Friends of France; . there!God, how the fellow groans —And youd give your heart to ease the joltOf the ambulance over the stones. Go on, go on, through the dreadful night — How — only God He knows!But now hes still! Aye, its terribly still On the way a dead man goes. Wake up, you swine asleep! Come out!Un blessS — urgent — damned bad!:A lamp streams in on the blood-stained whiteAnd the mud-stained blue of the lad. 11 est morU msieu! So the poor chaps dead?Just there, then, on the road 137 FRIENDS OF FRANCE You were driving a hearse in the hell-black night,With Death and a boy for your load. O
Friends of France; . there!God, how the fellow groans —And youd give your heart to ease the joltOf the ambulance over the stones. Go on, go on, through the dreadful night — How — only God He knows!But now hes still! Aye, its terribly still On the way a dead man goes. Wake up, you swine asleep! Come out!Un blessS — urgent — damned bad!:A lamp streams in on the blood-stained whiteAnd the mud-stained blue of the lad. 11 est morU msieu! So the poor chaps dead?Just there, then, on the road 137 FRIENDS OF FRANCE You were driving a hearse in the hell-black night,With Death and a boy for your load. O dump him down in that yawning shed, A man at his head and feet;Take off his ticket, his clothes, his kit, And give him his winding-sheet. Its just another poilu thats dead; Youve hauled them every dayTill your soul has ceased to wonder and weep At wars wild, wanton play. He died in the winter dark, alone, In a stinking ambulance,With God knows what upon his lips — But on his heart was France! Emery Pottle. C^JIA-^ **?*?— XI CHRISTMAS EVE, 1915 In one of the most beautiful countries in the world,the Alsatian Valley of the Thur runs to where theVosges abruptly end in the great flat plain of theRhine. In turn a small valley descends into that ofthe Thur. At the head of this valley lies the smallvillage of Mollau where is billeted the Section Sani-taire Americaine N° 3. It has been through monthsof laborious, patient, never-ceasing trips from thevalley to the mountain-tops and back, up the broad-ened mule-paths, rutted and worn by a thousandwheels and the hoofs of mules, horses, and oxen, byhobnailed boots and by the cars of the AmericanAmbulance (for no other Section is equipped withcars and men for such service), up from the smallAlsatian towns, leaving the main valley road to grindthrough a few fields of ever-increasing grade on intothe forest, sometimes pushed, sometimes pulled, al-ways blocked on the steepest slopes by huge armywagons deserted where they stuck,
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectworldwar19141918
