The Belgian official in charge of this company was very courteous and smiling.  It was only by a sudden catch of the breath between his words that one guessed at the excitement of his brain.  He explained to us, at what seemed to me needless length, the ease with which we could get into Dixmude, where there were many wounded.  He drew a map of the streets, so that we could find the way to the Hotel de Ville, where some of them lay.  We thanked him, and told the chauiieurs to move on.  I was in one of the ambulances and Gleeson sat behind me in the narrow space between the stretchers.  Over my shoulder he talked in a quiet voice of the job that lay before us.  I was glad of that quiet voice, so placid in its courage.

We went forward at what seemed to me a crawl, though I think it was a fair pace.  The shells were bursting round us now on all sides.  Shrapnel bullets sprayed the earth about us.  It appeared to me an odd thing that we were still alive.

Then we came into Dixmude.  It was a fair-sized town, with many beautiful buildings, and fine old houses in the Flemish style—­so I was told.  When I saw it for the first time it was a place of death and horror.  The streets through which we passed were utterly deserted and wrecked from end to end as though by an earthquake.  Incessant explosions of shell-fire crashed down upon the walls which still stood.  Great gashes opened in the walls, which then toppled and fell.  A roof came tumbling down with an appalling clatter.  Like a house of cards blown down by a puff of wind a little shop suddenly collapsed into a mass of ruins.  Here and there, further into the town, we saw living figures.  They ran swiftly for a moment and then disappeared into dark caverns under toppling porticoes.  They were Belgian soldiers.

We were now in a side street leading into the Town Hall square.  It seemed impossible to pass owing to the wreckage strewn across the road.

“Try to take it,” said Dr. Munro, who was sitting beside the chauffeur.

We took it, bumping over the high debris, and then swept round into the square.  It was a spacious place, with the Town Hall at one side of it, or what was left of the Town Hall.  There was only the splendid shell of it left, sufficient for us to see the skeleton of a noble building which had once been the pride of Flemish craftsmen.  Even as we turned towards it parts of it were falling upon the ruins already on the ground.  I saw a great pillar lean forward and then topple down.  A mass of masonry crashed down from the portico.  Some stiff, dark forms lay among the fallen stones.  They were dead soldiers.  I hardly glanced at them, for we were in search of living men.  The cars were brought to a halt outside the building and we all climbed down.  I lighted a cigarette, and I noticed two of the other men fumble for matches for the same purpose.  We wanted something to steady us.  There was never a moment when shell-fire was not bursting in that square about us.  The shrapnel bullets whipped the stones.  The enemy was making a target of the Hotel de Ville, and dropping their shells with dreadful exactitude on either side of it.  I glanced towards a flaring furnace to the right of the building.  There was a wonderful glow at the heart of it.  Yet it did not give me any warmth at that moment.