They would not last long at a time,
of course, but it broke up any rest that might have been had, and it was
only too evident that the enemy was trying to get the range on the
hospital.
One morning, standing by the window making cocoa for the boys, one of the
lassies saw an eight-inch shell land between the hospital tents, ten feet
in front of the window, and only five feet from the door of the place
where the severely wounded were lying. These shells always kill at two
hundred feet. All that saved them was that the shell buried itself deep in
the soft earth and was a dud.
The shells were coming every twenty minutes and there was no time to lose
for now the enemy had their range. At once all hands got busy and began to
evacuate the wounded men into the Salvation Army cave. The cave would
accommodate seventy men, but they managed to get a hundred men inside,
most of them on litters. They were all safe and the girls heard the
whistle of the next shell and made haste toward safety themselves. But
someone had carelessly dropped a whole outfit of blankets and things
across the passageway of the dugout and the first woman to enter fell
across it, shutting out the other two. Before anything could be done the
next shell struck the doorway, partly burying the fallen young woman.
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