, so we had
plenty when there was time to get it. In the middle of the worst of it
in the night I became conscious of a Belgian Boy Scout of fourteen in
the corridor, with a glass and a pail of drinking water; that boy
worked for hours with his glass and pail on his own, or wherever you
sent him. We took him back to Calais. He had come up into the firing
line on his cycle fitted with a rifle, with tobacco for the troops, and
lived with the British whom he loved, sharing their rations. He was a
little brick; one of the Civil Surgeons got him taken back with us,
where he wanted to go.

There were twenty-five officers on the train. They said there were
11,000 Germans dead, and they were using the dead piled up instead of
trenches.

About 1 o'clock that night we heard a rifle shot: it was a German spy
shooting at the sentry sailor on the armoured train alongside of us;
they didn't catch him.

It took from 4 to 10 P.M. to unload our bad cases and get them into
hospitals on motor ambulances: they lay in rows on their stretchers on
the platform waiting their turn without a grumble.

There have been so many hundreds brought down this week that they've had
suddenly to clear four hotels for hospitals.

We are now in the filthiest of sidings, and the smell of the burning of
our heaps of filthy _debris_ off the train is enough to make you sick.
We all slept like logs last night, and could have gone on all day; but
the train has to be cleaned down by the orderlies, and everything got
ready for the next lot: they nearly moved us up again last night, but we
shall go to-day.

I think if one knew beforehand what all this was going to be like one
would hardly want to face it, but somehow you're glad to be there.

We were tackling a bad wound in the head, and when it was finished and
the man was being got comfortable, he flinched and remarked, "That leg
is a beast." We found a compound-fractured femur put up with a rifle for
a splint! He had blankets on, and had never mentioned that his thigh was
broken. It too had to be packed, and all he said was, "That leg _is_ a
beast," and "That leg is a _Beast_."

_Monday, the 26th_, 7 A.M., _Ypres._--We got here again about 10 P.M.
last night in pouring wet, and expected another night like Friday night,
but we for some reason remained short of the station, and when we found
there was nothing doing, lay down in our clothes and slept, booted and
spurred in mackintosh, aprons, &c. We were