Part 6
From all the foregoing it must not be imagined that Section Y has a sinecure, or that strolling around gardens is a habit. Far from it. The regular daily service is arduous enough in itself, for one is either on duty or on call all of the time; but there are times following an attack when the men rest neither night nor day, when one gets food only in snatches, and frequently days at a time will pass when one is on such continuous service that there is never a chance to undress. Then there is the other aspect, the ever-present danger of being killed or wounded that one is under at the front, for Section Y works and lives in a heavily shelled area. But we will not talk of that, for it is unwise to think of such a thing when facing it. There are times, however, when one is forcibly reminded, and when it takes a great amount of will power to remain calm and perform one's duty.
The mention of shell fire to one who has never experienced it brings to mind, in a vague sort of way, an association with danger, but that is all. To us who have seen its effects--the hideously mangled killed and wounded, the agonized expressions and streams of fast-flowing blood, the crumbling of solid houses into clouds of smoke and dust; to us who hear the terrible tearing, snarling, deep roar of great shells as they hurtle down the air-lanes towards us to detonate with a murderous, ear-splitting crash, flinging their jagged _éclats_ for a half-mile in all directions, and sometimes killing French comrades near us; to us who live and work within shell range, not knowing when we too may be annihilated or maimed for life, it seems a very real and terrible menace, and for that reason to be banished from our thoughts.
In spite of the danger, the Americans render their service with fidelity at any and all times. A French captain once remarked that, no matter how much the town was being shelled, the little field ambulances could be seen slipping down the streets, past corners, or across the square on their way to and from _postes de secours_ back of the trenches. I remember one day that was especially a test of the men. The town was being shelled, and it happened that at the same time there were many calls for cars. The Germans were paying particular attention to the immediate surroundings of the headquarters, and the shells were not falling by any time-table known to us. A call came in, and the "next man" was handed his orders. He waited until a shell burst and then made a run for it. Several cars had been out on calls and were due to return. There was no way of giving them a warning. We heard the purr of a motor, and almost immediately the sing of a shell very close to us. There was an instant of anxiety, an explosion, and then we were relieved to see the car draw up in line, the driver switch off his motor and run for our entrance. He held his order card in front of him as he ran. Just as he entered another shell hit near by. It reminded me strongly of a scene in a "ten-twenty-thirty" martial play. All the hero needed was some fuller's earth to pat off his shoulders when he came inside. There were several entrances of this sort during the afternoon, and one shell, landing just in front of us and nearly on top of a passing motor lorry, resulted in the addition of the French driver and his aid to our little wall-protected group. It was a day when the shelling seemed to be general, for shrapnel and small 77 shells were also bursting at intervals over and in a little town one passes through in order to avoid a more heavily bombarded outer route on the way to the _postes de secours_. It was magnificent descending the hill from the _postes_ that afternoon. To the left French 75 shells were in rapid action; and one could see the explosion of the German shells just over the crest of the long ridge where the batteries were firing. It was a clear, sparkling day, and against the vivid green of the hills, across the winding river, the little white puffs of shrapnel exploding over the road below were in perfect relief, while from the red-tiled roofs of the town, nestling in the valley below, tall columns of black smoke spurted up where the large shells struck. Little groups of soldiers, the color of whose uniforms added greatly to the picture, were crowded against the low stone walls lining the road to observe the firing; and one sensed the action and felt the real excitement of the sort of war one imagines instead of the uninteresting horror of the cave-dweller combats that are the rule in this war.
It is difficult to take any one day's work and describe it in the attempt to give an adequate picture of the routine of the American Section, for with us all days are so different. The background or framework, the schedule of runs, the points of calling, the ordinary duties, are more or less the same; but the action and experiences, which add the color, are never alike. There are days at a stretch when the work might be called monotonous, were it not for the fact that there is a continual source of pleasure in feeling that one is being of service to France, and that one's time is being spent in relieving the suffering of her brave wounded soldiers.
Six-thirty is the time for bread and coffee, and the long table in the flag-decorated mess-room begins to fill. Mignot, our comrade orderly, is rushing to and fro placing bowls in front of those arriving, and practising on each the few English expressions he has picked up by association with us. Two men of the Section enter who look very tired. They throw their caps or fatigue hats on to a side table and call for Mignot. They have been on all-night service at M----, the hamlet where the most active _postes de secours_ are located.
"Much doing last night?" asks one of the crowd at the table.
"Not much. Had only sixteen altogether."
"Anything stirring?"
"Yes; Fritz eased in a few shrapnel about five-thirty, but didn't hurt any one. You know the last house down on the right-hand side? Well, they smeared that with a shell during the night."
