New Quarters
August 6, 1915
I was delighted to see "Doc" to-day. He arrived yesterday evening from Paris, but I was on M—— duty, so we did not meet until this morning. We had a long talk and I told him the story of the fatal 22d; the recital of it only seems to have reimpressed me with the horror of that night.
A "POSTE DE SECOURS" AT MONTAUVILLE
We are now quite comfortably settled in our new quarters, a house never shelled until just after our occupation of it, when we received a 77 a few feet from our windows. I do not know why it has been spared unless the Boches were anxious not to destroy a creation so obviously their own. Architecturally it is incredible—a veritable pastry cook's chef d'œuvre. Some of the colors within are so vivid that hours of darkness cannot drive them out of vision. There is no piano, but musical surprises abound. Everything you touch or move promptly plays a tune, even a stein plays "Deutschland über alles"—or something. Still the garden full of fruit and vegetables will make up for the rest. Over the brook which runs through it is a little rustic bridge—all imitation wood made of cast iron! Just beneath the latter I was electrified to discover a very open-mouthed and particularly yellow crockery frog quite eighteen inches long! A stone statue of a dancing boy in front of the house was too much for us all. We ransacked the attic and found some articles of clothing belonging to our absent hostess, and have so dressed it that, with a tin can in its hand, it now looks like an inadequately clad lady speeding to her bath-house with a pail of fresh water.
Last night "Mac" and I were on night duty at M——, and when we arrived at the telephone bureau—where we lie on stretchers fully dressed in our blankets waiting for a call (the rats would keep you awake if there were no work to do)—we were told that they expected a bad bombardment of the village. "Mac" and I tossed up for the first call, and I lost. "Auberge Saint-Pierre, I bet," laughed "Mac." That is our worst trip—but it was to be something even more unpleasant than usual. About eleven o'clock the Boches started shelling the little one-street village with 105 shrapnel. In the midst of it a brancardier came running in to ask for an ambulance—three couchés, "très pressé." Of course, I had to grin and bear it, but it is a horrid feeling to have to go out into a little street where shells are falling regularly—start your motor—turn—back—and run a few yards down the street to a poste de secours where a shell has just landed and another is due any moment.
"Are your wounded ready?" I asked, as calmly as I could. "Oui, monsieur." So out I went—and was welcomed by two shells—one on my right and the other just down the street. I cranked up No 10, the brancardier jumped up by my side, and we drove to our destination. I decided to leave the ambulance on the left side of the road (the side nearer the trenches and therefore more protected by houses from shell-fire), as I thought it safer on learning that it would be fifteen minutes before the wounded were ready; and luckily for me, for a shell soon landed on the other side of the road where I usually leave the ambulance. My wounded men were now ready; it appeared that one of the shrapnel shells had entered a window and exploded inside a room where seven soldiers, resting after a hard day's work in the trenches, were sleeping—with the appalling result of four dead and three terribly wounded. As I felt my way to the hospital along that pitch-black road, I could not help wondering why those poor fellows were chosen for the sacrifice instead of us others in the telephone bureau—sixty yards down the street.
However, here I am writing to you, safe and sound, on the little table by my bedside, with a half-burnt candle stuck in a Muratti cigarette box. Outside the night is silent—my window is open and in the draught the wax has trickled down on to the box and then to the table—unheeded—for my thoughts have sped far. To Gloucester days, and winter evenings spent in the old brown-panelled, raftered room, with its pewter lustrous in the candlelight; and the big, cheerful fire that played with our shadows on the wall, while we talked or read—and were content. Well—that peace has gone for a while, but these days will likewise pass, and we are young. It has been good to be here in the presence of high courage and to have learned a little in our youth of the values of life and death.