motley community was America's contribution to
France. I fell asleep.

"Up, birds!"

The lieutenant of the Paris Section, a mining engineer with a
picturesque vocabulary of Nevadan profanity, was standing in his pajama
trousers at the head of the room, holding a lantern in his hand. "Up,
birds!" he called again. "Call's come in for Lah Chapelle." There were
uneasy movements under the blankets, inmates of adjoining beds began to
talk to each other, and some lit their bedside candles. The chief went
down both sides of the dormitory, flashing his lantern before each bed,
ragging the sleepy. "Get up, So-and-So. Well, I must say, Pete, you have
a hell of a nerve." There were glimpses of candle flames, bare bodies
shivering in the damp cold, and men sitting on beds, winding on their
puttees. "Gee! listen to it rain," said somebody. "What time is it?"
"Twenty minutes past two." Soon the humming and drumming of the motors
in the yard sounded through the roaring of the downpour.

Down in the yard I found Oiler, my orderly, and our little Ford
ambulance, number fifty-three. One electric light, of that sickly yellow
color universal in France, was burning over the principal entrance to
the hospital, just giving us light enough to see our way out of the
gates. Down the narrow, dark Boulevard Inkerman we turned, and then out
on to a great street which led into the "outer" boulevard of De
Batignolles and Clichy. To that darkness with which the city, in fear of
raiding aircraft, has hidden itself, was added the continuous, pouring
rain. In the light of our lamps, the wet, golden trees of the black,
silent boulevards shone strangely, and the illuminated advertising
kiosks which we passed, one after the other at the corners of great
streets, stood lonely and drenched, in the swift, white touch of our
radiance. Black and shiny, the asphalt roadway appeared to go on in a
straight line forever and forever.

Neither in residential, suburban Neuilly nor in deserted Montmartre was
there a light to be seen, but when we drew into the working quarter of
La Chapelle, lights appeared in the windows, as if some toiler of the
night was expected home or starting for his labor, and vague forms,
battling with the rain or in refuge under the awning of a cafe, were now
and then visible. From the end of the great, mean rue de La Chapelle the
sounds of the unrest of the railroad yards began to be heard, for this
street leads to the freight-houses near