walker has been ill since the first day. Perkins has developed an abscess in the ear. Carey, out for a record, has been checked by a sore throat. The strain is telling a little on all of us; only Curley is a man of iron, who is so uncomfortable at Moosch that he rolls up to Tomans, and so disgusted with Tomans that he rolls down to Moosch again at once.

The cars, too, are giving way. The Bitschwiller road is wearing out brake-bands faster than they can be put on. Several axle shafts have broken, among others that on the supply car, that is now reposing among the corpses in the garage at Tomans.

FRIDAY, December 24th.

HEAVY showers, mist.

Fitful bombardment, evidently much hampered by the fog.

Made one trip in the morning, one in the early afternoon. Returning from the latter, was impressed into service by Dick Hall to get a couché and four assis at Willer. But when we got to the infirmary, found that the "lier" could sit up, so that they could all five get into Hall's car. But no sooner had they mounted than an infirmier said he had to go too. We dissuaded him, however, and I rolled up the mountain, and Dick rolled down to Moosch. Poor Dick! Poor charming, whimsical Dick ! I never saw him again.

Had a trip down in time for supper at Moosch. On my way up found Cate in trouble with a tire -his sixth since the beginning of the attack --- and stopped to help him. When we were finished, we went on, but found Douglas, Peirce, Jennings, all waiting at the watering trough for some trucks to reach the top of the hill, as they were impossible to pass. Finally we started off again, a merry convoy, stopping to heave Peirce's old 'bus up every little grade. A cart, stuck in the middle of the steep corner, complicated matters, but we finally reached Tomans. I was lulled to sleep by one of the survivors recounting the story of the 152nd.

CHRISTMAS DAY.

FOG. Desultory firing. No work.

As I was lying awake in the morning, the sergeant of the infirmiers came in. "Very bad news everywhere," he said with a grave face. "We have lost several of our trenches ---and one of the Americans has been killed."

After I saw Dick at Willer, he must have taken his men to Moosch, waited there a little while, and started up to Tomans again as usual. The road was almost empty. I can imagine him stopping at the lonely watering trough, smiling a little to himself, as he used to when he was alone, hearing the shells above him, and thinking perhaps how lucky Doyle was to have come off as easily as he did; perhaps of something entirely different, of Christmas, of going home --- who knows what? Then he cranked his car, and started to climb again.

For some time the Germans had been trying without success to locate an observation post on the ridge above Tomansplatz, near Markstein. A battery, probably at the northern end of the Sudelkopf, had been firing at it on Christmas Eve. One of the last shells, between six and seven in the evening, overshot the ridge, and fell on the zigzags of the road, about midway between the turn with the watering trough and the steep corner. It struck Dick Hall's car just behind the front seat; it must have been quite a big one, for it blew the car completely off the road, bent in the frame, smashed to match-wood the light body, flattened out the tins of petrol. Dick was wounded in three places, the head, the side, and the thigh, and killed at once.

His body lay there, among the wreck of his car, all night. Our merry convoy passed without seeing it. I saw one of the gasoline cans by the side of the road, and stopped to pick it up, wondering who dropped it. About six in the morning, just as it was getting light, Jennings and Matter came up together; they saw the car, stopped to look at it, and found the body.

MONDAY, December 27th.

CHILLY, intermittent rain.

Went down about noon. The triage has been transferred from Moosch to Willer; after leaving my men at the latter place, proceeded to the former.

Hill gave me permission to stay down for Dick's funeral. About half the boys were down; we drove over through the rain to the Protestant chapel at Wesserling. A chaplain preached. The chapel was at first empty, but slowly it filled up with English and Frenchmen; all our friends, and some we had never known.

After the civil ceremony, the coffin was loaded in Louis' ambulance, and driven to Moosch again for the military ceremony. A guard of honor of old Territorials --- all they could spare, I suppose---lined up on each side. The Protestant chaplain again conducted the ceremony, while the crowd listened bareheaded in the rain. The divisionnaire pinned the croix de guerre on the flag that draped the bier; the several majors each spoke a few words. The pall-bearers took up the coffin, and we all marched to the crowded graveyard on the hill behind the hospital.

