Things happen too quickly to know how to describe them.
To-day when I went out to breakfast an old village woman aged about 70
was brought in wounded in two places. I am not fond of horrors.

We have been given an empty house for the staff, the owners having
quitted it in a panic and left everything, children's toys on the
carpet, and beds unmade. The hospital is a college for priests, all of
whom have fled. Into this building the wounded are carried day and
night, and the surgeons are working in shifts and can't get the work
done. We are losing, alas! so many patients. Nothing can be done for
them, and I always feel so glad when they are gone. I don't think anyone
can realise what it is to be just behind the line of battle, and I fear
there would not be much recruiting if people at home could see our
wards. One can only be thankful for a hospital like this in the thick of
things, for we are saving lives, and not only so, but saving the lives
of men who perhaps have lain three days in a trench or a turnip-field
undiscovered and forgotten.

As soon as a wounded man has been attended to and is able to be put on a
stretcher again he is sent to Calais. We have to keep emptying the wards
for other patients to come in, and besides, if the fighting comes this
way, we shall have to fall back a little further.

We have a river between us and the Germans, so we shall always know when
they are coming and get a start and be all right.

Your loving
S. MACNAUGHTAN.

* * * * *

_25 October._--A glorious day. Up in the blue even Taubes--those birds
of prey--look beautiful, like eagles wheeling in their flight. It is all
far too lovely to leave, yet men are killing each other painfully with
every day that dawns.

I had a tiresome day in spite of the weather, because the hospital was
evacuated suddenly owing to the nearness of the Germans, and I missed
going with the ambulance, so I hung about all day.

_26 October. My birthday._--This morning several women were brought in
horribly wounded. One girl of sixteen had both legs smashed. I was
taking one old woman to the civil hospital and I had to pass eighteen
dead men; they were laid out beside some women who were washing clothes,
and I noticed how tired even in death their poor dirty feet looked.

[Page Heading: TO THE EDGE OF THE FIGHTING LINE]

We started early in the ambulance to-day, and went to pick up the
wounded. It was a wild gusty morni