not sit down. If we attempted it we sat on some one, and then there was a
howl. We tried all manner of positions, all sorts of schemes. In the
daytime we sought the roof of the cars, or leaned far out the open doors.
If the country had not been so lovely, and if all our experiences had not
been new and out of the ordinary, there would have been more grousing.

The second day on the train--we were three days and three nights--while
passing through a city near Rouen, we had a glimpse of our first wounded
French soldiers. It seemed as though war came home to a lot of us then for
the first time. I was fairly sick at heart when I saw one Frenchman with
both arms bound up, and with blood pouring over his face. I understood that
these wounded men were coming back from the battle of Soissons. From the
glimpses we caught of them in their train they seemed a funny lot of
fighting men, these poilous, with their red breeches, their long blue coat
pinned back from the front, the little blue peaked cap, and their long
black whiskers. I was horrified at the whole sight. For the first time I
asked myself, "What in the world are _you_ out here for?"

There must have been many of the boys who indulged in the same vein of
thought, to judge by the seriousness of the faces as we proceeded and left
the French hospital train behind.

On the evening of the third day, as we pulled slowly into the station at
Strazeele, we could hear in the distance the steady rumbling of the big
guns at the front.




CHAPTER IV