From out the blue, clear autumn sky came a great grey dove flying serenely overhead.  This was a German aeroplane of the class called the Taube (dove).  These aeroplanes are quite beautiful in design, and fly with amazing rapidity.  This one wafted over our hospital with all the grace of a living creature “calm in the consciousness of wings,” and then, of course, we let fly at it.  From all round us shells were sent up into the vast blue of the sky, and still the grey dove went on in its gentle-looking flight.  Whoever was in it must have been a brave man!  All round him shells were flying—­one touch and he must have dropped.  The smoke from the burst shells looked like little white clouds in the sky as the dove sailed away into the blue again and was seen no more.

We returned to our work in hospital.  The men’s supper is at six o’clock, and we began cutting up their bread-and-butter and cheese and filling their bowls of beer.  When that was over and visitors were going, an order came for thirty patients to proceed to Ostend and make room for worse cases.  We were sorry to say good-bye to them, especially to a nice fellow whom we call Alfred because he can speak English, and to Sunny Jim, who positively refused to leave.

Poor boys!  With each batch of the wounded, disabled creatures who are carried in, one feels inclined to repeat in wonder, “Can one man be responsible for all this?  Is it for one man’s lunatic vanity that men are putting lumps of lead into each other’s hearts and lungs, and boys are lying with their heads blown off, or with their insides beside them on the ground?” Yet there is a splendid freedom about being in the midst of death—­a certain glory in it, which one can’t explain.

A piece of shell fell through the roof of the hospital to-day—­evidently a part of one that had been fired at the Taube.  It fell close beside the bed of one of our wounded, and he went as white as a ghost.  It must be pretty bad to be powerless and have shells falling around.  The doctors tell me that nothing moves them so much as the terror of the men.  Their nerves are simply shattered, and everything frightens them.  Rather late a man was brought in from the forts, terribly wounded.  He was the only survivor of twelve comrades who stood together, and a shell fell amongst them, killing all but this man.

At seven o’clock we moved all the furniture from Mrs. Stobart’s office to the dispensary, where she will have more room, and the day’s work was then over and night work began for some.  The Germans have destroyed the reservoir and the water-supply has been cut off, so we have to go and fetch all the water in buckets from a well.  After supper we go with our pails and carry it home.  The shortage for washing, cleaning, etc., is rather inconvenient, and adds to the danger in a large hospital, and to the risk of typhoid.

[Page Heading:  Orders to evacuate the hospital]