Friends of France; . d little more idea of what they were going intothan you and I have of the geography of the netherregions. This was on my left — the English going up. Andon my right, the t o streams actually touching andmingling, the English were coming back. They didnot come as they went, however. They came on theirbacks, very still and remote; and all that you werelikely to see of them now was their muddy boots atthe ambulance flap. Service Sanitaire as we were, I think Section 1never saw, before or since, such a conglomeration ofwounded as we saw that day at Poperinghe. Herewas the rail
Friends of France; . d little more idea of what they were going intothan you and I have of the geography of the netherregions. This was on my left — the English going up. Andon my right, the t o streams actually touching andmingling, the English were coming back. They didnot come as they went, however. They came on theirbacks, very still and remote; and all that you werelikely to see of them now was their muddy boots atthe ambulance flap. Service Sanitaire as we were, I think Section 1never saw, before or since, such a conglomeration ofwounded as we saw that day at Poperinghe. Herewas the rail-head and the base; here for the momentwere the Red Cross and Royal Army Medical Corpsunits shelled out of Ypres; here was the nervouscentre of all that swarming and sweating back-of-the-front. And here, hour after hour, into and throughthe night, the slow-moving wagons, English, French,and American, rolling on one anothers heels, broughtback the bloody harvest. The English, so returning to Poperinghe gate, were 14. o H co•—i -- MCO <P a < u i—iCiJ QCO DUNKIRK AND YPRES very well cared for. By the station wicket a largesquad of English stretcher-bearers, directed, I believeby a colonel of the line, was unceasingly and expertlybusy. Behind the wicket lay the waiting Englishtrain, steam up for Boulogne, enormously long andperfectly sumptuous: a super-train, a hospital Pull-man, all swinging white beds and shining nickel. TheFrench, alas, were less lucky that day. Doubtless theunimagined flood of wounded had swamped the gen-erally excellent service; for the moment, at least,there was not only no super-train for the French;there was no train. As for the bunks of the stationwarehouses, the hopital devacuation, they were ofcourse long since exhausted. Thus it was thatwounded tirailleurs and Zouaves and black men fromAfrica, set down from ambulances, staggered unat-tended up the station platform, sat and lay anyhowabout the concrete and the sand—no flesh-woundedhoppers
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Keywords: ., boo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectworldwar19141918