"By the way," continues the man in from night service, addressing himself to one across the table, "Canot, the artilleryman, was looking for you. Says he's got a ring for you made out of a _Boche_ fuse-cap, and wants to know if you want a Geneva or Lorraine cross engraved on it."
The men in the Section leave the room one by one to take up their various duties. There are some whose duty it is to stay in reserve, and these go out to work on their cars. Others are on bureau service, and they remain within call of the telephone. Two leave for D----, a town eight kilometres below, where their job is to evacuate from the two hospitals where the wounded have been carried down the day and night before. This town, too, suffers an occasional bombardment, and wounded are left there no longer than necessary. They are taken to a sanitary train which runs to a little village a few kilometres below, which is just beyond the limit of shell fire.
Sometimes our cars are called upon to evacuate to X----, which is a good many kilometres distant. The splendid road runs through a most charming part of the country. Just now everything is in bloom, and the gentle undulating sweep of highly cultivated fields is delineated by plots of yellow mustard plants, mellow brown tilled earth, and countless shades of refreshing green, while near the tree-bordered road one can see stretches of waving wheat dotted with the flaming red of poppies and the delicate blue of little field flowers. On those trips it does not seem possible that war is near; but on high, sharply outlined against the deep-blue sky, is a sausage-shape observation balloon, and looking back through a little window in the car one sees the bandaged and prostrate figures of the wounded occupants.
There are only two cars on service at M---- during the usual run of days, for unless there is an attack comparatively few wounded are brought down from the trenches to their respective regimental _postes de secours_ in the village.
Down the single, long street of this town, which had been changed from a quiet country hamlet to a military cantonment, strolls a motley collection of seasoned soldiers. The majority are uniformed in the newly adopted light bluish-gray; some few still carry the familiar baggy red trousers, black anklets, and long, dark-blue coat with conspicuous brass buttons. The _sapeurs_ and artillerymen wear dull green-and-yellow splotched dusters that make them almost invisible in the woods and impart the most striking war-working appearance to them. There is the cavalryman in his light-blue tunic with pinkish trimmings, and his campaign cloth-covered helmet, from the crest of which flows a horse-tail plume. Here and there are the smartly dressed officers with their variously colored uniforms designating their branch; but their gold galloons of rank do not show conspicuously on their sleeves now, and the braid on their caps is covered. Some wear the splotched duster which hides their identity entirely, and others are dressed in serviceable thin brown uniforms which bear hardly any insignia. In front of four or five of the low masonry houses a Red Cross flag is hung. These mark the _postes de secours_ where the wounded are bandaged and given to the ambulances. An American car is backed up in front of one, and the khaki-clad driver is the centre of interest for a group of soldiers. Some he knows well, and he is carrying on a cheerful conversation. It is surprising what a number of French soldiers speak English; and there are hundreds who have lived in England and in the States. Some are even American citizens, who have returned to fight for _la belle France_, their mother country. I have met waiters from the Café Lafayette, _chefs_ from Fifth Avenue hotels, men who worked in New York and Chicago banks, in commission houses, who own farms in the West, and some who had taken up their residence in American cities to live on their incomes. It seems very funny to be greeted with a "Hello there, old scout!" by French soldiers.
"Well, when did you come over?" asks the driver.
"In August. Been through the whole thing."
"Where were you in the States?"
"New York, and I am going back when it is over. Got to beat it now. So long. See you later."
A few companies of soldiers go leisurely past on their way up to the trenches, and nearly every man has something to say to the American driver. Five out of ten will point to the ambulance and cry out with questionable but certainly cheerful enough humor, "Save a place for me to-morrow!" or, "Be sure and give me a quick ride!" Others yell out greetings, or air their knowledge of English. "Hello, Charley!" heads the list in that department, and "Engleesh spoken" runs a close second. Some of the newly arrived soldiers take us for English, and "_Camarade anglais_" is in vogue; but with old acquaintances "_Camarade américain_," cried in a very sincere tone and followed by a grip of the hand, has a very warm friendship about it. Yes, you make good friends that way. Working along together in this war brings men very close. You find some delightful chaps, and then ... well, sometimes you realize you have not seen a certain one for a week or so, and you inquire after him from a man in his company.
"Where is Bosker, or Busker?--I don't know how you pronounce it. You know, tall fellow with corporal's galloons who was always talking about what a good time he was going to have when he got back to Paris."
"He got killed in the attack two nights ago," replies the man you have asked.
And you wonder how it happened exactly, and what he looks like dead.
