[Illustration]
_An Attack_
A few more hours and the steady line of ambulances began its journey
downward to crawl up again for another load, always waiting. We
deposited our wounded at the first hospital in the valley--there the
British took them and moved them on towards France. During that first
night and day the wounded men could not filter through the hospital
fast enough to let the new ones enter. Always there were three or four
Fords lined up before the door, filled with men, perhaps dying, who
could not be given even a place of shelter out of the cold. And it was
bitterly cold. The mountain roads were frozen; our cars slipped and
twisted and skidded from cliff to precipice, avoiding great ammunition
wagons, frightened sliding horses and pack-mules, and hundreds of men,
who, in the great rush, were considered able to drag themselves to the
hospitals unaided.
I was on my way to the nearest post to the lines on the afternoon of
the 27th when I was ordered to stop. Shells were falling on the road
ahead and a tree was down across it. I waited a reasonable time for
its removal and then insisted on going on. At that time I had never
been under fire. For two kilometres I passed under what seemed like an
archway of screaming shells. Branches fell on the car. At one time,
half stunned, half merely scared, I fell forward on the wheel, stalled
my engine, and had to get out and crank up, with pandemonium around me.
Then I found the tree still down. For an hour I lay beside my car in
the road, the safest place, for there was no shelter. We were covered
with _débris_. Then dusk came, and as we must return from that road
before dark, I tried to turn. The road was narrow, jammed with deserted
carts and cars, and with a bank on one side, a sheer drop on the other.
I jerked and stalled and shivered and finally turned, only to discover
a new tree down behind. There could be no hesitating or waiting for
help--we simply went through it and over it, in a sickening crash. And
then our ordinary adventures began.