At ten o'clock we were ordered to Poperinghe, about twenty miles from Dunkirk and three miles from Ypres, where one of the biggest battles of the war was just getting under way. The town was filled with refugees from Ypres, which was in flames and uninhabitable. Through Poperinghe and beyond it we slowly wound our way in the midst of a solid stream of motor trucks, filled with dust-covered soldiers coming up to take their heroic part in stemming the German tide. We were to make our headquarters for the time at Elverdinghe, but as we approached our destination the road was being shelled and we put on our best speed to get through the danger zone. This destination turned out to be a small château in Elverdinghe, where a first-aid hospital had been established. All round us batteries of French and English guns were thundering their aid to the men in the trenches some two miles away. In front of us and beside us were the famous 75's, the 90's, and 120's, and farther back the great English marine guns, and every few seconds we could hear their big shells passing over us. An automobile had just been put out of commission by a shell, before we reached the château, so we had to change our route and go up another road. The château presented a terrible scene. In every room straw and beds and stretchers, and mangled men everywhere. We started to work and for twenty-six hours there was scarcely time for pause. Our work consisted in going down to the postes de secours, or first-aid stations, situated in the Flemish farmhouses, perhaps four hundred or five hundred yards from the trenches, where the wounded get their first primitive dressings, and then in carrying the men back to the dressing-stations where they were dressed again, and then in taking them farther to the rear to the hospitals outside of shell range. The roads were bad and we had to pass a constant line of convoys. At night no lights were allowed and one had to be especially careful not to jolt his passengers. Even the best of drivers cannot help bumping on the pavements of Belgium, but when for an hour each cobble brings forth a groan from the men inside, it is hard to bear. Often they are out of their heads. They call then for their mothers—they order the charge—to cease firing—they see visions of beautiful fields—of cool water—and sometimes they die before the trip is over.
At Elverdinghe the bombardment was tremendous; the church was crumbling bit by bit. The guns were making too great a noise for sleep. About 4 p.m. we started out to find something to eat. A problem this, for the only shop still open was run by an old couple too scared to cook. No food for hours at a time gives desperate courage, so on we went until we found in a farmhouse some ham and eggs which we cooked ourselves. It was not altogether pleasant, for the whole place was filled with dust, the house next door having just been demolished by a shell. However, the machines were untouched, although a shell burst near them, and we hurried back for another night's work.
A WINTER DAY IN FLANDERS
The following morning we decided to stay in Elverdinghe and try to get a little sleep, but no sooner had we turned in than we were awakened by the order to get out of the château at once, as we were under fire. While I was putting on my shoes the window fell in and part of the ceiling came along. Then an order came to evacuate the place of all its wounded, and we were busy for hours getting them to a place of safety. Shells were falling all about. One great tree in front of me was cut completely off and an auto near it was riddled with the fragments. For two weeks this battle lasted. We watched our little village gradually disintegrating under the German shells. The cars were many times under more or less heavy artillery and rifle fire and few there were without shrapnel holes.
The advantage of our little cars over the bigger and heavier ambulances was demonstrated many times. 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. If a serious collision occurred, two hours' work sufficed to repair it. Always "on the job," always efficient, the little car, the subject of a thousand jokers, gained the admiration of every one.
To most of the posts we could go only after dark, as they were in sight of the German lines. Once we did go during the day to a post along the banks of the Yser Canal, but it was too dangerous and the General ordered such trips stopped. These few trips were splendid, however. To see the men in the trenches and hear the screech of the shells at the very front was thrilling, indeed. At times a rifle bullet would find its way over the bank and flatten itself against a near-by farmhouse. One was safer at night, of course, but the roads were so full of marmite holes and fallen trees that they were hard to drive along. We could only find our way by carefully avoiding the dark spots on the road. Not a man, however, who did not feel a hundred times repaid for any danger and anxiety of these trips in realizing the time and suffering he had saved the wounded. Had we not been there with our little cars, the wounded would have been brought back on hand-stretchers or in wagons far less comfortable and much more slow.
Finally the second battle of the Yser was over. The front settled down again to the comparative quiet of trench warfare. Meanwhile some of us were beginning to feel the strain and were ordered back to Dunkirk for a rest. We reached there in time to witness one of the most exciting episodes of the war. It was just at this time that the Germans sprang another surprise—the bombardment of Dunkirk from guns more than twenty miles away. Shells that would obliterate a whole house or make a hole in the ground thirty feet across would fall and explode without even a warning whistle such as ordinary shells make when approaching. We were in the station working on our cars at about 9.30 in the morning, when, out of a clear, beautiful sky, the first shell fell. We thought it was only from an aeroplane, as Dunkirk seemed far from the range of other guns. The dog seemed to know better, for he jumped off the seat of my car and came whining under me. A few minutes later came a second and then a third shell. Still not knowing from where they came, we got out our machines and went to where the clouds of smoke gave evidence that they had fallen. I had supposed myself by this time something of a veteran, but when I went into the first dismantled house and saw what it looked like inside, the street seemed by far a safer place. The house was only a mass of torn timbers, dirt, and débris. Even people in the cellar had been wounded. We worked all that day, moving from place to place, sometimes almost smothered by dust and plaster from the explosion of shells in our vicinity. We cruised slowly around the streets waiting for the shells to come and then went to see if any one had been hit. Sometimes, when houses were demolished, we found every one safe in the cellars, but there were many hurt, of course, and quite a number killed. The first day I had three dead and ten terribly wounded to carry, soldiers, civilians, and women too. In one of the earlier bombardments a shell fell in the midst of a funeral, destroying almost every vestige of the hearse and body and all of the mourners. Another day one of them hit a group of children at play in front of the billet where at one time we lodged, and it was said never to have been known how many children had been killed, so complete was their annihilation.
For a time every one believed the shells had been fired from marine guns at sea, but sooner or later it was proved that they came from land guns, twenty or more miles away, and as these bombardments were repeated in succeeding weeks, measures were taken to safeguard the public from them. Although the shells weighed nearly a ton, their passage through the air took almost a minute and a half, and their arrival in later days was announced by telephone from the French trenches as soon as the explosion on their departure had been heard. At Dunkirk a siren was blown on the summit of a central tower, giving people at least a minute in which to seek shelter in their cellars before the shell arrived. Whenever we heard the sirens our duty was to run into the city and search for the injured, and during the succeeding weeks many severely wounded were carried in our ambulances, including women and children—so frequently the victims of German methods of warfare. The American ambulance cars were the only cars on duty during these different bombardments and the leader of the Section was awarded the Croix de Guerre for the services which they performed.