Chapter II: Brittany and Its Hospitals

Le Mans, March 8, 1917.

This postal shows where we (Mrs. Lee, Katherine Key, and I) are to-night, after a very cold journey across snow-swept plains and hills from Chartres. We went to see the Cathedral again, and it was magnificent in a moment’s sunshine with the dazzling snow outside. We are traveling in the Ford truck, Maggie (so called because she was given by the Magnolia Committee), on our way to Quimper, where the dépôt is to be established for the distribution of hospital supplies.

Quimper, Brittany, March 12.

We are getting the dépôt open slowly. The things are untangled from the red tape of the railway station, and to-day we have been to the Board of Health.

We have two adorable French soldiers who work for us. They are both from the invaded region,--one from Lille. Both have had operations lately, and one has his head and ear done up in a bandage. The other has his nose stuffed up with cotton and has been wounded three times. They insist on working terribly hard, and it is all we can do to keep them from overdoing. We pay them two francs a day, which seems little, but is the regular pay. One of them hesitated about taking it at first, but said that as he had had only five cents a day since the beginning of the war, he would take it, as he needed it. He certainly did. When he first came to us he looked woebegone, but now he smiles and shaves and looks a little pinker. We gave him a comfort bag, and he was delighted to find a pair of socks in it. He said he hadn’t any, as they cost too much, so we gave him an extra pair and a sweater. When he saw the pajamas that we were unpacking he asked the usual question: “What are they, Mademoiselle?” I explained and asked him if he had a nightshirt to wear at the hospital (he is still staying there) and he said, no, so I told him to choose one. Having red hair, he promptly chose a pale pink one with bright pink facings.

The other man has a Croix de Guerre with a star. We asked him how he got it, and he explained shyly that he was the first to enter the Fort de Douaumont when the French retook it, during the battle of Verdun. He said he was not wounded there, but at the Chemin des Dames, which was--“Whew-w-w-w,” worse than anything he had seen “with hand-grenades and artillery you know,--the longer the war lasts, the better they know how to use those things.” He said that at Verdun he was up to his hips in mud most of the time, and no one could fire a gun, as (except for the artillery) it was all “very near with grenades.” Now, he lifts crates for us as if they were dominoes, and washes the windows till they shine like crystal.

Quimper, Brittany, March 19, 1917.

This is the most lovely spot you ever saw, and it is spring and warm. The primroses, and gorse, and violets, and little daisies, and jonquils are out, and the lilac buds are just bursting open.

On Sunday we went to Concarneau. The sea was the most tender spring blue. It was so peaceful and quiet that I could hardly believe we were in a Red Cross car, bowling along to take supplies to two hospitals filled with wounded and sick soldiers. The roadsides were sprinkled with little farmhouses. Through the open doors of some we saw the beautifully carved, but deadly, closed, Breton beds in the main room, in others, very modern iron beds, thank heaven! All the people were out strolling on the roads in their picturesque Sunday clothes, the women in their immaculate starched caps, and the men wearing embroidered waist-coats with buckles and velvet streamers. The children are dressed exactly like the grown people, long skirts and all. They stroll with their cows and horses, hens and pigs, casually down the road, so we have to be careful not to go too fast. Every now and then, we pass a soldier on leave, with the others. Once we passed one of their two-wheeled vehicles filled with women in white coiffes, an old man, and in the middle a soldier. One of the girls had her arm around his neck, and he had his about her waist. They were driving toward the railway station.

When we got to Concarneau we went first to a lovely pink house; it was beautiful against the blue sea, and was in the midst of a box-hedged garden, on the top of cliffs overlooking the water. On the front gate was a Red Cross flag, and they took care of twenty-five convalescent soldiers there. The soldiers certainly must have a serene and peaceful convalescence. They can fish from the rocks and walk on the beach. We gave them some reclining chairs and left some “comfort bags” for them (they call them “sacs surprises”).

