On the morning of September first, after we had been at Verdun for a
month under fire, as we were eating breakfast, three Englishmen walked
into our dining tent. They were members of Section One, English
Ambulance Corps. They informed us that their Section had been sent up
to relieve us. We were elated. We invited them to sit down for
breakfast with us, for we wanted to be decently polite and reserved. A
little later it turned out they had been misinformed. They had merely
been sent up to assist us. We were dejected. We were to stay on, “just
three or four days longer.”
The French were going to follow up their success of August twentieth
with another attack which would take place “’most any day” and then we
would be sent back for rest. The centre of this attack was to take
place in front of Fort Douaumont, and, if anything, it would be harder
on us than when we were at Haudremont on the twentieth.
The attack took place on the seventh of September and while some
ground was gained, the success was not as decisive as the previous
attack.
But the relief did not come for us, we were to stay on, “just for two
or three days longer,” through the counter attack of the Germans.
Personally I was playing out very rapidly. I was losing the ability to
relax and recuperate when off duty. I was losing the ability to
sleep――I was reaching the stage of premonitions. I hoped that I might
last out until relief came. I wanted to finish decently. I was afraid
of myself――I was afraid I might turn coward――I was afraid I might turn
quitter.
Then came a drive that I shall always remember. It was during the
counter attack of the Germans. I shall always remember it, for one
reason, because I was almost tempted to turn coward and quit.
The wounded were coming in fast at Douaumont, both French and German,
and all of our cars were on duty――at least all that were able to run.
It was just about noon when I started, and the sun was shining
cheerfully enough overhead but it was hell on earth. A short distance
out I passed one of the English cars coming in and the driver shouted
to me to have my gas mask ready. I confess I had a feeling of fear. I
had seen the victims of poison gas and I had a greater dread of that
than I had of shells, if such a thing were possible, and besides a
couple of nights before during a period that I had been on constant
duty for thirty hours in which time I had punctured six tires, had had
a slight touch of gas and had felt rather ragged ever since. About
four miles out, I passed one of our cars and the driver called to me
something about big shells and gas. I stopped to call back for more
particulars, but he was too far back to hear me. I was wavering but I
drove on. A little further and I could see the shells coming in. I
could see the gas clouds. I stopped my car――I got out and then I had
the hardest argument I have ever had with myself. First I argued: “It
is suicide to go on, I am justified in turning back and reporting the
road is impassable.” Then I argued with myself, “But if I do go on and
am hit, the agony will be over with in a few minutes, but if I turn
back, the agony will be with me the rest of my life.” So I put on my
gas mask and drove on.
Approaching the brow of the hill, I saw three of our cars drawn up
alongside the road. I stopped my car directly behind them and walked
ahead. The engine of one of the cars was still running, but the cars
were all deserted. At that minute a shell struck just at the brow of
the hill. The stop had undoubtedly saved me. I ran down an embankment
into a deserted dug-out and there I crouched, sweltering in my gas
mask. A few minuter later I ran out, jumped into my ambulance, passing
the three deserted cars and drove on, trembling so that I could
scarcely keep my feet on the right pedals. I reached the post at
Douaumont and there in the entrance was our French Lieutenant Reymond
in his steel helmet, calm and undisturbed, directing and assisting in
the loading of the ambulances. He quietly and good-naturedly took me
to task because my boots were not properly laced. I gave him a
cigarette and lighted one myself. Then I went inside the post where
tea was being ladled out to the stretcher bearers. This steadied me a
bit. I went out. The place was littered with wounded, mostly Germans.
Lieutenant Reymond assisted me in lifting wounded Germans into the
car.
Then I drove back and went off duty. Some time in the middle of the
night I had a terrible nightmare and went through the whole experience
over again, and in it I dreamed that I had an urgent call to go back
to the same post. I woke up, but the dream had been so vivid that I
really thought I had received a call. I pulled on my boots and, partly
dressed, started for my car. Stevenson and “Red” Day who were out
there informed me there had been no call and sent me back to bed.
Stevenson gave me a drug to make me sleep. Later, I found that “Red”
Day deliberately fixed my car so it would not run in the event of my
receiving any more imaginary calls in the night.
It was the day following that, as I was sitting on the end of my cot
about to lie down, a shell struck outside and a piece of the shell
about the size of an inkwell ripped a hole in the tent and struck on
my pillow. I picked it up while it was still hot, walked out and
showed it to Lieutenant Reymond and we laughed together over the
incident. Lieutenant Reymond’s laugh was fairly hearty.
On the fifteenth of September, after forty-five days and forty-five
nights under shell fire day and night, we received orders to go on
repose. A little while later Stevenson packed me in his staff car and
started me on my way to Paris to see a doctor.
I was not elated――I was utterly dejected. I had wanted to finish
strong and I had all but finished in the discard. “Take a month off or
as long as you need, but I want you to come back,” was Steve’s kind
and cheering parting, as the car pulled down the road.
The men in the Section had all been wonderful. Lieutenant Reymond had
been magnificent, but I am sure but for the brainy, watchful,
sympathetic leadership of William Yorke Stevenson, the Section would
never have held together those long days and nights, in the seething,
shrieking, blood-stained hell in front of Verdun――“The valley of the
shadow of death.”