Norwich bulletin., 1918-07-12
Shells sinn Over His Head.

Capt John s. Blackmar, who is in the medical service with the American forces in France. writes to his mother and wife here of being in a sector where shells sing over his head as he sits safely in his dugout, and he pays a tribute to the bravery and service rendered by the American ambulance drivers.
 Extracts from his letters follow: So this is war! In a dugout built into a hill. electrically lighted with telephone next door, 1 am as com fortabie as could he expected, especi- ally with four letters from home that came today.
 When they brought me up here in the car yesterday I came over a diff ferent road from my first trip. IL was wholly through the woods. and hidden from the enemy. while the first road was exposed. The first night found mark for one piece of shell, and the next night another, and that means a chevron for someone.
 Last evening when I was ordered up here, at once" thoughts of that road straight in sight for a mile, were not pleasant. But my driver took me. over this new road and when we got pretty close I supposed we had to
 
 reaching the shelter of the hill and safety. Bang! went a gun in the dis tance, as we scOoted through the strange woods. I said: Do they get us, Howard? Tell me these levers" (Dodge car) T don't know captain; time will tell" and he shrugged his shoulders and told me the different shifts. All of a sudden we went down a steep hill. around camoufiaged turn in I1o II, 6 safety, having never been exposed to the sight of the Bosche at all. Ha! ha! Great joke. He did not know the dangerous road I had previously been over at night, and 1 did not know this road, so there you are
 Sunday Morning. June g. Have had my breakfast in bed at 6.SO French custom), taken a bird bath, and am seated at my desk look ing out of the window to a superb view. Across and down ravine cov- cred with green that beats the Berk- shires, to the right at the end of the ravine, quarter of a mile away is the red tiled roofed ruin of a she'll torn town. A large ruined abbey is | there, and behind it is an American 1 field service ambulance station, Ford car and American driver from Yer mont; the rest of the crew are French. This station and the church
 are shelled nearly every night, but
 still they stay, and, believe me, those 1 American field service drivers deserve
 a lot of credit, and are a monument i to the tehacity and courage Of ,Ameri- can manhood. At any hour of the day or night, if one of my men should be l hurt, or need to be evacuated to a | hospital because of illnesS. I have but to phone, and that little Ford 1 (presented by some society," is John- ny on the job. It did seem good to
 to see that Yank the night I left here
 after my instruction trip.
 l am writing in pencil, as my field
 desk and medicine boxes got lost dur
 ing the last move. and I have no ink,
 records, nor paper, of which I am in
 dire need, When I was up here be-
 fore I picked some flowers and pressed
 them to put in letter to you; but the book I pressed them in is missins
 with my other baggage. The blue flowers were picked within 100 yards of the German lines.
 You never heard birds sing at sweetly as they do here: some that
 never heard before; almost like q
 canary, and plenty of cuckoos through the woods.
 Saw by the paper last night thal ! U-boats were operating on our coast The chasers will get them, never fear The Bosche is stopped and has done about as much as he can. He is hur. rying to accomplish something befor, the U. s. boys get in. But when they s do get started, with plenty of plane and artillery, just say Good night
 Besche!' Our French major said a table last night that it was too bat America had not entered the war \ year sooner if they had it would hay, \ been over now.
 S It makes me laugh to hear thos, a fools waste their metal sending shell
 l over our head. We are as snug as