Page:Ambulance 464 by Julien Bryan.djvu/219

 through a lot of unfinished trenches and others blocked with barbed-wire. Finally it got so bad we were forced into the open for several hundred yards. This would have been quite safe a mile behind the front lines at La Harazee, where it is very hilly; but in this flat country you can be seen two or three miles away, and at one mile you are taking somewhat of a chance. It was exactly an hour and a half after we left Bois Carré that we saw the first sign of old German occupation. This was a large pile of hand-grenades which were unmistakably Boche. Then came an Abri with "Sicherheithier" written on one of the timbers and I noticed that it was quite carefully built. It occurred to me as I read the words, how strange it was that the people of Goethe's race should be our enemies in a war like this. Now we ran into an old supply station where barbed-wire, shells and trench torpedoes lay scattered around. Across from this, but still in the trench, was a grave, marked by a simple wooden cross. And I noticed that the name inscribed upon it was German and that he belonged to the foreign legion of the French Army. They lost a good many thousand men when they took Mont Cornillet and Mont Haut here. I picked up a Boche helmet a little farther on; the wearer had been killed by a shell splinter which penetrated the steel. The blood had rusted it and we could see traces of it quite plainly.