smoke. They were lying so close to the ground that
they had been struck only by plaster and splinters of glass; but
the shock had been so great that nearly all of them died within the
following hour.

The next day it was decided that we should change our domicile, and we
made ready to carry off our wounded and remove our hospital to a point
rather more distant. It was a very clear day. In front of us, the main
road was covered with men, whom motor vehicles were depositing in groups
every minute. We were finishing our final operations and looking out
occasionally at these men gathered in the sun, on the slopes and in the
ditches. At about one o'clock in the afternoon the air was rent by
the shriek of high explosives and some shells fell in the midst of the
groups. We saw them disperse through the yellowish smoke, and go to
lie down a little farther off in the fields. Some did not even stir.
Stretcher-bearers came up at once, running across the meadow, and
brought us two dead men, and nine wounded, who were laid on the
operating-table.

As we tended them during the following hour we looked anxiously at the
knots of men who remained in the open, and gradually increased, and we
asked whether they would not soon go. But there they stayed, and again
we heard the dull growl of the discharge, then the whistling overhead,
and the explosions of some dozen shells falling upon the men. Crowding
to the window, we watched the massacre, and waited to receive the
victims. My colleague M----drew my attention to a soldier who was
running up the grassy slope on the other side of the road, and whom the
shells seemed to be pursuing.

These were the last wounded we received in the suburb of G----. Three
hours afterwards, we took up the same life and the same labours again,
some way off, for many weeks more....

Thus things went on, until the day when we, in our turn, were carried
off by the automobiles of the Grand' Route, and landed on the banks of a
fair river in a village where there were trees in blossom, and where the
next morning we were awakened by the sound of bells and the voices of
women.

THE SACRIFICE

We had had all the windows opened. From their beds, the wounded could
see, through the dancing waves of heat, the heights of Berru and Nogent
l'Abbesse, the towers of the Cathedral, still crouching like a dying
lion in the middle of the plain of Reims, and the chalky lines of the
trenches intersecting the landsca