badly shelled there
yesterday. The Germans were trying for the armoured train. The naval
officer on the armoured train had to stand behind the engine-driver with
a revolver to make him go where he was wanted to. The sitting-up cases
on No.-- got out and fled three miles down the line. A Black Maria shell
burst close to and killed a man. They are again "urgently needing"
A.T.'s; so I hope we are going there to-night.

Eighty thousand German reinforcements are said to have come up to break
through our line, and the British dead are now piled up on the field.
But they aren't letting the Germans through. Three of our men died
before we unloaded at 8 P.M. yesterday, two of shock from lying ten
hours in the trench, not dressed.

_Tuesday, November 3rd, Bailleul_, 8.30 A.M.--Just going to load up;
wish we'd gone to Ypres. Germans said to be advancing.

_Wednesday, November 4th, Boulogne._--We had a lot of badly wounded
Germans who had evidently been left many days; their condition was
appalling; two died (one of tetanus), and one British. We have had a lot
of the London Scottish, wounded in their first action.

Reinforcements, French guns, British cavalry, are being hurried up the
line; they all look splendid.

_Wednesday, November 11th._--Sometimes it seems as if we shall never
get home, the future is so unwritten.

A frightful explosion like this Hell of a War, which flared up in a few
days, will take so much longer to wipe up what can be wiped up. I think
the British men who have seen the desolation and the atrocities in
Belgium have all personally settled that it shan't happen in England,
and that is why the headlines always read--

"THE BRITISH ARMY IMMOVABLE." "WAVES OF GERMAN INFANTRY BROKEN."
"ALLIES THROW ENEMY BACK AT ALL POINTS." "YPRES HELD FOR THREE
WEEKS UNDER A RAIN OF SHELLS."

You can tell they feel like that from their entire lack of resentment
about their own injuries. Their conversation to each other from the time
they are landed on the train until they are taken off is never about
their own wounds and feelings, but exclusively about the fighting they
have just left. If one only had time to listen or take it down it would
be something worth reading, because it is not letters home or newspaper
stuff, _but told to each other_, with their own curious comments and
phraseology, and no hint of a gallery or a Press. Incidentally one gets
a few eye-openers into what happens to a group