LETTERS FROM THE

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2485, 11 June 1915, Page 6

LETTERS FROM THE

GERMAN CROWN PRINCE'S QUARTERS DUG-OUT AND CHATEAU An Urgenoy Cases Hospital for the French appealed for owners of cars to go to tlie front and bring in wounded soldiers from field hospitals. An English gentleman volunteered his services and writes home a letter, from which the "Morning Post" takes the following:— We are in a quiet little country town where there are shops and everything much as usual (of course plenty or soldiers about), and without a pass you cannot leave the town in a car. For a walk in the country one has to get the password. On Monday we got our first wounded from the station, about 20. Having come from a field hospital near the front, they were much cleaner than one had expected. Some, of course, were very bad, but they all seem to be doing wonderfully well considering how desperately some were wounded and in how many places. I think quite the saddest is a young chap of 25 who was shot in the head. One eye is destroyed and the nerve of the other. At present both are bandaged, but he expects when they are taken off to be able to se« again. It will be a. terrible blow when ho finds out he is blind. Testing an Ambulance. I had quite a long expedition on Wednesday. The head of the medical service of this Army, a general who inspected our ambulances and found them in some way different from theirs, wantod to have a trial of one of ours, so I took one, with the driver, when the general made an inspection of field hospitals, and wont with him. We started at 7 a.m., going towards M , stopping on the way to inspect an underground refuge, said to have been made at the battle of for the Crown Prince. Then an officer got into the ambulance and lay on one of the stretchers. When wo opened up to let him out he was fast asleep, though the roads were none of the best, so our test was very satisfactory. The town of , where the Prussians had been in September, was unharmed, though all the villages on the way were nothing but heaps of stones, and is practically nothing but a large field hospital. The children always call out "Les Anglais" as wo pass, and often salute. It is about five miles from the trenches, pom here we loaded up and brought back wounded. I visited the general in his car, and ive Btopped to visit a small chateau which had been turned into < a hospital , r y6I T serious_ cases. I waß surprised to find in the dining-room all the furniture and some very fine old china untouched. They told me the house had been chosen as the Crown Prince's headquarters and the orders, given nothing was to be touched. However, the wine was too much of a temptation, and was all drunk before- they left. A Marquee Hospital. \\ e had a long day yesterday. I took the car and convoy of four ambulances and. another car to M , some 32 miles, for wounded. The day waß «'et, and roads bad. We waited at the Evacuation Hospital, where the wounded are brought in the French ambulances from the field dressing stations, till they had had something to eat, and finally got them loaded up, 16 jn all. .It took two and a half hours to come in with them. They are put on to beds in a marquee with double walls and well heated, where they have ward numbers attached to them'. All their clothes are taken off, everything out of their pockets put into a little 1 bag and given them to hold, while the < l'rench clerks attached to us take all 1 particulars of names, wounds, etc., as ■ given on the cards they bring here, and ' also take their clothes, wrap them in a bundle, and mark them after which they are cloaned and fumigated. Then tlie patient, having been night-gowned is carried and put to bed to rest beforo his wounds are examined and redress- c i "j.l. ar there have been only two t doaths. The others do very well, and I evidently enjoy being here. One offi- 1 cer told me he was treated like a king, i and they all look happy and are sorry t when they are moved on. Cermans Fire on Ambulanoes. On Wednesday some of my lot had quite an exciting experience. We were asked to send a convoy with our tour- ' ing car right up to the dressing station 1 at the front. They were piloted by a I Staff officer in the car, and- told to keep a 100 yards apart, but just where they had to stop they bunched up together, and the Germans found the temptation too great, for they evidently had an observer in a tree somewhere near, and they sent four or five 4-inch shells at t them, which burst near, and they camo s home laden with pieces of burst shell 4 as souvenirs. They all thought it 4 rather a joke, but it was decided that a in future we should pick up our wound- r ed at a safe distance, or rattier have I them brought in by French ambulances t to M . v FORCINC THE DARDANELLES. 1 HOW THE "OCEAN" WAS SUNK. An offioer on board His Majesty's ship Ocean, in a letter home, describes the last moments on board that ship. He writos: j I hope you were not very anxious when you heard the Ocean had gono ( down. I hope they brought the casualties out at the same time, so that you would see 1 wa6 all right. We had been hit ever so many times, and it was right at the end of the day, when wa £ were coming out of action, that sud- j; denly there was a big explosion, and L the whole ship" shook, and then wo began to list over to starboard. In five minutes we had listed over a good way. Wo had no orders to shift or anything, ? but one of the gun's crow looked out a of the casemates door and saw that everybody had gone aft; so we went aft and found that tliero were destroyers alongside and that we were alan- S doning ship. H amours of Leaving Ship. aI It was half tragic and half funny. One thing looked very funny. I saw '■» another midshipman standing with his " bands in his pockots looking ever so pleased with himself, when suddenly ho slipped and slid all the way across* the quarter deck, as it was very slanting. By then I thought it was time for yours truly to be gone, so I climbed down into one of the destroyers and found the Navigator, so I followed him. Then tho cnomv got our range with howitzers, and shells were falling about us, so tho destroyer I was in shoved off being one of tho outside ones, and we A steamed out with another. Then after V a while we were told to go back to the C Ocean, but when we got there we found (5 nobody else had come back, and the enemy wero still firing at her, so we tl wcro rocalled and wont to the Aganiom- oi non, where I am now. ROUND ABOUT YPRES. DISPATCH RIDER'S. IMPRESSIONS. A medical student who is at the front m as a motor-cycle dispatch rider in the R.A.M.C. and has been stationed at or near Ypres for some timo writes about the town; — "Docs it not seem ftinnr fo you that, the few people who are in this town carry to rm their ordinary work as if nothing fa tvas happening? They just ; oonie to [heir shop door and look out if a shell burata uw\ Tlj© women and oliildren^

nrp iiist. ths same, and only shrug tV.m't shoulders. _ "I am having a very decent time altogether. I have even managed to get a mattress to lie on now, Previously I slept on a tiled floor whioh was always wet. You know, whenever it rains all the houßes in this town get flooded because the roofs are all smashed in, I wish you could see this town. It is a, big place, but absolutely in ruins. It it like, say, Canterbury, but has a big market-place; a fine cathedral, town hall, and famous 'Cloth Hall,' all in ruins; all churches partially destroyed, bouses and hotels also in ruins, great shell holes in the streets, public gardens smashed to atoms, and whole streets and squares full of piles of bricks and masonry. Anywhere in the middle of the street you may come across a piece of masonry or part of a statue. I know exactly where all obstacles are now and can ride round them at night easily. The (athedral clock is lying in the middle. Of the market square. "Just received the sterilising tabs from father. All our water comes in water-cart* in which is chloride of lime, so that we should be safe. We boil is also. Imagine, by the way, bad tea with no milk and tasting strongly o' oblorido of lime."