II--WITH THE DYING SOLDIERS AT LANDRECIES The sun was well up before we set out on Tuesday, August 25. Southwards again our direction lay: a strategic retirement, we were told. Early in the evening we reached Landrecies. Hardly had we passed the outskirts of the town before a scare arose. Civilians came tearing out of Landrecies. Motor cars and carts rushed past us at breakneck speed. The cry went up, "_Les Allemands!_" ("The Germans!") A certain peasant who for the moment had lost control of himself whipped the horse which he was driving into a gallop, deaf to the heartrending call of some children who ran in panic after him begging him to give them a lift. Out rushed a footsore guardsman from one of the ambulance wagons, placed a rifle at his head, and compelled him to stop and pick them up.... At about 8 P.M. we heard the rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns and the boom of field artillery. The men of the Royal Army Medical Corps meanwhile awaited the summons that did not come. The rain came down in torrents, and they lay down wherever they could find a sheltered spot. Sleep for most of us was impossible. The din of battle was terrific.... I went at once in search of the Hon. Rupert Keppel and handed to him Major Matheson's note. He was in an upstairs room with five or six wounded men. He was lying on a bed with a bandage round his forehead, but made light of the wounds which he had received. After a few words and a short prayer at each bedside, I made inquiries for Lord Hawarden. I was told that he was already dead, but I found him in a little room by himself, still breathing although apparently unconscious. He had lost his left arm, and a portion of his back had been shot away. I knelt down beside him and commended him to God, saying in the form of a prayer as from myself the hymn "Abide with Me." As I rose from my knees he opened his eyes and smiled. He had been asleep merely, and now began to speak with quite a strong voice. Not a word did he say about himself, or his sufferings. He talked about the battle, about his old home near Bordon, which was within a couple of miles of my own home and formed a happy link between us, and about his mother.... The other poor patients were terribly knocked about. Limbs in some cases had been entirely blown off by shells. Lyddite had turned many complexions to a jaundiced yellow. And yet every man was calm and resigned, and proud to have had a share in the fight.... A kindly French priest was going from bed to bed saying comforting words in French. Probably not one of the patients understood his words, but they all understood and appreciated his meaning.