g really have taken place in this once quiet French
countryside, almost within the suburbs of Paris? It seems
impossible--unbelievable!"

* * * * *

In the little upland village of Clamanges was a field hospital which
had been established by the Germans when they first occupied the place
on the night of September 7th. They had held it until their retreat
on the 10th, when their retirement was so precipitate that they had
been unable to take with them their wounded.

In this war it is the custom to convert the village churches into
hospitals. The chairs and benches are thrown out into the graveyard
and the floor is covered with straw upon which the wounded are laid in
long rows extending the length of the nave. The altar is converted
into the pharmacist's headquarters and bottles and medicaments are
piled thereon, while bandages, for want of room, are sometimes hung
upon the statue of the Virgin, who has, in this unique service, an air
of sublime and compassionate contentment. An operating room is usually
established in the vestry or in the Parish House and a Red Cross flag
is hung from the steeple. Any shell holes in the roofs and walls are
stopped with sections of tenting. As we approached Clamanges, we
detected a sickening, subtle, sweetish odor which crept stealthily to
us through the air and filled us with an insinuating disgust. The
Colonel said simply, "That is gangrene."

The streets of the village were muddy and littered, and there were
innumerable ominous flies everywhere. The town was crammed with
German wounded. In the church long rows of them, touching feet to head
and arm to arm, so that the attendants had to step gingerly between as
they made their slow way about. The neighboring peasant houses were
packed full with the overflow. In the halls lay the bodies of men who
had died of gangrene, and as no one had time to attend to the dead,
the piles of them grew and increased. We were told that there were
thirteen hundred wounded in the village, among whom labored sixty
attendants. They were all severely wounded, since the Germans had
dragged with them all their slightly wounded, these being good assets.

What had once been a little rose garden was piled high with a gigantic
heap of bloody accoutrements which had been taken from wounded men as
they were brought in. Under a tree in a corner of the churchyard a
surgeon had set up a big kitchen table which he used for operations