this one was different. He was so gentle and so serious without
being at all solemn. He had been in the war for three years, and
said quite incidentally, that under the law of averages his time
was long past due and he expected to go soon. It didn't seem to
bother him. He passed the rum omelet with a steady hand. But his
serious mien had attracted the ambulance boys and upon the room of
his office in the big brick hospital they had scrawled in chalk,
"Defense absolutement de rire!" "It's absolutely forbidden to
laugh." Evidently American humour got on his nerves. As we dined
in the tent, the boys outside sang trench songs, and college songs
with trench words, and gave other demonstrations of their youth.

So we ate and listened to the singing, while the moon rose, and
with it came a fog--more than a fog--a cloud of heavy mist that
hid the moon. We moved our baggage from the tent to a vacant room
in a vacant ward in the big hospital. We saw in the misty moonlight
a great brick structure running around a compound. The compound was
over 200 feet square, and in the centre of the compound was a big
Red Cross made of canvas, painted red, on a background of whitewashed
stones. It was 100 feet square. On each side of the compound a
Red Cross blazed from the roof of the buildings, under the Geneva
lights--lights which the Germans had agreed should mark our hospitals
and protect them from air raids.

At midnight we left the hospital to visit those ambulance men who
were stationed at the first aid posts, up near the battle line.
It was an eery sort of night ride in the ambulance, going without
lights, up the zigzags of the hill to the battle front of Verdun.
The white clay of the road was sloppy and the car wobbled and
skidded along and we passed scores of other vehicles going up and