O’Malley tells the story of two of the Captain’s drivers—Privates
Freddy Schroeder and Leo Smith, both from New York City—who were
engaged in their customary hilarious sport when word came to the little
Red Cross band that a medical detachment was out beyond the hindside
of No Man’s Land and that it had been marooned there for thirty hours
without food or water. “Zipp went Red Cross rowdies Freddy and Leo
in their tawney ambulances decorated with the big Red Cross—fairest
of targets for a German gentleman. And this time when the drivers,
their ambulances loaded with grub and water, came to an open stretch
of road they got not only machine gun bullet storms but Hunnish high
explosives. And as they were sailing along through the metal storm on a
straight stretch of open highway, a German shell exploded just ahead of
them, so close that they barely had time to come to a stop on the edge
of the crater. They were about to reverse and back off to where they
had come from when another shell bit the road just behind them and made
another crater.
[Illustration:
_Drawn by Joseph Cummings Chase._