Page:Ambulance 464 by Julien Bryan.djvu/162

 seemed to be "midis" from the South of France, I set out on a walk in the trenches, and was gone about three hours. At one place in a first line trench I got a wonderful view of No Man's Land and the Boche trenches. In the background stood the ruins of Servon, through which their third line runs.

A heavy bombardment began as I was leaving and shell after shell whistled overhead, apparently going toward St. Thomas. Sad to say, it was all over before I arrived and a lot of new holes around the post and everybody sticking pretty close to his abri were the only signs that anything unusual had happened. While we were eating lunch a blessé came in who had lost the thumb and first finger of each hand half an hour before while attempting to unload a Boche grenade. He suffered terribly but never made a whimper during the long ride into Suniat. After I saw this fellow I thought of what one little grenade had done to him and wondered why it was we take chance after chance in unloading stuff, just for souvenirs. A couple of fingers missing or a scarred face makes a more lasting souvenir than an old shell, but one you wouldn't be so proud of.

We had a lively time at supper tonight, in our abri next to the post. Instead of cooking their own food the lazy brancardiers get it all prepared from one of the big kitchen sections just a few hundred yards from here. One of the dishes was fried