SHARP whistle cuts the
tense silence. It is the signal to start. It marks the line which breaks the past from the future;
it is the boundary between the Known and the Unknown, and the frontier where duty and service merge.
For a second, as the motors race, there is commotion --- quickly settling into a rhythmic whir. The
men are in their seats with somewhat of an echo of that whir in their hearts. The lieutenant's car
rolls slowly out of the gate, followed by the chef's, and in turn by the others of the section, and
as the last car crosses the threshold there is a cheer from the friends gathered to bid us Godspeed,
---for Section XXXI is born.
E are off. We do not know
where we are going. After a number of interminable delays and halts we pass through the gates of the
city, and leave behind the last vestige of the Known. Ahead of us the road stretches white in the
sunlight --- the white road of mystery leading on to adventure and redemption. We have ceased to be
our own masters. We are units, cogs in the machine, infinitesimal pawns in the giant game, and move
as the dust which rises from the car ahead ---where we know not, why we know not,---and how we often
wonder!
ONVOY formation allows, by
the book, for an interval of twenty feet between cars when passing through cities, and for one
hundred feet when in the country. The flesh, however, is weak. In cities it is rare indeed to see
cars separated by more than a nose except in spasms, while in the country a matter of miles is
unimportant. A convoy is like a pack of dogs on the hunt, racing pell mell up hill and down dale one
minute, and crawling the next, with an occasional dog straying off and losing itself for an
indefinite length of time.
For example, we come to some small town where we are to have lunch. We arrive in a hurry and with much dust, the first few cars in close formation, nose to tail, the last a few miles in the rear. Suddenly the driver of the leading car, who has been admiring the scenery on the right of the road, sees the chef standing on the left making frantic motions for him to stop. Perhaps the driver puts out his hand, perhaps he does not. At any rate, he applies the brakes and comes to a dead stop --- for an instant. The driver of the second car may have been adjusting his carburetor or observing an aeroplane, or a peasant girl, or a map --- the exact object is beside the question. He suddenly comes to earth when he finds his charge valiantly trying to climb over the car in front ---more brakes. Of course there is a third car, and possibly a fourth, or more, which demand attention. The final result advances the leading car some feet, decreases the supply of spare radiators, and as a rule does not contribute to the general harmony.
One or more cars must always have taken the wrong road, and lead a hare and hound chase for some minutes before the final roundup, leaving for clues numerous peasants who, when queried, always know just where it went. Of course, by the law of chance, some one of these has undoubtedly seen it, and the lost is eventually found.
There was one particular member of our section who was a rover at soul, and led several interesting hunts. A little later in the season this same rover took a by-road and started through the Hesse Forest for Germany. Our whole pack was called out, and after an exciting chase he was finally caught and convinced of his error. Fortunately for both him and us the chef has a sense of humor, and the section, in spite of our many innocent attempts to disintegrate it and take individual excursions to different parts of France, continues to be a unit.
For five days we proceed thus, with the white road stretching out in front and the brown dust trailing behind. We stop to get gasoline, to eat, and to sleep. We begin to near the front, and pass through town after town of roofless houses, shattered churches, and scattered homes. Through fields dotted with wooden crosses with the tricolored ribbon, and pock-marked with shell-holes. We pass aeroplane hangars and batteries of guns. We see more saucisses in the sky and soldiers on the ground. The hand of the Hun lies heavy on the land, and his poison breath scorches the grass of the fields. We see fewer civilians and more steel helmets, and yet the rumble of the guns is no louder. But there is a certain breath of power and energy in the air, and one feels himself waiting for something to happen.
Something does --- an infuriated bull charges Rover's car and picks off one of his headlights. Rover reverses hastily and unhesitatingly into the car behind, while the farmer's wife makes her appearance, drives off the bull, and saves Rover from extermination.
Then, one afternoon, we arrive at our point of embarkation, so to speak. It is Bar-le-Duc, sixty kilometres from Verdun, and by virtue of its being the one city in many miles, the meeting place of the world, which is to say, of course, our sector of front---when en repos.
AR-LE-DUC, the old
stronghold of the feudal dukes of Bar, nestling in the valley on the banks of the slow-moving
Ornain, tributary to the River Marne, and with la ville haute trespassing far onto one ridge,
and the ruined castle frowning down from the other, is a town of memories and traditions which
greets this war as but another chapter in the never-ending book of its history. It has two large and
ancient cathedrals, the one crowning the upper city --- now quite naturally in ruins, as the enemy,
by this time a connoisseur in churches, makes frequent air raids. The chateau --- considered quite
modern as it is but two hundred years of age --- has mellowed into the surroundings by now, and
forms a sufficiently integral part of the beauty of the city to be likewise a target for our
"considerate" neighbor.
