e the
place about 100 yards off. The Germans were here six days ago; got into
a big sewer that goes under the line, and blew it up. There is a hole 30
feet long, 15 across and 15 deep--very good piece of work. They occupied
the station, and bragged about getting across to England from Calais.
The M.O. who lives here, to be the link (with a sergeant and seven men)
between the field ambulances and the trains, dined with us. It is a wee
place. The station is his headquarters.

_Thursday, October 22nd._--Took on from convoys all night in pitch
darkness--a very bad load this time; going to go septic; swelling under
the bandages. There was a fractured spine and a malignant oedema, both
dying; we put these two off to-day at St Omer. We came straight away in
the morning, and are now nearly back at Boulogne.

YPRES.

_Friday, October 23rd._--All unloaded by 11 P.M. last night. (1800 in a
day and a night.) No.-- A.T. was in; visited M. and S. Bed by 12;
clothes on for forty hours. Slept alongside quay. Two hospital ships
in; watched them loading up from ambulances. No time to go ashore. The
wounded officers we had this time said the fighting at the Front is very
heavy. The men said the same. They slept from sheer exhaustion almost
before their boots were got off, and before the cocoa came round. In the
morning they perked up very pleased with their sleep, and talked
incessantly of the trenches, and the charges, and the odds each regiment
had against them, and how many were left out of their company, and all
the most gruesome details you can imagine. They seem to get their blood
up against the Germans when they're actually doing the fighting--"you're
too excited to notice what hits you, or to think of anything but your
life" ("and your country," one man added). "Some of us has got to get
killed, and some wounded, and some captured, and we wonder which is for
us."

11.15.--Just off for ----? I was in the act of trotting off into the
town to find the baths, when I met a London Scottish with a very urgent
note for the O.C.; thought I'd better bide a wee, and it was to say
"Your train is urgently required; how soon can you start?" So I had a
lucky escape of being left behind. (We had leave till 1 P.M.) Then the
Major nearly got left; we couldn't start that minute, because our
stores weren't all in, and the R.T.O. came up in a great fuss that we
were holding up five supply trains and reinforcements; so the British
Army had to