e a grey or white coat with brown or black fur or
astrakhan sleeves. Some wear the fur inside and some outside; they
simply love them.

Reduced to pacing the platform in the dark and rain to get warm. It is
368 paces, so I've done it six times to well cover a mile, but it is not
an exciting walk! Funny thing, it seems in this war that for many
departments you are either thoroughly overworked or entirely hung up,
which is much worse. In things like the Pay Department or the
Post-Office or the Provisioning for the A.S.C. it seldom gets off the
overworked line, but in this and in the fighting line it varies very
much.

"The number of victims of the Taube attack on Hazebrouck on Monday
is larger than was at first supposed. Five bombs were thrown and
nine British soldiers and five civilians were killed, while 25
persons were injured."--'Times,' Dec. 9th.

We were at H. on that day.

_Monday, December 14th._--Got off at last at 3.30 A.M. Loaded up 300 at
Merville, a place we've only been to once before, near the coalmines.
Guns were banging only four miles off.

Had a good many bad cases, medical and surgical, this time: kept one
busy to the journey's end. We are unloaded to-night, so they will soon
be well seen to, instead of going down to Rouen or Havre, which two
other trains just in have got to do.

We have a good many Gordons on; one was hugging his bagpipes, and we had
him up after dinner to play, which he did beautifully with a wrapt
expression.

We are going up again to-night. "Three trains wanted immediately"--been
expecting that.

_Tuesday, December 15th._--We were unloaded last night at 9.30, and
reported ready to go up again at 11 P.M., but they didn't move us till 5
A.M. Went to same place as yesterday, and cleared the Clearing Hospitals
again; some badly wounded, with wounds exposed and splints padded with
straw as in the Ypres days.

The Black Watch have got some cherub-faced boys of seventeen out now.
The mud and floods are appalling. The Scotch regiments have lost their
shoes and spats and wade barefoot in the water-logged trenches. This is
a true fact.

I'm afraid not a few of many regiments have got rheumatism--some
acute--that they will never lose.

The ploughed fields and roads are all more or less under water, and each
day it rains more.

We have got a Red Cross doctor on the train who was in the next village
to the one we loaded from this morning. It has been tak