The English section was present almost to a man. There were, of course, a great many of the French ---so many people had known Dick and liked him. The little girl from the café, and the one from the shop, both came to leave a flower on the grave.

THERE has been no more courageous service in the War than that of the Foreign Legion of the French Army. This organization, drawn from men of all races and types, contained its Harvard representatives --- among them Victor Chapman, '13, who turned later, and fatally, to the Flying Service; Alan Seeger, '10, a young poet of uncommon promise, several times, and at length without denial, reported killed; H. W. Farnsworth, '12, killed at Tahure in the autumn of 1915, a writer of remarkable letters from which some passages will presently be given; and David W. King, '16, also to be represented in a letter written from the front. Before them, however, a poem of Seeger's which appeared in the North American Review, a charming expression of the spirit of joyous and devoted youth, the more poignant now through the fulfillment of its prophetic strain, should enter at this point in the record of Harvard service.

The letter from King, written when his classmates at Cambridge had just begun the peaceful work and warlike play of their senior year, is as follows:

October 12, 1915.(21)

ON the 24th of September we were moved up into a boyau, so as to be ready for the attack the next day. The shelling was something hellish, and had been going on for three days and nights. The morning of the twenty-fifth was foggy, and it was thought that the attack would be postponed, but about nine o'clock it cleared off and we moved up into the first line trenches. If the shelling was infernal before, it was quadruple then. We had to cross a road and get into the final sally trench, and I assure you, we did it on the hop, marmites landing bang on the spot, and the air full of humming-birds and insects.

The Colonial Infantry led off, and we were their immediate supports, following them at one hundred yards' distance. They swept forward and took trench after trench, all demolished by our guns, and then we followed them. It was pretty to see the effects of training; we went forward just as we had done a hundred times in practice.

When we had passed over the first two lines of trenches, we began to get their shrapnel, so we halted in close formation. Some one screamed on my right, and my gun was shattered in my hand. The little corporal beside me had got his in the head. We then moved up into an old German boyau, but there were some guns back of us, and we got all the marmites that fell short of them; this was not good enough, so the battalion followed up and we came to a stop in an open field at about four o'clock. They turned loose everything they had on us ---shrapnel, marmites, air torpedoes, and mitrailleuses, and, as we had advanced farther than the rest of the line, they had us enfiladed. About ten o'clock, they moved us to a little ridge twenty-five metres back, and told us to dig ourselves in. It was raining hard and we were lying flat in the mud, so you may be sure we were glad of the exercise.

Morning found us in individual shelter-holes, and just as well, for at day-break the fun began again. We lay there all day, on an exposed crest. I forgot to say that during the night, fifty yards ahead in a work where the first line was, we suddenly heard a deuce of a row, shouts, shots, and all sorts of confusion. Suddenly a bugle rang out with "Au drapeau," and then the Charge. Then there was a lot of French cheering and silence. It seems that the Boches had made a counter and the regiment in front was broken and scattering. It flashed over one of our "clarions," who found himself with them, to sound the Charge. It is forbidden to use bugle calls, but this time it pulled them together, and they pushed the Boches back with "Rosalie." We didn't know what to do; we could only stand fast till they were driven back on us, but we almost went crazy when they blew that charge, --it sure was inspiring. The thick gutteral shouts, and then clear through it all: --

Well, we spent the twenty-sixth in the field, as I say; nothing to mention. That night they got our range with marmites. One of our sergeants was buried alive, and we had to dig him out under fire; just in time too; he was gasping like a fish when we got him.

The morning of the twenty-seventh, we went back two hundred yards and held a boyau. Some hell it was too; it was an old Boche boyau, and they had the range down pat. I was working up on its talus, and they dropped one bang into it. It blew me over backward, and when I picked myself up, there was thick black smoke pouring out of the trench; no one killed. Some luck

To make things more cheerful, as we were going to work, a shell burst near my best friend (F. W. Zinn) who was walking just ahead of me, and he got a piece in the side. It did not penetrate, but it made a bad contusion just under his heart, and I am afraid it smashed some ribs. There were no Red Cross workers nearby, so I had to take him back. He could hardly breathe when I got him to the poste de secours. Lucky devil! He will get a month's rest, but I miss him like anything, as friends are pretty scarce around here.