All my previous ideas of men marching to war have had a touch of heroism, crudely expressed by quick-step and smart uniforms.  To-day I see tired dusty men, very hungry looking and unshaved, slogging along, silent and tired, and ready to lie down whenever chance offers.  They keep as near their convoy as they can, and are keen to stop and cook something.  God! what is heroism?  It baffles me.

22 October.  Furnes.—­The bulk of our party did not return from Furnes yesterday, so we gathered that the wounded must be coming in, and we left Dunkirk early and came here.  As I packed my things and rolled my rugs at 5 a.m.  I thought of Mary, and “Charles to fetch down the luggage,” and the fuss at home over my delicate health!

A French officer called Gilbert took us out to Furnes in his Brooklands racing-car, so that was a bit of an experience too, for we sat curled up on some luggage, and were told to hang on by something.  The roads were empty and level, the little seats of the car were merely an appendage to its long big engines.  When we got our breath back we asked Gilbert what his speed had been, and he told us 75 miles an hour.

There was a crowd of motors in the yard of the Ecclesiastical College at Furnes, engines throbbing and clutches being jerked, and we were told that all last night the fighting had gone on and the wounded had been coming in.  There are three wards already fairly full, nothing quite ready, and the inevitable and reiterated “where” heard on every side.

“Where are the stretchers?” “Where are my forceps?” “Where are we to dine?” “Where are the dead to be put?” “Where are the Germans?”

No one stops to answer.  People ask everybody ten times over to do the same thing, and use anything that is lying about.

[Page Heading:  THE FIGHTING AT DIXMUDE]

There are two war correspondents here—­Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Ashmead Bartlett—­and they told me about the fighting at Dixmude last night.  I must try to get Mr. Gibbs’s newspaper account of it, but nothing will ever be so simple and so dramatic as his own description.  He and Mr. Bartlett, Mr. Gleeson and Dr. Munro, with young Mr. Brockville, the War Minister’s son, went to the town, which was being heavily shelled.  Dixmude was full of wounded, and the church and the houses were falling.  The roar of things was awful, and the bursting shells overhead sent shrapnel pattering on the buildings, the pavements, and the cars.

Young Brockville went into a house, where he heard wounded were lying, and found a pile of dead Frenchmen stacked against a wall.  A bursting shell scattered them.  He went on to a cellar and found some living men, got the stretchers, loaded the cars and bade them drive on.  In the darkness, and with the deafening noises, no one heard his orders aright, the two motor ambulances moved on and left him behind amongst the burning houses and flying shells.  It was only after going a few miles that the rest of the party found that he was not with them.