File:Friends of France; (1916) (14594990620).jpg

Identifier: friendsoffrance1916andr (find matches)
Title: Friends of France;
Year: 1916 (1910s)
Authors: Andrew, Abram Piatt, 1873-1936.
Subjects: American field service. World War, 1914-1918
Publisher: Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin company

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seriously wounded, havingthe rest to be carried in light wagons pulleu L j mules,until they get to some mountain-top relay-pointwhere our cars are stationed. Most of these relay-points are very close to one or several French batter-ies. Some of them are established in the midst ofthriving cantonments buried in the woods and with-in sight of the German trenches on a sister mountain-top. Others, farther removed from the enemy linesand higher above the level of destruction, are on sum-mits suitable only for the biggest of the French gunsand reached in turn only by the very long-range Ger-man guns. Such a place is a mountain-top at which we feelalmost as much at home as at our base, for eight ofour cars are always on duty at this place, each manserving for a week at a time, and one man being re-lieved every day. It is one of those plateau-shapedeminences which are mentioned in geographies asdistinguishing the Vosges from the Alps and thePyrenees. It is treeless through exposure to the 42
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THE SECTION IN ALSACE RECONQUISE wind, and its brow slopes gradually towards theFrench side, with a succession of cuplike hollowstenanted by brush-covered bomb-proofs and dug-outs and horse-sheds. Other than topographicalconcealments are also employed; gray horses aredyed brown and groups of road-builders when atwork in some particularly exposed place carry, likethe army that went against Macbeth, umbrellas ofbranches. We are housed here in a long, low shack builtagainst the side of the crest. Violent storms some-times take the roof off this shack with the conse-quent drenching of the surgeon in charge, ourselves,a half-dozen stretcher-bearers and as many mule-drivers. Bunks are built crosswise against the sideof the walls, and over some of these bunks the wordsPour Intransportables are written. The rest, how-ever, are occupied by people on duty here, for it ismerely a relay-point, and the wounded, unless un-able to stand a further journey or arriving by mulesin numbers greater than w

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