re hardly human sometimes, and in their bandages they
have a suggestion of something tragically grotesque.

_26 May._--We had a great day--rather, a glorious day--at the station
yesterday. In the morning I heard that "les anglais" were arriving
there, and, although the news was a little startling, I couldn't go
early to Adinkerke because I felt so seedy. However, I got off at last
in a "camion," and when I arrived I found the little station hospital
and salle and Lady Bagot's hospital crowded with men in khaki.

We don't know yet all that it means. The fighting has been fierce and
awful at Ypres. Are the hospitals at the base all crowded? Is there no
more room for our men? What numbers of them have fallen? Who is killed,
and who is left?

All questions are idle for the moment. Only I have a postcard to say
that Colin is at the front, so I suppose until the war is over I shall
go on being very sick with anxiety. At night I say to myself, as the
guns boom on, "Is he lying out in the open with a bullet through his
heart?" and in the morning I say, "Is he safe in hospital, and wounded,
or is he still with his men, making them follow him (in the way he has)
wherever he likes to lead them?" God knows, and the War Office, and
neither tells us much.

[Page Heading: GAS-POISONING]

The men at the station were nearly all cases of asphyxiation by gas.
Unless one had actually seen the immediate results one could hardly have
credited it. In a day or two the soldiers may leave off twitching and
shuddering as they breathe, and may be able to draw a breath fairly, but
an hour or two after they have inhaled the deadly German gas is an awful
time to see one's men. Most of them yesterday were in bed, but a few sat
on canvas chairs round the empty stove in the salle, and all slept, even
those in deadly pain. Sleep comes to these tired soldiers like a death.
They succumb to it. They are difficult to rouse. They are oblivious, and
want nothing else. They are able to sleep anywhere and in any position,
but even in sleep they twitch and shudder, and their sides heave like
those of spent horses.

It struck me very forcibly that what was immediately wanted was a long
draught for each of them of some clean, simple stimulant. I went and
bought them red wine, and I could see that this seemed to do good, and I
went to the barge and got bottles of whisky and a quantity of distilled
water, and we dosed the men. It seemed to do them a wonderful l