25 October.—A glorious day. Up in the blue even Taubes—those birds of prey—look beautiful, like eagles wheeling in their flight. It is all far too lovely to leave, yet men are killing each other painfully with every day that dawns.
I had a tiresome day in spite of the weather, because the hospital was evacuated suddenly owing to the nearness of the Germans, and I missed going with the ambulance, so I hung about all day.
26 October. My birthday.—This morning several women were brought in horribly wounded. One girl of sixteen had both legs smashed. I was taking one old woman to the civil hospital and I had to pass eighteen dead men; they were laid out beside some women who were washing clothes, and I noticed how tired even in death their poor dirty feet looked.
TO THE EDGE OF THE FIGHTING LINE
We started early in the ambulance to-day, and went to pick up the wounded. It was a wild gusty morning, one of those days when the sky takes up nearly all the picture and the world looks small. The mud was deep on the road, and a cyclist corps plunged heavily along through it. The car steered badly and we drove to the edge of the fighting-line.
First one comes to a row of ammunition vans, with men cooking breakfast behind them. Then come the long grey guns, tilted at various angles, and beyond are the shells bursting and leaving little clouds of black or white in the sky. We signalled to a gun not to fire down the road in much the same way as a bobby signals to a hansom. When we got beyond the guns they fired over us with a long streaky sort of sound. We came back to the road and picked up the wounded wherever we could find them.
The churches are nearly all filled with straw, the chairs piled anywhere, and the sacrament removed from the altar. In cottages and little inns it is the same thing—a litter of straw, and men lying on it in the chilly weather. Here and there through some little window one sees surgeons in their white coats dressing wounds. Half the world seems to be wounded and inefficient. We filled our ambulance, and stood about in curious groups of English men and women who looked as if they were on some shooting-party. When our load was complete we drove home.
Dr. Munro told me that last night he met a German prisoner quite naked being marched in, proudly holding his head up. Lots of the men fight naked in the trenches. In hospital we meet delightful German youths.
Amongst others who were brought in to-day was Mr. "Dick" Reading, the editor of a sporting paper. He was serving in the Belgian army, and was behind a gun-carriage when it was fired upon and started. Reading clung on behind with both his legs broken, and he stuck to it till the gun-carriage was pulled up! He came in on a stretcher as bright as a button, smoking a cigar and laughing.
POPERINGHE