I was driving back empty. Since this particular road was sometimes under fire we preferred to drive at night, but at night you couldn't see the craters and for a while we were losing more cars to accidents than to German artillery, so they told us to wait for dawn.

I had brought the last load down at sunset. I was counting on a whole night's sleep but I didn't get it because they had crammed in one with a terrible wound in his bowels and they didn't bandage it right or something, and the whole back of the ambulance was awash in blood and excrement - the man was dead when they unloaded anyway - and after I waited in line to tank up I had to wait in line again to have them hose down the inside of the car. I finally got an hour's sleep in the dormitory, a roll and a cup of coffee, and then I started off again. For once there was hardly any traffic going up, so I was making good time, concentrating mainly on staying awake and avoiding the craters, when all of a sudden an airplane appeared - not up in the sky but right in front of me, not ten feet above the road, floating down above my head, the angel of death throwing the shadow of his wings over me, moving so slowly that I could hear the creaking of the wires as he struggled to control his flaps, obviously trying to land in the road because it was the only clear stretch in that devastated forest. He veered to the right, veered to the left, came down with his wheels on the pave, bounced way up into the air then came down again with a crash that broke his landing gear and whirled him around so that he came to rest across the road, tipped over with his wings sticking up. Only then did I see the Maltese Crosses, black and silver on his wings, and by that time the thing was on fire and I had put on my brakes and was running....

He claims I pulled him out. I don't know. He was hanging in there sideways, had got his belt off but his legs were caught and one of them looked broken and I guess I just pulled hard enough or he pulled against me, smelling the gasoline, both of us pulling with our combined weight until he just fell out, and then stumbling together along the road and underneath the car just as the hole thing went up with a sort of phoof - immense blast of heat but not as bad as the big howitzer shells - and then everything came raining down on the car and all around us.

When it was quiet I had a chance to look at him for the first time, lying there beside me. His helmet and goggles were off now. He had short brown hair and a rather old-fashioned cavalry moustache, everything singed. He wore brown leather overalls and a piece of his shinbone was sticking right through his trouser leg. He was obviously in great pain and trying not to show it, looking into my eyes and trying to see why I had done it.

"Merci beaucoup," he said, after a moment, and smiled. His face was black from the fire, and his teeth gleamed.

"Ich bin Amerikaner," said I carefully. I started to roll out from under the ambulance, but he reached for me with his left arm.

"Better not yet," he said in English, indicating the watch on his wrist, and at that moment I heard the first shell clattering across the Meuse like a freight train. The forest exploded, the pavement on which we were lying heaved and buckled beneath us, and the ambulance above us rocked in its springs. The next shell hit farther away, but they kept coming. I had only been at the front a few weeks, but I knew that this was no casual artillery duel; this was the beginning of an attack.

"I would like to thank you for saving my life," said the German, still lying on his side. "My name is Lieutenant Kite."

"Kite? "

"K-e-i-t-h. You say Keith. It is Scottish, eh? My ancestor was a soldier for the King of Prussia. For money, you know."

"My name is Peter Ellis. American Field Service."

Awkwardly lying beneath my ambulance, we shook hands. A slow but steady series of shells came thundering across and crashed into the forest. A rain of steel. Two tires blew out, the car dropped several inches and I jerked away from the hot exhaust pipe, watching him watching me.

'Your first bombardment?"

"Yes."

"Not in such a good place in the middle of the road, but we have no choice now. Try to forget about it. Tell me, why are you here?"

"You mean in France?"

"In France, yes."

"We believe in the Allied cause. We want to help the French."

"Why?"

"Well ... You started the War, you invaded Belgium."

"But what has that to do with America? You think we want to invade America? No, I'm sorry, you must forgive me! You save my life and I present you with political arguments! It is only that I'm curious why a young man - you are a student? - comes to this crazy place, maybe to be blown up and killed or hurt, when he can be at home to enjoy life - What did you do at home?

"Not much. Went to school."

"To school? How old are you?"

"Well, to college, university. But I dropped out to come over here."

"And what did you study?"

The shelling went on. I can't remember ever being really frightened before, but I was beginning to tremble now, beginning to fear that in a few seconds I would lose control of my clenched sphincter, and I sensed that his quiet questions were intended to distract me from the skull-rattling explosions.

"What sort of thing did you study?" he asked again.

"I would like. . ." I was still embarrassed to admit it. "I would like to be a painter but my father is a doctor, and he wants me to be one too."

"Oh yes, I see. My father is a general, and I want to be a lawyer."

"Are you a professional officer?"

