and another is dying:
many as usual are delirious, and the haemorrhage was worse than ever: it
is frightfully difficult to stop it with these bad wounds and compound
fractures. One sergeant has both eyes gone from a shell wound.

The twelve sitting-up cases on each carriage are a joy after the tragedy
of the rest. They sit up talking and smoking till late, "because they
are so surprised and pleased to be alive, and it is too comfortable to
sleep!"

One man with a broken leg gave me both his pillows for a worse man, and
said, "I'm not bad at all--only got me leg broke." A Reading man, with
his face wounded and one eye gone, kept up a running fire of wit and
hilarity during his dressing about having himself photographed as a Guy
Fawkes for 'Sketchy Bits.'

_Wednesday, October 28th._--Got to Boulogne yesterday morning; then
followed a most difficult day. It was not till 10 P.M. that they began
to unload the sick. The unloading staff at Boulogne have been so
overworked night and day that trains get piled up waiting to be
unloaded. Fifty motor ambulances have been sent for to the Front, and
here they have to depend largely on volunteer people with private
motors. Then trains get blocked by other trains each side of them, and
nothing short of the fear of death will move a French engine-driver to
do what you want him to do. Meanwhile two men on our train died, and
several others were getting on with it, and all the serious cases were
in great distress and misery. As a crowning help the train was divided
into three parts, each five minutes' walk from any other--dispensary on
one bit, kitchen on another. Everybody got very desperate, and at last,
after superhuman efforts, the train was cleared by midnight, and we went
thankfully but wearily to our beds, which we had not got into for the
two previous nights.

To-day was fine and sunny, and while the train was getting in stores we
went into the town to find a _blanchisserie_, and bought a cake and a
petticoat and had a breath of different air. We expect to move up again
any time now. Most welcome mails in.

News of De Wet's rebellion to-day. I wonder if Botha will be able to
hold it?

'The Times' of yesterday (which you can get here) and to-day's 'Daily
Mail' say the fighting beyond Ypres is "severe," but that gives the
British public no glimmering of what it really is. The ---- Regiment had
three men left out of one company. The men say General ---- cried on
seeing the