Friends of France; . icated and eclipsed. The competitive principledoes not enter, naturally; the significance is that inthis twelvemonth the service of the Americans hasbeen steadily extended and vitalized. And in at-tempting to express here something of the wholethrough one of its parts, I need only suggest that theinitial adventure in the North, comprehending in afew crowded weeks a fairly full range of experiencebehind the lines, perhaps still stands as typical andillustrative of all the rest. In Dunkirk we witnessed, and within our powerstried to cope with, what yet remains, I believe, th
Friends of France; . icated and eclipsed. The competitive principledoes not enter, naturally; the significance is that inthis twelvemonth the service of the Americans hasbeen steadily extended and vitalized. And in at-tempting to express here something of the wholethrough one of its parts, I need only suggest that theinitial adventure in the North, comprehending in afew crowded weeks a fairly full range of experiencebehind the lines, perhaps still stands as typical andillustrative of all the rest. In Dunkirk we witnessed, and within our powerstried to cope with, what yet remains, I believe, themost sensational artillery exploit in history. It is re-membered that the little cars of the Americans oftenran those empty streets, and pursued those deafeningdetonations, alone. Here, at our base, we shared thelife of a town under sporadic, but devastating, bom-bardment; forward, in Elverdinghe, we shared thelife of a town under perpetual, and also devastating,bombardment; still further forward, in Ypres, we be- 6. DUNKIRK, MAY, 1915 DUNKIRK AND YPRES held a town bombarded from the face of the earthin a single night. We shared no life here, nor yet inNieuport, for there was none to share. In the salientaround Ypres, we played for many days our smallpart in that vast and various activity forever going onat the back of the front. Here we saw and learnedthings not easily to be forgotten: the diverse noisesof shells going and coming, of arrivees and departs; thestupendous uproar of the duel before the charge,which makes the deepening quiet of a run-back comelike a balm and a blessing; the strange informality ofroadside batteries, booming away in the sight of peas-ant families and every passer; the silence and thestillness, and the tenseness and the busyness, of nightalong the lines; the extreme difficulty of hiding fromshrapnel successfully without a dugout; the equaldifficulty of driving successfully down a shell-bittenroad in darkness like ink; the glow against the sky of abur
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