“ Few in number and limited in their activities, this little band of American ambulance drivers in France is of course insignificant when compared with the tens of thousands of young Frenchmen who crossed the ocean as soldiers and sailors to help America in 1777. To the valor and devotion of these Frenchmen we owe our very existence as an independent nation, and nothing that Americans have done for France during these last hard years of trial can be thought of—without embarrassment—in relation with what Frenchmen did for us in those unforgettable years of our peril from 1777 to 1781. ”

“ Until our light, cheap cars were risked on these roads a wounded man faced a ten-mile journey with his stretcher strapped to the back of a mule or put on the floor of a hard, springless wagon. Now he is carried by hand or in wheelbarrows from one half to two miles. Then in one of our cars there is a long climb followed by a long descent. And over such roads! Roads blocked by artillery convoys and swarming with mules, staggering likely as not beneath a load of high-explosive shells! Roads so narrow that two vehicles cannot pass each other when both are in motion! ”

“ The driver seems almost buried under his freight; he has not an inch of room more than is necessary for the control of his car. Covered with mud, blood-stained, with startlingly white bandages against their tanned skin; with puttees loose and torn, heavy boots, shapeless uniforms gray from exposure, and with patient, suffering faces still bearing the shock and horror of bombardment, the wounded roll slowly from the postes [Pg 150] de secours to shelter and care, shivering, maybe, in the cold and grayness of dawn, but always with a hand to help each other and a word of thanks to the driver. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One day it was sunshine and spring, with roads six inches deep in mud, no traffic, and nothing to remind one of war, except the wounded in the car and the distant roar of the guns, which sounded like a giant beating a carpet. The next day it was winter again, with mud turned to ice, the roads blocked with troops, and the Germans turning hell loose with their heavy guns.
In such a crisis as those first days around Verdun, ammunition and fresh men are the all-essential things. The wounded are the déchets, the "has-beens," and so must take second place. ”

“ On this day when you celebrate anniversary your national independence, at the very hour when in hard-fought battles France defends her independence against a foe whose mad lust for world-domination threatens liberty of all nations, and whose savage deeds threaten moral conquests of civilization, I extend you profound French affection for your great and generous nation, and seize opportunity to offer renewed assurances heartfelt gratitude people of Lorraine, for admirable devotion of all members American Ambulance, Pont-à-Mousson. ”

“ En toutes circonstances, tous et chacun ont fait leur devoir,—et plus que leur devoir,—avec un parfait mépris personnel du danger, avec une simplicité touchante, avec un imperturbable sang-froid n'ayant d'égal que l'empressement foncièrement généreux des secours inlassablement apportés.
La mort d'un conducteur tué à son volant, la blessure grave d'un autre conducteur contractée au cours de son service, témoignent encore bien plus que les citations à l'ordre du jour décernées à la Section et à un nombre élevé de ses membres, de la façon dont elle a compris ses devoirs et tenu à les remplir. ”

“ There is no place like the front for the Long Arm of Coincidence to play pranks. I have known two university football stars to meet for the first time since their gridiron days on a shelled curve of a narrow road—each in charge of an ambulance and each down in the road driving some wandering cows out of their way. I have known two young men to celebrate the Fourth of July on their voyage over to do ambulance work, in a way that drew forth the gentle rebukes of a Protestant minister who happened to be a passenger on the same boat. ”

“ It is possible, also, from a number of these eminences to follow in a fascinating fashion the progress of artillery duels, and, with a good pair of glasses, even to see infantry advancing to the attack. When the cannonading is heavy the whole horizon pops and rumbles and from the sea of green mountains spread out before you rise puffs of shrapnel smoke, flaky little clouds about the size of a man's hand and pale against the tree-tops, as one thinks of death as pale. They hover, sometimes too many at a time to count, above the mountains and then sink down again into the general greenness. ”

“ A few yards behind the mouths of the communication trenches are the first dressing-stations, everywhere and always one of war's most ghastly spots. Paths make their way from these dressing-stations down the mountain-sides until they become roads, and, once they have become roads, our work begins.
Nowhere else are foreign soldiers upon German soil. Nowhere else, from Ypres to Belfort, do the lines face each other in a mountain range of commanding summits and ever-visible village-dotted valleys. ”

“ Even now the members of Section Y have much to learn. They still persist in remaining in their chairs in the exposed garden when aeroplanes are being fired at directly overhead, when balls of shrapnel have repeatedly dropped into the flower-beds, and when one man was narrowly missed by a long, razor-edged fragment of a shrapnel shell. And this has not even the excuse of a desire to observe—for the novelty of these performances has long since passed—and one hardly ever glances upward. They won't even move for a German Taube, though it might at any minute drop a bomb or two. ”

“ But cooks are the people we cultivate the most assiduously. It is forbidden to leave your car and eat in a café. Besides, the time of day when we are hungriest is the time—maybe midnight or early morning—when no cafés are open or when we are marooned on some mountain-top. For single cars and small wandering detachments there are only informal arrangements for "touching" rations. So we depend upon the good-will of the chief cooks and we seldom go hungry. But the stanchest sustainer of every American Ambulance driver presides over the kitchen of the largest sorting-point in the valley. ”

“ During that first night and day the wounded men could not filter through the hospital fast enough to let the new ones enter. Always there were three or four Fords lined up before the door, filled with men, perhaps dying, who could not be given even a place of shelter out of the cold. And it was bitterly cold. The mountain roads were frozen; our cars slipped and twisted and skidded from cliff to precipice, avoiding great ammunition wagons, frightened sliding horses and pack-mules, and hundreds of men, who, in the great rush, were considered able to drag themselves to the hospitals unaided. ”

