Our camp began to look very smart, and the seeds we had sown in the spring came up and covered the huts with creepers.  We had as many flowers inside our huts as we could possibly get into the shell cases and other souvenirs which perforce were turned into flower vases—­a change they must have thought rather singular.  The steady boom of the guns used to annoy me intensely, for it shook the petals off the roses long before they would otherwise have fallen, and I used to call out, crossly, “Do stop that row, you’re simply ruining my flowers.”  But that made no difference to the distant gunners, who carried on night and day causing considerably more damage than the falling petals from my roses!

We began to classify the new girls as they came out, jokingly calling them “Kitchener’s” Army, “Derby’s Scheme,” and finally, “Conscripts.”  The old “regulars” of course put on most fearful side.  It was amusing when an air-raid warning (a siren known as “mournful Mary”) went at Mess and the shrapnel began to fly, to see the new girls all rush out to watch the little white balls bursting in the sky, and the old hands not turning a hair but going on steadily with the bully beef or Maconochie, whichever it happened to be.  Then one by one the new ones would slink back rather ashamed of their enthusiasm and take their seats, and in time they in turn would smile indulgently as the still newer ones dashed out to watch.

We had no dug-out to go to, even if we had wanted to.  Our new mess tent was built in the summer; and we said good-bye for ever to the murky gloom of the old Indian flapper.

One day I had gone out to tea with Logan and Chris to an “Archie” station at Pont le Beurre.  During a pause I heard the following conversation take place.

Host to Logan:  “I suppose, being in a Convoy Camp, you hear nothing but motor shop the whole time, and get to know quite a lot about them?”

“Rather,” replied Logan, who between you and me hardly knew one end of a car from the other, “I’m becoming quite conversant with the different parts.  One hears people exclaiming constantly:  ’I’ve mislaid my big end and can’t think where I’ve put the carburettor!’” The host, who appeared to know as much as she did, nodded sympathetically.

Chris and I happened to catch the Captain’s eye, and we laughed for about five minutes.  That big-end story went the round of the camp too, you may be quite sure.

Besides the regular work of barges, evacuation, and trains we had to do all the ambulance work for the outlying camps, and cars were regularly detailed for special depots the whole day long.  Barges arrived mostly in the mornings, and I think the patients in them were more surprised than anyone to see girls driving out there, and were often not a little fearful as to how we would cope!  It was comforting to overhear them say to each other on the journey:  “This is fine, mate, ain’t it?”