[Sidenote: The French bills come in.]
Friday was a long, tense day. The French merchants and all the people
with whom we had dealings, anticipating our withdrawal, swarmed in with
accounts. When the G.A.N. (Grand Armee Nationale) sent in its request
for a check (previously, I had been obliged fairly to windlass their
bill out of them), I knew the French would evacuate. The Commandant sent
for the Directrice, and advised her to follow French headquarters
wherever it might move. He said he was evacuating all French hospitals
and had turned over all evacuation hospitals to the English. No more
wounded French were to be brought into E----.
[Sidenote: The German aviators bomb hospitals again.]
All day I worked without food, and after 7.30 got supper for myself and
three companions. We hoped for a night's rest, but the Germans began
bombing us at dusk, and kept it up till daylight. They were after
hospitals, as we knew by the fact that the dropping bombs were at a
distance from us and the regular line. All night the machine-gun battle
went on--our own guns at E----, warring with the sweeping planes
overhead. We got so tired of going to shelter, and so accustomed to the
firing, that we finally stayed in our rooms and even opened our shutters
to peer out into the calm summer sky. Shells were bursting and ground
signals of colored lights were streaming skyward. It was too exciting to
sleep until we gave out from sheer exhaustion. I managed to get an
intermittent slumber from four until seven.
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