Perhaps the most interesting thing to note about the rest stations is that they are one of the few points of contact between the members of the B.E.F. and the French population. Our camps, our hospitals, our motor convoys, are all little Englands in themselves, but every morning to the sick parade of these rest stations come not only the local V.A.D.'s and ambulance drivers, but the French civilian population as well, and in greater and greater numbers. Accidents are brought to a rest station very often in preference to being taken anywhere else, and anxious mothers bring Jean or Marie when a mysterious ailment shows itself in untoward spot or sneeze. The Gallic cock is more than a decoration as he strides across the pottery of the rest stations--he is become a symbol as well. CHAPTER VI WAACS: RUMOURS AND REALITIES When I spoke at H.Q. of the depression I found in all the landscape around and of its peculiar morbid quality, nearly everyone assured me that I should find the country round E----, whither I was going, far more depressing. "There is nothing but sand dunes and huts, miles of huts, hospitals and camps and so on...." It did not sound very delightful. But to differing vision, differing effects, and personally, I loved E----; terrible as cities of huts generally are, here they seemed to me to have lost much of their terror. I loved the long rippling lines of dunes, the decoration of hundreds of tall pines that came partly against the sandy pallor, partly against the vivid steely blue of the river beyond, I loved the bare woods we passed all along the road, the trees still not perceptibly misted with buds but giving, with their myriads of fine massed twigs, an effect of clouded wine-colour. And was there ever such a countryside for magpies? Superstition dies before their numbers, helpless to count them, so far are they beyond the range of sorrow, mirth, marriage and birth, at any one glance. Everywhere through those winey woods there went up the fanlike flutter of black-and-white, the only positive notes in all the delicate universe, compact of pearly skies, dim purples of earth, and pale irradiation of the sun. [Illustration: H. M. THE QUEEN INSPECTING A "VAD" DOMESTIC STAFF] [Illustration: A V. A. D. MOTOR CONVOY] [Illustration: WAAC GARDENERS AT WORK IN THE CEMETERY] [Illustration: WREATHS FROM MOTHERS OF THE FALLEN] On the roads there was the usual medley of the races of the world, added to as we neared E---- by Canadian nurses in streaming white veils and uniforms of brilliant blue, and also--for surely the most delightful of created blessings may rank as a race of the world--by the glossy golden war-dogs, who also have their training camp near here, and take their walks abroad, waving their plumy tails and jumping up on their masters, like any leisured dog at home.