and the Germans confront each other, but
things have been quieter lately. The piteous list of casualties is not
so long as it has been. A wounded German was brought in to-day. Both his
legs were broken and his feet frost-bitten. He had been for four days in
water with nothing to eat, and his legs unset. He is doing well.

[Page Heading: PERVYSE]

On Sunday I drove out to Pervyse with a kind friend, Mr. Tapp. At the
end of the long avenue by which one approaches the village, Pervyse
church stands, like a sentinel with both eyes shot out. Nothing is left
but a blind stare. Hardly any of the church remains, and the churchyard
is as if some devil had stalked through it, tearing up crosses and
kicking down graves. Even the dead are not left undisturbed in this
awful war. The village (like many other villages) is just a mass of
gaping ruins--roofs blown off, streets full of holes, not a window left
unshattered, and the guns still booming.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Charles Percival._

FURNES, BELGIUM,
_5 December._

DARLING TAB,

I have a chance of sending this to England to be posted, so I must send
you a line to wish you many happy returns of the day. I wish we could
have our yearly kiss. I will think of you a lot, my dear, on the 8th,
and drink your health if I can raise the wherewithal. We are not famous
for our comforts, and it would amaze you to see how very nasty food can
be, and how very little one can get of it.

I have an interesting job now, and it is my own, which is rather a
mercy, as I never know which is most common, dirt or muddle. I can have
things as clean as I like, and my soup is getting quite a name for
itself. The first convoy of wounded generally comes into the station
about 11 a.m. It may number anything. Then the men are put into the
train, and there begins a weary wait for the poor fellows till more
wounded arrive and the train is loaded up, and sometimes they are kept
there all day. The stretcher cases are in a long corridor, and the
sitting-up cases in ordinary third-class carriages. The sitters are
worn, limping men, with bandaged heads, and hands bound up, who are yet
capable of sitting up in a train.

The transport is well done, I think (_far_ better than in South Africa),
but more women are wanted to look after details. To give you one
instance: all stretchers are made of different sizes, so that if a man
arrives on an ambulance, the stretchers belonging to