Mr. Gleeson and Mr. Bartlett went back for him.  Nothing need be said except that.  They went back to hell for him, and the other two waited in the road with the wounded men.  After an hour of waiting these two also went back.

I asked Mr. Gibbs if he shared the contempt that some people expressed for bullets.  He and Mr. Gleeson both said, “Anyone who talks of contempt for bullets is talking nonsense.  Bullets mean death at every corner of the street, and death overhead and flying limbs and unspeakable sights.”  All these men went back.  All of them behaved quietly and like gentlemen, but one man asked a friend of his over and over again if he was a Belgian refugee, and another said that a town steeple falling looked so strange that they could only stand about and light cigarettes.  In the end they gave up Mr. Brockville for lost and came home with the ambulances.  But he turned up in the middle of the night, to everyone’s huge delight.

23 October.—­A crisp autumn morning, a courtyard filled with motors and brancardiers and men in uniform, and women in knickerbockers and puttees, all lighting cigarettes and talking about repairs and gears and a box of bandages.  The mornings always start happily enough.  The guns are nearer to-day or more distant, the battle sways backwards and forwards, and there is no such thing as a real “base” for a hospital.  We must just stay as long as we can and fly when we must.

About 10 a.m. the ambulances that have been out all night begin to come in, the wounded on their pitiful shelves.

“Take care.  There are two awful cases.  Step this way.  The man on the top shelf is dead.  Lift them down.  Steady.  Lift the others out first.  Now carry them across the yard to the overcrowded ward, and lay them on the floor if there are no beds, but lay them down and go for others.  Take the worst to the theatre:  get the shattered limbs amputated and then bring them back, for there is a man just dead whose place can be filled; and these two must be shipped off to Calais; and this one can sit up.”

[Page Heading:  A WOUNDED GERMAN]

I found one young German with both hands smashed.  He was not ill enough to have a bed, of course, but sat with his head fallen forward trying to sleep on a chair.  I fed him with porridge and milk out of a little bowl, and when he had finished half of it he said, “I won’t have any more.  I am afraid there will be none for the others.”  I got a few cushions for him and laid him in a corner of the room.  Nothing disturbs the deep sleep of these men.  They seem not so much exhausted as dead with fatigue.

A French boy of sixteen is a favourite of mine.  He is such a beautiful child, and there is no hope for him; shot through the abdomen; he can retain nothing, and is sick all day, and every day he is weaker.

I do not find that the men want to send letters or write messages.  Their pain is too awful even for that, and I believe they can think of nothing else.