e two Sisters on each
side of it: each has a door into it. No one knows where we are going; we
start this afternoon.

6 P.M.--Not off yet. We had lunch in a small dining-car, we four
Sisters at one table, Major ---- and his two Civil Surgeons at another,
and some French officials of the train at another. Meal cooked and
served by the French--quite nice, no cloth, only one knife and fork.
They are all very friendly and jolly.

In between the actual dealing with the wounded, which is only too real,
it all feels like a play or a dream: why should the whole of France, at
any rate along the railways and places on them, be upside down, swarming
with British soldiers, and all, French and English, working for and
talking of the one thing? everything, and every house and every hotel,
school, and college, being used for something different from what it was
meant for; the billeting is universal. You hear a funny alternation of
educated and uneducated English on all sides of you, and loud French
gabbling of all sorts. By day you see aeroplanes and troop trains and
artillery trains; and by night you see searchlights and hear the
incessant wailing and squawking of the train whistles. On every platform
and at every public doors or gates are the red and blue French soldiers
with their long spikey bayonets, or our Tommies with the short broad
bayonets that don't look half so deadly though I expect they are much
worse. You either have to have a written passport up here, or you must
know the "mot" if challenged by the French sentries. All this from Havre
and St Nazaire up to the Front.

The train is one-third mile long, so three walks along its side gives
you exercise for a mile. The ward beds are lovely: broad and soft, with
lovely pillow-cases and soft thick blankets; any amount of dressings and
surgical equipment, and a big kitchen, steward's store, and three
orderlies to each waggon. Shouldn't be surprised if we get "there" in
the dark, and won't see the war country. Sometimes you are stopped by
bridges being blown up in front of you, and little obstacles of that
kind.

_Wednesday, October 14th._--Still in the siding "waiting for orders" to
move on. There's a lot of waiting being done in this war one way and
another, as well as a lot of doing. What a splendid message the French
Government have sent the Belgian Government on coming to Havre! exciting
for the people at Havre: they used to go mad when dusty motor-cars with
a few e