Page:Fred Arthur McKenzie - Americans at the Front (1917).djvu/37

 It was winter. Sometimes there was thin ice on the road. Mostly the whole area around Verdun was mud—mud-holes so deep that if a man fell in them, he could not hope to get out alone. When the French advanced, the re-conquered land, over which the Americans had now to work, was indescribable. Mangled bodies and broken limbs lay about, the souvenirs of many months of concentrated war. In some parts where the Ambulance workers went through their cars could not follow, for there was only a narrow strip of pathway along the morass of mud. On either side gaped the chasms, shell-made mud-holes. The Americans' work on this occasion was so valued that they were again cited before the Corps d'Armée. Up to now the Corps had two convoys. The French Government asked it to provide a third.

The American Ambulance Field Service has a fine hospital at Neuilly, with two smaller hospitals, and an extensive and admirable work at the front. Many of its men have been wounded in action; one has been killed; and many have earned high war honours. The Field Ambulance has had by the autumn of 1916 no less than eight sections of twenty-five cars each at work; it has operated in all kinds of territory, from Flanders to Alsace, and it has