From Moyen we moved on to Tantonville, a place not lacking in material comforts, but totally devoid of soul; and from there we still make our round of posts--of one, two, or four cars, and for two, four, or eight days. In some, the work is fairly constant, carrying the sick and second-hand wounded from post to hospital and from hospital to railroad; in others, one struggles against mental and physical decay--and it is from the latter of these in its most aggravated form that the present communication is penned. At Oëlleville, we saw the class of 1916 called out,--brave, cheerful-looking boys, standing very straight at attention as their officers passed down the line, and later, as we passed them on the march, cheering loudly for "_les Américains_"--and so marching on to the open lid of hell at Verdun. The roads were filled with soldiers, and every day and all day the troop-trains were rumbling by to the north, and day after day and week after week the northern horizon echoed with the steady thunder of artillery. Sometimes, lying awake in the stillness of dawn to listen, one could not count the separate explosions, so closely did they follow each other. The old man who used to open the railway gate for me at Dombasle would shake his head and say that we ought to be up at Verdun, and once a soldier beside him told him that we were neutrals and not supposed to be sent under fire. I heard that suggestion several times made, and one of our men used to carry in his pocket a photograph of poor Hall's car to refute it. There was a momentary thrill of interest when a call came for four cars to Baccarat--a new post and almost on the front; there was an English Section there in need of assistance, and we four who went intended to "show them how." But it seemed that the call had come too late and the pressing need was over; the last batch of German prisoners had been brought in the day before and the active fighting had ceased. We stepped into the long wooden cabin where they waited--the German wounded--and they struggled up to salute--a more pitiful, undersized, weak-chested, and woe-begone set of human derelicts I hope never to see again in uniform; and as we stood among them in our strong, warm clothes, for it was snowing outside, all of us over six feet tall, I felt suddenly uncomfortable and ashamed.