6 November.—­Furnes always seems to me a weird tragic place.  I cannot think why this is so, but its influence is to me rather curious.  I feel as if all the time I was living in some blood-curdling ghost story or a horrid dream.  Every day I try to overcome the feeling, but I can’t succeed.  This afternoon I made up my mind to return to our villa and write my diary.  The day was lovely, and I meant to enjoy a rest and a scribble, but so strong was the horrid influence of the place that I couldn’t settle to anything.  I can’t describe it, but it seemed to stifle me, and I can only compare it to some second sight in which one sees death.  I sat as long as I could doing my writing, but I had to give in at last, and I tucked my book under my arm and walked back to the hospital, where at least I was with human beings and not ghosts.

Our life here is made up of many elements and many people, all rather incongruous, but the average of human nature is good.  A villa belonging to a Dr. Joos was given to our staff.  It is a pretty little house, with three beds in it, and we are eighteen people, so most of us sleep on the floor.  It wouldn’t be a bad little place (except for the drains) if only there wasn’t this horrid influence about it all.  I always particularly dislike toddling after people like a little lost dog, but here I find that unless I am with somebody the ghosts get the better of me.

The villa is being ruined by us I fear, but I have a woman to clean it, and I am trying to keep it in order.  It is a cold little place for we have no fires.  We can, by pumping, get a little very cold water, and there is a tap in the bath-room and one basin at which everyone tries to wash and shave at the same time.  We get our meals at a butcher’s shop, where there is a large room which we more than fill.  The lights of the town are all out by 6 o’clock, so we grope about, but there is a lamp in our dining-room.  When we come out we have to pass through the butcher’s shop, and one may find oneself running into the interior of a sheep.

We get up about 7 o’clock and fight for the basin.  Then we walk round to the butcher’s shop and have breakfast at 7.30.  Most people think they start off for the day’s work at 8, but it is generally quite 10 o’clock before all the brown-hooded ambulances with their red crosses have moved out of the yard.  We do not as a rule meet again till dinner-time, and even then many of the party are absent.  They come in at all times, very dirty and hungry, and the greeting is always the same, “Did you get many?”—­i.e., “Have you picked up many wounded?”

One night Dr. Munro got bowled over by the actual air force created by a shell, which however did not hit him.  Yesterday Mr. Secher was shot in the leg.  I am amazed that not more get hit.  They are all very cheery about it.

To-day we heard that a jolly French boy with white teeth, who has been very good at making coffee at our picnic lunches, was put up against a tree and shot at daybreak.  Someone had made him drunk the night before, and he had threatened an officer with a revolver.