I was leaning on a fence and I looked at the cemetery. Though it was overflowing, its appetite was insatiable. A group of German prisoners were occupied in digging long dark pits that were like so many open and expectant mouths. Two officers went by: one was fat, and looked as if at any moment he would be struck with apoplexy. He was gesticulating wildly to the other. “We have,” he said, “got ready in advance 200 graves and almost as many coffins. No, you can’t say that this offensive has not been planned.” As a matter of fact, a large number of coffins had been already completed. They filled the tent where the corpses were to be unceremoniously laid out. Outside in the open, a large gang of joiners were engaged in cutting up planks of pinewood. They were whistling and singing innocently, as is usual with those who work with their hands. I realised once again how a man’s opinion of great events is determined by his vocation and aptitudes. There was a sergeant there whose views of Armageddon varied with the quality of the wood which he had to use. When the wood was bad he used to say, “This war is damned rot.” But when the wood was clear of knots his view was: “We’ll get them licked.” The heavy and responsible task of running the hospital was entrusted to a nervy and excitable young man. He appeared at every moment, his fingers clutching bundles of papers, which he passed from one hand to the other. I had few opportunities of hearing him speak, but, when I did, each time I caught the same words: “That’s not my business--I am getting crazy with it all. I have enough worries of that sort.” I knew then that he had to think of many things. Almost all day a procession of motor cars, heavily laden with a groaning mass of wounded, came along the winding road which was being hastily metalled, looking like the ravenous gullet of this vast organism. On the top of the bend the lorries were unloaded under a porch decorated with flags, bearing no small resemblance to the festooned arch which on wedding days is erected at church doors. From the first day I was ordered on night duty to deal with the ambulance cars as they arrived. A dozen of us were grouped under the porch for this purpose. Up to that time it was only in the trenches that I had seen my comrades, wounded beside me, starting out on a long and mysterious journey of which little was known to us. The man who was hit appeared to be spirited away--he vanished from the battlefield. I was going to know all the stages of the suffering existence he was then only beginning.