pleasant places of the English country-side, I had time to acquire
a perspective and to discover that I had been fighting for
democracy and the future safety of the world. I think that my
experience in this respect is like that of most of the young
Americans who have volunteered for service under a foreign flag.

I decided to get into the big war game early in 1916. My first
thought was to go into the ambulance service, as I knew several men
in that work. One of them described the driver's life about as
follows. He said:

"The _blessés_ curse you because you jolt them. The doctors curse
you because you don't get the _blessés_ in fast enough. The
Transport Service curse you because you get in the way. You eat
standing up and don't sleep at all. You're as likely as anybody to
get killed, and all the glory you get is the War Cross, if you're
lucky, and you don't get a single chance to kill a Hun."

That settled the ambulance for me. I hadn't wanted particularly to
kill a Hun until it was suggested that I mightn't. Then I wanted to
slaughter a whole division.

So I decided on something where there would be fighting. And having
decided, I thought I would "go the whole hog" and work my way
across to England on a horse transport.

One day in the first part of February I went, at what seemed an
early hour, to an office on Commercial Street, Boston, where they
were advertising for horse tenders for England. About three hundred
men were earlier than I. It seemed as though every beach-comber and