t and Melle, and that it had been engaged
at Quatrecht.

Our own orders were to stick to Melle.

I suppose from the way the ambulances were massed there that the end
had been foreseen. That afternoon the battle began to sweep round from
Quatrecht to Melle; and on our third journey out a rumour reached us
at the barrier where the sentry stood guard. It was one of those
preposterous rumours that run before disaster and are started God knows
how when a retreat begins. I think it was the Belgian Red Cross men who
spread it, for I heard the guide who went with Jimmy's Field Ambulance
assuring him seriously that seven thousand British had been surrounded
and cut to pieces on the road between Quatrecht and Melle. To be sure the
number diminished with each repetition of the tale, dropping from seven
thousand to seven hundred and from seven hundred to seventy. But in
another hour we were bringing in the men of the ----shires.

And towards the end of the day the real bombardment of Melle began, and
on our last journey out we and Jimmy's Field Ambulance were in the thick
of it.

I can remember nothing of that bombardment but the three shells.

The first ripped open the roof of the Town Hall and set fire to it.

The second struck the Greek pediment and brought the whole front toppling
into the street.

Then, about five minutes after, there was the third shell.

The light was going out of the sky, so that we saw the first shell like a
sheet of curved lightning making for the village as we approached from
the Ghent side. There was a deadly attraction about the thing that made
you feel that it and you were the only objects in God's universe, and
that you were about to be merged in each other. It looked as if it were
rushing out of heaven straight for us, so that we were surprised when it
apparently swerved aside and hit the Town Hall instead.

(Jimmy and I were in the front of the car. Kendal, whose flesh wound was
beginning to worry him, sat behind.)

A battery of artillery charged past us, followed by the remnants of a
French regiment on the run. Jimmy put more speed on. By the time we got
into the village the Town Hall was spouting flame.

Jimmy drew up his car about fifty yards away from it. The Field Ambulance
had turned, and took its stand a little further away behind us, under the
cover of the opposite walls. Its men began dragging out their stretchers.
Kendal and I made ready with ours. The wounded were being broug