Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/166

136 white and stained with huge red crosses. It rendered quite superfluous Williams' explanation that the wounded who suffer too harshly for ambulance or train are carried in these craft smoothly to the sea and the hospital ship for England. Its repetition, its constant recurrence now, sketched a morbid picture, blurred with smoke—a sort of hell to which men go before they die.

We entered a large village and drew up before the headquarters of a division general. With the stopping of the engines the cannon chorus grew throatier, as if warning us back in a titanic fury. Williams got out.

"I'm going in to report," he said, "and to find out, if I can, what the Huns are up to. I don't want to get you fellows strafed if I can help.

We sat in the cars, listening to the ugly roar while we studied this nerve centre of the fighting system.

The headquarters was a large brick château, set across a wide and pleasant yard. On the high verendah a group of officers lounged, smoking and with puzzled faces appearing to listen, too. Sentries paced swiftly up and down before the steps. From a wooden shack at one side a brass horn, like an automobile signal, seemed perpetually ready to scream. Any doubt as to its pur-