hospital early in the night and had dropped their eggs--incendiary
bombs. An hour later they came and dropped some high explosives.
They came again at midnight and because there were no anti-aircraft
guns near by--the allies until those August and September German
raids never had dreamed that hospitals would be raided--they came
again swooping low and turned their machine guns on the doctors
and the nurses in the compound who were taking the wounded out of
the burning building. Then toward morning they came and dropped
handbills which declared, "If you don't want your hospitals bombed,
move them back further from the front!"

The Germans were not acting in the heat of passion. They were fighting
scientifically, even if barbarously. For every mile a hospital is
moved back of the line makes it that much harder to stop gangrene
in the wounded. And by checking gangrene we are saving a great
majority of our wounded to return to battle.

Nine doctors and fifteen nurses and many wounded were killed that
night at Vlaincourt. "And the French officer de liason between the
French army and the American ambulance, what of him?" we asked.

"He slept in the hospital and was killed by a bomb," answered the
Frenchman.

So our serious faced French lieutenant knew all too well why "It
is absolutely forbidden to laugh" in war!