e afternoon most of the corps were out on the road searching for
wounded. Mairi Chisholm, a Scotch girl eighteen years old, and a young
American woman had been left behind in the Furnes Hospital. With them
was a stretcher bearer, a man of twenty-eight. A few shells fell into
Furnes. The civilian population began running in dismay. The girls
climbed up into the tower of the convent to watch the work of the
shells. The man ordered the women to leave the town with him and go to
Poperinghe. The two girls refused to go.

For weeks Furnes was under artillery fire from beyond Nieuport. One of
our hospital nurses was killed as she was walking in the Grand Place.

I saw an American girl covered by the pistol of an Uhlan officer. She
did not change color, but regarded the incident as a lark. I happened to
be watching her when she was sitting on the front seat of an ambulance
at Oudecappelle, eating luncheon. A shell fell thirty yards from her in
the road. The roar was loud. The dirt flew high. The metal fragments
tinkled on the house walls. The hole it dug was three feet deep. She
laughed and continued with her luncheon.

I saw the same girl stand out in a field while this little drama took
place: The French artillery in the field were well covered by shrubbery.
They had been pounding away from their covert till the Germans grew
irritated. A German Taube flew into sight, hovered high overhead and
spied the hidden guns. It dropped three smoke bombs. These puffed out
their little clouds into the air, and gave the far-away marksmen the
location for firing. Their guns broke out and shrapnel shells came
overhead, burst into trailing smoke and scattered their hundreds of
bullets. The girl stood on the arena itself. Of concern for her personal
safety she had none. It was all like a play on the stage to her. You
watch the blow and flash but you are not a part of the action.

Each night the Furnes Hospital was full with one hundred wounded. In the
morning we carried out one or two or one-half dozen dead. The wounds
were severe, the air of the whole countryside was septic from the sour
dead in the fields, who kept working to the surface from their shallow
burial. There was a morning when we had gone early to the front on a
hurry call. In our absence two girl nurses carried out ten dead from the
wards into the convent lot, to the edge of the hasty graves made ready
for their coming.

There is one woman whom we have watched at work for t