Page:Ambulance 464 by Julien Bryan.djvu/211

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"AMBULANCE 464"
161

the bridge and while waiting there alone was killed by a balloon-directed shell. The Frenchmen showed me where it all happened. Afterwards, I bickered with them for a lot of time-fuses which they had dug up from some neighboring shell holes. I gave one fellow a dollar Ingersoll watch for five perfect fuses, including two aluminum ones for which he had been obliged to dig down four feet into the earth. While we were bargaining, a brancardier came towards us with a huge eel which he had caught in the stream of "Suippes." He skinned it in the abri, and we had "eel à la tranchée" for lunch. It wasn't a bit bad.

While I was taking a few snapshots of the shell holes around the abri and in the little cemetery across the road, I ran across a young artillery lieutenant. I could see that he hadn't been out of Fontainebleau long and I thought perchance he might know Lucot or Bernard LarLenque, both of whom studied there last year. He let out a great yell when I mentioned the latter's name, and seizing my hand, told me that Bernard was his cousin. His own name was Christian Thurneyssen. Of course he wanted to know all about him, where I had met him and how he was getting along. Only the day before he had learned that Bernard had been wounded. We had a long talk together, and in the end I promised to look up his family when I went into Paris.