boys died of
exhaustion and heat. The officers guarded each pump in case they should
drink bad water, and they drank water wrung out of their towels!

"And just as Bill got to the pump the shell burst on him--it made a
proper mess of him"--this with a stare of horror. And they never
criticise or rant about it, but accept it as their share for the time
being.

The train is to-day in a place with a perfect wood on both sides,
glowing with autumn colours, and through it goes a road with continual
little parties of French cavalry, motors, and transport waggons passing
up it.

_Saturday, October 17th._--We are to stay here till Monday, to go on
taking up the wounded from the 1st Division. They went on coming in all
yesterday in motor ambulances. They come straight from the trenches, and
are awfully happy on the train with the first attempts at comforts they
have known. One told me they were just getting their tea one day,
relieving the trenches, when "one o' them coal-boxes" sent a 256 lb.
shell into them, which killed seven and wounded fifteen. _One_ shell! He
said he had to help pick them up and it made him sick.

10 P.M.--Wrote the last before breakfast, and we haven't sat down since.
We are to move back to Villeneuve to-morrow, dropping the sick probably
at Versailles. Every one thankful to be going to move at last. The gas
has given out, and the entire train is lit by candles.

Imagine a hospital as big as King's College Hospital all packed into a
train, and having to be self-provisioned, watered, sanitated, lit,
cleaned, doctored and nursed and staffed and officered, all within its
own limits. No outside person can realise the difficulties except those
who try to work it.

The patients are extraordinarily good, and take everything as it comes
(or as it doesn't come!) without any grumbling. Your day is taken up in
rapidly deciding which of all the things that want doing you must let go
undone; shall they be washed or fed, or beds made, or have their
hypodermics and brandies and medicines, or their dressings done? You end
in doing some of each in each carriage, or in washing them after dinner
instead of before breakfast.

The guns have been banging all the afternoon; some have dropped pretty
near again to-day, but you haven't time to take much notice. Our meals
are very funny--always candles stuck in a wine bottle--no
tablecloth--everything on one plate with the same knife and fork--coffee
in a glass, served b