The Germans swept the hospital with their machine guns and did their best to bomb it, but fortunately made no hits.  It was finally necessary to put out all lights and to cease work.  It was a most trying ordeal, because the buildings were of pine, close together, and a direct hit probably would have started a fire which would have burned the wounded as they lay.

[Sidenote:  The sound of battle draws near.]

About half past one I went up to our mess and crawled into an empty bed.  The next morning when I awakened it was to the sound of distant cannon.  This meant that the battle was drawing nearer.

[Sidenote:  A ride on an ambulance.]

An especially hard day kept me on the strain from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and when I returned to the mess I found no dinner and no servants.  Our directrice, anticipating evacuation, had dismissed them.  Only a little Belgian refugee, a sort of “slavey,” hung on, because she had no other place to go.  Tired out, I managed to make an omelet and a cup of tea, and to fry some griddle cakes to replace the bread which was conspicuous by its absence.  Then I stationed myself in front of the canteen hoping to flag a passing ambulance.  An American driver stopped his car, and a Frenchman, who was beside him on the front seat, jumped down to help me up.  This man had a bandage around his throat, and when I asked him if he was wounded, he made a hissing sound in reply.  The American driver explained that he could not speak because he had a bullet through his windpipe.  There were six badly wounded men on the stretchers inside, but we heard not a sound from them.

[Sidenote:  A night of horrors.]

I shall not soon forget that night I had steeled myself to meet horrors, and knew that I must not let them affect me.  Yet in spite of terrible wounds, there was little sound of suffering.  The place was wonderfully quiet.

When I got inside of the receiving room, a group of our women who had been at work all afternoon were still moving about, white and hollow-eyed with fatigue.  A French doctor asked if I could not bring some food there from the canteen.  It was Thursday.  Some of the men had been wounded on Tuesday, and had had no food and little water.

[Sidenote:  Bringing up food for the wounded.]

I found an English girl with an empty ambulance, who risked a reprimand for leaving without orders, and we flashed back to the canteen, and loaded up with twenty gallons of hot chocolate, bread, about three hundred hard boiled eggs, some kilos of chocolate, and raw eggs and sugar.  We flew back to the hospital; but there was a big convoy of ambulances just in, so that we could not get up to the main buildings.  We scouted around in the dark to find a place to deposit our stuff and open a temporary kitchen, and, returning to the ambulance, we came across a wounded boy who had sunk on a bench.  The ambulance driver had passed him, making his way on foot, but being full-up, she was unable to give him a lift.  He was wounded in the chest, was exhausted, and had no great-coat.  It was absolutely necessary to get him under cover and to give him warmth and nourishment.  We put our arms around him and tried to help him along, but soon it was apparent that he had not the strength to make the reception ward.