A stir ran through the men.  Orders began to fly, and I went back to my place and my party.  Soon we would be ashore, and I would be in the way of beginning the work I had come to do.

[ILLUSTRATION:  Harry Lauder preserves the bonnet of his son, brought to him from where the lad fell.  “The memory of his boy, it is almost his religion.” (See Lauder05.jpg)]

[ILLUSTRATION:  A tatter of plaid of the Black Watch on a wire of a German entanglement barely suggests the hell the Scotch troops have gone through. (See Lauder06.jpg)]

CHAPTER XIII

Boulogne!

Like Folkestone, Boulogne, in happier times, had been a watering place, less fashionable than some on the French coast, but the pleasant resort of many in search of health and pleasure.  And like Folkestone it had suffered the blight of war.  The war had laid its heavy hand upon the port.  It ruled everything; it was omnipresent.  From the moment when we came into full view of the harbor it was impossible to think of anything else.

Folkestone had made me think of the mouth of a great funnel, into which all broad Britain had been pouring men and guns and all the manifold supplies and stores of modern war.  And the trip across the narrow, well guarded lane in the Channel had been like the pouring of water through the neck of that same funnel.  Here in Boulogne was the opening.  Here the stream of men and sup-plies spread out to begin its orderly, irresistible flow to the front.  All of northern France and Belgium lay before that stream; it had to cover all the great length of the British front.  Not from Boulogne alone, of course; I knew of Dunkirk and Calais, and guessed at other ports.  There were other funnels, and into all of them, day after day, Britain was pouring her tribute; through all of them she was offering her sacrifice, to be laid upon the altar of strife.

Here, much more than at Folkestone, as it chanced, I saw at once another thing.  There was a double funnel.  The stream ran both ways.  For, as we steamed into Boulogne, a ship was coming out—­a ship with a grim and tragic burden.  She was one of our hospital ships.  But she was guarded as carefully by destroyers and aircraft as our transport had been.  The Red Cross meant nothing to the Hun—­except, perhaps, a shining target.  Ship after ship that bore that symbol of mercy and of pain had been sunk.  No longer did our navy dare to trust the Red Cross.  It took every precaution it could take to protect the poor fellows who were going home to Blighty.