d luck. I wish we'd had enough for them. It is
the smokes and the rum ration that has helped the British Army to stick
it more than anything, after the conviction that they've each one got
that the Germans have got to be "done in" in the end. A Sergt. of the
C.G. told me a cheering thing yesterday. He said he had a draft of young
soldiers of only four months' service in this week's business. "Talk of
old soldiers," he said, "you'd have thought these had had years of it.
When they were ordered to advance there was no stopping them."

After all we are not going to Bethune but to Merville again.

This is a very slow journey up, with long indefinite stops; we all got
bad headaches by lunch time from the intense cold and a short night
following a heavy day. At lunch we had hot bricks for our feet, and hot
food inside, which improved matters, and I think by the time we get the
patients on there will be chauffage.

The orderlies are to have their Xmas dinner to-morrow, but I believe
ours is to be to-night, if the patients are settled up in time.

Do not think from these details that we are at all miserable; we say
"For King and Country" at intervals, and have many jokes over it all,
and there is the never-failing game of going over what we'll all do and
avoid doing After the War.

7 P.M.--Loaded up at Merville and now on the way back; not many badly
wounded but a great many minor medicals, crocked up, nothing much to be
done for them. We may have to fill up at Hazebrouck, which will
interrupt the very festive Xmas dinner the French Staff are getting
ready for us. It takes a man, French or British, to take decorating
really seriously. The orderlies have done wonders with theirs.
Aeroplanes done in cotton-wool on brown blankets is one feature.

This lot of patients had Xmas dinner in their Clearing Hospitals to-day,
and the King's Xmas card, and they will get Princess Mary's present.
Here they finished up D.'s Xmas cards and had oranges and bananas, and
hot chicken broth directly they got in.

_12 Midnight._--Still on the road. We had a very festive Xmas dinner,
going to the wards which were in charge of nursing orderlies between the
courses. Soup, turkey, peas, mince pie, plum pudding, chocolate,
champagne, absinthe, and coffee. Absinthe is delicious, like squills. We
had many toasts in French and English. The King, the President, Absent
Friends, Soldiers and Sailors, and I had the _Blesses_ and the
_Malades_. We got up