30th August 1914 (Sunday) 

I go back to Market Place at CROUTOY to bring back 33 sick and wounded. Arrive back at 10 pm. For several days have been on short rations and should have fared very badly but for the generosity of the people who supplied us with all sorts of food, bread, fruit and drinks along the route. We were billeted on a fine farm at the back of which was a splendid old garden. We again slept on straw which is more comfortable, than other ways of sleeping we have tried in the field. A defeated German body of troops, Infantry and Cavalry without guns, passed through a town just before us. 

When on the hills the scenery in the valleys was beautifully picturesque and though one would be dead tired the supreme beauty of the scenery would still appeal, so varied with wood, hill and dale, avenues of elm and chestnut, nestling farm and quaint French church. The golden grain ready for the harvest and the pretty trim patches of vegetable garden interspersed with orchards riotously luxurious in all kinds of fruit, formed pictures so peaceful and so much at variance with the war with all its fatigue and all its train of horrors that one wondered.