Mme. Toiray said that several days ago, she was waked by the sound of shooting on the sea, and a Norwegian ship was torpedoed almost outside her window. It seemed impossible on the smiling, shining blue sea that we were looking at, that seemed as harmless as at Manchester. They have suffered badly here from submarines. In one village there are sixty-four orphans, whose fathers were killed on the little blue-sailed fishing boats, blown up by those Boche submarines. They are thick around these coasts. They tell us that the Germans fire with rifles on the sailors who are clinging to the wreckage. There are also mines about.

In another hospital that we went to see, most of the patients were out, but there were two in bed, and we gave them bags. They were so excited! Every time they fished in the bags, and drew out a new little package, they smiled more broadly, and one, a very pale boy with huge blue eyes, was quite pink with pleasure when he got his last present. He found an extraordinary brush in his bag, something like a bottle brush, only twisted round like a doughnut. None of us knew what it was for but, nothing daunted, he told us, in his weak voice, all the things he was going to use it for, and was much amused and pleased with his necessity for invention.

In leaving supplies at the hospitals, after having ascertained the number of wounded, we have to extract from the authorities what they need by asking questions about each article, for they are always so afraid of imposing on us, that they never ask for enough.

After finishing our visits to the hospitals, we went to see the old town that used to be an island, and is surrounded by a wall. It has tiny winding streets, overhanging and rickety houses, and arched and carved doorways in all kinds of odd little corners. We went into the church, and there, under the gray stone vaulted roof, a hundred or more women in their white caps were kneeling in silence, a few men among them. Before the altar was the black pavilion that they have here for coffins, but in it was no coffin. The priest was saying something very low, and a devout “Amen” came from the kneeling congregation as we entered. We stole out again. I don’t know whose the funeral was, but it must have been for some one from Concarneau, who had died away from home.

Brest, Finistère, March 30, 1917.

Since we left Quimper we have visited one hospital on the way, at Châteaulin, which is quite a pretty town. There was a ladder in the locks for the salmon to climb up. There were only about twenty-seven “blessés” in the hospital, and we found them in the garden, playing croquet in the rain with an ancient set sent by us. We gave out comfort bags to the men, and they were enormously pleased as usual. One man had no name in his bag, and was terribly upset to have no “dame Américaine” to thank. Therefore I gave him the name of Mrs. Rice in Brattleboro, Vermont, to thank, and he was thrilled, and wanted to know all about her, where she lived, etc. He was a well-educated boy, and actually said he knew where Boston was. I told him Vermont was named by a Frenchman, because the mountains were so green, which piece of information interested him greatly. The nicest man in the hospital was a mobilized priest, who had been wounded. He was so excited over the bags, and told us that they did a great deal for the morale of the men. Every one tells that to us, and it can’t be too much emphasized. Several peasant women, in their little white caps and black dresses, have come to thank us personally for making their sons, in the hospitals near by, so happy with our presents of bags. One man came on his way back to the front to thank us. He had been out when we gave the bags and we had left one for him. Unfortunately we were away that day, but his little, white-capped mother came a day or two later, all the way from Concarneau--a distance of twenty-five kilometers--to make sure that we were thanked.

Going through Plougastel-Daoulas, a tiny little place, we stopped for a moment to see the church, a very old one, and a white-capped old woman came running out of a house across the street to thank us for our “bonté” to her son, to whom we had given a bag. He was at Benodet, a little village by the sea, where there is a hospital of convalescent wounded. No one had been near them until we came. He had written her on some of the letter-paper in the bag, and she showed us the “enveloppe Américaine” as a great curiosity. She said he had written to thank the “bonne dame Américaine” whose name he had found in the bag. It contained a picture of the sender’s house with a vegetable garden in front of it, in which flourished cabbages, potatoes, and beets. Those vegetables were a real tangible link between him and the Iowa lady. I dare say she’ll get a letter from him asking all kinds of questions, and telling how he managed his garden.