One evening, as the last rays of the sun glinted from its roof, it stood solid and strong,---ready to do battle with the elements for many centuries more, but while the city lay quiet in the cold moonlight of an August night, the sound of purring motors broke the silence from above. The contre-avions crashed, and the yellow shrapnel broke in the sky often a mile from its invisible target, and never near enough to arrest the advance of the raiders, who suddenly shut off their motors and, as often before, swooped silently down on their motionless prey, and dropped their bombs. Then, turning on their motors, they climbed and glided over the city again and again until, having dropped their entire cargo, they flew off. But in the morning the chateau no longer stood proudly up from the river mist, and another buttress against the ravages of the elements had crumbled into untimely ruins.
The main street of the town is denuded of its plate glass, and more houses crumble each time the enemy reports "military advantage gained" by an indiscriminate slaughter of the future crop of France's defenders, and those heroic souls who bear them.
The town is noted for its manufactures, its wines, and its confitures. As to the first-named I know little, but as to the merits of its wines, its liqueurs, and its confitures I cannot say enough, nor can many thousands of others who seek out Bar-le-Duc as the one sanctuary from the mud and deprivations of the rest of their existence, and bask gloriously in the discomforts of its civilization for a few stolen hours.
ONVOY formation again, the
cars freshly washed and glistening in the sunlight, --- for a few minutes, before the grey cloud of
dust pouring from the cars in front settles on us again. We come to a turn. A large sign
greets us, Souilly --- vers Verdun, emphasized by a giant arrow pointing in the direction we
take. We are instantly sure that this is to be our headquarters. Verdun is a name we have long
wished to visualize. At the first stop we tell each other the great news. While we are grouped in
the road a big grey limousine carrying three generals dashes past. Every one salutes, and by a
miracle we are noticed and the salute is returned. Cheerful Liar at once informs us that they were
Joffre, Petain, and ---he is at a loss for the third name. We help him out --Hindenburg perhaps.
But we are doomed to bitter disappointment. Thirty kilometres from the famous city we are given orders to park our cars in a pile of ruins formerly known as Erize --- Erize la petite, and well named.
RIZE is, without exception,
the dullest place beneath the sun --- a small town, now a mass of crumbling ruins, holding not above
two dozen civilians, who are, for the most part, still less interesting than the town. Of course,
there are Grand'mère and Grand-père, no relation to each other, but so christened by
us because they are the only two octogenarians here. Grand'mère is not properly from Erize.
Her home is somewhere north of Verdun, in a town with an unpronounceable name and long since
destroyed. She, herself, carries proudly on her wrinkled forehead a two-inch scar from shrapnel, and
informs us tearfully that her two sons have died in action, "pour la patrie," she
concludes, with a faint smile.
I met Grand'mère for the first time when I picked an unripe apple from an overburdened tree. The old woman appeared from the depths of a nearby building and advanced menacingly towards me, hobbling along on a cane, and pouring forth as she came an unintelligible tirade from which I gathered that the apple reposing guiltily in my hand was hers --- not mine. A single franc served to wreathe her face in smiles and to obtain undisputed claim to the apple and her good graces in the future. Ira furor brevis est. I afterwards learned that houses in Erize rent for fifty francs a year, this including several acres of farm land.
Grand-père, aged ninety-eight, I met near the temporary kitchen where the cook was giving him a cup of Pinard, which he drank eagerly, while Grand'mère gave him wise counsel, to which he replied as Omar Khayyam might have done.
But they are the only characters of interest here. The fields surrounding the town have as their redeeming feature a system of old trenches, with much barbed wire and an occasional shell-fragment to reward the searcher. The German advance was stopped less than a mile from here, and the trenches have been used since for practice.
The dugouts interest us particularly. We are later to become surfeited with them, but as yet they are still delightfully novel. The rumble of the guns can be heard plainly from here, and at rare intervals a saucisse rises on the horizon, much to our joy and excitement.
