Charlotte had been sorry for Sutton and Gwinnie and the rest of McClane's
corps who had not come out with them to this new place, but had been sent
back again to Melle where things had been so quiet all morning that they
hadn't filled their ambulances, and half of them had hung about doing
nothing. She had fretted at the stupidity which had sent them where they
were not wanted. But here there were not enough hands for the stretchers,
and Charlotte was wanted every second of the time. From the first minute
you could see what you were in for.

The retreat.

And for an instant, in the blind rush and confusion of it, she had lost
sight of John. She had turned the car round and left it with its nose
pointing towards Ghent. Trixie Rankin and the McClane men were at the
front cars taking out the stretchers; John and McClane were going up the
road. She had got out her own stretcher and was following them when the
battery came tearing down the road and cut them off. It tore headlong,
swerving and careening with great rattling and crashing noises. She could
see the faces of the men, thrown back, swaying; there was no terror in
them, only a sort of sullen anger and resentment.

She stood on the narrow sandy track beside the causeway to let it pass,
and when a gap came in the train she dashed through to get to John. And
John was not there. When all the artillery had passed he was not there;
only McClane, going on up the middle of the street by himself.

She ran after him and asked him what had happened to John. He turned,
dreamy and deliberate, utterly unperturbed. John, he said, had gone on to
look for a wounded man who was said to have been taken into one of those
houses there, on the right, in the lane. She went down the lane with her