unded. Long rows of litters awaited the busy doctors' visit for
further examination. First dressings put on by the man himself or by a
comrade in the firing-line were removed and fresh dressings substituted.
Ambulance after ambulance ran up, the litters of those who were "next"
were slipped in behind the green curtains, and on soft springs over
spinning rubber tires the burdens were sped on their way to England.

Officers were bringing order out of the tide which flowed in across the
fields and the communication trenches as if they were used to such
situations, with the firing-line only two thousand yards away. The
seriously wounded were separated from the lightly wounded, who must not
expect to ride but must go farther on foot. The shell-mauled German
borne pickaback by a comrade found himself in an ambulance across from a
Briton and his bearer was to know sleep after a square meal in the
prisoners' inclosure.

And all this was the refuse from the hopper of battle, which has no
service for prisoners unless to carry litters and no use at all for
wounded; and it was only a by-product of the proof of success compared
to a trip over the field itself--a field still fresh.

Artillery caissons and ambulances and signal wire carts and other
specially favored transport--favored by risk of being in range of
hundreds of guns--now ran along the road in the former No Man's Land
which for nearly two years had had no life except the patrols at night.
The bodies of those who fell on such nocturnal scouting expeditions
could not be recovered and their bones lay there in the midst of rotting
green and khaki in the company of the fresh dead of the charge who were
yet to be buried.

There was the battalion which took the trenches resting yonder on a
hillside, while another battalion took its place in the firing-line. The
men had stripped off their coats; they were washing and making tea and
sprawling in the sunshine, these victors, looking across at curtains of
fire where the battle was raging. Thus reserves might have waited at
Gettysburg or at Waterloo.

"They may put some shells into you," I suggested to their colonel.

"Perhaps," he said. The prospect did not seem to disturb him or the men.
It was a possibility hazy to minds which asked only sleep or relaxation
after two sleepless nights under fire. "The Germans haven't any
aeroplanes up to enable them to see us and no sausage balloons, either.
Since our planes brought down thos