Upon a line of fifteen kilometres there was an incessant cannonade and in every town there was a hell.  The furthest villages were already alight.  I watched how the flames rose, and became great glowing furnaces, terribly beautiful.  Quite close to us—­only a kilometre away across the fields to the left—­there were Belgian batteries at work, and rifle-fire from many trenches.  We were between two fires, and the Belgian and German shells came screeching across our heads.  The enemy’s shells were dropping close to us, ploughing up the fields with great pits.  We could hear them burst and scatter, and could see them burrow.  In front of us on the road lay a dreadful barrier, which brought us to a halt.  An enemy’s shell had fallen right on top of an ammunition convoy.  Four horses had been blown to pieces, and lay strewn across the road.  The ammunition wagon had been broken into fragments, and smashed and burnt to cinders by the explosion of its own shells.  A Belgian soldier lay dead, cut in half by a great fragment of steel.  Further along the road were two other dead horses in pools of blood.  It was a horrible and sickening sight from which one turned away shuddering with a cold sweat.  But we had to pass after some of this dead flesh had been dragged away.  Further down the road we had left two of the cars in charge of the three ladies.  They were to wait there until we brought back some of the wounded, whom they would take from us so that we could fetch some more out of Dixmude.  The two ambulances came on with our light car, commanded by Lieutenant de Broqueville and Dr. Munro.  Mr. Gleeson asked me to help him on the other end of his own stretcher.

I think I may say that none of us quite guessed what was in store for us.  At least I did not guess that we had been asked to go into the open mouth of Death.  I had only a vague idea that Dixmude would be just a little worse than the place at which we now halted for final instructions as to the geography of the town.

It was a place which made me feel suddenly cold, in spite of a little sweat which made my hands moist.

It was a halt between a group of cottages, where Belgian soldiers were huddled close to the walls under the timber beams of the barns.  Several of the cottages were already smashed by shell-fire.  There was a great gaping hole through one of the roofs.  The roadway was strewn with bricks and plaster, and every now and then a group of men scattered as shrapnel bullets came pattering down.  We were in an inferno of noise.  It seemed as though we stood in the midst of the guns within sight of each other’s muzzles.  I was deafened and a little dazed, but very clear in the head, so that my thoughts seemed extraordinarily vivid.  I was thinking, among other things, of how soon I should be struck by one of those flying bullets, like the men who lay moaning inside the doorway of one of the cottages.  On a calculation of chances it could not be long.