“ Back of the trenches for several miles every village is full of soldiers resting or in reserve; the roads are filled with marching troops, horses, mule trains, baggage wagons, guns and ammunition carts. At every crossroad stand sentries with bayonets. After sunset the whole country is dark, no lights being permitted, but the roads are more crowded than by day, as it is under cover of night that troops and guns are generally moved. The whole country near to the active lines is one great theatre of war. Everywhere are sights and sounds forbidding a moment's forgetfulness of the fact. ”

“ Soldiers, as I have said, march by these posts on their way to and from the trenches. Whenever they are allowed to break ranks near our cars they crowd around us with little bottles in their hands asking for gasoline to put in cigarette lighters which they make out of German bullets. Most of these men belong to battalions of Chasseurs Alpins, and I do not suppose there are any finer soldiers in the world than those stocky, merry-eyed men from the mountain provinces of France, with their picturesque caps and their dark-blue coats set off by their horison-blue trousers. ”

“ En ce jour où vous célébrez fête votre indépendance nationale, à l'heure même où dans des rudes combats la France défend son indépendance contre un ennemi dont la folie de domination menace la liberté de tous les peuples et dont les procédés barbares menacent les conquêtes morales de la civilisation, vous adresse expression profondes sympathies françaises pour votre grande et généreuse nation, et je saisis cette occasion vous présenter nouvelles assurances gratitude émue populations lorraines pour dévouement admirable de tous les membres Ambulance Américaine de Pont-à-Mousson. ”

“ But these towns seem to be, on the whole, cheerful, prosperous places. Soldiers resting from the trenches flirt the time away with bilingual Alsatian girls. Horns, claxons, and the hum of motors make in the little mountain-smothered streets the noises of Broadway or Piccadilly. The cafés and stores are full from morning until eight o'clock, when all lights must be put out.
Nothing is taken by the soldiery without being paid for, a fact that was brought sharply home to me on one occasion. We needed wood for the kitchen-fire of a little dressing-station hidden on a tree-covered mountain-top. ”

“ Nothing has been done to alter or disguise. The fields surrounding are pitted with shell craters, which have a suggestive way of lining the open roads; along the edge of the roads are rifle pits and shallow trenches filled with a litter of cartridge boxes and bits of trampled uniform and accoutrement, blue and red, or greenish gray, mixed together, and always and everywhere the long grave mounds with the little wooden crosses which are a familiar feature of the landscape. It lacks, perhaps, the bald grim cruelty of Hartmannsweilerkopf, but it is a place not to be forgotten. ”

“ Sometimes we sit in the little garden behind our caserne in the evening, comfortably drinking beer and smoking or talking and watching the flash of cannon which are so far away we cannot hear the report. At such times, the war is remote and does not touch us. At other times, at a perfectly appointed dinner-table, laden with fresh strawberries, delicious cakes, and fine wine, and graced with the presence of a charming hostess, the war is still more distant. Pont-à-Mousson, moreover, is rich in beautifully conceived gardens of pleasant shade trees, lovely flowers, and tinkling fountains. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Chambre
des Députés Paris, le 6 août 1915
Monsieur le Directeur,—
J'ai l'honneur de vous remercier, au nom de la Commission d'Hygiène publique, des soins éclairés et dévoués que l'Ambulance Américaine prodigue à nos blessés de Pont-à-Mousson.
Dans les tristes heures que nous vivons, il nous est particulièrement doux de savoir que des mains amies s'empressent autour de ceux des nôtres qui si courageusement versent leur sang pour la défense de notre Pays. ”

“ They share with the world at large a feeling towards the French people of sympathy, of admiration, and, indeed, of reverence, such as exists towards the people of no other country; and millions of them, like these volunteers of the American Ambulance, have been tortured by a longing to have some share with the people of France in defending the ideals for which, as they feel, America has always stood, and for which France is now making such vast, such gallant, and such unflinching sacrifice. ”

“ You know how proud I am of having been the first to appreciate the gallant young men whom your noble-hearted country sent to us, of having succeeded in having your first section sent to Alsatian territory, and, lastly, of bearing, as a symbol of honour, the name of Father of the American Sections, which was spontaneously bestowed upon me by those noble young men on the day when they learned that they were to go to Alsace. ”

“ On narrow roads, with a ditch on each side, choked with troops, ammunition wagons, and vehicles of all sorts moving in both directions, horses sometimes rearing in terror at exploding shells, at night in the pitch dark, except for the weird light from the illuminating rockets, the little cars could squeeze through somehow. If sometimes a wheel or two would fall into a shell hole, four or five willing soldiers were enough to lift it out and on its way undamaged. ”

“ And side by side with the dead are the living, the soldiers of the army of France, holding, through bitter cold and a ceaseless shower of iron and hell, the far-stretching lines. If there is anything I am proud of, it is of having been with the French army—the most devoted and heroic of the war. ”

“ The Hague Conventions forbid carrying any soldiers in ambulances except those who are wounded and those in the service sanitaire. It is, putting it mildly, unpleasant to have to refuse a man a ride when he is wearily facing a long walk and you are spinning by in an empty ambulance. It is doubly unpleasant when you feel that this man would do anything for you from pushing your car out of a ditch to sharing a canteen. ”