First one comes to a row of ammunition vans, with men cooking breakfast behind them.  Then come the long grey guns, tilted at various angles, and beyond are the shells bursting and leaving little clouds of black or white in the sky.  We signalled to a gun not to fire down the road in much the same way as a bobby signals to a hansom.  When we got beyond the guns they fired over us with a long streaky sort of sound.  We came back to the road and picked up the wounded wherever we could find them.

The churches are nearly all filled with straw, the chairs piled anywhere, and the sacrament removed from the altar.  In cottages and little inns it is the same thing—­a litter of straw, and men lying on it in the chilly weather.  Here and there through some little window one sees surgeons in their white coats dressing wounds.  Half the world seems to be wounded and inefficient.  We filled our ambulance, and stood about in curious groups of English men and women who looked as if they were on some shooting-party.  When our load was complete we drove home.

Dr. Munro told me that last night he met a German prisoner quite naked being marched in, proudly holding his head up.  Lots of the men fight naked in the trenches.  In hospital we meet delightful German youths.

Amongst others who were brought in to-day was Mr.  “Dick” Reading, the editor of a sporting paper.  He was serving in the Belgian army, and was behind a gun-carriage when it was fired upon and started.  Reading clung on behind with both his legs broken, and he stuck to it till the gun-carriage was pulled up!  He came in on a stretcher as bright as a button, smoking a cigar and laughing.

[Page Heading:  POPERINGHE]

Late this afternoon we had to turn out of Furnes and fly to Poperinghe.  The drive was intensely interesting, through crowds of troops of every nationality, and the town seemed large and well lighted.  It was crowded with people to see all our ambulances arrive.  We went to a cafe, where there was a fire but nothing to eat, so some of the party went out and bought chops, and I cooked them in a stuffy little room which smelt of burnt fat.

After supper we went to a convent where the Queen of the Belgians had made arrangements for us to sleep.  It was delightful.  Each of us had a snowy white bed with white curtains in a long corridor, and there was a basin of water, cold but clean, and a towel for each of us.  We thoroughly enjoyed our luxuries.

28 October.—­The tide of battle seems to have swung away from us again and we were recalled to Furnes to-day.  The hospital looked very bare and empty as all the patients had been evacuated, and there was nothing to do till fresh ones should come in.  Three shells came over to-day and landed in a field near us.  Some people say they were sent by our own naval guns firing wide.  The souvenir grafters went out and got pieces of them.

[Page Heading:  DUNKIRK]