Perhaps the most satisfactory part of the searcher's job was in many ways the search for missing men--by interviewing the boys in the hospitals about their friends and intimates, getting tremendously tiny details about these in camp or in battle, or even in the hospitals themselves, and from these details evolving the web of evidence--Conan Doyle or E. Phillips Oppenheim could hardly have had a more fascinating time of it than did some of our Red Cross women in unraveling the tangle of confusion which they found wound about this boy or that, or the other fellow. Many an agonizing situation, indeed, was cleared up through the efforts of these women. And such times were almost the sole relief from a task that frequently was dreary and almost always distressing. If you would the better understand the real task that these women faced, permit me to quote from a letter written by one of them: "The most entertaining part of my work is writing letters home for the wounded boys. In answer to my letters the replies that come back are more than adequate reward. The letters come from farmhouses in Vermont, from factory towns in Connecticut, from busy Massachusetts cities, and from lonely Western ranches. They are pathetic, sad, funny; but all of them are overflowing with surprises and gratitude for the person in the mysterious 'over there' who had taken the trouble to visit and write home for her 'particular boy' after he was wounded. These letters for the boys were usually written to a woman--mothers, sisters, or 'girls' the favorites first, of course, although occasionally 'aunty' or 'teacher' came in for a message of reassurance. "The first letter I had to write was for a boy who had lost his right eye. He wanted me to write his girl, whose photographs I had seen several times. She had very fluffy hair and usually seemed to stand in an apple orchard. After this he made a rather staggering suggestion: Would I please read all of Alice's letters so that I should know what kind of a girl she was and so answer her letters better! Realizing that a Red Cross worker should flinch at nothing and trying not to think of Alice's feelings in the matter, I took the letters out of a bag at the head of his bed and plunged into the first one.