A stretcher was being borne into the doorway of an _estaminet_ which had escaped destruction by shells, and above the door was chalked some lettering which indicated that it was a first clearing station for the wounded. Lying on other stretchers on the floor were some wounded men. Of the two nearest, one had a bandage around his head and one a bandage around his arm. They had been stunned, which was only natural when you have been as close as they had to a shell-burst--a shell that made a hit. The concussion was bound to have this effect. A third man was the best illustration of shell destructiveness. Bullets make only holes. Shells make gouges, fractures, pulp. He, too, had a bandaged head and had been hit in several places; but the worst wound was in the leg, where an artery had been cut. He was weak, with a sort of where-am-I look in his eyes. If the fragment which had hit his leg had hit his head, or his neck, or his abdomen, he would have been killed instantly. He was an illustration of how hard it is to kill a man even with several shell-fragments, unless some of them strike in the right place. For he was going to live; the surgeon had whispered the fact in his ear, that one important fact. He had beaten the German shell, after all. Returning by the same road by which we came a motor car ran swiftly by, the only kind of car allowed on that road. We had a glimpse of the big painted red cross on an ambulance side, and at the rear, where the curtains were rolled up for ventilation, of four pairs of soldier boot-soles at the end of four stretchers, which had been slid into place at the _estaminet_ by the sturdy, kindly, experienced medical corps men. Only one ambulance, dust-covered, of the colour of the road itself came along, clear of any blast of shells; nothing at the front sends the same chill down the spine as the thought of a man wounded by a shell being hit a second time by a shell. It rarely happens, so prompt and so shrewd is the work of the Royal Army Medical Corps. Before we reached the village the ambulance passed us on the way back to the _estaminet_. Very soon after the shell-burst, a telephone bell had rung down the line from the extreme front calling for an ambulance and stating the number of men hit, so that everybody would know what to prepare for. At the village, which was outside the immediate danger zone, was another clearing station. Here the stretchers were taken into a house--taken without a jolt by men who were specialists in handling stretchers--for any redressing if necessary, before another ambulance started them on a journey, with motor trucks and staff automobiles giving right of way, to a spotless white hospital ship which would take them home to England the next night. It had been an incident of life at the front and of the organisation of war, causing less flurry than an ambulance call to an accident in a great city. XXXV BRITISH PROBLEMS