_25 October._--A glorious day. Up in the blue even Taubes--those birds
of prey--look beautiful, like eagles wheeling in their flight. It is all
far too lovely to leave, yet men are killing each other painfully with
every day that dawns.

I had a tiresome day in spite of the weather, because the hospital was
evacuated suddenly owing to the nearness of the Germans, and I missed
going with the ambulance, so I hung about all day.

_26 October. My birthday._--This morning several women were brought in
horribly wounded. One girl of sixteen had both legs smashed. I was
taking one old woman to the civil hospital and I had to pass eighteen
dead men; they were laid out beside some women who were washing clothes,
and I noticed how tired even in death their poor dirty feet looked.

[Page Heading: TO THE EDGE OF THE FIGHTING LINE]

We started early in the ambulance to-day, and went to pick up the
wounded. It was a wild gusty morning, one of those days when the sky
takes up nearly all the picture and the world looks small. The mud was
deep on the road, and a cyclist corps plunged heavily along through it.
The car steered badly and we drove to the edge of the fighting-line.

First one comes to a row of ammunition vans, with men cooking breakfast
behind them. Then come the long grey guns, tilted at various angles, and
beyond are the shells bursting and leaving little clouds of black or
white in the sky. We signalled to a gun not to fire down the road in
much the same way as a bobby signals to a hansom. When we got beyond the
guns they fired over us with a long streaky sort of sound. We came back