Page:Ambulance 464 by Julien Bryan.djvu/200

 during the night and mangled them more than ever. He also told us of the new use which the Germans have for their dead. Instead of burying them, a process which is expensive and certainly very inefficient, they collect several thousand bodies, load them onto freight cars and take them to a factory some distance behind the lines. Here they are put into a big machine like a sausage grinder and when the residue has been chemically treated they are able to extract a considerable amount of glycerine from it. This of course is very valuable to them in the manufacture of high explosives. The dead men are all supposed to be very patriotic and probably nothing pleases them more than to look down (or up, I don't know which) from their new homes and see that they have helped the Fatherland to the end. We were not able to stay here very long; we had to go back on the car returning to Mourmelon. And after eating supper with their section there, we set out on our long journey to Recy. Sammy took with him a German machine gun belt containing five hundred bullets which one of Fourteen's men sold him. We couldn't walk very fast with it and didn't get home until midnight.

About ten of us rode up to the Russian Hospital near Mourmelon le Grand this morning to attend the funeral of Paul Osborne, the Section Twenty-eight man who was killed near Prosnes a