One little man had lots of letter-paper and _no one_ to write to. He was nearly in tears over it, and I gave him S.’s name, as I knew she’d be sure to answer, and told him she was my sister, which made her more real to him. He was much pleased.

After we had spent the night at Châteaulin, we came on to Brest through the loveliest, hilly, wild country. We took a country road, and finally ended up at a ferry, where we bobbled across the river in company with two cows, two peasants, and a horse and cart. Two sailors, whom we overtook, told us they were walking to Brest, about eight kilometers (five miles), and we asked them if they wanted a ride. They accepted joyfully, and told Mrs. Lee (all their conversation was respectfully directed to her) that they had never been in an automobile before. They certainly had a novel experience going in a Ford Red Cross camion on top of bales of wool, jerseys, comfort bags, etc. You should have seen the expression on the face of the Octroi man when he lifted up the back flap, and saw two sailors enthroned on a “tas de choses.” He let us go on without looking any further.

When I went to the garage in the morning, we found a flat tire. I started to take it off while Katherine gave mental support, when we heard a voice behind us saying, “You ’ave ’ad a misfortune, ’aven’t you?” There was a British Tommy, as large as life and twice as natural.

He grabbed the tools away from me and proceeded to put the new tire on, conversing gayly all the while, even while pumping. He was very young and pink cheeked. He asked what we were doing here. We told him. “Well,” he said, “Americans and British is all the same. I might ’ave been born over on that side of the water, an’ you on this side, an’ you’d ’a been British and me Yankee.” (Puff, pump, pump.) “H’America ’as to think for awhile before she jumps in, she ’as so many Germans.” (Puff.) “Pretty soon you may be looking after some of your own boys though.” (Pump.) “I looks after these Portuguese ’ere. I don’t know exactly ’oo I’m under. I’m very free. At the front they supervise you, but ’ere so long as the car runs, I can do as I like.” (Pump, pump--proud glance at his perfect motor in the corner.) “I belongs to the A. S. C. There’s two other Englishmen ’ere besides me, and the officers’ servants. I don’t know ’oo I’m under (that seemed to bother him) but I drive the colonel around, so I sticks to ’im and ’e _sticks to me_.” (Pump, pump.) We asked him where he’d been. “Aow, around. I came here from Paree (Paris, French touch). The road from Paree is full of ’airpin bends. I got ditched at night, so I ran to the nearest town and got six men to pull the car out of the ditch, but when I started ’er up,--h’out she come, so they got a ride back to town,” etc., etc.

“Well, now, I ’opes you ’ave good luck with that tire--aow, that’s nothin’--glad to ’elp, you know. Now I’ll brush up an’ see my sweet-’eart. ’Ope you never see me in those ’ospitals you see.”

So hoping that we should _not_ meet again, we parted.

Quimper, Finistère, April 8, ’17.

Our last day at Brest was the most interesting of all. We visited the big marine hospital, which is perfect, and looks just like a ship, another big hospital, also admirable, and a third in what used to be a jail. The Médecin-chef was a dear kindly old soul, and very efficient, too. He organized, cleaned, and whitewashed the whole thing in fifteen days. It was an excellent hospital. He showed us down rows of whitewashed rooms, some with improvised beds of wood, where the men slept who didn’t have to stay in bed all day. The Médecin-chef asked us if we would be afraid of the Boches, and when we said, “No,” he took us up to the top of the building to a ward of German prisoners, guarded by a sailor with a gun and fixed bayonet. The ward was very nice, just like the ones downstairs. Most of the prisoners were very young boys, one looked no older than sixteen. They had a special doctor all to themselves (each floor has its doctor there), and he told us about their different wounds, how they were, etc., and jollied them up. In one corner of the room, they had made a little chapel out of paper, that they had cut out and colored, and over it was a sign written in German, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” Strange, wasn’t it? They were as fat and rosy as the French wounded (who look remarkably healthy, usually). They have the same food and care as the French, and the same liberties, except that of walking about the town when convalescent. There was a yard, however, where they could go out.

