Page:Fred Arthur McKenzie - Americans at the Front (1917).djvu/54

 He could not act, he could not write, once war had begun. "It seemed so silly," he said. He enlisted in the R.A.M.C. as a private. In due course he became Lance-Corporal, sharing in the hard work of rescuing the wounded at the front. In the autumn of 1915 he was in the fighting around Loos.

On one occasion the Germans were counter-attacking. The Ambulance men were told that stretcher work was impossible at such a time, that it was suicide to show one's head above the parapet, the enemy fire coming from both the front and the right flank. Chapin went to report to the medical officer, intending to return to collect the wounded after dark. He was already marked for his splendid work. "I will tell you something of Chapin's fine work on the Saturday," wrote a comrade to his wife, "collecting wounded on the wire before the first captured German trench. For many hours I was out there with him; heart-breaking conditions, twenty appeals for help where one could only heed one; rain for hour after hour, and no little annoyance from cross-fire. On one journey, three of us (your husband was one) came in for a tempest of fire. Two of us lay low with the laden stretcher on the grass, while your husband volunteered to go ahead into the village, using a communication trench to bring back