As we had laughed ourselves wide awake, I passed around some cigarettes, while another fellow went down for a pot of coffee. Dressing consists of putting on one's shoes, puttees, and tunic--when I feel particularly sybaritic I take off my necktie at night. For once the sun came up in a clear blue sky and shone down frostily on a clean white world--a metre of snow on the ground, and pines like Christmas trees. It was wonderfully still: far away on a hillside some one was chopping wood, and beyond the German lines I could hear a cock crow. After stopping to ask the telephonist if there were any calls, I took towel and soap and tooth-brush and walked to the watering trough, where a stream of icy water runs constantly. As I strolled back, a thumping explosion came from the trenches--some enthusiast had tossed a grenade across as a New Year's greeting to the Boche. Retaliatory thumps followed, and suddenly a machine-gun burst out with its abrupt stutter. Louder and louder grew the racket as gusts of firing swept up and down the lines, until a battery of 75's took a hand from the hills half a mile behind us. _Crack-whang-crack_, they went, like the snapping of some enormous whip, and I could hear their shells whine viciously overhead. An orderly appeared shortly, to inform me that I must make ready to take out a few wounded. My load consisted of one poor fellow on a stretcher, still and invisible under his swathing of blankets, and two very lively chaps,--each with a leg smashed, but able to sit up and talk at a great rate. We offered them stretchers, but they were refused with gay contempt. They hopped forward to their seats, smiling and nodding good-bye to the stretcher-bearers. Despite my efforts one of them bumped his wounded leg and a little involuntary gasp escaped him. "Ça pique, mon vieux," he explained apologetically; "mais ça ne fait rien--allez!" At the hospital, several miles back, there was the usual wait for papers, and as I handed cigarettes to my two plucky passengers, I explained that hospital book-keeping was tiresome but necessary. Suddenly the blood-stained blankets on the stretcher moved and a pale, but calm and quizzical face looked up into mine: "Oh, là là! C'est une guerre de papier; donnez-moi une cigarette!" You can't down men of this caliber. Just before bedtime another call came from a dressing-station at the extreme front. It was a thick night, snowing heavily, and black as ink, and I had to drive three kilometres, without light of any kind, over a narrow winding road crowded with traffic of every description. How one does it I can scarcely say. War seems to consist in doing the impossible by a series of apparent miracles. Ears and eyes must be connected in some way. Driving in pitchy blackness, straining every sense and calling every nerve to aid one's eyes, it seems that vision is impaired if ears are covered.