AMBULANCE CORPS SEES REAL WAR

Phillip Overton Mills '05, former member of the University football team, and now with the American Ambulance Corps in France, has written a letter of great interest concerning work at the war zone. The CRIMSON prints below his letter, to Eliot Norton '85, which has been made public.

"I am going to tell you a little of our work here in France.

In the first place we are a regular Army Division Ambulance Corps, following our division wherever it goes and doing our work in connection with the fighting work of the division, carrying its wounded from the field dressing stations back to the hospitals. When our division goes up to the front line trenches we follow with the "brancardiers" (stretcher bearers).

We have no connection with the American ambulance at Neuilly, who are doing good work but not exactly the same kind we are doing.

We are under the American Red Cross but subject to the orders of the French government. Richard Norton is our chief and I found in Paris that the French authorities treated men in quite a different manner when I said I was joining "Norton's Section."

You know modern large-calibre guns enable the Germans to make it extremely uncomfortable for many kilometers behind the fighting lines by shelling the roads and villages. Even here once in a while a shell goes over our camp, but it isn't all on one side by a long way. Fritzie often goes hungry when the French make his roads impassable.

Working Without Lights.

"In hot sectors we do all our work at nigh without lights and at a fair risk. It's all chance, anyway. If the Germans land a shell in the dark on general theory that something ought to be on that road, at that spot, at that time, and you are there-you get it. That's all. But there are lots of roads and they are long Some cross-roads get special attention right along, and that brings me to tell you of an incident that happened the other night.

The section had been ordered to a point out beyond a certain now very famous town to within about three kilometers of the first lines, and they went in convey with our chief leading, as he always does.

The job finished, we were coming back, when we approached a noted bad corner, where orders had been long before issued to us, "if anything happens there, ditch the machine and go on."

Just then we heard a particularly nasty old whistler go over and saw him light on the road among the trees just where the road bent to the left. A few moments later we arrived on the spot.

Caught by a Shell.

"An artillery caisson partly blocked the road, and three poor horses were down. Three men of the gun team had already dragged one horse out of the road and had a trace around another's neck sliding him to the side. It was very dark--only a pale moon and a few stars.

The French sergeant flashed a light and pointed it o show us just enough room to squeeze through between the caisson and the ditch while his men went steadily on without haste yet with efficient "team work" and no conversation, clearing the road. And this was no place to linger, as the next one was always due to arrive.

The extra man on the ambulance has hopped off to guide the driver and as he swung back on the moving care the sergeant called out in English in a cheery voice, "good night."

We don't have this Kind of thing all the time, though we did get an ambulance shot up badly the other day on the road--fortunately no one hurt.

"The corps should always have two men for each car, and at present we are a little short-handed, because a number of our men have joined the American Aviation Corps of the French Army; but all have their heart in the work, and it only means a little more for each one of us to do.

"We are working seven cars night and day on advanced posts in 48-hour shifts, but the men and cars are pretty well recovered from the strenuous nights and days they got at Verdun and all are eager to see our fighting division move where we will get in the coming pursuit race to Berlin."

If the know any good men send them over, and they will see enough of war in ten day to last them a life-time.