"I have been one. My brother is one. I have been an officer of cavalry, but the life in peacetime, it's not so interesting, so I have begun to study, juristics, you know, to become a lawyer or judge. My mother's brother is a judge, and I thought I might like that better than horses all the time. I studied one year at the University, and then the War began, and there was not much use for horses, so I transferred to the aeroplanes. You don't have a cigarette? "

I rolled over on my back, extracting a crushed pack and some matches. I sniffed for gasoline, but didn't smell any.

"The firing seems to have stopped," I said as I lighted his cigarette and mine. I was furious to see how my hand trembled.

"Let us wait a few moments," he said.

Suddenly there was machine-gun fire, very close.

"Not a sound!" muttered Keith, the cigarette clamped in his lips.

More machine-gun fire, then shouts. Then silence. Then the sound of people running, boots on the pavement, the creaking of equipment, and a line of men dashed across the road from east to west, mud-streaked figures running crouched down - helmets, rifles, hand grenades -

"They're yours!" I whispered.

"Much too far over. They are lost!"

An instant later they were gone again. I had never seen German soldiers except as prisoners.

"Why didn't you call out?" I asked.

"What could they have done for me? I can't walk, and most of them will be dead before this day is over."

For a long while nothing happened. We heard occasional bursts of rifle and machine-gun fire, and Keith could tell by the sound which side was shooting. A plane flew overhead.

"Nieuport Eleven," said Keith. "Cylinder missing. Trying to get home."

We talked. He told me about his father, the retired general, his brother with the Death's Head Hussars in Rumania, his other brother still in school. I told him about Germantown and Harvard.

By this time we had crawled out from under the ambulance. We sat in the cool sunshine, leaning against the running board. The lower part of his flying suit was drenched with blood and I didn't like the way his face looked now. With some difficulty I cut off one trouser leg, although he didn't want me to ("Yon think I want to spend the War in prison half naked?") and when I got it off I saw the blood was welling from a bullet hole in the fleshy part of his thigh.

"Well, your father wants you to be a doctor," he said, as I tried to rig a tourniquet and bandage the wound. I'd seen it done, but I'd never done it myself. His face contorted as he clenched his teeth, but he didn't make a sound.

"I have some morphine in the car. ".

"No, thank you."

"Most people beg for it.".

"Yes, but I have seen the side effects. Why don't you draw my picture? You have a notebook or something?"

I did have a little sketchbook in the car, so I climbed in and got it. -the ambulance was a shambles - windshield smashed, dashboard splintered, the frame punctured with shell fragments.

I sat down on the road and sketched Lieutenant Christoph Keith, lying up against the front wheel of an ambulance purchased by Mrs. Andrew Carnegie, and that is what I was doing when the first camions packed with French assault infantry came roaring up. They stopped long enough to pull the wreckage off the road, then disappeared in clouds of choking dust. I made Keith lie down in the ditch. When the military police arrived, they would not wait for an ambulance. They insisted on taking him away, sitting up in the back seat of their open sedan. I tore the sketch out of my notebook and gave it to him.

Later, I looked for him in the hospitals of Verdun, but I couldn't find him.

PROLOGUE - THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1922
I. HOW I GOT THERE
1. PARIS 1922
>2. VERDUN 1916
3. IT'S STEALING MONEY, ISN'T IT
4. WHERE WERE YOU IN 1919?
5. RELIABLE TROOPS
6. AN ISLAND
7. BISMARCK FOUND THEM USEFUL
8. INTRODUCTIONS
9. THE LITTLE HOUSE
10. INDIAN CROSSES
11. ANOTHER PART OF TOWN
12. A VIEW OF THE GENDARMENMARKT
13. TWO FOR TEA
14. ON THE TOWN
15. A VIEW OF THE HAVEL
16. REIGEN
II. WHAT HAPPENED
17. THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 1922
18. MONDAY, JUNE 19, 1922
19. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21, 1922
20. FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 1922
21. SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 1922
22. WHAT HAPPENED?
III. THE WITCHES' SABBATH
23. SILENCE WITH VOICES
24. THE JUDGMENT OF   PARIS
25. SAME SONGS, DIFFERENT SINGERS
26. THEY'RE ONLY GOING TO HIRE HIS VOICE
27. INFLATION WORKS IN DIFFERENT WAYS
28. SMALL CHANGE
29. WHY NOT PAINT LILI?
30. COLD WIND IN MAY
31. ROLLING THUNDER
32. WALDSTEIN'S VOICE
33. THE MATTER OF A DOWRY
34. A RUSSIAN WORD AND A GERMAN WORD
35. THE MARCH ON BERLIN
36. A PIG LOSES MONEY ALL THE TIME
37. THE ARTISTS' BALL
IV. STRIKE TWELVE ZEROs
38. AMYTAL DREAMS
39. LETTERS
40. PROFESSOR JAFFA'S PROGNOSIS
41. THE OTHER SUBJECT
42. ROLLING HOME