sight but well
over the German lines and headed east. No attempt was made to do any
bombing of our positions by the Zeppelins although we occasionally
received visits from bombing airplanes. The night before I left
France, the last time, they dropped several bombs on the village of
Ecoviers where I was staying. The only result was the killing of two
civilians, the wounding of several others and the wrecking of one of
the few whole houses in the town which had often been a victim of
shells. Not a soldier was injured.

You have, no doubt, read of cases where bombs have been dropped on or
near hospitals, ambulances and so on, and possibly you think that this
was intentional on the part of the boche. If so you flatter him. This
bomb dropping is, at best, very uncertain business and it would be
well-nigh impossible for the most expert flyer to aim at and hit any
single building. The fact is that, in nearly every town and city
behind the lines, hospitals, ammunition stores and billets are located
in close proximity to one another, with probably a railway running
near by, so that any attempt to bomb the really important "military"
points will necessarily jeopardize the homes of non-combatants--including
hospitals. Even the Zeppelins, which are much more stable than an
airplane, have never been able to place their bombs with any degree of
accuracy.

CHAPTER XIII

THE BATTLE OF ST. ELOI

No one realizes better than I the utter futility of attempting to
describe a modern battle so that the reader can really understand or
visualize it. There are no words in any vocabulary that convey the
emotions and thoughts of persons during the long days and nights of
horror--of the continual crash of the shells, the melting away or
total annihilation of parapets and dug-outs; being buried and
spattered with mud and blood; with dead and wounded everywhere and,
worst of all, the pitiful ravings of those whose nerves have suddenly
given way from shell shock. No imagination can grasp it; no picture
can more than suggest a small part of it. None who has not had the
actual experience can ever understand it. The hospital and ambulance
people back at the rear see some of the results, but even they can
have no conception of what it is like to be actually in the torment
and hell-fire _at the front_.

I could not, if I so desired, give an accurate description of the
operations in general. I have not the necessary data as to the various
t