A few more hours and the steady line of ambulances began its journey downward to crawl up again for another load, always waiting. We deposited our wounded at the first hospital in the valley—there the British took them and moved them on towards France. During that first night and day the wounded men could not filter through the hospital fast enough to let the new ones enter. Always there were three or four Fords lined up before the door, filled with men, perhaps dying, who could not be given even a place of shelter out of the cold. And it was bitterly cold. The mountain roads were frozen; our cars slipped and twisted and skidded from cliff to precipice, avoiding great ammunition wagons, frightened sliding horses and pack-mules, and hundreds of men, who, in the great rush, were considered able to drag themselves to the hospitals unaided.
I was on my way to the nearest post to the lines on the afternoon of the 27th when I was ordered to stop. Shells were falling on the road ahead and a tree was down across it. I waited a reasonable time for its removal and then insisted on going on. At that time I had never been under fire. For two kilometres I passed under what seemed like an archway of screaming shells. Branches fell on the car. At one time, half stunned, half merely scared, I fell forward on the wheel, stalled my engine, and had to get out and crank up, with pandemonium around me. Then I found the tree still down. For an hour I lay beside my car in the road, the safest place, for there was no shelter. We were covered with débris. Then dusk came, and as we must return from that road before dark, I tried to turn. The road was narrow, jammed with deserted carts and cars, and with a bank on one side, a sheer drop on the other. I jerked and stalled and shivered and finally turned, only to discover a new tree down behind. There could be no hesitating or waiting for help—we simply went through it and over it, in a sickening crash. And then our ordinary adventures began.
John W. Clark
There we had lived and eaten and sometimes slept during the attack. The soldiers of the ——th had practically adopted each and all of us, giving up their bunks and their food and wine for us at all times and sharing with us the various good things which had come from their homes scattered from the Savoie to Brittany. No lights were ever shown there; no shells had fallen anywhere near. On January 8, the first ones came, shrapnel and asphyxiating gas. Four men were killed. One of the brancardiers came out and stood in the road, unsheltered, to warn any American car that might be coming up. A car broke down and I took 161 up that afternoon. We climbed the road among the shells, and near the top a man was struck just in front of us. I picked him up and on the way down again we went through a running fire. Two days later our hut up there was struck and demolished. So we moved.
J. W. C.
Poilu Hardships