United States or Eswatini ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


However, I got off at last in a "camion," and when I arrived I found the little station hospital and salle and Lady Bagot's hospital crowded with men in khaki. We don't know yet all that it means. The fighting has been fierce and awful at Ypres. Are the hospitals at the base all crowded? Is there no more room for our men? What numbers of them have fallen? Who is killed, and who is left?

He planted his two cannon. At ten o'clock he opened hot fire with the camion and with muskets. Chief Menewa's Red Sticks were ready and defiant. They answered with whoops and bullets. Their three prophets, horridly adorned with bird crests and feathers and jingling charms, danced and sang, to bring the cloud. The balls from the cannon only sank into the damp pine logs, and did no damage.

The French soldier strolled over to us; helped to straighten out the camion, and when we learned that he was going down the hill we gave him a lift.

This second sentence may well give us heart of hope considering the horde of French terms which invaded our tongue in the long years of the Great War. If camion and avion, vrille and escadrille supply no permanent need of the language they may soon become obsolete, just as mitrailleuse and franc-tireur slipped out of sight soon after the end of the Franco-Prussian war of fifty years ago.

And just as we turned back to return to the town I saw a child's stuffed cloth doll rag dolls I think they call them in the States lying flat in the road; and a wagon wheel or a camion wheel had passed over the head, squashing it flat. I am not striving for effect when I tell of this trifle. When you write of such things as a battlefield you do not need to strive for effect.

It was a wicked, blowy day, and I crept into a wrecked "camion" and sheltered there, and ate some lunch and slept a little. I wasn't feeling a bit well. That night we only made twenty miles, and then we put up at a little rest-house, where the woman had ten children. They all had colds, and coughed all the time.

What we must remember is that the rough soldier, himself blinded with blood and mud, uncertain whether he could ever reach a point of safety, yet had time to stoop and pick that little flower of France and save it from being crushed beneath the camion wheels.

The 2nd Division came hurrying from their rest billets near Chaumont-en-Vexin, northwest of Paris; the 3rd Division came thundering by train and camion from Chateau-Villain, southeast of Paris. Two converging lines of fresh, eager warriors came marching, marching, the light of battle in their eyes and with rollicking, boisterous songs on their lips. At quick rout step they came.

"This," said Major Murphy, taking in the situation quickly, "is a mighty dangerous place." As the word "place" escaped him he was on the ground. He had slid through a window of the ambulance. The ambulance drivers Singer and Hughes neglecting to unlock the ambulance doors, ran up the road and began working with the drivers of the camion to get the great van on the road again.

And as we looked out of the windows of the ambulance our hearts jumped at least Henry's and mine jumped as we saw that between us and the forks of the road a great French camion had skidded and stalled, with two wheels over the embankment that raised the road from the swamp about us, effectually blocking our way.