"Finally it seemed to me that the only way of reaching the front was to join a volunteer motor ambulance corps, as several other women had done. I transformed a 60-horsepower, eight-seated touring car into a motor ambulance for four badly wounded men or eight slightly wounded ones. I qualified for the service and was authorized to proceed to the front in Alsace, accompanied by a mechanician.
"While performing my ambulance duties I had a good opportunity to watch the armored automobiles, and realized that their work was the most exciting and perhaps the most decisive of the war."
One day Mlle. Duclos, having taken some wounded men to the field hospital, was returning once more to the fighting line. Eager for adventure she drove her car up a mountain road, which was not included in the trench zone, and entered a wild, mountainous country, from which the French were desperately trying to drive the Germans by flank attacks, surprises, air raids and other stratagems.
Soon the rattle of rifle bullets and machine gun fire close at hand caught her attention. A turn in the road brought her in sight of a big armored French car that stood disabled in the middle of the road. The engine had been smashed by a shell. The Germans were firing at it from cover some distance away. The French soldiers were firing away from the protection of the armor with their machine guns and their rifles, but they were handicapped by the immobility of the car, and the Germans were gradually encircling them. Three of the eight Frenchmen forming the crew of the car lay dead in the road, killed while they had exposed themselves in an attempt to repair the engine.
Mlle. Duclos saw three German soldiers rise from cover and advance in an effort to rush the car. They were shot down, but she saw that in a few more minutes the Frenchmen must be overwhelmed.
Taking in the situation at a glance, the experienced motorist sped up to the injured car and backed up her machine before she stopped.
"Get in," she cried to the French soldiers, "or you will be taken in another minute."
The five Frenchmen jumped into Mlle. Duclos's car with their rifles. Under a rain of bullets she sped back by the way she had come. Luckily they all escaped, and a turn in the zigzag road soon put them out of danger.
The Germans must have taken possession of the car in a leisurely manner after the escape of the French. It was precious booty to them. Probably they tried to repair it, and, finding that impossible, started to tow it back.
The Frenchmen were not satisfied to escape with their lives and leave their car behind. Mlle. Duclos had noted carefully the direction of the surrounding roads. After running back a short distance she found a road that would lead them to the one that the Germans would follow on their way back.