As this is Easter Sunday, we went to mass in the cathedral at Quimper. It was filled with peasant women in their best black velvet dresses and white caps, children, in their colored silk aprons, and peasant men in black velvet suits embroidered in yellow. Many soldiers were there too, some on crutches, some with their heads bandaged, and some with no visible wounds. There were very few townspeople in ordinary clothes, like ourselves. The service was absolutely silent, except for a little bell that rang now and then, and a scraping when the prie-dieu chairs were turned around. Far outside on the hill we could hear a bugle blowing.

When the service was over, we all went out amid the clatter of sabots. What do you think we saw? Above the “Mairie” opposite, a huge French flag flung out. Under it were the flags of all the Allies, and in the middle, taller than all the others, our own beloved stars and stripes, floating in the breeze. I don’t believe any of us have ever been much more thrilled, though it did give one an awful, choky feeling, too. Of course we went over to the “Mairie” and asked for the Mayor’s secretary, a good friend of ours. We are the only Americans here, and we, as Americans, thanked him, for America, for putting our flag with the others, where for so long we had wanted it to be. He was quite touched, and quietly congratulated us on being allies. He felt that our flag must be with the others, he said, and he had sent to Nantes to have one made. You cannot buy flags like it in France now, though in a few days they hope to have many. When we went out, there was another like it over the Préfecture de Police, only this time it was alone, with a French flag on either side.

When we give our bags to the “blessés” now, we say they are from their allies, “the Americans.” The soldiers are always very grave, they thank us and say, “O yes, Mademoiselle but it makes us sad to think that another country must suffer as we have,” and they look at us with a kind of grave pity, when they thank us for our “gentilesse.”

Quimper, May 1.

The best way to tell you about our work here is to describe a visit to the Hôpital Mixte, as an example, though of course they vary.

We walked through an arched doorway, over which French and Red Cross flags were fluttering, and found ourselves in a garden with buildings on four sides. It is a really pretty garden, with trees, box-hedges, and paths. The pear trees and camellias are all in bloom now. Everything is a tender spring green, and it seems as though all the white flowers in the world were blooming together, and trying to make a kind of resurrection for all the pure, brave souls who have died in the war. Strangely enough, the young recruits of the Class of 1918, whom we hear marching through the towns at all hours, and see all day, have uniforms of white unbleached cotton, too.

But I was telling you about the Hôpital Mixte. A sister, in white too, met us at the door. We asked for the Médecin-chef, and afterwards the sisters showed us the linen room. You never saw such an immaculate place. No boots are ever allowed to tread on the shiny floor, and the sisters almost dance over it on little pads, left in the doorway for the purpose. All the sheets, pillowcases, socks, pajamas, shirts, and pieces of old linen are arranged in patterns. We exclaimed, and said that it must have taken a long time to make it so beautiful. The sister smiled, and said, “No, not when one is used to it,” and explained that this arrangement lets the air in between the piles of linen, which is good for it. It was all darned and patched to the last degree. We saw some familiar day-shirts with the U. S. flags on the pockets, and they seemed to consist more of patches than of original shirt. “All the things have to be mended every time they are washed,” she explained. “There are only fourteen sisters to do everything.” “How many wounded have you?” we asked. “Two hundred and fifty, and we expect another fifty to-morrow; we are cleaning an empty ward upstairs for them.” We told her that we had presents from America for the soldiers. “Already, from America, for _my_ soldiers!”

