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