re not even
shut; one could help oneself to anything! The "etat major" has left, and
so have all the officials; 23,000 tickets have been taken at the railway
station, and the road to Calais is{6} blocked with fleeing refugees.

It was rather odd that the day I left here and passed through Furnes it
was being shelled, and we had to wait a little while before we could get
through; and when I arrived at Dunkirk the bombardment was just over,
and a huge shell-hole prevented us passing down a certain road.

Well, I got back to my work at Adinkerke in the midst of the fighting,
and reached it just as the sun was setting. What a scene at the station,
where I stopped before reaching home to leave the chairs and things I
had bought for the hospital there! They were bringing in civilians
wounded at Ypres and Poperinghe, which place also has been shelled (and
yet we say we are advancing!), and there were natives also from
Nieuport.

[Page Heading: WOUNDED WOMEN AND CHILDREN]

One whole ambulance was filled with wounded children. I think King Herod
himself might have been sorry for them. Wee things in splints, or with
their curly heads bandaged; tiny mites, looking with wonder at their
hands swathed in linen; babies with their tender flesh torn, and older
children crying with terror. There were two tiny things seated opposite
each other on a big stretcher playing with dolls, and a little
Christmas-card sort of baby in a red hood had had its mother and father
killed beside it. Another little mite belonged to no one at all. Who
could tell whether its parents had been killed or not? I am afraid many
of them will never find their relations again. In the general scrimmage
everyone gets lost. If this isn't frightfulness enough, God in heaven
help us!

On the platform was a row of women lying on stretchers. They were
decent-looking brown-haired matrons for the most part, and it looked
unnatural and ghastly to see them lying there. One big railway
compartment was slung with their stretchers, and some young men in
uniform nursed the babies. I shall never forget that railway compartment
as long as I live. A man in khaki appeared, thoughtful, as our people
always are, and brought a box of groceries with him, and sweet biscuits
for the children, and other things. Thank Heaven for the English!

At the hospital it was really awful, and the doctors were working in
shifts of twenty-four hours at a time.

I left my tables, chairs, trays, et