[Illustration: EFFECT OF GERMAN SHELLS IN ALSACE (THANN)] [Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO HARTMANNSWEILERKOPF, DECEMBER, 1915] The time spent in Moosch at the hospital was nearly always a period of activity and interest. There were sure to be minor repairs needing attention, tire-changing to be done, and often more difficult matters to attend to, such as eliminating the knock in an engine, changing brake-bands, or putting in a new rear axle. The hospital itself looked across the valley to the hills beyond, upon one of which was anchored a small sausage-shaped balloon, such as is used all along the French line for observation purposes. One hundred metres back of the hospital rose the hills forming the other side of the valley. On the slope of one of these was the rapidly growing graveyard where the bodies of the soldiers who had died at the hospitals were laid. Among them was the body of Richard Hall, the young American ambulance driver who lost his life during the attack, when his machine was struck by a shell on the road up the mountain. On the east side of the hospital passed a small road that led up to the graveyard, and beyond this was an open field where an aero bomb fell with disastrous results to one fowl and to the windows of the hospital on that side. In the hospital yard on this side were put the ambulances needing repairing, and in rush times part of the other side of the yard was also required. Here was rather a good-sized building, the front end of which was the morgue and the other end the laundry. Behind it was a small shelter where the bloody stretchers were cleaned. It was in these surroundings, with the rows of coffins on one side and the stretcher-cleaning on the other, that much of the repair work was done during the height of the attack. Here, too, would form the military funeral processions that went with the bodies to the graveyard on the hill. Two funerals a day of one to five coffins was the regular schedule in the busy days of the attack. One of the most intensely interesting sights was the gathering of the whole regiment, of those who were left after the attack, about this graveyard to give a last formal salute to their departed comrades.