going back on
her I tell myself how magnificent she is, so plucky and so
clever at her job. I don't wonder that half the men in our Corps
are gone on her. And there's a Belgian Colonel, the one Cutler
gets his orders from, who'd make a frantic fool of himself if
she'd let him. But good old Queenie sticks to her job and
behaves as if they weren't there. That makes them madder. You'd
have thought they'd never have had the time to be such asses in,
but it's wonderful what a state you can get into in your few odd
moments. Dicky says it's the War whips you up and makes it all
the easier. I don't know....

FURNES.

_November._

That's where we are now. I simply can't describe the retreat. It
was too awful, and I don't want to think about it. We've
"settled" down in a house we've commandeered and I suppose we
shall stick here till we're shelled out of it.

Talking of shelling, Queenie is funny. She's quite annoyed if
anybody besides herself gets anywhere near a shell. We picked up
two more stretcher-bearers in Ostend and a queer little
middle-aged lady out for a job at the front. Cutler took her on
as a sort of secretary. At first Queenie was so frantic that she
wouldn't speak to her, and swore she'd make the Corps too hot to
hold her. But when she found that the little lady wasn't for the
danger zone and only proposed to cook and keep our accounts for
us, she calmed down and was quite decent. Then the other day
Miss Mullins came and told us that a bit of shell had chipped
off the corner of her kitchen. The poor old thing was ever so
proud and pleased about it, and Queenie snubbed her frightfully,
and said she wasn't in any danger at all, and asked her how
she'd enjoy it if she was out all day under fire, like us.

And she was furious with me because I had the luck to get into
the bombardment at Dixmude and she hadn't. She talked as if I'd
done her out of her shelling on purpose, whereas it only meant
that I happened to be on the spot when the ambulances were sent
out and she was away somewhere with her own car. She really is
rather vulgar about shells. Dicky says it's a form of war
snobbishness (he hasn't got a scrap of it), but I think it
really is because all the time she's afraid of one of us being
killed. It must be that. Even Dicky owns that she's splendid,