In this war it is the custom to convert the village churches into hospitals. The chairs and benches are thrown out into the graveyard and the floor is covered with straw upon which the wounded are laid in long rows extending the length of the nave. The altar is converted into the pharmacist's headquarters and bottles and medicaments are piled thereon, while bandages, for want of room, are sometimes hung upon the statue of the Virgin, who has, in this unique service, an air of sublime and compassionate contentment. An operating room is usually established in the vestry or in the Parish House and a Red Cross flag is hung from the steeple. Any shell holes in the roofs and walls are stopped with sections of tenting. As we approached Clamanges, we detected a sickening, subtle, sweetish odor which crept stealthily to us through the air and filled us with an insinuating disgust. The Colonel said simply, "That is gangrene." The streets of the village were muddy and littered, and there were innumerable ominous flies everywhere. The town was crammed with German wounded. In the church long rows of them, touching feet to head and arm to arm, so that the attendants had to step gingerly between as they made their slow way about. The neighboring peasant houses were packed full with the overflow. In the halls lay the bodies of men who had died of gangrene, and as no one had time to attend to the dead, the piles of them grew and increased. We were told that there were thirteen hundred wounded in the village, among whom labored sixty attendants. They were all severely wounded, since the Germans had dragged with them all their slightly wounded, these being good assets. What had once been a little rose garden was piled high with a gigantic heap of bloody accoutrements which had been taken from wounded men as they were brought in. Under a tree in a corner of the churchyard a surgeon had set up a big kitchen table which he used for operations; the ground underneath was black and caked. In a near by corner of the church walls was a great pile of boots and stained clothes which had been cut from shattered limbs, and I expect one might have discovered even more ghastly objects had one ventured to turn over the rags. The attendants were nearly all French, although two German doctors and several German orderlies had stayed behind with their wounded. All worked heroically to cope with their great task.