moment and found it again. Then they lost it altogether and nothing
remained save the whitish blurs in the blue sky and a hardly audible
booming in the far distance.

"I bet 'e's took some photographs--'e'll be over to-night. I reckon
we're bloody lucky to be at a C.C.S."

"D'yer think 'e wouldn't bomb a C.C.S.?"

"Course 'e wouldn't--'e knows as well as what we do that there's some of
'is own wounded at C.C.S.'s."

"Yer've got some bleed'n' 'opes--do anythink, 'e would. Didn't yer see
it in the papers? 'E bombed a French C.C.S. at Verd'n an' knocked out
umpteen wounded."

"I bet that's all bloody lies--yer can't believe nothin' what's in the
papers."

"Can't yer! If yer don't it's because yer don't want ter. I believe yer
a bleed'n' Fritz yerself, always stickin' up fer the bastard. Everythink
what's in the papers is true--the Government wouldn't allow it if it
wasn't! That's got yer, ain't it?"

"Yer want ter look at it a bit more broad-minded. Course 'e makes
mistakes sometimes like anybody else--'ow do 'e know it's a C.C.S.--'e
can't see no Red Crorss at night?"

"Mistakes be blowed--'e knows what's what, you take my word for it ..."

We gathered idly round the disputants, glad of a distraction that would
help to pass the time. A third person joined in the argument:

"If 'e bombs 'orspitals an' C.C.S.'s it's our own bloody fault. Look at
our C.C.S. 'ere. There's a ordnance park and a R.E. dump up the road.
There's a railway in front an' a sidin' where troops is always
detrainin'. Then there's a gas dump over yonder. An' if we're bloody
fools an' leave the lights on at night, 'ow can 'e tell what's what when
everything's mixed up together? Why the bloody 'ell don't they put
C.C.S.'s away from dumps an' railways? Why don't they stick 'em right in
the fields somewhere? I bet we'll cop it one o' these nights, an' serve
us right too."

German aeroplanes had passed overhead almost every clear windless
night, but the buzz of propellers, that often went on for hours, and the
dull boom of bombs exploding far away had never caused anything more
than slight uneasiness and apprehension.

One night, after we had been at the C.C.S. for about a month, we heard
the uproar of a distant air-raid. Early the next morning a number of
motor-ambulances arrived with their loads of wounded men. A camp, a mile
or two from the station, had been bombed and fifty men had been killed
and many more wounded. One of the "cases" bro