Note 10 — XI
Reading edition
"Translation
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Messieurs—Comrades
:—
"We are here to offer our last, supreme homage of gratitude and affection, beside this freshly dug grave, to this young man—I might well say, this boy—who fell yesterday, for France, on the slopes of Hartmannsweilerkopf. Do I need to recall the painful emotion that we all felt when we learned yesterday morning that Driver Richard Hall, of the American Sanitary Section No 3, had been mortally wounded by the bursting of a shell, near the dressing-station at Thomannsplats, where he had gone to take up the wounded?
"In Ambulance 3/58, where we cherish for our American comrades a sincere affection based upon months of life in common, during which we have had full opportunity to estimate truly their endurance, their courage, and their devotion, Driver Richard Hall was regarded with peculiar esteem for his modesty, his sweet disposition, his obligingness.
"Barely graduated from Dartmouth College, in the noble enthusiasm of his youth he brought to France the invaluable coöperation of his charitable heart—coming hither to gather up on the battlefields of Alsace those of our gallant troops who were wounded fighting for their beloved country.
"He died like a 'Chevalier de la Bienfaisance,' like an American, while engaged in a work of kindness and Christian charity!
"To the dear ones whom he has left in his own land, in Michigan, to his grief-stricken parents, to his older brothel who displays here among us such stoicism in his grief, our respect and our expressions of sorrow are most sincere and heartfelt.
"Driver Richard Hall, you are to be laid to rest here, in the shadow of the tri-colored flag, beside all these brave fellows, whose gallantry you have emulated. You are justly entitled to make one of their consecrated battalion! Your body alone, gloriously mutilated, disappears; your soul has ascended to God; your memory remains in our hearts—imperishable!—Frenchmen do not forget!
"Driver Richard Hall—farewell!"