On a bright afternoon early in March I went to the railway station three miles behind the trenches at E----. Only a mile away a town was being shelled. One could look across the fields at the changing roof line, at a church steeple that had so far escaped. But no shells were falling in E----. The station was a small village one. In the room corresponding to our baggage-room straw had been spread over the floor, and men just out of the trenches lay there in every attitude of exhaustion. In a tiny room just beyond two or three women were making soup. As fast as one kettle was ready it was served to the hungry men. There were several kettles--all the small stove would hold. Soup was there in every state, from the finished product to the raw meat and vegetables on a table. Beyond was a waiting-room, with benches. Here were slightly injured men, bandaged but able to walk about. A few slept on the benches, heads lolled back against the whitewashed wall. The others were paying no attention to the incessant, nearby firing, but were watching a boy who was drawing. He had a supply of coloured crayons, and the walls as high as he could reach were almost covered. There were priests, soldier types, caricatures of the German Emperor, the arms of France and Belgium--I do not remember what all. And it was exceedingly well done. The boy was an artist to his finger tips. At a clever caricature of the German Emperor the soldiers laughed and clapped their hands. While they were laughing I looked through an open door. Three men lay on cots in an inner room--rather, two men and a boy. I went in. One of the men was shot through the spine and paralysed. The second one had a bullet in his neck, and his face already bore the dark flush and anxious look of general infection. The boy smiled. They had been there since the day before, waiting for a locomotive to come and move the hospital train that waited outside. In that railway station the boy had had his leg taken off at the knee. They lay there, quite alone. The few women were feeding starving men. Now and then one would look in to see if there was any change. There was nothing to be done. They lay there, and the shells burst incessantly a mile away, and the men in the next room laughed and applauded at some happy stroke of the young artist. "I am so sorry," I said to the boy. The others had not roused at my entrance, but he had looked at me with quick, intelligent eyes. "It is nothing!" was his reply. Outside, in the village, soldiers thronged the streets. The sun was shining with the first promise of spring. In an area way regimental butchering was going on, and a great sow, escaping, ran frenzied down the street, followed by a throng of laughing, shouting men. And still the shells fell, across a few fields, and inside the station the three men lay and waited.