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So dangerous is the terrain in this respect that the ambulances and motor-lorries and ammunition-trains could not get up to the trenches at all had not the Belgians, with great foresight, done wholesale tree-planting. Most people do not number nursery work among the duties of an army, but nowadays it is.
At this hour the Boer ambulances had been invited to come for such of their wounded as could be moved, for since the enemy returned our wounded from Spion Kop we have followed the practice of sending back theirs on all occasions should they prefer it.
This soon degenerated into the wildest panic, and the road was speedily choked by storming, cursing, terror- stricken men, who in their furious haste, defeated their own efforts to escape. It was pitiful, it was shameful, to see ambulances full of the wounded shoved to one side and left by the cowardly thieves who had galloped away on the horses.
The ambulances had gathered in a few German soldiers, who would become prisoners of war on their recovery, and while these were inclined to be despondent and unsociable they were treated courteously by all, the Americans showing no preference for any nation.
During the two days that followed the convent at Furnes was overcrowded with the wounded. All day long and late into the night they were brought back by the Belgian ambulances from the zone of fire, and hardly an hour passed without a bang at the great wooden gates in the courtyard which were flung open to let in another tide of human wreckage.
While, amid this holiday illumination, the Parisians enjoyed the panorama before them, the Freres Chretiens and the attendants of the various ambulances were moving along the battle-plains; the first in their large-brimmed hats and sable garbs, the last in strange motley costume, many of them in glittering uniform all alike in their serene indifference to danger; often pausing to pick up among the dead their own brethren who had been slaughtered in the midst of their task.
The man who raised the flag was captured, and it says much for the humanity of British soldiers that he was not bayoneted upon the spot. Yet it is not fair to blame a whole people for the misdeeds of a few, and it is probable that the men who descended to such devices, or who deliberately fired upon our ambulances, were as much execrated by their own comrades as by ourselves.
To the front, to the field hospitals behind the trenches, to railway stations, to hospital trains and ships, to great base hospitals. I watched its ambulances on shelled roads. I followed its brassards as their wearers, walking gently, carried stretchers with their groaning burdens.
An hour after I was on the way, and Georgie a few moments in advance. I had seen bad roads in northern and western Pennsylvania, but this was my first ride over no road. We met a steady stream of such wounded as were able to walk, but comparatively few were brought in ambulances.
In the glare of the flames from the houses on fire, in the middle of the smoke, horses, cannon, fourgons, charrettes, ambulances, piles of dead and dying, formed a sickening pell-mell. In this chaos starving soldiers, holding lighted lanterns, tore strips of flesh from dead horses lying in the mud, killed by the shells.
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