HE saucisse is a
balloon shaped like a sausage---hence its name. At the front they are in the sky by the hundreds on
both sides to direct the fire of the artillery and to observe the enemy's operations generally. They
are consequently made the objective of the aeroplane, and many are brought down every day. The
aeroplane dodges along from cloud to cloud, and when he is just over the saucisse suddenly
swoops down, and with a tic-tic-tic from his machine-gun the bag crumples up in a cloud of black
smoke and flames, the observer jumps out with his parachute, and the aeroplane dashes off pursued by
many shells.
In the balloons the observers all have parachutes and usually make their escape, although often they have to spend a little time dangling from the limb of some tree.
E are told not to stray far,
as the order to move may come at any moment. We take walks through the country, and always on
returning find the section with "no news,"---but at last the order comes.
We have gotten our baggage ready, and are sitting around in the darkness smoking our pipes and thinking. Tomorrow we are going up to the lines. A big attack has been scheduled, and we are to take care of the wounded. It is to be our first work, and any fighting at all seems a "big attack" to us. We are a green section, fresh from Paris. We have never heard a shell whistle, and have been thrilled by the sound of guns twenty miles away. What will be our sensations lace to face with the real thing? We are a bit nervous. There is some tension. We discuss the probable extent of the attack and debate as to its success. This leads us nowhere, and alter we have pledged each other and the section "Bonne chance" in a glass of cognac from a bottle opened for the occasion, we turn in.
T is cold and chill, and a
steady drizzle is oozing from the sky above into the earth beneath, and is making it soft and
slippery. I awake, yawn, stretch sleepily, and gaze out into the grey dejection of the morning. I
have been sleeping luxuriously on the floor of an ambulance, wedged in between two trunks and a
duffle-bag.
"Well, this is 'der Tag' for us," I remark to a friend, who has spent the night on top of the two trunks.
He stops eating my jam for an instant and agrees with me. Then, on second thought, he generously offers me some jam. I sit up and struggle for a few seconds with a piece of the bread we carry for nourishment and defence, spread some jam on it, get out a bottle of Sauterne (at the front wine is wine at all hours of the day and night), and we settle down to breakfast. Breakfast is a purely personal investment, as it officially consists of coffee so called by courtesy --- and bread. The French bread comes in round loaves a foot in diameter, and is never issued until four days old, and is often aged ten or more before we see it. Fresh bread, it is believed, would give a soldier indigestion. French officialdom believes the same evil of water, and provides each soldier with a quart a day of cheap red wine called, in the argot of the trenches, Pinard. Breakfast over, we make our way to the barn, our official quarters, by means of steppingstones previously laid from the car, and chat with the other members of the section.
Today we are moving up into the zone of fire itself, and are somewhat excited. The entire section is to move to a little destroyed town, Ville-sur-Couzances. From there six cars are always to be on duty taking care of our first wounded. The chef and the sous-chef join us presently. They went up yesterday and were shown the postes, and consequently come in for a storm of questions. The sous-chef tells us that today we shall hear them "whistle both ways." We are thrilled. He asks us if we are ready. We are ---even Rover. Then the lieutenant comes in. He speaks a few words to the chef. The chef blows his whistle four times.
It is the signal for assembly. He gives us a few instructions. We run to our cars. One whistle---we crank up. Two whistles---the leading ambulance painfully and noisily tears itself from its bed of mud. The others follow in regular succession, until the last car melts into the grey, cold mist. When shall we see Erize again?
ILLE-SUR-COUZANCES is also
at this time the headquarters of Section XXIX, which has just lost two men, and Section LXIX, which
is a gear-shift section, ---we are quite proudly Fords. Section, XIX, French, whom we are relieving,
examines us critically, but makes no audible comments. To the six of us chosen for the first
"roll" there is but one impatient thought. We hear "Napoleon"---a French private
attached to our section for ravitaillement because he could do nothing else---telling the
cook and several unwilling assistants how to dispose of the field range. In the French manner,
instead of ignoring him, the stove is discarded, and a Latin argument follows much to the amusement
if not to the edification of the onlookers. This does not concern us, and as soon as we get the
order to roll we are blithely off.
