ng
all day. It took me till lunch to read my enormous mail.

Major T. has heard to-day that the French railway people want his train
back again for passenger traffic, so the possibility of our all being
suddenly disbanded and dispersed is hanging over us; but I believe it
has been threatened before.

_Thursday, February 18th._--In bed, 10 P.M. We have had a very heavy day
with the woundeds again from Bailleul. We unloaded again at B. this
evening, and are to go up again some time to-night.

There is a great deal going on in our front.

There was a boy from Suffolk, of K.'s Army, in my ward who has only been
out three weeks. He talked the most heavenly East Anglian--"I was agin
the barn, and that fared to hit me"--all in the right sing-song.

A sergeant of the D.C.L.I. had a fearful shell wound in his thigh, which
has gone wrong, and as the trouble is too high for amputation they will
have their work cut out to save his life. They were getting out of the
trench for a bayonet charge, and he had just collected his men when he
was hit; so the officer "shook hands with him" and went on with the
charge, leaving him and another man, wounded in the leg, in the trench.
They stayed there several hours with no dressings on, sinking into the
mud (can you wonder it has gone wrong?), until another man turned up and
helped them out; then they _walked_ to the Regimental Aid Post, 200
yards away, helped by the sound man. There they were dressed and had the
anti-tetanus serum injection, and were taken by stretcher-bearers to the
next Dressing Station, and thence by horse ambulance to the Field
Ambulance, and then by motor ambulance to where we picked them up. There
are lots of F.'s regiment wounded.

_Friday, February 19th._--We left B. at 5 A.M. to-day, and were delayed
all the morning farther up by one of the usual French collisions. A
guard had left his end of a train and was on the engine; so he never
noticed that twelve empty trucks had come uncoupled and careered down a
hill, where they were run into and crumpled up by a passenger train. The
guard of that one was badly injured (fractured spine), but the
passengers only shaken.

At St Omer Miss M. and Major T. and I were being shown over the Khaki
Train when ours moved off. There was a wild stampede; the Khaki Train
had all its doors locked, and we had miles to go inside to get out.
Their orderlies shouted to ours to pull the communication cord--the only
way of appealing