t I
found him gasping with double pneumonia; it was no joke nursing him with
seven others in the compartment. He only just lived to go off the train.

Another one I found dead about 5.30 A.M. We were to have been sent on to
Rouen, but the O.C. Train reported too many serious cases, and so they
were taken off at B. It was a particularly bad engine-driver too.

I got some bath water from a friendly engine, and went to bed at 12 next
day.

We were off again the same evening, and got to B. this morning, train
full, but not such bad cases, and are on our way back again now: expect
to be sent on to Rouen. Now we are three instead of four Sisters, it
makes the night work heavier, but we can manage all right in the day. In
the last journey some of the worst cases got put into the top bunks, in
the darkness and rush, and one only had candles to do the dressings by.
One of the C.S.'s was on leave, but has come back now. All the trains
just then had bad loads: the Clearing Hospitals were overflowing.

The Xmas Cards have come, and I'm going to risk keeping them till
Friday, in case we have patients on the train. If not, I shall take them
to a Sister I know at one of the B. hospitals.

We have got some H.A.C. on this time, who try to stand up when you come
in, as if you were coming into their drawing-room. The Tommies in the
same carriage are quite embarrassed. One boy said just now, "We 'ad a
'appy Xmas last year."

"Where?" I said.

"At 'ome, 'long o' Mother," he said, beaming.

_Xmas Eve, 1914._--And no fire and no chauffage, and cotton frocks;
funny life, isn't it? And the men are crouching in a foot of water in
the trenches and thinking of "'ome, 'long o' Mother,"--British, Germans,
French, and Russians. We are just up at Chocques going to load up with
Indians again. Had more journeys this week than for a long time; you
just get time to get what sleep the engine-driver and the cold will
allow you on the way up.

8 P.M.--Just nearing Boulogne with another bad load, half Indian, half
British; had it in daylight for the most part, thank goodness! Railhead
to-day was one station further back than last time, as the ----
Headquarters had to be evacuated after the Germans got through on
Sunday. The two regiments, Coldstream Guards and Camerons, who drove
them back, lost heavily and tell a tragic story. There are two men (only
one is a boy) on the train who got wounded on Monday night (both
compound fracture of the thigh)