e hut, with the sun on their faces, were four wounded Germans,
Wurtemburgers and Bavarians, too ill to move just then. Each of them had
lost a leg under the surgeon's knife. They were eating strawberries, and
seemed at peace. I spoke to one of them.

"Wie befinden sie sich?"

"Ganz wohl; wir sind zufrieden mit unsere behandlung."

I passed through the shell-shock wards and a yard where the
"shell-shocks" sat about, dumb, or making queer, foolish noises, or
staring with a look of animal fear in their eyes. From a padded room
came a sound of singing. Some idiot of war was singing between bursts of
laughter. It all seemed so funny to him, that war, so mad!

"We are clearing them out," said the medical officer. "There will be
many more soon."

How soon? That was a question nobody could answer. It was the only
secret, and even that was known in London, where little ladies in
society were naming the date, "in confidence," to men who were directly
concerned with it--having, as they knew, only a few more weeks, or days,
of certain life. But I believe there were not many officers who would
have surrendered deliberately all share in "The Great Push." In spite
of all the horror which these young officers knew it would involve,
they had to be "in it" and could not endure the thought that all their
friends and all their men should be there while they were "out of it."
A decent excuse for the safer side of it--yes. A staff job, the
Intelligence branch, any post behind the actual shambles--and thank God
for the luck. But not an absolute shirk.

Tents were being pitched in many camps of the Somme, rows and rows of
bell tents and pavilions stained to a reddish brown. Small cities
of them were growing up on the right of the road between Amiens and
Albert--at Dernancourt and Daours and Vaux-sous-Corbie. I thought they
might be for troops in reserve until I saw large flags hoisted to tall
staffs and men of the R.A.M.C. busy painting signs on large sheets
stretched out on the grass. It was always the same sign--the Sign of the
Cross that was Red.

There was a vast traffic of lorries on the roads, and trains were
traveling on light railways day and night to railroads just beyond
shell-range. What was all the weight they carried? No need to ask.
The "dumps" were being filled, piled up, with row upon row of shells,
covered by tarpaulin or brushwood when they were all stacked. Enormous
shells, some of them, like gigantic pigs without le