Some days it is very quiet up there at the _postes de secours_--even the artillery to the rear is not firing overhead; and at other times it is rather lively. Soldiers will be sauntering up and down the long street, collecting in groups, or puttering around at some task, when suddenly there is a short, sharp, whistling sound overhead and a loud detonation as the well-timed shrapnel explodes. The aggregation does a turning movement that for unison of motion could not be excelled, and packs against the houses on the lee side of the street. There are some who do not bother about such a comparatively small thing as shrapnel, and keep to their course or occupation. I have seen men continue to sweep the street, or keep going to where they were heading, in spite of the fact that shrapnel whistled in at frequent intervals. I have also seen some of these immovable individuals crumple up and be still.
One evening the firing was so heavy that every one had sought the protection of the walls, when down the street came a most gloriously happy soldier. He was taking on up the street carrying a bottle, and at every explosion he waved his free arm and a wild yell of delight issued from his beaming face. It appeared to entertain him hugely, as if a special fireworks exhibition had been arranged on his behalf. It always seems to be that way. A sober man would have been killed on the spot.
With shells it is a very different story than with shrapnel. One can avoid the latter by backing up against a house, but the shells are apt to push it over on you. When the deeper, heavier whistle of a shell is heard, it sounds a good deal like tearing a big sheet of cloth. Men do not brave it. They know its hideous effects, and take to the nearest cellar or doorway. The first one or two that come in, if well placed, often claim victims. A group of soldiers will be talking or playing cards in front of a house. There is a swish; the shell hits the hard road in front of them, and the jagged _éclats_ rip into the little crowd, sometimes killing three or four of them. The soldiers who find themselves at a greater distance have time to throw themselves flat on the ground, and it is seldom that the singing fragments do not pass well overhead.
It is quite remarkable that none of the Americans have as yet been hurt at X----, for the evacuation of the wounded goes on regardless of the shelling. Often the escapes have been very close. Just yesterday ten big shells came in, killed six men and wounded forty others, and yet our two cars on duty there escaped without being hit. One day, following an attack, the firing was rather frequent. Nearly all of the ambulances were lined up in the village waiting for the wounded to be brought down. Our commander was talking to one of his drivers when a shell exploded on the other side of a wall behind him. He walked down the street to give instructions to another man. A shell hit the roof of a house there and covered the two with _débris_. He started to return, and as he passed a certain house a shell went right into it. They seemed to be following him. It frequently happens that an ambulance will be running down the street and a shell hit a house just behind or in front of its course. Now and then one's breath will stop when a car is enveloped in the clouds of dust and _débris_ coming from a shell-hit house, and start again when from the haze the driver emerges dirty but smiling. Of course, the cars have been hit. A shell tore off the front top of one ten inches from the driver's head, but as yet no member of the American Section has been hurt.
A kilometre up the climbing, winding road is a lone _poste de secours_ in the woods just off the highway. The approach and the place itself are often shelled. There have been times when the drivers were under a seriously heavy fire on night duty; times when trees have been shattered and fallen across the road and huge craters made in the soft earth of the adjacent fields. A kilometre beyond is still another point of call, and from there one can look directly into one of the most fought-over sections of ground in the long line from the sea to Belfort. It is a bit of land that before the war was covered with a magnificent forest. Now it is a wilderness whose desolation is beyond description. It is a section of murdered nature. The black, shattered things sticking up out of a sea of mounds were at one time great trees. There are no branches on the split trunks now. No green can be seen anywhere. Where the trenches ran there are but series of indentations, jumbles of splintered trench timbers, broken guns, rusty fragments of shells, strips of uniforms and caps, shoes with a putrid, maggot-eaten mass inside. It does not seem possible that life could ever have been there. It looks as if it had always been dead. What testimony to human habitation remains is but mute and buried wreckage.
This last _poste de secours_ is in the very line of fire, but then there are bomb-proofs near by and one can find shelter. One must be careful running up to this _poste_, for new and very deep holes are continually being blown in the road and there is danger of wrecking the cars.
Section Y has performed its duties so well that the work of an adjacent division has been given to it, and in a few days now the little cars will roll past the last-mentioned _poste de secours_ over to the exposed plain beyond and into the zone of its newly acquired activities.
