ses she
has raised in Glasgow. Her idea is that her Ambulance should be an
independent unit attached to our corps but bearing her name. (Seems
rather a pity to bring the poor lady out just now when things are
beginning to be risky and our habitations uncertain.)

The British troops are pouring into Ghent. There is a whole crowd of
them in the _Place_ in front of the Station. And some British wounded
from Antwerp are in our Hospital.

Heavy fighting at Lokeren, between Ghent and Saint Nicolas. Car 1 has
been sent there with the Commandant, Ursula Dearmer, Janet McNeil and
the Chaplain (Mr. Foster has been hurt in lifting a stretcher; he is out
of it, poor man). Mrs. Torrence, Dr. Wilson and Mr. Riley have been sent
to Nazareth. Mrs. Lambert has gone to Lokeren with her husband in his
car.

I was sent for this morning by somebody who desired to see the English
Field Ambulance. Drawn up before the Hospital I found all that was left
of a Hendon bus, in the charge of two British Red Cross volunteers in
khaki and a British tar. The three were smiling in full enjoyment of the
high comedy of disaster. They said they were looking for a job, and they
wanted to know if our Ambulance would take them on. They were keen. They
had every qualification under the sun.

"Only," they said, "there's one thing we bar. And that's the
firing-line. We've been under shell-fire for fifteen hours--and look at
our bus!"

The bus was a thing of heroism and gorgeous ruin. The nose of its engine
looked as if it had nuzzled its way through a thousand _debacles_; its
dark-blue sides were coated with dust and mud to the colour of an
armoured car. The letters M. E. T. were barely discernible through the
grey. Its windows were shattered to mere jags and spikes and splinters
of glass that adhered marvellously to their frames.

I don't know how I managed to convey to the three volunteers that such a
bus would be about as much use to our Field Ambulance as an old
greenhouse that had come through an earthquake. It was one of the
saddest things I ever had to do.

Unperturbed, and still credulous of adventure, they climbed on to their
bus, turned her nose round, and went, smiling, away.

Who they were, and what corps they belonged to, and how they acquired
that Metropolitan bus I shall never know, and do not want to know. I
would far rather think of them as the heroes of some fantastic
enterprise, careering in gladness and in mystery from one besieged