As we entered the first ward, she called to the soldiers from the doorway, “Mes enfants, here are some ladies from America, with presents for you from the United States!” Heads popped up from battered pillows on lines of wobbly beds, and pale faces looked at us with interest, as an incident in a life of boredom. A thin man, with a leg in a plaster cast, was the first to receive a surprise bag. “Am I to choose,” he said, “one little package, and pass the bag along?” You should have seen him beam with pleasure when we told him it was all for him, and that he would find within a card from the American lady who sent the bag. They loved the mouth organs. A man who had been wounded twice before, whose Croix de Guerre and Médaille Militaire hung over his fever chart, told me he was going to keep his mouth organ for his little boy. We asked him where the child was; he said he did not know, but he had read in the paper that morning that his village had been liberated from the Germans. He had had no news of his family until a month ago. Then he learned that his wife had died, and his little boy was safe with his grandparents. His family did not know where he was, nor he, where they were, but such was his faith in France and all she undertook, that he knew that there, in that far away hospital, his little boy would come to him, somehow. He would keep his American gift, the little mouth-organ, safe until he saw his boy. Do you wonder they thank us for those bags? The doctors tell us they are wonderful for the morale of their soldiers. Long hours of lying in bed slip away as they play the games found in the bags, or exchange and examine each others’ presents. Above all they love penknives, pipes, socks, and razors. They like raffia, and it is hard to get it here. Send bright colors, they make such pretty things of it, and it helps to pass many a weary hour. A soldier can work with it, flat on his back, when he cannot hold a puzzle or any game in his hand.

We saw one hospital of Senegalese; there were about two hundred of them, all having had frozen feet. I never saw such black people, and most of them are huge. They say the Germans are very much afraid of them. The French put a few of their own French soldiers in with them, to show that they have the same treatment as the French. The doctor said he had an awful time managing them, as they don’t care whether they sleep in bed, or on the floor, also when they are out in the garden, if they feel too hot, they shed their clothes and promenade with nothing on, whereas the bushes are clad in promiscuous shirts and trousers.

Quimper, May 11, 1917.

The Lieutenant-Colonel of this district is most kind,--though very fiery, too. There is nothing he hasn’t done for us. You should have seen him inspect the dépôt. He grabbed the smallest pair of blue underdrawers from a shelf, held it up against himself and said: “Rather small, ladies.” Then he grabbed a shirt and said it was much better than any he had ever had. He looked through everything and was enchanted. Then he sat down and asked us questions, taking notes of answers, and talked to us, giving us information and advice as to how we should work.

I happened to mention to the Colonel that I had a filleul who had not had leave for a long time. The Colonel wrote his Captain and asked him to let him come here on leave. Wasn’t that kind, when he has all Quimper to manage? My filleul is a strong looking man, shorter than I am, with immense feet, and in civil life is a potter. He is intelligent, with a sense of humor, but very shy and so afraid of doing anything wrong. He had had bronchitis and the Colonel told me to bring him to see him, and that he would look after him. The Colonel was so nice. He called my filleul “tu” and “mon brave garçon” at once, and asked him about his family. Filleul told him they were behind the German lines and said he had heard once, through a prisoner, that his wife was well. The Colonel was so sympathetic that all three of us were on the verge of tears. Then as I was going away he told him to come and see him in the evenings. He asked him how his regiment in Alsace was, and whether the young boys do well, and my filleul answered that they do. My filleul brought some trench bread with him, awful stuff by the time it got to me. He said it felt so strange to be in bed that the first night he hardly slept. Where he had been, at one time, they had to use ice instead of water, and had only half-cooked beans. They didn’t do much fighting because the Boches opposite them were only boys of the 1918 class. “They were only kids, so when they were hungry, we gave them bread.” I asked him if the Germans were brave and he said, “They certainly were at Verdun.” There his beloved Captain Thorrel was killed beside him. He was hit on the helmet and was buried there. The soldiers called him “Père Thorrel” and adored him.

During this interval the writer went to Verdun and was in Paris for a few weeks, returning to Brittany about the middle of June.

Brest, Finistère, July 13, 1917.

