[Sidenote: Waiting through the raid alone.]
I stayed it out--about twenty minutes--alone in that dark flagged
hallway, and it was lonesome. When the shrapnel and machine-gun fire let
up sufficiently to make it safe, I crept along under the shelter of the
eaves to the door of a courtyard next door where I knew one of our cooks
lived. She had invited me a few days before, to refuge there instead of
trying to get over the _abris_, because, she said, the whole upper lofts
were full of hay, and it had been demonstrated that bombs will not
penetrate to any depth in hay. But the door was locked, and though I
beat upon it with my electric torch, nobody heard me. I finally took
advantage of a lull in the firing, when the Germans went back to their
own lines for more ammunition, to get over the _abris_.
There one of the women on night duty at the canteen told me that the
directrice and everybody else not on night duty, had gone up to the
evacuation hospital about ten o'clock, in response to a call for aid
from the French authorities.
[Sidenote: Many wounded in the hospitals.]
In E---- there were half a dozen large hospitals. The wounded, chiefly
English, were coming in faster than the hospital corps could handle
them. They needed our help, not only in registering the men--very few of
whom understood any French--but in feeding and giving water.
I got to the hospital the next day and worked steadily till eight
thirty. Then an ambulance driver gave me a lift as far as the canteen,
and I managed to get a cold supper at our mess.
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