ved
from time to time, two others coming out to take their places,
and every day they had visits from the ambulances which came
out to pick up the wounded. A room on the ground floor was
used during the day, partly as a living-room, partly as a surgery,
and here were brought any soldiers wounded in this part of the
lines. At night they retired to the cellar, as the house itself was
far too dangerous. The Germans shelled Pervyse almost every
night, and sometimes in the day as well, and this particular
house was the most exposed of any in the town. But shells
were not the only trouble, and when a few weeks later the
cellars were filled with water, it was evident that other quarters
must be found.

Pervyse was of course entirely deserted by its inhabitants, but it
could scarcely be called dull. We went out one afternoon to see
what was going on, and found a party of the Corps at lunch.
They seemed to be in particularly good spirits, and they told us
that the house had just been struck by a shell, that the big
Daimler ambulance had been standing outside, and that its
bonnet had been riddled by the shrapnel bullets. We went
outside to see for ourselves, and there we found a large hole in
the side of the house, through which a shell had entered a room
across the passage from that occupied by the Corps, who had
fortunately chosen the lee-side. The big six-cylinder Daimler
had been moved into a shed, and there it stood with twenty or
more holes in its bonnet, but otherwise uninjured. By a stroke of
luck the driver had gone inside the house for a moment or he
would undoubtedly have been killed. It is fortunate that the
Corps is possessed of such a keen sense of humour.

Shells may be amusing in the daytime, but they are not a bit
amusing at night. Only two women with real solid courage could
have slept, night after night, in that empty house in a ruined and
deserted village, with no sounds to be heard but the rain and
the wind, the splutter of the mitrailleuse, and the shriek of shells.
Courage is as infectious as fear, and I think that the soldiers,
watching through the night in the trenches near by, must have
blessed the women who were waiting there to help them, and
must have felt braver men for their presence.

Pervyse was protected by a wide screen of flood, and across
this there was one way only--a slightly raised road going
straight across six miles of water. No advance by either side
was possible, for the road was