the town, and soon they were raining in three
at a time. My little room here is a sort of lean-to over the kitchen
with no room above it; so I cleared out to dress in one of the others,
and didn't stop to wash. Gabrielle came running up to fetch me
downstairs. At the hospital, which was only about 200 yards down the
road, the wounded officers were thinking it was about time Capt.
---- moved his Field Ambulance. One boy by the window had got some
_debris_ in his eye from the nearest shell, which burst in my
blackbird's garden, or rather on the doorstep opposite. (That was the
one that got me out of bed rather rapidly.) The orders soon came to
evacuate all the patients. At the French Hospital, about six minutes
away, three wounded had been hit in a M.A. coming in, and the Officers'
Mess had one (none of them were in), and they were dropping all round
it. Then the order came from the D.D.M.S. to the A.D.M.S. to evacuate
the whole of the --th, --th, and --th Field Ambulances, and within about
two hours this was done.

Everybody got the patients ready, fixed up their dressings and splints,
gave them all morphia, and got them on to their stretchers.

The evacuation was jolly well done; their servants appeared by magic,
each with every spot of kit and belongings his officer came in with
(they are in _all_ cases checked by the Sergeant on admission, no matter
what the rush is), and the place was empty in an hour. The din of our
guns, which were bombarding heavily, and the German guns, which are
bombarding us at a great pace, and the whistle and bang of the shells
that came over while this was going on, was a din to remember.

Then we went back to our billet to hurl our belongings into our baggage,
and came away with the A.D.M.S. and his Staff-Major in their two
touring-cars. The Division is back resting somewhere near here. We got
to bed about 2 A.M. after tea and bread and butter downstairs, but slept
very little owing to the noise of the guns, which shake and rattle the
windows every minute.

We don't know what happens next.

At about four this morning I heard a nightingale trilling in the garden.

2 P.M.--In the Chateau garden. It is a glorious spot, with kitchen
garden, park, moat bridge, and a huge wilderness up-and-down plantation
round it, full of lilac, copper beeches, and flowering trees I've never
seen before, and birds and butterflies and buttercups. You look across
and see the red-brick Chateau surrounded by