going. Often they would be called
out at night, had to saddle and be on the move. Nelka rode a horse
named 'Vive la France.' If they were to move any distance they were
loaded into trains. She always remembered a dark autumn night
unloading the horses from the train in the dark, in the woods, and
right next to the position of artillery batteries, firing
steadily--the difficulty of controlling and trying to keep the horses
reasonably quiet. She had a great deal of trouble with her frightened
horse, trembling and scared, because of the noise and flashing guns.
The fighting was going on a short distance ahead and hardly had they
unloaded as the wounded started to be brought in. They worked on them
in muddy dugouts. Between moments of respite Nelka would run out into
the dark and try to soothe her horse which was tied in the woods. The
guns kept on firing all night.

This was the kind of life which went on. In July 1916 my uncle, the
head of the unit, was killed by shell fire, at a moment of some very
heavy fighting. The work they were carrying on was right near the
firing lines.

At one time, during 1916 Nelka came for a few days to our country
estate and one day I went with her to Petrograd. There she received a
letter from her Aunt Martha Wadsworth. I was coming back to the
country with Nelka on the train. She had the letter in her hand but
would not open it for she said she felt it was bad news and she was
afraid. She had a premonition of something wrong. We traveled all the
way in silence and I could see how very anxious and upset she was.
Feeling as I did for her, it was painful for me to see her in that
state but there was nothing I could do. She did not open the letter
until we reached home and she went alone into her room. It was what
she had expected--the news that her beloved Aunt Susie Blow had died
in New York.

Another terrible, painful shock, Nelka took it in a very hard way but
with great calm and fortitude. She felt that she had failed her aunt,
that she should have been with her, instead of at the war. She blames
herself. She felt that being at the war was a form of selfishness of
self-indulgence, when her duty should have been to remain with her
aunt.

Once again a tragic and very hard blow, a blow so hard to accept
because of her special devotion to that aunt.

But the war was on--she could not even indulge in her sorrow and she
had to return to the front. Fighting was heavy that summer and her
c