ation is one that calls for nerve. It was only luck that the
artillery from beyond the Yser did not begin tuning up. The Germans had
shelled that road diligently for many days and some evenings. Back to
the crossroads Mrs. Knocker brought her cargo, and on to Oudecappelle,
and so to the hospital at Furnes, a full ten miles. Safely home in the
convent yard, the journey done, the wounded men lifted into the ward,
she broke down. She had put over her job, and her nerves were tired.
Womanlike she refused to give in till the work was successfully
finished.

How would a man have handled such a strain? I will tell you how one man
acted. Our corporal drove his touring car toward Dixmude one morning. He
ordered Tom, the cockney driver, to follow with the motor ambulance. In
it were Mrs. Knocker and Miss Chisholm, sitting with Tom on the front of
the car. Things looked thick. The corporal slowed up, and so did Tom
just behind him. Now there is one sure rule for rescue work at the
front--when you hear the guns close, always turn your car toward home,
away from the direction of the enemy. Turn it before you get your
wounded, even though they are at the point of death, and leave your
power on, even when you are going to stay for a quarter of an hour.
Pointed toward safety, and under power, the car can carry you out of
range of a sudden shelling or a bayonet charge. The enemy's guns began
to place shrapnel over the road. The cloud puffs were hovering about a
hundred feet overhead a little farther down the way. The bullets
clicked on the roadbed. The corporal jumped out of his touring car.

[Illustration: BRETON SAILORS READY FOR THEIR NOON MEAL IN A VILLAGE
UNDER DAILY SHELL FIRE.

Throughout this Yser district British nurses drove their ambulances and
rescued the wounded.]

"Turn my car," he shouted to Tom. Tom climbed from the ambulance,
boarded the touring car and turned it. The corporal peered out from his
shelter, behind the ambulance, saw the going was good and ran to his own
motor. He jumped in and sped out of range at full tilt. The two women
sat quietly in the ambulance, watching the shrapnel. Tom came to them,
turned the car and brought them beyond the range of fire.

But the steadiest and most useful piece of work done by the women was
that at Pervyse. Mrs. Knocker and two women helpers, one Scotch and one
American, fitted up a miniature hospital in the cellar of a house in
ruined Pervyse. They were within three minut