Page:Ambulance 464 by Julien Bryan.djvu/76

 once more. Three more shells fell outside and then, when nothing else happened for some time, we got our nerve back again and crawled slowly out. We poked around the ruins for a while until we got some distance from the post. Here on top of a pile of stones, once the walls of a little cottage, we gazed at the distant summit of a hill where French shells were breaking instead of German. For the enemy held the crest. This was the famous MortHomme. Craig stopped by soon after this on his way to Esnes, and since Ott was on twenty-four hour duty here and there was no point in my staying with him, I went on with Craig, to learn the road.

It was late in the afternoon when we got started. Immediately upon leaving the village we came into plain sight of the trenches. However, it happened that we were seen far more clearly by the enemy than we could possibly see him. We had to drive over an exposed road along the brow of a hill with the fields on either side of us speckled with shellholes. Opposite us were the Boche trenches showing up in thin, white lines, which were occasionally marked by a puff of smoke from an exploding seventy-five. I experienced the same, shivery feeling here which one often has at home, before getting up to make a speech in school. You try to tell yourself everything is all right, but still you seem to quiver all over. However, from the glances I stole