War Service Letters 



451 



Lille statue in the Place de la Concorde. We saw the decoration o£ the 

 Strassburg monument, and the whole parade passed through a great 

 open space right in front of us. A very pompous gendarme looked 

 severely at us several times, for we were a little outside the crowd he 

 had caged in behind the statue, but our uniforms and a firm front car- 

 ried the day. Nearly every soldier was bedecked with flowers, and 

 nearly all the allied nations were represented in the parade — a tremen- 

 dously impressive spectacle, with a big offensive ready to break any 

 minute less than fifty miles away. ... 



"Monday was kept as a holiday too, and will stand out longer in my 

 mind as the day when I was first 'under fire.' La grosse Bertha spoke 

 again after a silence of several weeks. I was sitting in front of the 

 Louvre when the darn thing went off. It sounded mighty close to me, 

 but missed me by about a mile, I afterwards learned. For a few min- 

 utes I thought I didn't care much about sight-seeing anyway; but then 

 I reflected that I might just as easily be hit in the hotel as in the 

 park and might better enjoy the privilege of seeing something first. 

 Big Bertha does not seem to be thought much of, anyway. A woman 

 near me merely shrugged her shoulders and said, 'Encore,' and went 

 on with her reading. We all went around as if she weren't barking at 

 all. . . . 



"I worked at the hospital again yesterday — a terribly hard day. I 

 had to tell one boy that his leg was amputated — he hadn't known it was 

 gone. He was so brave about it for all he was so terribly weak and 

 sick. Later, when I was giving him some soup, he said. They seem to 

 take a lot of trouble about caring for you here, even if they know 

 you're never going to be good for anything again. They seem to try 

 just as hard to make you get well' I had all I could do to keep from 

 crying. . . . 



"I saw Mr. McAdie too in London, to my surprise, and Patty Cos- 

 grave Murray, who seems the same as ever. Here I have met Harry 

 Hand and Elizabeth Gray Potter and Alice Leavens so far. Alice 

 Leavens is returning to America tomorrow after a most eventful year 

 here. She was at Havre when the Germans made their March advance, 

 and had to evacuate with her refugees and without her possessions." . . . 



July 21, 1918. 



. . . "Since I wrote you last I've had only one day of hospital work, 

 with some very slightly wounded but thoroughly tired-out Sammies — 

 not at a real hospital, but at a refugee home which had been called into 

 temporary service. I went there to inspect the refugee work as part of 

 the preparation for my job, but took off my hat and rolled up my sleeves 

 and fell to work bathing, undressing, feeding and jollying a bunch of 

 lads so utterly weary and worn out they were just like tired, sleepy 

 children. I had to wake one of them three times before even the idea 

 of food would penetrate. 'Gee, isn't it quiet here!' he said, and fell 



