es down alone into the place of suffering, leaving the man,
however dear, far away. But in this supreme experience of facing death
to save life, you go together. The little Belgian soldier is at your
side. Together you sit tight under fire, put the bandages on the
wounded, and speed back to a safer place.

Once I went to the farthest outpost. A Belgian soldier stepped out of
the darkness.

"Come along, miss, I've a good gun. I'll take you."

Walking up the road, not in the middle where machine guns could rake us,
but huddled up by the trees at the siding, we went. It will be a
different thing to meet him one day in Antwerp, than it will be to greet
again the desk-clerk of the La Salle Hotel in Chicago. It lies deeper
than doing you favors, and assigning a sunny room.

The men are not impersonal units in an army machine. They become
individuals to us, with sharply marked traits. It is impossible to see
them as cases. Out of the individuals, we built our types--we
constructed our Belgian soldier, out of the hundreds who had told us of
their work and home.

"You must have met so many you never came to know their stories."

It was the opposite. Paul Collaer, who played beautifully; Gilson, the
mystic; Henri of Liege; the son of Ysaye, they were all clear to us.
There was a splendid fat doctor who felt physical fear, but never
shirked his job. He used to go and hide behind the barn, with his pipe,
till there was work for him. His wasn't the fear that spreads disaster
through a crowd. He was fat and funny. A fat man is comfortable to have
around, at any time, even when he is unhappy. No one lost respect for
this man. Every one enjoyed him thoroughly.

Commandant Gilson of the Belgian army was one of our firm friends. My
introduction to him was when I heard a bit of a Liszt rhapsody floating
into the kitchen from our piano, the fingers rapid and fluent, and long
nails audible on the keys. I remember the first meal with him, a
luncheon of fried sardines, fruit cake, bread and cheese. The doctor
across the way had sent a bottle of champagne. After luncheon he
received word of an attack. He kissed the hand of each of us, said
good-by, and went out to clean his gun. We did not think we should see
him again. He retook the outpost and had many more meals with us. He
would rise from broken English into swift French--stories of the Congo,
one night till 2 a.m. Always smoking a cigarette--his mustache sometimes
singed from the