One of our men was killed on Christmas Day and we are terribly broken up over it. He was going from this hospital to the _poste_ we go to daily over a road up the mountain. At four o'clock Christmas morning one of our boys started up this road, which goes up and up with no level place on it. He passed the middle of the journey when he thought he noticed a wagon turned over about forty feet down in the ravine. He went to a point where he could stop his car, took his lantern, and walked back. He found one of our Fords so demolished it could not be distinguished. The top of the car was up in a tree and so were the extra tires; there was nothing on the ground but a chassis. He saw no one around, but on going down a little farther, he saw a bundle of blankets which we always carry for the wounded, and, on walking up to it, he found one of our fellows, Dick Hall. He was lying on his side with his arms fixed as if driving and in a sitting position, cold and rigid. He had been dead a couple of hours. Walter, who found him, went back up the road for assistance, and, while there, Hall's brother came along in his car and asked what the matter was and offered his assistance. Walter told him his brakes were not working and he was fixing them, so Hall, knowing nothing of his brother, passed on up the mountain, got his load of wounded, and took them to the hospital. [Illustration: RICHARD HALL'S CAR AFTER SHELL LANDED UNDER IT] _In the Hospital_ _January 1, 1916_ This brings the war home to us! This and the suffering and torments of the wounded make me sick at heart. I have seen them suffer particularly since this last attack, as I am a _blessé_ myself--and am in a French hospital. It is only a slight arm wound; the bone is cracked a little, but not broken. I am here to have the piece of shell drawn out and am assisting these poor wounded all I can. I was sent to the _poste_ we have nearest the lines, on the other side of the mountain and hidden in the woods. The trenches begin at this _poste_. The _poste_ itself is an _abri_, a bomb-proof dug-out in the ground. The roof and supports are made of timbers a foot or more thick, over these are placed two feet of heavy rock and again two feet of earth. When I got there the Germans began bombarding, and fired shells into these woods and into this _poste_ for almost five hours. I never want to see another such bombardment; it was frightful. I saw shells land among horses, smash big trees in half within ten and twenty yards. I saw three men hit; one had his face shot away. The _poste_ became so full of wounded we had to stand near the doorway, which is partly protected by a bomb-proof door. It was not exactly safe inside, for the shells, if big enough, when they hit such an _abri_ often loosen the supports, and the roof, weighing tons, falls in and buries people alive. A man in the same room with me in the hospital here was in an _abri_ not far from where we