Our trip has been full of touching and appealing impressions
crowding one upon the other. As our picturesque convoy ran through
the little villages, and we stopped here and there for some one to
clean a spark-plug or mend a tire, children crowded around us, and
asked questions about America, and we often got them to sing the
"Marseillaise" or some of the topical songs of the moment about
"Guillaume" and the "Boches" (people in France seldom speak of the
Germans as such, they call them simply "Boches" which seems to
mean "brutal, stupid people"). After a long, hard drive we reached
Saint-Omer about eleven. The hotels were full, the restaurants
were closed, and no provision had been made either for our food or
our lodging. So we wheeled into the public square and slept on the
stretchers in our ambulances--without other food than the chocolate and
crackers we had in our pockets. All day yesterday, as we ran past
the quaint towns and villages, we could hear the great cannon on the
front booming like distant thunder. It is hard to realize that for five
hundred and more miles these cannon are booming day after day all day
long, and often throughout the night.