Verdun is a place where the war’s scale becomes personal: the ambulance section moves from a rain-soaked village behind the front to roads and woods within range of the guns, where its members face bombardment and its consequences. In a later conversation, Don Stevens also invokes mutinies at Verdun as evidence for his expectation of revolution across the armies.

Setting Behind the Front

The section first moved onto the Voie Sacrée behind Verdun and spent three rainy weeks quartered in Erize la Petite, a ruined village. From the barn where they slept, Richard Ellsworth Savage watched young French soldiers pass toward the attack, while trucks carrying men and munitions ground along the muddy roads toward the front. The village thus served as a rear position, but the movement of soldiers and supplies kept the battle close at hand.

Within Range of the Guns

When the section advanced within range of the guns, Richard Ellsworth Savage and Fred Summers became lost in shell-damaged woods while on duty. Three shells passed close to their car; both men took cover in a ditch. Fred Summers was badly shaken, and Richard Ellsworth Savage stayed with him and urged him onward. Back at the section, they found three jagged shell-fragment holes in the car. The dressing station was positioned near a battery of 405 guns, so their work returning wounded people to triage remained exposed to the concussion of firing.

The Attack and Its Costs

The attack began the following day and brought continuous barrages, counter-barrages, and heavy gas bombardments. The section worked around the clock for three days. By the end, its members were suffering from dysentery and frayed nerves; one man was sent back to Paris with shell shock, and others were evacuated because of dysentery. Steve Warner and Ripley had been exposed to mustard gas and became sick when they tried to eat. Verdun’s violence therefore reached beyond the immediate danger of the guns, impairing the section’s ability to continue its work.

Verdun in Revolutionary Talk

Verdun also enters the book through political interpretation. During a leave, Don Stevens told Eveline Hutchins that mutinies had occurred there and described soldiers going toward an attack while denouncing the war and firing at gendarmes. He treated these reports as signs that unrest might spread across the front and help begin a world revolution. His account makes Verdun not only a military location but also a focal point in the hopes and rumors surrounding wartime revolt; the scene presents these claims as Don Stevens’s view, rather than independently confirming his forecast.