On August 17, Grant's comrade, George Reed, lost two fingers on his left hand by a burst of éclat--the French word for shrapnel. He received the Croix de Guerre for his injury but had to leave the ambulance corps.
Geo. Reed
was presented with Croix de Guerre this P.M. All fellows who were in camp at the time lined up and Lieut. Morin made the presentation and a pretty good one. Geo. has been very plucky indeed and every one in the section was very glad to see him get the honor. I hope my pictures of the event come out alright.
At 5:30 P.M. three of us were called out to take German blessés down to Souilly. Johnnie and I were first out with 5 couchés, one an officer shot through the abdomen who could speak very good English. We got to Souilly about 7 P.M. I had a chance there to talk to them. The officer told me that he had been through several attacks, but never had he seen anything to equal this last French attack. Their artillery fire for three days before the attack was so severe that they were cut off from provisions and had not eaten for three days. His men wouldn’t fight so they surrendered. The higher German officers had told them that the French were starving to death and couldn’t pull off a successful attack. They were very much surprised.
I asked him if he was glad to be a prisoner and after some hesitation he said hurriedly, “No! Oh no! I can’t say that. I am an officer,” and murmured something about his “Vaterland” which I couldn’t catch. I asked him if there was any chance of his being traded back to Germany with French prisoners and he said, “No, not unless I am too badly wounded to fight anymore.”
We took dinner with Section 63 doing rear evacuation work out of Souilly. They have very fine quarters and a good cook, but want to go to the front. After looking at Jake’s car which was pretty badly shot up the other night some of them changed their minds.
On our way back we ran into Boche planes which were watching for traffic on the roads. One cut loose at us with a machine gun, but didn’t touch us. They fly very low at night and sail around with their motors off listening for traffic. An arsenal was bombed up near our camp. We were pretty well scared. After the arsenal got started shells were exploding right and left. We found the camp in abris, but another load was waiting for us and we drove right back to Dugny. We were machine-gunned again, but untouched. They were bombing right and left. The Dugny road ruined just after we came in and since then many cases have come in from that district as I sit here in the hospital writing. I have spent 2 hours of this night in an abri. Carrière Sud is a summer resort compared with this place tonight. Gosh! I’ll be glad when we get out of this hole.
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