We crossed to where the Germans had retreated. The men carried acetylene lamps; two had electric flash-lamps, and another carried one of my car lights. It was a strange search, stumbling along the little pits of moist, cold earth in the dark. The lamps were masked, and flashed only occasionally, and downwards; and all talk was under the breath. It was uncertain that the Germans might not be somewhere near. We stumbled upon five or six bodies, but the enemy had clearly had time to remove their wounded with them. Two, however, left for dead, had been revived by the cold of the night, and were groaning. We found them by the sound. They were back some way from the trench, in the wet grass. One had been hit behind the shoulder, presumably while he was retreating. The dark chill of the night, with the little quick flashes of searching lights, and the mutter of occasional orders in the silence, lent additional impressiveness to the steady, business-like courage of the ambulance men. It is a work that requires very practised nerves under modern fighting conditions. None of the excitement of fighting for them, or the stimulus of "hitting back"; yet they get hit themselves often enough. These long days of furious bombardment, raking long lines of hidden positions, trench and village, must inevitably, and without intention, find shells dropping upon man, house or wagon, whose Red Cross is unseen or indistinguishable. The greater credit to the men whose dangerous work and even occasional death can earn them no glory of individual exploit. Like the fishermen mine-trawlers in the North Sea, they are the nameless heroes of humanity on the edges of the shadow of inhuman war. The firing began again before dawn, far to the south. When I left them, to convey two of the wounded Germans and an ambulance assistant back to the village, the surgeon and his party were getting hurriedly into two of the wagons, to follow up again behind the fighting line. Boulogne, Friday. Last night I crossed to England, returning early to-day in one of the worst storms conceivable on a Channel crossing. Boulogne and the north are beginning to simmer with a new movement. The southern position is still stationary. The forcing of the Germans out of their strong defensive trenches is a question of time and of endurance. The French and British have the advantage of superior facilities for moving men or getting up reinforcements by rail. It is still difficult to say whether the German right, as it lies, is fighting a stubborn rearguard action on the retreat, or if it is intended to hold its present lines. If the latter, it is in danger from the Allies' overlapping left, and from their movement on the north-west. Our own troops would seem to be carrying again the burden of some of the fiercest fighting, about Soissons.