Crosses of white, crosses with the tricolor of France, and black crosses, mark the graves of English, French and German, respectively. Here and there little cemeteries of white crosses are scattered through the fields where they have been able to collect their dead.
Fifteen kilometers to Bapaume, which is a mass of wreckage, and on to Battencourt. Here we met Colonel Westcott, who looked us over, and then shipped us to the 2/1 Field Ambulance of the 62nd Battalion at Fevreuil. We get out here, our baggage is unloaded and we enter our shelter. Now a shelter is a round piece of corrugated iron with a wooden floor and serves for winter quarters.
October 1st. I sha'n't attempt to describe a Field Ambulance personnel. Everyone has explained it to me and that is sufficient, because I didn't understand it and probably never shall. Only, it is in three sections and each section is in three parts, so we are part one of second section. Thus 2/1.
We are comfortably quartered and the men are all nice fellows. The colonel is on leave and Captain Pope is in command. The officers are all fed up on the war as they have been at it since the start and have all seen trench service.
All morning we rode around with the Sanitary Officer inspecting camps and sanitation in general. The English make a separate sanitary service under trained sanitary men and not doctors. In the course of the morning we met Major English, a charming fellow, not over thirty, who took us over his battalion of Lewis guns. They had just come back the night before, but quiet, order and cleanliness reigned everywhere. Truly a remarkable people.
In the afternoon we motored over to Péronne with the same Sanitary Lieutenant (Hafflin), and again a vast track of devastation as far as the eye could reach in all directions—trenches, barbed wire and graves. Literally, not a habitable house left standing. Péronne has a school of sanitation where the men are detailed for two or three days for instruction in general camp sanitation. It is a remarkable institution. Every bit of waste material is utilized. Petrol cans make wonderful stoves. Boxes are sawed up into latrine covers, wash benches, meat-safes. Tin cans are cut up and reshaped into many utensils. Hinges are improvised from bits of leather, pieces of tin and wire. It has all been carefully worked out and nothing left to chance. Then again all wagons, bits of equipment, harness, etc., are groomed with just as much care and attention as they would be at home. Autos are washed, shined and polished. It is all simply a marvel.
Péronne is a mass of wreckage like everything else. Evidently a once charming little Cathedral lies in a mass of wreckage, and on the doors of the Hôtel de Ville is scribbled in chalk "Eintritt fur 40 Sanitatespersonnel." The destitution of the Cathedral is so complete that it must have been blown up.
October 3rd. Yesterday morning about nine o'clock we started for Écoust-Longatte, going out in the motor ambulance about four kilometers. We were fitted out with steel helmets and two gas-masks, the second as an emergency in case anything happens to the first. After going about two kilometers there is a sign "No traffic beyond this point." Here the steel helmet is adjusted and the gas-mask drawn up in front, the bag opened and everything made ready for immediate adjustment. Then over about a two-kilometer stretch of road in full view of Fritz and under the range of his guns. The road is lined with small dugouts. Here and there empty shells are hung, to be rung in case of a gas attack. The condition of the wind is noted on boards as "Wind dangerous" or "Wind safe" depending upon the point of the compass from which it blows.
We crossed the two kilometers on the crest of the ridge. On all sides not a sign of life. This absence of all visual signs of life is almost appalling, for on all sides as far as the eye can reach not a cat is seen. Yet there is the creepy feeling that some one is always watching you.
At Écoust is A. D. S. (Advance Dressing Station) in the cellar of a ruined brewery. The men sleep, eat and live at least twelve feet below the ground. At the doors are two sets of curtains soaked in a solution of hexamine to be lowered on the sounding of the gas alarm, also with apparatus standing near to keep them sprayed with the same solution. After speaking with the officer in charge we set out on foot through Longatte, which is a small suburb of Écoust. Here the road for a strip of two hundred yards is in view of Fritz and it is camouflaged with wire netting to which small particles of green cloth are tied. We passed two enormous mine pits in the center of the road which the Germans blew up on their retreat to the Hindenburg Line. Bullecourt could be seen about three miles in front of us. All that remains now is a pile of white rubbish. The English line runs up to the suburbs of this town.