We have been to see some tuberculosis hospitals. There are four hundred patients living in what used to be five small summer hotels by the sea. Some of the soldiers have been there since the beginning of the war, and they have no women nurses, and no women are allowed even to go into the wards to clean. The soldiers are taken care of by the doctor, who does his best, and by Anamites from French Indo-China, who understand little French and speak a kind of Chinese patois,--you may imagine their ideas of hygiene,--if you can! There has been no operating-room (they are bone cases) though now one is being installed.

The soldiers are of all kinds, from peasants to men of education. They are all thrown together, “until we die,” as one of them expressed it. Until a few months ago they were all depressed, cold, bored, badly nourished, and had nothing to do but sit about waiting to die. Many of them are curable cases, too. Now they have a Soldiers’ Club formed by the Vicomtesse de X. and her sister. She is a charming young Frenchwoman (whose husband, by the way, is a “simple soldat” in the trenches). There, under her guidance they sing, play such games as are possible (they have nothing to play games with), and thanks to a kind American, may each have a cup of cocoa and a piece of war-bread, spread with jam. Then they go home to their dismal damp barracks of hotels. The cheering effect it has produced is wonderful, but the soldiers want books, serious books. They have none whatever except a few novels, and they are clamoring for memoirs and books of travel. Some of them, especially those from the “invaded country,” had libraries of their own at home. “Nous voici,” one said, “we cannot move away;--but if we could only travel in imagination! Most of all we want books of travel, Mademoiselle, and adventure, biographies too. We have a few novels, it is true, but we have read them over and over. We should so like to use our minds!”

Some of them had war-stained uniforms that were scarcely warm. We could get them some other clothes, but they asked for books!

If enough books could be collected they could start a traveling library between all the tuberculosis hospitals in this region. You might put an appeal in the paper to raise money for books for them.[1]

[Footnote 1: This was done, and met with a most generous response.]

At St. Anne d’Auray we saw a marvelous tuberculosis hospital all out of doors. The very sick cases are isolated and the groups of patients are separated according to the stage of the disease. The Médecin-Chef, Dr. Besançon, has had an out-of-door sun-shed built for them, all of cement with rounded corners. One man does nothing but whitewash all the time; when he finishes he begins again on the room he did first. The patients are never in the rooms except at night. Those who are well enough do a little work in the garden, and there are also out-of-door games for them.

Mrs. Post is doing wonderful work for the tuberculous civilians in the neighborhood of Morlaix. She has French nurses staying with her, who visit the patients in their homes. This educates the families, and the tubercular children have shown so much improvement that the people think it almost a miracle, do anything she says, and bring their friends. She does not try to make them do too many things at once, but studies the natural habits of the people and adapts them to corrective methods as much as possible, without changing them. For that reason she has French nurses almost entirely, as their tradition of nursing is the care of the patients in the home.

She is now adapting a wonderful old place for a hospital for the study and cure of tuberculosis. It has only fifty beds and they are for military patients, but the hospital mainly consists of the grounds, where the people come to be treated during the day, and go home at night. In this way the patients are watched and at the same time their families at home see the results and are educated. She seems to be doing a really wonderful work, and one that will last. Mrs. Whitney Warren has endowed the hospital.

Quimper, July 17, 1917.

Here I sit at the desk in the Quimper dépôt, waiting for something to happen (Maggie’s lack of rear axle having paralyzed our distributing facilities). I am surrounded by religious tracts and chewing gum, Wrigley’s. The reason is that they come in comfort bags. The French government disapproves of the first article, and the all-confiding stomach of the poilu of the second, so we have orders to extract these two things from the bags.

What do you think of my coming home for a few months and then coming back here? I don’t dare to think of it. It would be wonderful, but I’m afraid it would be hard to come back to France, not to mention the submarines one might meet en route. Anyway, there are times when I’d rather die a few miles nearer home than remain on distant dry land. Luckily that spirit doesn’t strike one often.

