I had been waiting there in the road about two hours when another American came by and took back word of my accident and of the parts necessary to set it right. Then about noon my friend came back in his _camion_ to take up his cases of shells and report my wounded safe at the railway station. We lunched together on the front seat of the _camion_ on bread, tinned ‘monkey meat,’ and red wine, while he told me stories about his life as a driver. He had been on his car then for more than twenty days without leaving it for food or sleep. That morning his ‘partner’ had been wounded by a shell, so he had to drive all that day alone. Usually the two men drive two hours, turn and turn about; while one is driving, the other can eat, sleep, or read the day before yesterday’s newspaper. The French _camions_ are organised in sections of twenty. Usually each section works in convoy, and has its name and mark painted on its cars. I saw some with elephants or ships, some with hearts or diamonds, clubs or spades, some with dice—in fact every imaginable symbol has been used to distinguish the thousands of sections in the service. The driver told me there were more than ten thousand trucks working between Verdun and Bar-le-Duc. There is great rivalry between the men of the several sections in matters of speed and load—especially between the sections of French and those of American or Italian cars. The American product has the record for speed, which is, however, offset by its frequent need of repair. My friend told me about trips he had made up as far as the third line trenches, and how they were using ‘seventy-fives’ like machine-guns in dug-outs, where the shells were fired at ‘zero’ so that they exploded immediately after leaving the mouth of the gun. The French, he said, would rather lose guns than men, and according to him, there were so many guns placed in the ‘live’ parts of the sector that the wheels touched, and so formed a continuous line. As soon as we had finished lunch he left me, and I waited for another two hours until the American staff car (in other surroundings I should call it an ordinary Ford touring car with a red cross or so added), came along loaded with an extra ‘rear construction,’ and driven by the chief himself. It took us another four hours to remove my battered rear axle and put in the new parts, but my car was back in service by midnight.