and condensed milk are not bad substitutes for the real articles, and
the supply of bread held out to the very end. A greater difficulty was
with our kitchen staff of Belgian women, for a good many of them took
fright and left us, and it was not at all easy to get their places filled.
As the week went on the pressure of the enemy became steadily
greater. On Tuesday, the 29th of September, the great fortress of
Wavre St. Catherine fell, blown up, it is believed, by the accidental
explosion of a shell inside the galleries. It had been seriously
battered by the big German howitzers, and it could not in any
case have held out for another day. But the results of the
explosion were terrible. Many of the wounded came to us,
and they were the worst cases we had so far seen.

On Thursday Fort Waelhem succumbed after a magnificent
resistance. The garrison held it until it was a mere heap of ruins, and,
indeed, they had the greatest difficulty in making their way out. I think
that there is very little doubt that the Germans were using against
these forts their largest guns, the great 42-centimetre howitzers. It is
known that two of these were brought northwards past Brussels after
the fall of Maubeuge, and a fragment which was given to us was
almost conclusive. It was brought to us one morning as an offering by
a grateful patient, and it came from the neighbourhood of Fort
Waelhem. It was a mass of polished steel two feet long, a foot wide,
and three inches thick, and it weighed about fifty pounds. It was very
irregular in shape, with edges sharp as razors, without a particle of
rust upon it. It had been picked up where it fell still hot, and it was by
far the finest fragment of shell I have ever seen. Alas we had to
leave it behind, and it lies buried in a back-garden beside our
hospital. Some day it will be dug up, and will be exhibited as
conclusive evidence that the Germans did use their big guns in