This war has been described as “Months of boredom, punctuated by moments of intense fright.” The writer of these sketches has experienced many “months of boredom,” in a French military field hospital, situated ten kilometres behind the lines, in Belgium. During these months, the lines have not moved, either forward or backward, but have remained dead-locked, in one position. Undoubtedly, up and down the long-reaching kilometres of “Front” there has been action, and “moments of intense fright” ha

When he could stand it no longer, he fired a revolver up through the roof of his mouth, but he made a mess of it. The ball tore out his left eye, and then lodged somewhere under his skull, so they bundled him into an ambulance and carried him, cursing and screaming, to the nearest field hospital. The journey was made in double-quick time, over rough Belgian roads. To save his life, he must reach the hospital without delay, and if he was bounced to death jolting along at breakneck speed, it did n

They brought him to the Poste de Secours , just behind the lines, and laid the stretcher down gently, after which the bearers stretched and restretched their stiffened arms, numb with his weight. For he was a big man of forty, not one of the light striplings of the young classes of this year or last. The wounded man opened his eyes, flashing black eyes, that roved about restlessly for a moment, and then rested vindictively first on one, then on the other of the two brancardiers . “Sales embusqué

The field hospital stood in a field outside the village, surrounded by a thick, high hedge of prickly material. Within, the enclosure was filled by a dozen little wooden huts, painted green, connected with each other by plank walks. What went on outside the hedge, nobody within knew. War, presumably. War ten kilometres away, to judge by the map, and by the noise of the guns, which on some days roared very loudly, and made the wooden huts shake and tremble, although one got used to that, after a

Rochard died to-day. He had gas gangrene. His thigh, from knee to buttock, was torn out by a piece of German shell. It was an interesting case, because the infection had developed so quickly. He had been placed under treatment immediately too, reaching the hospital from the trenches about six hours after he had been wounded. To have a thigh torn off, and to reach first-class surgical care within six hours, is practically immediately. Still, gas gangrene had developed, which showed that the Germa

A big English ambulance drove along the high road from Ypres, going in the direction of a French field hospital, some ten miles from Ypres. Ordinarily, it could have had no business with this French hospital, since all English wounded are conveyed back to their own bases, therefore an exceptional case must have determined its route. It was an exceptional case—for the patient lying quietly within its yawning body, sheltered by its brown canvas wings, was not an English soldier, but only a small B

As an orderly, Erard wasn’t much good. He never waited upon the patients if he could help it, and when he couldn’t help it, he was so disagreeable that they wished they had not asked him for things. The newcomers, who had been in the hospital only a few days, used to think he was deaf, since he failed to hear their requests, and they did not like to yell at him, out of consideration for their comrades in the adjoining beds. Nor was he a success at sweeping the ward, since he did it with the broo

A bitter wind swept in from the North Sea. It swept in over many miles of Flanders plains, driving gusts of rain before it. It was a biting gale by the time it reached the little cluster of wooden huts composing the field hospital, and rain and wind together dashed against the huts, blew under them, blew through them, crashed to pieces a swinging window down at the laundry, and loosened the roof of Salle I. at the other end of the enclosure. It was just ordinary winter weather, such as had laste

This is how it was. It is pretty much always like this in a field hospital. Just ambulances rolling in, and dirty, dying men, and guns off there in the distance! Very monotonous, and the same, day after day, till one gets so tired and bored. Big things may be going on over there, on the other side of the captive balloons that we can see from a distance, but we are always here, on this side of them, and here, on this side of them, it is always the same. The weariness of it—the sameness of it! The

Just inside the entrance gates a big, flat-topped tent was pitched, which bore over the low door a signboard on which was painted, Triage No. 1. Malades et Blessés Assis . This meant that those assis , able to travel in the ambulances as “sitters,” were to be deposited here for diagnosis and classification. Over beyond was the Salle d’Attente , the hut for receiving the grands blessés , but a tent was sufficient for sick men and those slightly wounded. It was an old tent, weatherbeaten, a dull,

In the Latin Quarter, somewhere about the intersection of the Boulevard Montparnasse with the rue de Rennes—it might have been even a little way back of the Gare Montparnasse, or perhaps in the other direction where the rue Vabin cuts into the rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs—any one who knows the Quarter will know about it at once—there lived a little hairdresser by the name of Antoine. Some ten years ago Antoine had moved over from Montmartre, for he was a good hairdresser and a thrifty soul, and he

As he hadn’t died in the ambulance, coming from the Poste de Secours , the surgeons concluded that they would give him another chance, and risk it on the operating table. He was nearly dead, anyway, so it didn’t much matter, although the chance they proposed to give him wasn’t even a fighting chance—it was just one in a thousand, some of them put it at one in ten thousand. Accordingly, they cut his clothes off in the Salle d’Attente , and carried him, very dirty and naked, to the operating room.

As a person, Grammont amounted to very little. In private life, before the war broke out, he had been an acrobat in the streets of Paris, and after that he became a hotel boy in some little fifth-rate hotel over behind the Gare St. Lazare. That had proved his undoing, for even the fifth-rate French travelling salesmen and sharpers and adventurers who patronized the hotel had money enough for him to steal. He stole a little, favoured by his position as garçon d’hôtel , and the theft had landed hi

At the intersection of the rue du Bac and the Boulevard St. Germain rises the statue of Claude Chappe, rising like a rock in the midst of the stream of traffic, and like a rock splitting the stream and diverting it into currents which flow east and west, north and south, smoothly and without collision. In guiding the stream of traffic and directing its orderly flow, the statue of Claude Chappe is greatly assisted by the presence of an agent de police , with a picturesque cape and a picturesque s

75 cents net.  Postage additional A volume comparable to Aunt Sarah and the War from the pen of the author of that book. The scene is laid in a hospital, but the cases recorded are those of men who, though wounded in body, are spiritually whole. It is the ideals of England,—the essential England that, when the hour strikes, is all courage—that manifest themselves throughout. And be it said that it is an epitome not only of the spirit of England but of the United Kingdom, with the emphasis on the

12°.  PICTURE WRAPPER.  $1.00 Tales descriptive of life in the British Navy under stress of war-time conditions—the life of the officers’ mess, and the stoke-hole—the grime as well as the glory. Vivid pictures of the ache of parting, of the strain of long waiting for the enemy, of sinking ships and struggles in the waves—and also of the bright side that not even war can extinguish....

12°.  $1.50 net.  Frontispiece “Many things seen, heard, and thought during travels at home, on sea and oversea, in the war-time which we call ‘Armageddon.’ It is a chronicle of war impressions gathered during travel, near and far, on its edges red and jagged.” “This indeed is a book of the war but it is not like the others. There is in it nothing that is harsh, cruel, ugly, such as there must be in nearly every other volume that is wrought about Armageddon. There is sadness in it but it is a sw