Joshua G. B. Campbell
[8] This Section has since added several important chapters to its history, having served successively on the Aisne, on the Somme, at Verdun, and in the Argonne. (November, 1916.)
[IX]
THE BEGINNINGS OF A NEW SECTION
The night before we were to leave we gave a dinner to the officers of the Ambulance. There were not many speeches, but we were reminded that we were in charge of one of the best-equipped Sections which had as yet taken the field, and that we were going to the front in an auxiliary capacity to take the place of Frenchmen needed for the sterner work of the trenches. We might be sent immediately to the front or kept for a while in the rear; but in any event there were sick and wounded to be carried and our job was to help by obeying orders.
Early the next morning we ran through the Bois-de-Boulogne and over an historic route to Versailles, where, at the headquarters of the Army Automobile Service, our cars were numbered with a military serial and the driver of each was given a Livret Matricule, which is an open sesame to every motor park in France. Those details were completed about ten o'clock, and we felt at last as if we were French soldiers driving French automobiles on the way to our place at the front.