The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-03-26
AMERICAN DROVE
 DYING GENERAL Serret Praised American Ambulance Drivers Highly HANDLED SOON AFTER Struck in Leg and Fatally Wounded. Picked Up by American Driver
 and Carried to d
 Hospital
By PRESTON LOCKWOOD

Paris, March Special. )-Robert Bacon, formerly ambassador to France and today president of the committee of the American Hospital of Neuilly, about a month ago accom- panied A. Piatt Andrew, inspector general of the field service of the American ambulance, in one Of his visits of inspection to the front. In the course of this trip they met General Serret at that time commanding the di- vision to which the ambulance corps in Alsace was attached.
 q could say," declared this grizzled warrior as he received his visitors in the mountain-encircled Vosges village where his headquarters were located, that your men were good. But that, gen. tlemen, would not be fair. I could say that they were excellent But that, too, would not be fair. l can only say that they are perfect"
 Mr. Bacon and MT. Andrew bowed their acknowledgements of the compliment and started to thank the general. But inter- rupting them he continued:
 "I know, Mr. Bacon, that you are a diplomat. But I am not speaking tie language of diplomacy. Your corps un-
 
 A few weeks later five of the section were huddled one night around the fire at a dressing station on the slope Of Hartmannsweilerkopf, that picturesque Alsa tian summit where beneath curtains of mist and shrapnel smoke, ever-present like the mist, have fallen the wounded of the bitterest fighting of the winter. In the afternoon the splinter of shell had wounded Luke Doyle of Boston, one Of the American ambulance drivers. at Shis spot and everybody kept his eyes on the mouth of the bombproof shelter as they tried to get some rest and to keep warm
 SERRET IS WOUNDED
 "One car is wanted at -, superior officer has been wounded, said the doc tor in charge of the post, reading note which soldier had put in his hands and naming a dressing station still nearer tho trenches.
 The men looked at one another won dering whose turn it was to roll, as yoing in search of wounded is called in the section. E. J. Curley of New York was first on the list and he lost no time in beginning to crank his car which, wet and cold, only sputtered and was flnaliy started by being showed along the road by the other Americans and group or artillery drivers.
 I.ishts could not be used for the road was in sight of the German observation posts and Curley blessed the yellow glare of the trench rockets as he made h,s way crawling and with every brake ablaze. Finally he came upon group of men around prostrate form. It was General Serret. who had been struck in the leg by a piece of a German shell while in the trenches encouraging his men,
 He was lifted into Curley's car and carried 16 kilometres to a base hospital The road was little better than a mule path and as rule between midnight ana daylight was given over entirely to ar tllery and army service convoys. But cne of the generals aides sat beside Cur ley and helped him with his pocket bull 's-eye to distinguish the road from the precipice and the shadows of over hanging trees from mules with h1gh e&- plosive shells strapped on their backs. At the hospital it was found necessary to amputate immediately the general > leg and a few days ln+~~ 4-e fine old soldier died and the Paris papers print columns about his career But no one mentioned, no one in Paris knew that when first wounded he had been car ried in an American ambulance and that the chauffeur who had carried him for the last time over the dizzy roads he had travelled over so much was not the well known automobilst who had dri' en
 
 war but instead one of the young vol unteers whom he had commended so highly to MT. Bacon and MT. Andrew The section of the American ambulance in Alsace is now the most sought after location al the front among the men. Dick" Hall, the young Dartmouth grad uate. who was killed by German shell early Christmas morning. was a mem- Der of this section and already the am bulance committee has received by cable the money to buy and equip car in his memory
 COLLEGE MEN IN IT The sections chief taste of shell fire las been experienced in the last two or three weeks. But it has always been q field for the best drivers in the serv- ice as the roads are steep narrow. full of murderous turns, often blocked with conveys and where exposed to the view Of the Germans necessarily traversed at night without lights. The section has been cited twice and Lowering Hill as its lead CT, given the croiX de guerre. When the section first took the field the middle of last April it was known as the Harvard section" But last June a group of Dartmouth men brought over by George E. McClary of Chicago were attached to it; they were soon followed by some Princeton men and now it is composed of college men from all over America including several Rhodes schol- | ars, who have obtained leaves of ab- scence from Oxford.
 | The following are among the young l Americans who are either now serving | in Alsace who have completed terms 1 of enlistment with section 8. as the American corps in the Vosges is known. ] Lowering Hill, New York, chef de sec I ton; Graham Carey, Boston, sous-chef
 de section; H. M. SuclSley, New York, 1 sous-chef de section; Durant Rice, New York, sous-chef de section; P. P. Cate, 1 Boston: J. w. Clark. New York; k. j.. Cuprley, New York; B. F. Dawson, Phil adelphia: D. B. Douglas Boston; l.. c. 1 Doyle, Boston: Powel Fenton. Philadel-
 phia; stephen Galatti. New York; Dud- 1 ley Hale. New York; Alex Henderson, Kew York; w. Hit Indianapolis: J.. 1 Thick, Los Angeles; K. Jackson, Colorado Springs; Allyn Jennings. Philadelphia; :; 1 "Dick'' Lawrence, Boston; Preston Lock-