It is only a few minutes' run to Brocourt, where the triage, or front hospital, is located. This is like a giant hangar in shape, but, instead of the mottled green, blue, and grey camouflage of the latter, it is brilliantly white with a red cross fifty feet square surmounting it. Despite this fact, it is bombed and shelled regularly by the "merciful" Hun. We pass through the shattered town, its church tower still standing, by a miracle, and pointing its scarred and violated finger to the heavens with the silent appeal---"Avenge! "
The sous-chef, who is sitting beside me, tells me to put on my helmet and to sling my mask over my shoulder. From here on men "go west" suddenly, and in their boots. We pass over a short rise in sight of the German saucisses, and down a steep and long hill into Récicourt. Of that hill there is much to remember---but today it is just steep, and green, and has many trees by the roadside loaded down with much unripe fruit. Past the sentry, over the bridge which the Boche hit yesterday with an eight-inch shell ---which failed to explode and bounced into the muddy river---and we are at the relay station. It is a barn with half the roof and a goodly portion of the walls missing. We use this to screen the cars from the eyes of raiding enemy aeroplanes, of which there are many.
Two of us are at once assigned to run to the poste de secours, P 2, where just now we are to keep two cars, the other four remaining at the relay station. Again luck is with me, and I am in the first car to roll. Our run is entirely through the woods, in the Hesse Forest, and as the enemy will not be able to see us we rejoice --- but we soon learn not to rejoice prematurely. There is hardly a man in sight as we struggle along through the mud, but beside the road everywhere, often spilling into it, lie piles of shells, 75's, 155's, and torpilles by the thousand, apparently arranged haphazardly. The torpille is a winged and particularly deadly shell, first cousin to the German minniewerfer, and differing essentially only in range. The maréchal des logis informs us encouragingly that the one lying in the middle of the road which we just ran over was a Boche which did not explode when it landed, and has not --- yet.
Everything is wrapped in the silence of the grave except for an occasional crash as some battery sends its message into Germany. We arrive at P 2, which is distinguished from the rest of the world by a foot square of white cotton and the universal red cross. There is room inside the gate --- a log dyke against the mud --- to park the cars: "Room sideways or deep," as one member of the section described it as he watched his boots sink steadily into the mud.
The sous-chef calls us around him and gives us our detailed instructions, for he is going back by the first car. Suddenly, as we are listening to him attentively, there is a piercing zz--chung, and a 250 lands within a hundred yards with a dull crash and a geyser of trees, dirt, and black smoke. We look at him inquiringly and he points to the abri. We nod and adjourn to it. A few more shells follow, then all is peaceful again, while the French batteries around us hammer away at the Germans in their turn. We take lunch on a rustic table under the trees and thoroughly enjoy having our tin plates rattled by the concussion of the guns, while a Frenchman explains to us the difference in sound between an arrivée and a départ.
Such is the initiation. Then while we, as yet mere amateurs, eat peacefully, relishing the novelty of the situation, and buoyed up by our first excitement, a short procession passes. It is a group of men carrying stretchers on which are what were men a few minutes before, who, standing within talking distance of us, were blown out of existence by the shells which whistled over our heads and, bursting, scattered éclats and dirt on the steel roof that sheltered us. It is a side of the front which has not touched us deeply before, a side which in the first few days of the ordeal by fire impresses itself more and more on the novice, until he learns to temper the realization with philosophy and the so-called humor of the front. Then is the veteran in embryo.
HE ambulance sections are
divided into two classes--- gear-shift and Ford. The gear-shift sections are composed of Fiats,
Berliets, or some other French car. They carry five couchés or eight assis, and
have two men to a car. The French Army ambulances are all gear-shift, and the gear-shift sections
included in the American Field Service all originally belonged to the French Government. Before the
American Government took over the Ambulance Corps, the American Field Service, in addition to
sending out Ford sections as quickly as they were subscribed in America, had been gradually
absorbing the French Ambulance System, relieving with its own men the French drivers who could then
serve in the trenches, and including those sections among its own.
The Ford sections carried three couchés or four assis, and had one driver, although many sections had extra men to help out. A Ford section then, when complete, consisted of twenty ambulances, one Ford camionnette or truck, which went for food and carried spare parts and often baggage, one French camionnette, a one-ton truck, which carried tools, French mechanics, and other spare parts, one large White truck with kitchen trailer, one Ford touring-car for the chef, and a more or less high-powered touring car for the lieutenant. The personnel was one French lieutenant, who was the connecting link between the organization and the government, and was responsible to the latter for the actions of the section; one chef, who was an American chosen by the organization from the sous-chefs of one of the sections in the field; one or two sous-chefs, chosen by the chef from the members of his or some other section; twenty drivers, often an odd number of assistant drivers, an American paid mechanic, and an odd number of French mechanics, cooks, and clerks.
The lieutenant received the orders and was responsible to the army for their execution. The lieutenant gave the chef his orders, and the chef was responsible to him for their execution by the section. The sous-chefs were the chef's assistants.
