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There were plain signs of massacre at hand all the way from the coast
to the lines. At Etaples and other places near Boulogne hospital huts
and tents were growing like mushrooms in the night. From casualty
clearing stations near the front the wounded--the human wreckage of
routine warfare--were being evacuated "in a hurry" to the base, and
from the base to England. They were to be cleared out of the way so
that all the wards might be empty for a new population of broken men,
in enormous numbers. I went down to see this clearance, this tidying
up. There was a sinister suggestion in the solitude that was being
made for a multitude that was coming.
"We shall be very busy," said the doctors.
"We must get all the rest we can now," said the nurses.
"In a little while every bed will be filled," said the matrons.
Outside one hut, with the sun on their faces, were four wounded
Germans, Wurtemburgers and Bavarians, too ill to move just then. Each
of them had lost a leg under the surgeon's knife.


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