We came to the little poste de secours and the officer told us they had been heavily shelled that morning and he sent out an orderly to dig up some of the fuse-tops that had fallen in the field beyond.  He gave us as souvenirs three lovely shell heads that had fused at the wrong time.  Everything seemed strangely unreal, and I wondered at times if I was awake.  He was delighted with the Hospital stores we had brought and showed us his small dressing station, from which all the wounded had been removed after the bombardment was over.  We then went on to another at Caeskerke within sight of Dixmude, the ruins of which could plainly be seen.  I found it hard to realize that this was really the much talked of “front.”  One half expected to see rows and rows of regiments instead of everything being hidden away.  Except for the extreme desolation and continual sound of firing we might have been anywhere.

We were held up by a sentry further on, and he demanded the mot de jour.  I leant out of the car (it always has to be whispered) and murmured “Gustave” in a low voice into his ear. “Non, Mademoiselle,” he said sadly, “pas ca.”  “Does he mean it isn’t his own Christian name?” I asked myself.  Still it was the name we had been given at the Etat Major as the pass word.  I repeated it again with the same result.  “I assure you the Colonel himself at C——­ gave it to me,” I added desperately.  He still shook his head, and then I remembered that some days they had names of people and others the names of places, and perhaps I had been given the wrong one.  “Paris” I hazarded.  He again shook his head, and I decided to be firm and in a voice of conviction said, “Allons, c’est ‘Arras,’ alors.”  He looked doubtful, and said, “Perhaps with the English it is that to-day.”  He was giving me a loophole and I responded with fervour, “Yes, yes, assuredly it is ‘Arras’ with the English,” and he waved us past.  I thought regretfully how easily a German spy might bluff the sentry in a similar manner.

Time being precious I salved my conscience about it as we drew up in Pervyse and decided to make tea.  I saw a movement among the ruins and there, peeping round one of the walls, was a ragged hungry looking infant about eight years of age.  We made towards him, but he fled, and picking our way over the ruins we actually found a family in residence in a miserable hovel behind the onetime Hotel de Ville.  There was an old couple, man and wife, and a flock of ragged children, the remnants of different families which had been wiped out.  They only spoke Flemish and I brought out the few sentences I knew, whereupon the old dame seized my arm and poured out such a flow of words that I was quite at a loss to know what she meant.  I did gather, however, that she had a niece of sixteen in the inner room, who spoke French, and that she would go and fetch her.  The niece appeared at this moment and was dragged forward; all she would