ed, dirty, fagged men, and ticketed them off for the
motor ambulances to the Hospitals, or back to the train, after dressing
them. The platform was soon packed with stretchers with all the bad
cases waiting patiently to be taken to Hospital. We cut off the silk
vest of a dirty, brigandish-looking officer, nearly finished with a
wound through his lung. The Black Watch and Camerons were almost
unrecognisable in their rags. The staple dressing is tincture of iodine;
you don't attempt anything but swabbing with lysol, and then gauze
dipped in iodine. They were nearly all shrapnel shell wounds--more
ghastly than anything I have ever seen or smelt; the Mauser wounds of
the Boer War were pin-pricks compared with them. There was also a huge
train of French wounded being dressed on the other side of the station,
including lots of weird, gaily-bedecked Zouaves.

There was no real confusion about the whole day, owing to the good
organising of the No.-- Clearing Hospital people who run it. Every man
was fed, and dressed and sorted. They'll have a heavy time at the two
hospitals to-night with the cases sent up from the trains.

M. and I are now--9 P.M.--in charge of a train of 141 (with an M.O. and
two orderlies) for St Nazaire; we jump out at the stations and see to
them, and the orderlies and the people on the stations feed them: we
have the worst cases next to us. We may get there some time to-morrow
morning, and when they are taken off, we train back, arriving probably
on Wednesday at Le Mans. The lot on this train are the best leavings of
to-day's trains,--a marvellously cheery lot, munching bread and jam and
their small share of hot tea, and blankets have just been issued. We
ourselves have a rug, and a ration of bread, tea, and jam; we had dinner
on the station.

When I think of your Red Cross practices on boy scouts, and the grim
reality, it makes one wonder. And the biggest wonder of it all is the
grit there is in them, and the price they are individually and
unquestioningly paying for doing their bit in this War.

_Monday, September 21st._--In train on way back to Le Mans from St
Nazaire. We did the journey in twelve hours, and arrived at 9 this
morning, which was very good, considering the congestion on the line. In
the middle of the night we pulled up alongside an immense troop train,
taking a whole Brigade of D. of Cornwall's L.I. up to the front, such a
contrast to our load coming away from the front. Our lot will