Chapter 4 - Page 2

septic; swelling under the bandages. There was a fractured spine and a malignant oedema, both dying; we put these two off to-day at St Omer. We came straight away in the morning, and are now nearly back at Boulogne.

YPRES.

Friday, October 23rd.--All unloaded by 11 P.M. last night. (1800 in a day and a night.) No.-- A.T. was in; visited M. and S. Bed by 12; clothes on for forty hours. Slept alongside quay. Two hospital ships in; watched them loading up from ambulances. No time to go ashore. The wounded officers we had this time said the fighting at the Front is very heavy. The men said the same. They slept from sheer exhaustion almost before their boots were got off, and before the cocoa came round. In the morning they perked up very pleased with their sleep, and talked incessantly of the trenches, and the charges, and the odds each regiment had against them, and how many were left out of their company, and all the most gruesome details you can imagine. They seem to get their blood up against the Germans when they're actually doing the fighting--"you're too excited to notice what hits you, or to think of anything but your life" ("and your country," one man added). "Some of us has got to get killed, and some wounded, and some captured, and we wonder which is for us."

11.15.--Just off for ----? I was in the act of trotting off into the town to find the baths, when I met a London Scottish with a very urgent note for the O.C.; thought I'd better bide a wee, and it was to say "Your train is urgently required; how soon can you start?" So I had a lucky escape of being left behind. (We had leave till 1 P.M.) Then the Major nearly got left; we couldn't start that minute, because our stores weren't all in, and the R.T.O. came up in a great fuss that we were holding up five supply trains and reinforcements; so the British Army had to wait for us.

The worst discomforts of this life are (a) cold; (b) want of drinking water when you're thirsty; (c) the appalling atmosphere of the French dining-car; (d) lack of room for a bath, and difficulty of getting hot water; (e) dirt; (f) eccentricities in the meals; (g) bad (or no) lights; (h) difficulties of getting laundry done; (i) personal capture of various live stock; (j) broken nights; (k) want of exercise on the up journey. Against all these minor details put being at the Front, and all that that includes of thrilling interest,--being part of the machinery to give the men the first care and comparative comfort since they landed, at the time they most need it--and least expect it.

6 P.M.--Hazebrouck again. We are said to be going to Belgium this time--possibly Ypres. There are a terrible lot of wounded to be got down--more than all the trains can take; they are putting some of them off on the stations where there is a M.O. with a few men, and going back for more.

There were two lovely French torpedo-boats alongside