“I think I owe my opportunity to do my bit, in the way I have, to the
fact that I arrived in Flanders a few hours before the fight and
the officers were too busy to send me back. I had seven automobiles,
and knew how to use them. I took them to Dixmude and offered the
automobiles and my services to the cause. I established headquarters
at Furnes, which is seven miles from Nieuport, eight from Dixmude, and
twenty from Ypres. I drove along the Yser Canal to the parts of the
field that were under the heaviest fire, for there, I knew, my cars
and I would be most needed. For a year I worked for the relief of the
wounded of the French armies. Then I went to Russia, where I found the
need of help and the sacrifice of life because of lack of that help
almost inconceivable. The French armies have 6,000 ambulances. The
Germans have 6,200. Russia, with a firing line of 6,000 miles, has only
600 motor-ambulances.
“I established dressing-stations in the mountains. Some of these were
10,000 feet above the sea-level. There, on the canvas stretched between
two horses, the wounded were brought, or so they started. For many of
them died in the long journey, every step of which was torture to a
wounded man.
“The most exciting experience I ever had was on the Galician border.
We could approach the battle-line only along the Tarnopol road, which
ran for fifteen miles directly under German guns. I was speeding along
it with an ambulance full of wounded soldiers when a shell struck the
roadside and exploded, tearing a great hole in the earth fifty feet
away. The concussion stopped us. Then we went on. I travel on my luck.
Some time, I suppose, I shall travel too far.”