presence of ambulance men in the firing line. Quite apart from the
serious losses incurred by so valuable a corps, advantage might be taken
by an unscrupulous enemy to bring up ammunition under cover of the Red
Cross.

It is no easy task in the dark or in a fading light to find the
khaki-clad figures lying prone upon the brown sand. But when the wounded
are discovered the ambulance man finds out as quickly as he can the
position and nature of the wound, and a "first aid" bandage or a rough
splint is applied. The sufferer is raised carefully upon a stretcher or
carried off in an ambulance waggon to a "dressing-station" somewhere in
the rear. If there are not enough stretchers, or the wound is merely a
slight one, the disabled soldier is borne away on a seat made of the
joined hands of two bearers. A second row of ambulance waggons is loaded
from the dressing-station--each waggon holds nine--and goes lumbering
off to the field hospital. Here the men are laid on the ground with
perhaps a waterproof sheet under them and a blanket over them. The
R.A.M.C. officers come round, select certain cases for operation, and
see to the bandaging and dressing of the others. Finally one of the
ambulance trains arrives, about 120 men are packed in it and it steams
off rapidly to some base hospital at Orange River, De Aar, Wynberg or
Rondebosch.

Any detailed account of Lord Methuen's battles lies outside the scope of
this little volume, and the British public know already practically all
that can be known about the general plan of such engagements as Belmont,
Graspan and Modder River.

Belmont is an insignificant railway station lying in the middle of as
dreary a bit of veldt as can well be imagined. A clump of low kopjes run