a
blanket of snow. Everything was white. We were moving cautiously
because with the snow over everything it was hard to tell where the icy
road left off and the ditches began; and those ditches were four feet
deep, and a big truck is hard to get out of a hole. Then there were no
lights, for we were too near the Boche batteries.

"Halt!" rang out suddenly in the night, and a sentry stepped into the
middle of the road.

I got down to see what he wanted.

"There are fifty truck-loads of soldiers going into the trenches
to-night, and they are coming this way. Drive carefully, for it is
slippery."

In a few moments we came to the first truck filled with soldiers, and
passed it. A hundred yards farther we came to the second one, loaded
down with American boys. Their rifles were stacked in the front of the
truck, and their helmets made a solid steel covering over the trucks.
One by one, fifty trucks loaded with American soldiers passed us. One
can hardly imagine that many American boys anywhere without some noise,
but the impressive thing about that scene was that not a single word,
not a sound of a human voice, came from a single one of those fifty
trucks. The only sound to be heard breaking the silence of the night
was the crunching of the chained wheels of the heavy trucks in the
snow. We watched that strangely silent procession go up over a
snow-covered hill and disappear. Not a single sound of a human voice
had broken the silence.

Another Silhouette of Silence: It is an operating-room in an evacuation
hospital. The boy was brought in last night. An operation was
immediately imperative. I had known the boy, and was there by courtesy
of the major in charge of the hospital. The boy had asked that I come.

For just one hour they worked, two skilled American surgeons, whose
names, if I were to mention them, would be recognized as two of
America's greatest specialists. France has many of them who have given
up their ten-thousand-dollar fees to endure danger to save our boys.
During that hour's stress and strain, with sweat pouring from their
brows, they worked. Now and then there was a nod to a nurse, who
seemed to understand without words, and a motion of a hand, but not
three words were spoken. It made a Silhouette of Silence that saved a
boy's life.

The next scene is a listening-post. Two men are stretched on their
stomachs in the brown grass. A little hole, just enough to conceal
their bodies