_11 November. Boulogne._--I got a letter from Julia yesterday, telling
me that Alan is wounded and in hospital at Boulogne, and asking me to
go and see him.

I came here this morning and had to run about for a long time before I
started getting a "laissez-passer" for the road, as spies are being shot
almost at sight now. By good chance I got a motor-car which brought me
all the way; trains are uncertain, and filled with troops, and one never
knows when they will arrive.

[Page Heading: STORIES OF THE BRITISH FRONT]

I found poor old Alan at the Base Hospital, in terrible pain, poor boy,
but not dangerously wounded. He has been through an awful time, and
nearly all the officers of his regiment have been killed or wounded. For
my part, in spite of his pain, I can thank God that he is out of the
firing-line for a bit. The horror of the war has got right into him, and
he has seen things which few boys of eighteen can have witnessed. Eight
days in the trenches at Ypres under heavy fire day and night is a pretty
severe test, and Alan has behaved splendidly. He told me the most awful
tales of what he had seen, but I believe it did him good to get things
off his chest, so I listened. The thing he found the most ghastly was
the fact that when a trench has been taken or lost the wounded and dying
and dead are left out in the open. He says that firing never ceases, and
it is impossible to reach these men, who die of starvation within sight
of their comrades.

"Sometimes," Alan said, "we see them raise themselves on an arm for an
instant, and they yell to us to come to them, but we can't."