A casualty clearing station of 1,000 beds needs 100 lorries to move it, but nine lorries take a full kit for 200 beds, and always nine lorries moved off first after the wounded to take up a new station further back and carry on. The medical officers looked after the surgical instruments and trundled them along the roads on wheeled stretchers. One officer went twenty-five miles this way and another seventeen miles. The sisters, after the wounded had left, were put on any vehicle going back from the battleline. During these days I saw them squeezed between drivers and men on motor lorries, sitting among the Tommies in transport wagons, one at least on a gun limber, and others perched on top of forage, still merry and bright in spite of all the tragedy about them, because that is their training and their faith. In this retreat one poor sister was killed and another wounded. Many of them, with the medical officers, lost their kits. At Achiet le Grand, on March 21, a shell killed eight orderlies and blew out the back of the operating theatre, and at another village on a second night, three ambulances were smashed up by bombs. Two drivers, with some of their patients, were killed, but all the wounded were brought away from the outer ring of casualty clearing stations safely, and then from the second ring through Roye and Marincourt, Dernacourt, and Aveluy. At Roye there was no time to spare, owing to the enemy's rapid advance, and seventy patients remained with a medical officer and twelve orderlies until they could be rescued, if there was any possible chance. There seemed at first no chance, but on the way back to Villers-Bretonneux the medical officer in command of the first convoy met some motor ambulances and begged the drivers to go into Roye and rescue those who had been left behind. They went bravely and brought away all the wounded and the staff, and had no time to spare, because the last ambulance came under the German rifle fire. It is a strange and wonderful thing that the patients do not seem to be harmed in any way by this excitement and fatigue, and one of the chiefs who made a tour of inspection of all his clearing stations at this time tells us he found all the wounded in good condition and apparently no worse for their experience. Fall of Villers-Bretonneux _ On April 24 the Germans attacked the important village of Villers-Bretonneux, near Amiens; it is on a hill above the Somme, and was used as a corps headquarters and administrative office by the British. The attack was in great force, including tanks, the first time they had been used by the Germans._ _The initial assault was a success and the Germans took the village and advanced nearly a mile beyond--but let Mr. Gibbs tell the rest:_