gh the country is peaceful, and you look in vain for
shell holes and ruined houses.

At length the railhead is reached--from here the rumble of the guns can
be heard--and the detrainment takes place. You fall your Highlanders in
by the side of the train, you jerk your pack about in a vain effort to
make it hang comfortably, a whistle blows, and you start off on your
long march to your regiment, to those dull, mumbling guns, to your first
peep of war.

* * * * *

A "cushy" wound, a long and aching journey in a motor ambulance, a
nerve-racking night in a clearing hospital, where the groans of the
dying, the hurrying of the orderlies, and your own pain all combine in a
nightmare of horror, and next morning you are in the train once
more--you are going back to the Base. But how different is this from the
journey up to the front! The sound of distant firing has none of the
interest of novelty; the shelling of an aeroplane, which would have
filled you with excitement a short time ago, does not now even cause you
to raise your eyes to watch; you are old in warfare, and _blase_.

There is no room for fear on this train; it is crowded out by pain, by
apathy, by hope. The man next you cannot live a week, but he seems
content; at all events, it is not fear that one sees in his face. There
is no fear--there is hope.

The train is bright with flowers; there are nurses, and books, and
well-cooked food--there is even champagne for the select few. There is
no longer the shattered country of the firing line, but there are hills
and rivers, there is the sea near Wimereux, and the hope of being sent
home to England. There are shattered wrecks that were men, there is the
knowledge of hovering death, but, above all, there is hope.

So the train hastens on--no crawling this time--to the clearing house,
the Base. Past the little sun-washed villages it runs, and the gleaming
Seine brings smiles to wan faces. There, look, over there in the
distance, are the wonderful spires and the quaint houses and the river,
all fresh and laughing in the sun, and the trees up on the hill above
the town are all tender green. Even if one is to die, one may get back
home first; at all events, one has been spared to see God's clean
country, and to breathe untainted air again.

* * * * *

_Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and
Aylesbury, for Simpkin, Marshall, Hami