sent on some errand to the British sector, of there blundering into front-line danger, where he would fall wounded or gassed or something, lying all night upon the field; but with morning light the stretcher-bearers would take him back, back to where an ambulance waited. Its driver, a graceful girl, especially fetching in her jaunty cap and Sam Browne belt, would be standing by while the stretcher-men lifted their burden into her car.
But that was a dream—an absurd, ridiculous imagining. He never saw the British sector. He never got within one hundred miles of the American front. He was never even ditched in one of his own trucks. He spent most of his time working twenty hours a day. He got rid of the two bars of a captain and finally wore the eagle of a colonel on his collar, but he had the authority of a three-star general in his organization, and he did his part to keep the army fed and clothed, working with unbounded enthusiasm until the armistice. But in a few short November days all the glamour and fascination faded out of war. A military organization became dreary and desultory and inefficient.
He longed to get away from it and had prestige enough now to secure immediate leave. He searched the hospitals of Paris; he appealed to the records of the British Ambulance Units; he