The routine when at work is for a certain number of cars to be on duty at one time, the number depending on the work. The section is divided into shifts of the number of cars required. When on duty a man must always have his car and himself ready to "roll," and when off duty, after putting his car in condition, must rest so as to be in shape for his next turn. When the work is heavy, the cars on duty are rolling all the time with very little opportunity for food or rest for the driver; consequently, for a man not to get himself and his car ready in this period of rest means that the service is weakened; and that, if other cars go en panne unavoidably, it is possibly crippled --- and lives may be lost. When the work is light, men are usually twenty-four hours on and forty-eight off; when moderate, twenty-four on and twenty-four off; when stiff, forty-eight on and twenty-four off, and during an attack almost steadily on. The longest stretch that my section kept its men continuously at work was seven days and nights in the Verdun sector during an attack, and we were compelled to cease then only because too few of our cars were left able to roll to carry the wounded.
From headquarters the day's shift is sent to the relay station, and from there cars go as needed to the postes de secours. The postes are as near the trenches as it is possible for the cars to go, and some can be visited only at night. The wounded are brought to these by the brancardiers through the boyaux, or communication trenches, and usually have their first attention here. After first aid has been administered, and when there are enough for a load, or there is a serious case, the car goes to the triage, stopping at the relay station, from which a car is sent to the poste to replace the first, which returns to the relay station directly from the hospital.
The hospitals also are divided into two main classes, the triages, or front hospitals in the zone of fire, and the H.O.E's, hospitals of evacuation, anywhere back of the lines. The hospital of evacuation is the third of the four stages through which a wounded man passes. The first is the front line dressing station, the abri; the second, if the wound is at all serious, is the triage; the third, if serious enough, is the hospital of evacuation; and the fourth, if the soldier has been confined to the hospital for ten or more days, is the ten-day permission to Paris, Nice, or some other place of his choice. Then these classes, in some cases, are subdivided into separate hospitals for couchés, assis, and malades.
These subdivisions sometimes make complications, as in the case of one driver who was given what appeared to be a serious case to take to the couché hospital. While on the way, however, the serious case revived sufficiently to find his canteen. After a few swallows he felt a pleasant warmth within, for French canteens are not filled with water, and sat up better to observe his surroundings and to make uncomplimentary remarks to the driver. Arrived at the hospital, the brancardiers lifted the curtain at the rear of the car, and seeing the patient sitting up and smoking a cigarette, apparently in good health, they refused to take him, and sent the car on to the assis hospital. Overcome by his undue exertion, the wounded man lay down again, and by the time the ambulance had reached the other hospital was peacefully dozing on the floor. The brancardiers shook their heads, and sent the car back to the couché hospital. Somewhat annoyed by this time, the ambulancier did not drive with the same care, and the jolts aroused the incensed poilu, who sat up and began to ask personal questions. The driver, not wishing to continue his trips between the two hospitals for the duration of the war, stopped the car outside the couché hospital, and, seeing his patient sitting up, put him definitely to sleep with a tire tool, and sent him in by the uncomplaining brancardiers.
E spend a good part of our
time in the abri. Just now the Boche appears to have taken a particular dislike to this part
of the sector, for he is strafing it most unmercifully. We do not doubt at all that it is because we
are here. The fact that there are six thousand French guns massed in the woods, so near together
that you cannot walk a dozen feet without tripping over one, may, of course, have something to do
with the enemy's vindictiveness, but that does not occur to us.
After taking an hour or two of interrupted sleep in the abri, we step out in the early morning to get a breath of fresh air and to untangle our cramped muscles. A shell or two whines in uncomfortably near, and we are convinced that the enemy knows our every move by instinct. When we sit in the abri during the day, and there is never a second that we do not hear the whine of at least one shell overhead, and the intervals between shells striking near enough to shake the abri and rattle éclats on its steel roof grow less, we are convinced the Boche is searching for our dugout. When I am making a run to P 2, and, rounding Dead Horse Corner, start on the last stretch, and a shell knocks a tree across the road a hundred feet ahead, blocking us completely, and two more shells drop on the road by the tree, two more strike ten yards on our right, and another lands within fifteen feet on our left, there is no doubt in my mind that the enemy is after me.
In reality, of course, the enemy has no idea where the abris are located, and just now is simply taking a few chance shots at a likely corner --- but every man knows that every shell he hears is meant for him personally,---all of which goes to prove how egotistical we really are.
