e six poplars I had seen through a
periscope in the trenches the day before. "Well, you see the roof of a
house between the second and third tree from the right? Good!" He turned
to the telephone operator in the corner of the loft. "Lay No. 2 on the
register! Report when ready!" The operator repeated the words
confidentially to the distant battery, and even as he spoke the receiver
answered "Ready!" "Fire!" I had my eyes glued to the house, yet nothing
seemed to happen, and I rubbed my field-glasses dubiously with my
pocket-handkerchief. Had they missed? Even as I speculated there was a
puff of smoke and a spurt of flame in the roof of the house between the
poplars. We had delivered the goods.

If one of those ruinous farms does not contain a battery mess the
chances are that it will shelter a field ambulance or else a company in
billets. Field ambulances, like the batteries, are somewhat migratory in
their habits, and change their positions according as they are wanted.
But a field ambulance is not, as might be supposed, a vehicle but a unit
of the R.A.M.C, with a major or a colonel in charge as O.C. The A.D.M.S.
of a division has three field ambulances under him, and when an attack
in force is projected he mobilises these three units at forward dressing
stations in the rear of the trenches. They are a link between the
aid-posts in front and the collecting stations behind. From the
collecting stations the wounded are sent on to the clearing hospitals
and thence to the base. It sounds beautifully simple, and so it is. The
most eloquent compliment to its perfection was the dreamy reminiscence
of a soldier I met at the base: "I got hit up at Wipers, sir; something
hit me in the head, and the next thing I knew was I heard somebody
saying 'Drink this,' and I found myself in bed at Boulogne." Every field
ambulance has an attendant chaplain, and a very good sort he usually is.
Is the soldier sick, he visits him; penitent, he shrives him; dying, he
comforts him. One such I knew, a Catholic priest, six feet two, and a
mighty hunter of buck in his day, who was often longing for a shot at
the Huns, and as often imposing penances upon himself for such
un-ghostly desires. He found consolation in confessing the Irishmen
before they went into the trenches: "The bhoys fight all the better for
it," he explained. He was sure of the salvation of his flock; the only
doubts he had were about his own. We all loved him.

There is one great