The American cars literally infest the roads in the day. They buzz along on calls to the _postes_, return from evacuations, and keep so busy trying to accelerate the work that a casual observer might imagine that a whole division had been annihilated overnight. A car with three stretcher-cases in the back, a slightly wounded soldier sitting on the seat next to the driver, and a load of knapsacks piled between the hood and the fenders, starts down from the _poste de secours_, spins on through a village full of resting troops, and turns on to the highway leading to the evacuation hospitals at the town eight kilometres below. At first the holes in the walls and houses along the way, and the craters in the fields where the _marmites_ had struck, made one continually conscious of the possibility of a shell. Now one does not think about it, save to note the new holes, observe that the older ones have been cemented up, and to hope that an _éclat_ won't hit you at those exceedingly rare times when a shell bursts ahead or behind. The closest call so far on that stretch of road was when a 210 hit eleven feet to the side of one of our cars, but failed to explode. Of course there is a chance that even at that distance the _éclat_ might take a peculiar course and miss one; but the chances are that if that shell had gone off one of our men would have been minus several necessary portions of his anatomy.
The work at night is quite eerie, and on moonless nights quite difficult. No lights are allowed, and the inky black way ahead seems packed with a discordant jumble of sounds as the never-ending artillery and _ravitaillement_ trains rattle along. One creeps past convoy after convoy, past sentinels who cry, "_Halte là!_" and then whisper an apologetic "_Passez_" when they make out the ambulance; and it is only in the dazzling light of the illuminating rockets that shoot into the air and sink slowly over the trenches that one can see to proceed with any speed.
It is at night, too, that our hardest work comes, for that is usually the time when attacks and counter-attacks are made and great numbers of men are wounded. Sometimes all twenty of the Section cars will be in service. It is then that one sees the most frightfully wounded: the men with legs and arms shot away, mangled faces, and hideous body wounds. It is a time when men die in the ambulances before they reach the hospitals, and I believe nearly every driver in the Section has had at least one distressing experience of that sort.
Early one morning there was an urgent call for a single wounded. The man's comrades gathered around the little car to bid their friend good-bye. He was terribly wounded and going fast. "See," said one of them to the man on the stretcher, "you are going in an American car. You will have a good trip, old fellow, and get well soon. Good-bye and good luck!" They forced a certain cheerfulness, but their voices were low and dry, for they saw death creeping into the face of their comrade. The driver took his seat and was starting when he was asked to wait. "Something for him," they said. When the car arrived at the hospital, the man was dead. He was cold and must have died at the start of the trip. The driver regretted the delay in leaving. Why had they asked him to wait? Then he saw that the ambulance was covered with sprigs of lilac and little yellow field flowers. The men knew the car would serve as a hearse.
Once an American ambulance was really pressed into service as a hearse in a very touching funeral. A young lieutenant, the son of a prominent and influential official, had been killed in a gallant action. The family had been granted permission to enter the lines and attend the funeral. The young officer, who but a few days before his death had won his commission, was held in the deepest affection by his company, and they arranged that, as something very special, he should have a hearse. A car from Section "Y" was offered, and went to the church in the hamlet back of the trenches. The soldiers literally covered the ambulance with flowers and branches, and then stood waiting with the great wreaths they had brought in their hands. The little group emerged from the partly wrecked church, and the flag-covered coffin was slid into the car. The _cortège_, headed by a white-robed priest and two censer boys, wound slowly down the tortuous path that the troops follow on their way to the trenches.
The mother was supported by the father, a venerable soldier of 1870, who limped haltingly on his wooden leg. Back of the two came the lieutenant's sister, a beautiful girl just entering her twenties. The captain of the company was at her side, then followed other officers, and the silent, trench-worn soldiers behind. The funeral halted on the hillside near a grave dug beneath the branches of a budding apple tree. The coffin was pulled from the ambulance and lowered into the grave. And the mother knelt at the side, sobbing. The old father, who struggled to suppress his emotion, began a little oration. His voice trembled, and when at intervals he tried to say, "_Vive la France!_" it broke and great tears ran down his face. The soldiers, too, were crying, and the American's eyes were damp. Behind, a battery of 75's was firing--for on no account must the grim details of the war be halted--and at every deafening shot and swish of the shell tearing overhead the girl shivered, huddled close to the captain, and looked in a frightened way at the soldiers around her. In her small, thin shoes and black wavy dress she seemed strangely out of place in those military surroundings.
The Americans have a faculty of adapting themselves to any service they may be called upon to perform, and many times they undertake on their own initiative various missions that are not in exact accord with their military duties. They very often transport dead civilians after a bombardment. Though nearly every one takes to the caves when a bombardment starts, the first shells that come in frequently kill a number of people who have not had time to get to shelter. In the past few weeks nearly all the civilians have left the dangerous town, and it is seldom now that soldiers and the residents--men, women, and children--are found mixed up in pitiful dead groups.