We had hardly arrived at the heaps of rubbish which surrounded the entrance to the dressing station, beside which lay the blackened body of a dead man, when a shell burst, and one of the bits broke the leg of the young fellow I was talking to. "What's the matter with your text now, Canon?" he said. "The text is all right, old man, you have only got a good Blighty and are lucky to get it," I replied. The cellars below had been used as a dressing station by the enemy before Courcelette was taken and consisted of several large rooms, which were now being used by our two divisions in the line. Beyond the room used for operations, there was one dark cellar fitted up with two long shelves, whereon lay scores of stretcher bearers and cyclists, and at the end of that, down some steps, there was another, in which more bearers awaited their call. Only two candles lit up the darkness. As there must have been between three and four hundred men in the Red Chateau, the air was not particularly fresh. Our choice lay, however, between foul air within and enemy shells without, for the Germans were making direct hits upon the debris overhead. Naturally we preferred the foul air. It showed how one had grown accustomed to the gruesome sights of war, that I was able to eat my meals in a place where rags saturated in human blood were lying on the floor in front of me. Two years before it would have been impossible. The stretcher bearers were doing noble work. When each case had been attended to, they were called out of the back cellar and entrusted with their burden, which they had to carry for more than a mile over those dangerous fields to the ambulances waiting in the sunken road. Again and again a bearer would be brought back on a stretcher himself, having been wounded while on the errand of mercy. Once a party, on their return, told me that one of their number had disappeared, blown to atoms by a shell. About four o'clock, though time had little meaning to us, because the only light we had was from the candles and acetylene lamps, I went (p. 146) into the cellar where the bearers lay, and, reminding them that it was Sunday, asked if they would not like to have a service. One of them handed me a candle, so we had prayers and a reading, and sang "Nearer My God to Thee," and some other hymns. When the service was over, I asked those who would like to make their Communion to come to the lower cellar at the end, where there was more room. We appropriated one of the corners and there I had seven or eight communicants. More than a year afterwards, in London, I met a young soldier in the Underground Railway, and he told me that he had made his communion on that day, and that when he was lying on the ground wounded at midnight, the shells falling round him, he thought what a comfort it was to know that he had received the Sacrament. I did not leave the Red Chateau till late the following afternoon, when I went back with a ration-party.