Funnily enough, would you believe it, it was the petrol that floored me.  Considering we wallowed in it from morning till night it was rather strange.  I was nearly spun altogether when it came to the game of Bridge in the telephone room.  “I’ve never played it in my life,” I said desperately.  “Never mind,” said someone jokingly, “just take a hand.”  I took the tip seriously and did so, looking at my cards as gravely as a judge—­finally I selected one and threw it down.  To my relief no one screamed or denounced me and I breathed again. (It requires some skill to play a game of Bridge when you know absolutely nothing about it.)

“Pity you lost that last trick,” said my partner to me as we left the room; “it was absolutely in your hand.”

“Was it?” I asked innocently.

We had a rush of work after this, and wounded again began to pour in from the Third Battle of Ypres.

Early evacuations came regularly with the tides.  They would begin at 4 a.m. and get half an hour later each day.  When we took “sitters” (i.e. sitting patients with “Blighty” wounds), one generally came in front and sat beside the driver, and on the way to the Hospital Ships we sometimes learnt a lot about them.  I had a boy of sixteen one day, a bright cheery soul.  “How did you get in?” (meaning into the army), I asked.  “Oh, well, Miss, it was like this, I was afraid it would be over before I was old enough, so I said I was eighteen.  The recruiting bloke winked and so did I, and I was through.”  Another, when asked about his wound, said, “It’s going on fine now, Sister (they always called us Sister), but I lost me conscience for two days up the line with it.”

We had a bunch of Canadians to take one day.  “D’you come from Sussex?” asked one, of me.  “No,” I replied, “from Cumberland.”  “That’s funny,” he said, “the V.A.D. who looked after me came from Sussex, and she had the same accent as you, I guess!” Another man had not been home for five years, but had joined up in Canada and come straight over.  A Scotsman had not been home for twenty, and he intended to see his “folks” and come out again as soon as he was passed fit by the doctors.

One fine morning at 5 a.m. we were awakened by a fearful din, much worse than the usual thing.  The huts trembled and our beds shook beneath us, not to mention the very nails falling out of the walls!  We wondered at first if it was a fleet of Zepps. dropping super-bombs, but decided it was too light for them to appear at that hour.

There it was again, as if the very earth was being cleft in two, and our windows rattled in their sockets.  It is not a pleasant sensation to have steady old Mother Earth rocking like an “ashpan” leaf beneath your feet.

We dressed hurriedly, knowing that the cars might be called on to go out at any moment.

What the disaster was we could not fathom, but that it was some distance away we had no doubt.

At 7 a.m. the telephone rang furiously, and we all waited breathless for the news.