ncessant monologue of the fever-stricken. And yet it is
curious I look back upon that convent kitchen as a place of gaiety,
holding many memories of comradeship, and as a little sanctuary from
the misery of war. I was a scullion in it, at odd hours of the day and
night when I was not following the ambulance wagons to the field, or
helping to clean the courtyard or doing queer little jobs which some
one had to do.

"I want you to dig a hole and help me to bury an arm," said one of the
nurses. "Do you mind?"

I spent another hour helping a lady to hang up blankets, not very well
washed, because they were still stained with blood, and not very
sanitary, because the line was above a pile of straw upon which men
had died. There were many rubbish heaps in the courtyard near
which it was not wise to linger, and always propped against the walls
were stretchers soppy with blood, or with great dark stains upon them
where blood had dried. It was like the courtyard of a shambles, this
old convent enclosure, and indeed it was exactly that, except that the
animals were not killed outright, but lingered in their pain.

13

Early each morning the ambulances started on their way to the zone
of fire, where always one might go gleaning in the harvest fields of
war. The direction was given us, with the password of the day, by
young de Broqueville, who received the latest reports from the
Belgian headquarters staff. As a rule there was not much choice. It
lay somewhere between the roads to Nieuport on the coast, and
inland, to Pervyse, Dixmude, St. Georges, or Ramscapelle where the
Belgian and German lines formed a crescent down to Ypres.

The centre of that half-circle girdled by the guns was an astounding
and terrible panorama, traced in its outline by the black fumes of
shell-fire above the stabbing flashes of the batteries. Over Nieuport
there was a canopy of smoke, intensely black, but broken every
moment by blue glares of light as a shell burst and rent the
blackness. Villages were burning on many points of the crescent,
some of them smouldering drowsily, others blazing fiercely like
beacon fires.

Dixmude was still alight at either end, but the fires seemed to have
burnt down at its centre. Beyond, on the other horn of the crescent,
were five flaming torches, which marked what were once the neat
little villages of a happy Belgium. It was in the centre of this
battleground, and the roads about me had been churned up by she