One whole ambulance was filled with wounded children.  I think King Herod himself might have been sorry for them.  Wee things in splints, or with their curly heads bandaged; tiny mites, looking with wonder at their hands swathed in linen; babies with their tender flesh torn, and older children crying with terror.  There were two tiny things seated opposite each other on a big stretcher playing with dolls, and a little Christmas-card sort of baby in a red hood had had its mother and father killed beside it.  Another little mite belonged to no one at all.  Who could tell whether its parents had been killed or not?  I am afraid many of them will never find their relations again.  In the general scrimmage everyone gets lost.  If this isn’t frightfulness enough, God in heaven help us!

On the platform was a row of women lying on stretchers.  They were decent-looking brown-haired matrons for the most part, and it looked unnatural and ghastly to see them lying there.  One big railway compartment was slung with their stretchers, and some young men in uniform nursed the babies.  I shall never forget that railway compartment as long as I live.  A man in khaki appeared, thoughtful, as our people always are, and brought a box of groceries with him, and sweet biscuits for the children, and other things.  Thank Heaven for the English!

At the hospital it was really awful, and the doctors were working in shifts of twenty-four hours at a time.

I left my tables, chairs, trays, etc., for the hospital at the station, and returned early the next day, for numbers of wounded were still coming in.  I wanted slippers for everyone, but my Belgian helpers had given a hundred pairs of mine away in my absence.  They were overworked a little, I think, so I overlooked the fact that they lost their tempers rather badly.  Besides, I will not quarrel.  In a small kitchen it would be too ridiculous.  The three little people fight among themselves, but I don’t fancy I was made for that sort of thing.

There was nothing but work for some time.  My “eclopes” had been entirely neglected, and no one had even bothered to buy vegetables for the men.

On Sunday, May 2nd, I went to see Dr. de Page’s hospital.  I saw a baby three weeks old with both his feet wounded.  His mother came in one mass of wounds, and died on the operating table—­a young mother, and a pretty one.  A young man with tears in his eyes looked at the baby, and then said, “A jolly good shot at fifteen miles.”

They can’t help making jokes.

There were two Scots lying in a little room—­both gunners, who had been hit at Nieuport.  One, Ochterlony from Arbroath, had an eye shot away, and some other wounds; the other, McDonald, had seven bad injuries.  Ochterlony talked a good deal about his eyes, till McDonald rolled his head round on the pillow, and remarked briefly, “I’d swop my stomach for your eyes.”