m the material. The
colour is browner than our own khaki--and quite different both from the
German, which is much greyer, and the Austrian, which is almost blue. I
heard in Belgium that at the beginning of the war German soldiers were
constantly mistaken for our men.

X

BY THE TRENCHES AT RADZIVILOW

The next morning we went up to Radzivilow. It is the next station to
Skiernevice, and there was very heavy fighting going on there when we
went up. We were told we were going up on an armoured train, which
sounded very thrilling, but when we got to the station we only found a
quite ordinary carriage put on to the engine to take us up. The Russian
battery was at that time at the south of the railway line, the German
battery on the north of it--and we were in the centre of the sandwich.
At Zyradow these cannon sounded distant, but as we neared Radzivilow the
guns were crashing away as they did at Lodz, and we prepared for a hot
time. The station had been entirely wrecked and was simply in ruins, but
the station-master's house near by was still intact, and we had orders
to rig up a temporary dressing-station there.

Before we had time to unpack our dressings, a messenger arrived to tell
us that the Germans had succeeded in enfilading a Russian trench close
by, and that they were bringing fifty very badly wounded men to us
almost at once. We had just time to start the sterilizer when the little
carts began to arrive with some terribly wounded men. The machine guns
had simply swept the trench from end to end. The worst of it was that
some lived for hours when death would have been a more merciful release.
Thank God we had plenty of morphia with us and could thus ease their
terrible sufferings. One man had practically his whole face blown off,
another had all his clothes and the flesh of his back all torn away.
Another poor old fellow was brought in with nine wounds in the abdomen.
He looked quite a patriarch with a long flowing beard--quite the oldest
man I have seen in the Russian army. Poor Ivan, he had only just been
called up to the front and this was his first battle. He was beautifully
dressed, and so clean; his wife had prepared everything for him with
such loving care, a warm knitted vest, and a white linen shirt most
beautifully embroidered with scarlet in a intricate key-pattern. Ivan
was almost more unhappy at his wife's beautiful work having to be cut
than at his own terrible wounds. He was quite conscio