The only plan (if you know of any man who wants to come out) is to know how to drive a motor-car and then to offer it and his services to the Red Cross Society.  I have set my heart on station soup-kitchens because I see the men put into horse-boxes on straw straight off the field, and there they lie without water or light or food while the train jolts on for hours.  I wish I had you here to back me up!  We could do anything together.

As ever, yours gratefully,
SALLY.

The motor kitchens cost L600 fitted, but the maker is giving the one I speak of for L300.  Everyone has given so much to the war I don’t feel sure I could collect this amount.  I might try America, but it takes a long time.

CHAPTER III

AT FURNES RAILWAY-STATION

21 November.—­I am up to my eyes in soup!  I have started my soup-kitchen at the station, and it gives me a lot to do.  Bad luck to it, my cold and cough are pretty bad!

It is odd to wake in the morning in a frozen room, with every pane of glass green and thick with frost, and one does not dare to think of Mary and morning tea!  When I can summon enough moral courage to put a foot out of bed I jump into my clothes at once; half dressed, I go to a little tap of cold water to wash, and then, and for ever, I forgive entirely those sections of society who do not tub.  We brush our own boots here, and put on all the clothes we possess, and then descend to a breakfast of Quaker oat porridge with bread and margarine.  I wouldn’t have it different, really, till our men are out of the trenches; but I am hoping most fervently that I shan’t break down, as I am so “full with soup.”

[Page Heading:  WORK IN THE SOUP-KITCHEN]

Our kitchen at the railway-station is a little bit of a passage, which measures eight feet by eight feet.  In it are two small stoves.  One is a little round iron thing which burns, and the other is a sort of little “kitchener” which doesn’t!  With this equipment, and various huge “marmites,” we make coffee and soup for hundreds of men every day.  The first convoy gets into the station about 9.30 a.m., all the men frozen, the black troops nearly dead with cold.  As soon as the train arrives I carry out one of my boiling “marmites” to the middle of the stone entrance and ladle out the soup, while a Belgian Sister takes round coffee and bread.

These Belgians (three of them) deserve much of the credit for the soup-kitchen, if any credit is going about, as they started with coffee before I came, and did wonders on nothing.  Now that I have bought my pots and pans and stoves we are able to do soup, and much more.  The Sisters do the coffee on one side of eight feet by eight, while I and my vegetables and the stove which goes out are on the other.  We can’t ask people to help because there is no room in the kitchen; besides, alas! there are so many people who like raising a man’s head and giving him soup, but who do not like cutting up vegetables.