The English, so returning to Poperinghe _gare_, were very well cared for. By the station wicket a large squad of English stretcher-bearers, directed, I believe by a colonel of the line, was unceasingly and expertly busy. Behind the wicket lay the waiting English train, steam up for Boulogne, enormously long and perfectly sumptuous: a super-train, a hospital Pullman, all swinging white beds and shining nickel. The French, alas, were less lucky that day. Doubtless the unimagined flood of wounded had swamped the generally excellent service; for the moment, at least, there was not only no super-train for the French; there was no train. As for the bunks of the station warehouses, the _hôpital d'évacuation_, they were of course long since exhausted. Thus it was that wounded _tirailleurs_ and Zouaves and black men from Africa, set down from ambulances, staggered unattended up the station platform, sat and lay anyhow about the concrete and the sand--no flesh-wounded hoppers these, but hard-punished men, not a few of them struck, it was only too manifest, in the seat of their lives. This was a bloody disarray which I never saw elsewhere, and hope never to see again. Here, indeed, there was moaning to be heard, with the hard gasp and hopeless coughing of the _asphyxiés_. And still, behind this heavy ambulance, rolled another; and another and another and another. On my left was the cannon fodder going up; on my right was the cannon fodder coming back. The whole mechanics of war at a stroke, you might have said: these two streams being really one, these men the same men, only at slightly different stages of their experience. But there was still another detail in the picture we saw that day, more human than the organized machine, perhaps, and it seemed even more pathetic. Behind me as I stood and watched the mingling streams of soldiers, the little square was black with _réfugiés_. Farther back, in the station yard, a second long train stood steaming beside the hospital train, a train for the homeless and the waifs of war. And presently the gate opened, and these crowds, old men and women and children, pushed through to embark on their unknown voyage. [Illustration: AMERICANS IN THEIR GAS-MASKS]