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The ambulances carried them away to the station of Fortem, where those who could still sit up were packed into a steam tram, and where the stretcher-cases were taken to the civil hospital at Furnes by motor transport. But in outlying farmsteads in the zone of fire, and in isolated cottages which had been struck by a chance shot, were other wounded men difficult to get.
She's the first touch of home that the stretcher-cases see when they've said good-bye to the trenches. She moves down the ward; eyes follow her. When she is absent, though others take her place, she leaves a loneliness. If she meant much to men in days gone by, to-day she means more than ever.
Trickling rearwards, moving when opportunities offered, went limping the bandaged wounded, the stretcher-cases, blood-stained and grey, but patient, splendidly patient, the unladen mules, often waiting long periods for a clear passage, and all the odd men, messengers, prisoner escorts and others who move up and down the communications during a battle.
Shells, high explosives and shrapnel, were coming over every now and then. I kept my helmet well over my head. This also served as a shade from the sun, for it was now about ten o'clock and a sultry day. I was able to obtain a view of events round about fairly easily. From time to time orderlies tramped through the archway, bearing stretcher-cases to the dug-out.
From time to time our tasks were interrupted by the notes of a bugle or the shrilling of the Sergeant-Major's whistle demanding our presence for an intake of new patients. A party of orderlies was wanted to go to the railway-station to help to remove stretcher-cases from the ambulance train.
He lay there peacefully for an hour or two, and then, becoming thoroughly fed up at this lack of progress and seeing no point in such delays, called out to some one he heard near him, to know what possibility there was of a further move. "None, old boy," came the discouraging reply. "Stretchers are just about finish, and there 're dozens of stretcher-cases lying everywhere.
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