Page:Ambulance 464 by Julien Bryan.djvu/118

 grand time listening to each projectile as it whistled over my head, and broke a few seconds later in the woods beyond. I discovered, as it grew darker and I could see the flash of the exploding shell, that the noise from this took several seconds to come to me, after the explosion. And more than that, I noticed that the whistle continued for a short length of time after the shell had actually exploded. Therefore I naturally concluded from this that the nearer you were to an exploding projectile, the shorter would be the whistle; and that it would be impossible to hear at all the approach of a very close shell.

At supper tonight the good news came, which we, and especially the Frenchmen, have been waiting to hear for months---"Les EtatsUnisontdeclaré la guerre contrel'Allemagne." One of the brancardiers returning from his furlough in Paris, broke the news to us. We were all below in the abri, making a great uproar over "soupe" (a poilu can make more noise over a plate of hot soup than any other human being) when he came rushing down the muddy stairs and shouted to us what had happened. Soupe was forgotten for the moment, as we plied him with questions and pored over the copies of "Le Parisien" and "Le Matin" which he gave to us. So America was really in the war; President Wilson had made a great speech in Congress and denounced Germany; no longer would