II
IN ACTION
VILLE-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.
The 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.