The Commandant at this Fannies' camp took me into her office, and she and the D. of T.--who chimed in whenever he thought she was not saying enough in praise of his admired Fannies--told me the rough outlines of the history of the body since the beginning of the war. Though now affiliated to the Red Cross, they were an independent body before the war, and when hostilities broke out were a mounted corps, with horse ambulances. They offered themselves to the English authorities, were refused, and came out to the war-zone and worked for the Belgians for fourteen months. They ran a hospital in Calais staffed by themselves for nurses and with Belgian doctors and orderlies. Then, in the beginning of 1916 they offered to drive motor ambulances and thus release Red Cross men drivers, and now they are running, with the exception of two ambulances for Chinese, the whole of the Calais district, and have released many A.S.C. men as well. It is a big area, with many outlying camps where there are detached units. As a rule, there is only one girl to each ambulance, but in very lonely spots the allowance is three girls to two cars. At St. Omer the authorities at first objected to having them, but now they have taken over the whole of the Red Cross and A.S.C. ambulances there. At this camp that I saw, they have no day or night shifts, as there is not much night work except during a push, when everyone works night and day without more than a couple of hours' sleep snatched with clothes on--indeed, I heard of a convoy where for a fortnight the girls never took off their clothes, but just kept on with fragmentary rests. The other occasion when there is night work is when there is a raid. As I have said, the camp is in a peculiarly unhealthy spot for bombs, and until just lately the girls had no raid-shelter. Now one has been dug for them, roofed with concrete and sandbags and earth, which would stand anything short of a direct hit from some such pleasant little missile as is now the pride of the camp. But at first, even when the raid-shelter was built, there was no telephone extension to it from the office, and therefore the Commandant had to stay in the office with one other to take the telephone calls, then had to cross the open, in full raid, and going to the mouth of the shelter call out the names of the girls whose turn it was to drive the ambulances. She told it me as exemplifying the spirit of the girls, that never once, through all the noise and danger, did a girl falter, always answered to her name and came coolly and unconcernedly up the steps and went across to her car. But it seemed to me that it was as good to sit quietly in a matchboard office and await the messages, to say nothing of taking them across that danger zone. Now an order has gone forth that the ambulances are not to start till the raid is over, as they are too precious to be risked. It is not a bad record, this continuous service of the Fannies since the outbreak of war, is it?