Dearest Cher Maître, After nearly six months at the same job I felt a yearning to get away for a few days, & also a great desire to find out what was really wanted in some of the hospitals near the front, from which such lamentable tales have reached us. It took a good deal of démarching & counter marching to get a laissez- passer…. However,…I did, a day or two ago, get a splendid permesso, & immediately loaded up the motor with clothes & medicaments & dashed off from Paris with Walter yesterday morning.... We went to Verdun..., stopping at Blercourt to see a touching little ambulance where the sick & the nervously shattered are sent till they can be moved. Most of them are in the village church, four rows of beds down the nave, & when we went in the curé was just ringing the bell for vespers. Then he went & put on his vestments, & reappeared at the lighted altar with his acolyte, & incense began to float over the pale heads on the pillows, & the villagers came into the church, &, standing between the beds, sang a strange wailing thing that repeats at the end of every verse: ‘Sauvez, sauvez la France, Ne l'abandonnez pas!’—It was poignant. << less