After that we drove down to the station. While we were hanging about there, a shell was hurled over this side of the village from the German batteries. It careered over the roofs, with a track that was luminous in the dusk, like a curved sheet of lightning. I don't know where it fell and burst.
We were told to stand out from under the station building for fear it should be struck.
When we got back into the village we went into the inn and waited there in a long, narrow room, lit by a few small oil-lamps and crammed with soldiers. They were eating and drinking in vehement haste. Wherever the light from the lamps fell on them, you saw faces flushed and scarred under a blur of smoke and grime. Here and there a bandage showed up, violently white. On the tables enormous quantities of bread appeared and disappeared.
These soldiers, with all their vehemence and violence, were exceedingly lovable. One man brought me a chair; another brought bread and offered it. Charming smiles flashed through the grime.
At last, when we had found one man with a wounded hand, we got into the ambulance and went back to Ghent.
[Saturday, 10th.]
I have got something to do again—at last!
I am to help to look after Mr. ——. He has the pick of the Belgian Red Cross women to nurse him, and they are angelically kind and very skilful, but he is not very happy with them. He says: "These dear people are so good to me, but I can't make out what they say. I can't tell them what I want." He is pathetically glad to have any English people with him. (Even I am a little better than a Belgian whom he cannot understand.)
I sat with him all morning. The French boy has gone and he is alone in his room now. It seems that the kind Chaplain sat up with him all last night after his hard day at Melle. (I wish now I had stood by the Chaplain with his Matins. He has never tried to have them again—given us up as an unholy crew, all except Mr. Foster, whom he clings to.)
The morning went like half an hour, while it was going; but when it was over I felt as if I had been nursing for weeks on end. There were so many little things to be done, and so much that you mustn't do, and the anxiety was appalling. I don't suppose there is a worse case in the Hospital. He is perhaps a shade better to-day, but none of the medical staff think that he can live.