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. It's just another _poilu_ that's dead; You've hauled them every day Till your soul has ceased to wonder and weep At war's 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 [Illustration] XI CHRISTMAS EVE, 1915 In one of the most beautiful countries in the world, the Alsatian Valley of the Thur runs to where the Vosges abruptly end in the great flat plain of the Rhine. In turn a small valley descends into that of the Thur. At the head of this valley lies the small village of Mollau where is billeted the Section Sanitaire Américaine N{o} 3. It has been through months of laborious, patient, never-ceasing trips from the valley to the mountain-tops and back, up the broadened mule-paths, rutted and worn by a thousand wheels and the hoofs of mules, horses, and oxen, by hobnailed boots and by the cars of the American Ambulance (for no other Section is equipped with cars and men for such service), up from the small Alsatian towns, leaving the main valley road to grind through a few fields of ever-increasing grade on into the forest, sometimes pushed, sometimes pulled, always blocked on the steepest slopes by huge army wagons deserted where they stuck, rasping cart-loads of trench torpedoes on one side, crumbling the edge of the ravine on the other,--day and night--night and day--in snow and rain--and, far worse, fog--months of foul and days of fair,--up with the interminable caravans of _ravitaillement_, supplies with which to sustain or blast the human body (we go down with the human body once blasted), up past small armies of Alsatian peasants of three generations (rather two--octogenarians and children), forever repairing, forever fighting the wear and tear of all that passes,--up at last to the little log huts and rudely made _postes de secours_ at the mouth of the trench "bowels,"--a silent little world of tethered mules, shrouded carts and hooded figures, lightless by night, under the great pines where is a crude garage usually filled with grenades into which one may back at one's own discretion.