Now indeed we were "in the battle"! Our own guns were thundering away
behind us, and the road was more and more broken up by shell holes. "Look
at that group of trees to your left--beyond it is Neuve Chapelle," said
our guide. "And you see those ruined cottages, straight ahead, and the
wood behind." He named a wood thrice famous in the history of the war.
"Our lines are just beyond the cottages, and the German lines just in
front of the wood. How far are we from them? Three-quarters of a mile." It
was discussed whether we should be taken zigzag through the fields to the
entrance of the communication-trench. But the firing was getting hotter,
and Captain ---- was evidently relieved when we elected to turn back.
Shall I always regret that lost opportunity? You did ask me to write
something about "the life of the soldiers in the trenches"--and that was
the nearest that any woman could personally have come to it! But I doubt
whether anything more--anything, at least, that was possible--could have
deepened the whole effect. We had been already nearer than any woman--even
a nurse--has been, in this war, to the actual fighting on the English
line, and the cup of impressions was full.

As we turned back, I noticed a little ruined cottage, with a Red Cross
flag floating. Our guide explained that it was a field dressing-station.
It was not for us--who could not help--to ask to go in. But the thought of
it--there were some badly wounded in it--pursued me as we walked on
through the beautiful evening.

A little farther we came across what I think moved me more than anything
else in that crowded hour--those same companies of men we had seen sitting
waiting in the fields, now marching quietly, spaced one behind the other,
up to the trenches, to take their turn there. Every day I am accustomed to
see bodies, small and large, of khaki-clad men, marching through these