ance.
But it was out for more than that. Suddenly it began to drop bombs,
and whether by design or otherwise--they have no manners, these
fellows--they exploded in the middle of a field hospital. One of my
friends, a young doctor, was wounded in the left arm by a bullet from
one of these bombs, though I don't know what other casualties there
were. But the inevitable happened. Shortly after the disappearance of
the aeroplane the German shells searched the position, and found it
with unpleasant accuracy. It is always the same. The German
aeroplanes are really wonderful in the way they search out the
positions of our guns. We always know that within half an hour of a-n
observation by aeroplane the shells will begin to fall above the
gunners unless they have altered their position. It was so in this
fighting round Meaux yesterday.

"For some days this rat-hunting among the villages on the left bank of
the Ourcq went on all the time, and we were not very happy. The truth
was that we had no water for ourselves, and were four days thirsty. It
was really terrible, for the heat was terrific during the day, and some
of us were almost mad with thirst. Our tongues were blistered and
swollen, our eyes had a silly kind of look in them, and at night we had
horrid dreams. It was, I assure you, an intolerable agony."

"But we did our best for the horses. I have said we were four days
without drink. That was because we used our last water for the poor
beasts. A gentleman has to do that--you will agree?--and the French
soldier is not a barbarian. Even then the horses had to go without a
drop of water for two days, and I'm not ashamed to say that I wept
salt tears to see the sufferings of those poor innocent creatures, who
did not understand the meaning of all this bloody business and who
wondered at our cruelty."

"The nights were dreadful. All around us were burning villages, the
dear hamlets of France, and at every faint puff of wind the sparks
floated about them like falling stars. But other fires were burning.
Under the cover of the darkness the Germans had collected their
dead and had piled them into great heaps and had covered them with
straw and paraffin. Then they had set a torch to these funeral pyres."

"Carrion crows were about in the dawn that followed. Not many of
them, but they came flopping about the dead bodies, and the living,
with hungry beaks. One of my own comrades lay very badly
wounded, and when he wakened out o