With shells it is a very different story than with shrapnel. One can avoid the latter by backing up against a house, but the shells are apt to push it over on you. When the deeper, heavier whistle of a shell is heard, it sounds a good deal like tearing a big sheet of cloth. Men do not brave it. They know its hideous effects, and take to the nearest cellar or doorway. The first one or two that come in, if well placed, often claim victims. A group of soldiers will be talking or playing cards in front of a house. There is a swish; the shell hits the hard road in front of them, and the jagged _éclats_ rip into the little crowd, sometimes killing three or four of them. The soldiers who find themselves at a greater distance have time to throw themselves flat on the ground, and it is seldom that the singing fragments do not pass well overhead. It is quite remarkable that none of the Americans have as yet been hurt at X----, for the evacuation of the wounded goes on regardless of the shelling. Often the escapes have been very close. Just yesterday ten big shells came in, killed six men and wounded forty others, and yet our two cars on duty there escaped without being hit. One day, following an attack, the firing was rather frequent. Nearly all of the ambulances were lined up in the village waiting for the wounded to be brought down. Our commander was talking to one of his drivers when a shell exploded on the other side of a wall behind him. He walked down the street to give instructions to another man. A shell hit the roof of a house there and covered the two with _débris_. He started to return, and as he passed a certain house a shell went right into it. They seemed to be following him. It frequently happens that an ambulance will be running down the street and a shell hit a house just behind or in front of its course. Now and then one's breath will stop when a car is enveloped in the clouds of dust and _débris_ coming from a shell-hit house, and start again when from the haze the driver emerges dirty but smiling. Of course, the cars have been hit. A shell tore off the front top of one ten inches from the driver's head, but as yet no member of the American Section has been hurt. [Illustration: ON THE ROAD TO BOIS-LE-PRÊTRE] [Illustration: FONTAINE DU PÈRE HILARION, A SPRING IN BOIS-LE-PRÊTRE WHERE FRENCH AND GERMAN SOLDIERS FRATERNIZED IN THE EARLY DAYS OF THE WAR]