you can't get off when the train is stationary for fear of its
vanishing, and for obvious reasons when it is moving. I did walk round
the train for an hour in the dark and slime in the siding yesterday
evening, but it is not a cheering form of exercise.

To-day it is _pouring_ cats and dogs, awful for loading sick, and there
will be many after this week for the trains.

Every one has of course cleared out of beautiful Ypres, but we are going
to load up at Poperinghe, the town next before it, which is now
Railhead. Lately the trains have not been so far.

_Monday, November 16th, Boulogne_, 9 A.M.--We loaded up at Bailleul 344.
The Clearing Hospitals were very full, and some came off a convoy. One
of mine died. One, wounded above the knee, was four _days_ in the open
before being picked up; he had six bullets in his leg, two in each arm,
and crawled about till found; one of the arm wounds he got doing this. I
went to bed at 4. The news was all good, taken as a whole, but the men
say they were "a bit short-handed!!" One said gloomily, "This isn't War,
it's Murder; you go there to your doom." Heard the sad news of Lord
Roberts.

We are all the better for our week's rest.

_Tuesday, November 17th_, 3 A.M.--When we got our load down to Boulogne
yesterday morning all the hospitals were full, and the weather was too
rough for the ships to come in and clear them, so we were ordered on to
Havre, a very long journey. A German died before we got to Abbeville,
where we put off two more very bad ones; and at Amiens we put off four
more, who wouldn't have reached Havre. About midnight something broke on
the train, and we were hung up for hours, and haven't yet got to Rouen,
so we shall have them on the train all to-morrow too, and have all the
dressings to do for the third time. One of the night orderlies has been
run in for being asleep on duty. He climbed into a top bunk (where a
Frenchman was taken off at Amiens), and deliberately covered up and went
to sleep. He was in charge of 28 patients. Another was left behind at
Boulogne, absent without leave, thinking we should unload, and the train
went off for Havre. He'll be run in too. Shows how you can't leave the
train. Just got to St Just. That looks as if we were going to empty at
Versailles instead of Havre. Lovely starlight night, but very cold.
Everybody feels pleased and honoured that Lord Roberts managed to die
with us on Active Service at Headquarters, and who would c