The Brattleboro Committee has sent the kind of thing needed here most,--that is shirts, socks, etc., in fact, clothes. There is a crying need for those felt slippers, too. Every one asks for them. They are used in the house as they are quiet and clean, and when the men go out they put sabots on over them. I have a great respect for sabots. In winter they are warm and dry. The soldiers wear them in the trenches often, and the doctors say they save many a poilu from having frozen feet.

It is funny to see how fashionable it is now to be American. We are quite the “dernier cri.” All the hats of the latest style in the windows, for instance, are of our army shape, only in varied colors. The little boys run out and ask you what the American flag is like. The peasant women always smile and nod when they find that we are “Américaines.”

One day on one of our trips we were taking tea in what had been a garage (originally, I suppose, a barn, as it had a thatched roof). Two Canadian officers who passed us had said, “Bong jour, Madame,” and then discovering suddenly that we spoke English came over to explain that that was all the French they knew. They said “caw-fee” to the waiter several times very slowly and he brought it. One turned out to be from Minnesota, one of the 23,000 Americans who had enlisted in the Canadian Army when the war broke out, because he was “sick of sittin’ round and seein’ us do nothin’.” The Minnesota man had been a lumberman at home, and had been sent here to cut down trees. He let loose a little “hot stuff” on what he thought of French methods. Can’t you see him?--huge and straight, and sun-burned, used to cutting down any trees he wanted, acres at a time, now confronted with the French method of signing papers “every time you cut down a match-stick.” The other said it did not matter what you cut down, so long as it was the best way to lick the Germans, but he considered that the French did have a Special Providence watching over them. “Yes,” said the one from Minnesota, “they have, and you can bet Providence is going to see them right through to the end, too.” Then followed a dissertation on the general “messiness” of France, putting their barns and their houses “plumb together” so you didn’t know which was which. “When I first came over,” he said, “I blushed till I had no more blushin’ in me, at their messiness, and lack of system, and general habit of livin’; and now I keep right on blushin’. Look at us, takin’ tea in a barn!” Then we left, and he ordered mixed crême de menthe and another liqueur.

At a French port, where our work took us a few days ago, we went to the American consul’s to ask a question. While we were there two torpedoed captains came in to get papers to enable them to go home on liners, as their merchant ships had been sunk near there. Their men had got off safely, but one man had hurt himself falling into the boat, as a shell had cut the line while he was letting himself down. One of the captains was greatly agitated because he had gone, according to directions, to a certain latitude and longitude, where he was told he would be met by a convoy, but was met instead by a submarine. He was also angry because he had been sunk by shellfire, not by a torpedo, and had not had a chance to shell back. The other man, who had been very quiet, and had said that he had had a “sailin’ vessel,” interposed to say that wasn’t the point;--the point was that they had lost their cargoes, one of flour, the other of machine oil, and those cargoes were needed. He hadn’t any gun to fire back with either.

The next day, coming up on the train, we got by chance into the same compartment with the two Captains; the one who had been so agitated could not understand French, and was much excited over getting his men settled on the train. The quiet one twinkled a smile at us out of his very blue eyes and said nothing. He was a big man with a slow smile. Beside him was another man with his head done up in a bandage. The Captain leaned over, and asked the bandaged one if his head ached, patting him on the knee when he answered that it did. It developed that the head had a piece of shell in it. The big Captain came from “The State o’ Maine, near Bangor,” and had been torpedoed before, on another “sailin’” vessel. They hadn’t had any contraband on board, but the Austrian submarine with German officers, which sank her, wanted her provisions,--a nine months’ supply,--and her chronometer too, as they are short of chronometers in Germany. The captain said that the Germans on the submarines were an excitable lot,--they had taken him on board the submarine both times he was torpedoed, to boast to him about their engines. With that he relapsed into silence, then added that there was about as much danger of being submarined as of being hit by lightning. That is what he had “told his folks,” but the first time it happened they had to know of it, because it was in the newspapers, and when they heard of it they were “kinder s’prised.” We asked if his family knew that he had been hit this time? He said “No,” he had cabled them that all had landed safely!!