t beneath the courtyard. This was being used for
operations.

In front of the archway and in the road stood two "padres" directing
the continuous flow of stretchers and walking wounded. They appeared
to be doing all the work of organisation, while the R.A.M.C. doctors
and surgeons had their hands full with dressings and operations.
These were the kind of directions:

"Wounded Sergeant? Right. Abdominal wound? All right. Lift him
off--gently now. Take him through the archway into the dug-out."

"Dead? Yes! Poor fellow, take him down to the Cemetery."

"German? Dug-out No. 2, at the end of the road on the right."

Under the superintendence of the R.C. "padre," a man whose sympathy
and kindness I shall never forget, my stretcher was lifted off the
carrier and I was placed in the archway. The "padre" loosened my
bandage and looked at the wound, when he drew in his breath and asked
if I was in much pain.

"Not an enormous amount," I answered, but asked for something to
drink.

"Are you quite sure it hasn't touched the stomach?" he questioned,
looking shrewdly at me.

I emphatically denied that it had, and he brought a blood-stained mug
with a little tea at the bottom of it. I can honestly say that I never
enjoyed a drink so much as that one.

Shells, high explosives and shrapnel, were coming over every now and
then. I kept my helmet well over my head. This also served as a shade
from the sun, for it was now about ten o'clock and a sultry day. I was
able to obtain a view of events round about fairly easily. From time
to time orderlies tramped through the archway, bearing stretcher-cases
to the dug-out. Another officer had been brought in and placed on the
opposite side of the archway. The poor fellow, about nineteen, was
more or less unconscious. His head and both hands were covered in
bandages crimson with blood. So coated was he with mud and gore that I
did not at first recognise him as an officer. At the farther end of
the arch a young private of about eighteen was lying on his side,
groaning in the agony of a stomach wound and crying "Mother." The
sympathetic "padre" did the best he could to comfort him. Out in the
road the R.A.M.C. were dressing and bandaging the ever-increasing flow
of wounded. Amongst them a captive German R.A.M.C. man, in green
uniform, with a Red Cross round his sleeve, was visible, hard at
work. Everything seemed so different from the deadly strife a
thousand or so yards away. There, foe