A Surgeon in Belgium Part 3

IX. A Pause

The life of a hospital at the front is a curious mixture of excitement and dullness. One week cases will be pouring in, the operating theatre will be working day and night, and everyone will have to do their utmost to keep abreast of the rush; next week there will be nothing to do, and everyone will mope about the building, and wonder why they were ever so foolish as to embark on such a futile undertaking. For it is all emergency work, and there is none of the dull routine of the ordinary hospital waiting list, which we are always trying to clear off, but which is in reality the backbone of the hospital's work.

When we first started in Antwerp, the rush of cases was so great as to be positively overwhelming. For more than twenty-four hours the surgeons in the theatre were doing double work, two tables being kept going at the same time. During that time a hundred and fifty wounded were admitted, all of them serious cases, and the hospital was full to overflowing. For the next ten days we were kept busy, but then our patients began to recover, and many of them had to go away to military convalescent hospitals. The wards began to look deserted, and yet no more patients arrived. We began to think that it was all a mistake that we had come, that there would be no more fighting round Antwerp, and that we were not wanted. Indeed, we canva.s.sed the possibilities of work in other directions, and in the meantime we drew up elaborate arrangements to occupy our time. There were to be courses of lectures and demonstrations in the wards, and supplies of books and papers were to be obtained. Alas for the vanity of human schemes, the wounded began to pour in again, and not a lecture was given.

During that slack week we took the opportunity to see a certain amount of Antwerp, and to call on many officials and the many friends who did so much to make our work there a success and our stay a pleasure. To one lady we can never be sufficiently grateful. She placed at our disposal her magnificent house, a perfect palace in the finest quarter of the city. Several of our nurses lived there, we had a standing invitation to dinner, and, what we valued still more, there were five bathrooms ready for our use at any hour of the day. Their drawing-room had been converted into a ward for wounded officers, and held about twenty beds. One of the daughters had trained as a nurse, and under her charge it was being run in thoroughly up-to-date style. The superb tapestries with which the walls were decorated had been covered with linen, and but for the gilded panelling it might have been a ward in a particularly finished hospital. I often wonder what has happened to that house. The family had to fly to England, and unless it was destroyed by the sh.e.l.ls, it is occupied by the Germans.

Calling in Antwerp on our professional brethren was very delightful for one's mind, but not a little trying for one's body. Their ideas of entertainment were so lavish, and it was so difficult to refuse their generosity, that it was a decided mistake to attempt two calls in the same afternoon. To be greeted at one house with claret of a rare vintage, and at the next with sweet champagne, especially when it is plain that your host will be deeply pained if a drop is left, is rather trying to a tea-drinking Briton. They were very good to us, and we owed a great deal to their help. Most of all we owed to Dr. Morlet, for he had taken radiographs of all our fractures, and of many others of our cases. We went to see him one Sunday afternoon at his beautiful house in the Avenue Plantin. He also had partly converted his house into a hospital for the wounded, and we saw twenty or thirty of them in a large drawing-room. The rest of the house was given up to the most magnificent electro-therapeutical equipment I have ever seen or heard of. We wandered through room after room filled with superb apparatus for X-ray examinations, X-ray treatment, diathermy, and electrical treatment of every known kind. It was not merely that apparatus for all these methods was there. Whole rooms full of apparatus were given up to each subject. It was the home of a genius and an enthusiast, who thought no sum too great if it were to advance his science. Little did we think that ten days later we should pick its owner up upon the road from Antwerp, a homeless wanderer, struggling along with his wife and his family, leaving behind everything he possessed in the world, in the hope that he might save them from the Germans. We heard from him not long ago that they had carried off to Germany all the wonderful machinery on which he had spent his life.

The very next morning, while we were still at breakfast, the wounded began to arrive, and we never had another day in Antwerp that was not crowded with incident. The wounded almost always came in large batches, and the reason of this was the method of distribution adopted by the authorities. All the injured out at the front were collected as far as possible to one centre, where a train was waiting to receive them. There they remained until the train was sufficiently filled, when it brought them into the Central Station of Antwerp. At this point was established the distributing station, with a staff of medical officers, who arranged the destination of each man. Antwerp has a very complete system of electric trams, scarcely a street being without one, and of these full use was made for the transport of the wounded.

Those who could sit went in ordinary cars, but for the stretcher cases there were cars specially fitted to take ordinary stretchers. A car was filled up with cases for one hospital, and in most cases it could deposit them at the door. It was an admirable method of dealing with them, simple and expeditious, and it involved far less pain and injury to the men than a long journey on an ambulance. In fact, we were only allowed in exceptional circ.u.mstances to bring in wounded on our cars, and it is obvious that it was a wise plan, for endless confusion would have been the result if anyone could have picked up the wounded and carried them off where they liked. Our cars were limited for the most part to carrying the injured to the various dressing- stations and to the train, and for these purposes they were always welcomed. They were soon well known at the trenches, and wherever the fighting was heaviest you might be sure to find one of them. Many were the hairbreadth escapes of which they had to tell, for if there were wounded they brought them out of danger, sh.e.l.ls or no sh.e.l.ls.

And it says as much for the coolness of the drivers as for their good luck that no one was ever injured; for danger is halved by cool judgment, and a bold driver will come safely through where timidity would fail.

X. The Siege

It is difficult to say exactly when the Siege of Antwerp began. For weeks we heard the distant boom of the guns steadily drawing nearer day by day, and all night the sky was lit up by distant flashes. But so peculiar was the position of Antwerp that it was not till the last ten days that our life was seriously affected, and not till the very end that communication with our friends and the getting of supplies became difficult. Our first real domestic tragedy was the destruction of the waterworks on the 30th of September. They lay just behind Waelhem, some six miles south of Antwerp, and into them the Germans poured from the other side of Malines a stream of 28-centimetre sh.e.l.ls, with the result that the great reservoir burst. Until one has had to do without a water-supply in a large city it is impossible to realize to what a degree we are dependent upon it. In Antwerp, fortunately, a water- supply has been regarded as somewhat of an innovation, and almost every house, in the better cla.s.s quarters at least, has its own wells and pumps. It was, however, the end of the summer, and the wells were low; our own pumps would give us barely enough water for drinking purposes. The authorities did all they could, and pumped up water from the Scheldt for a few hours each day, enabling us, with considerable difficulty, to keep the drainage system clear. But this water was tidal and brackish, whilst as to the number of bacteria it contained it was better not to inquire. We boiled and drank it when we could get nothing else, but of all the nauseous draughts I have ever consumed, not excluding certain hospital mixtures of high repute, tea made with really salt water is the worst. Coffee was a little better, though not much, and upon that we chiefly relied. But I really think that that was one of the most unpleasant of our experiences. A more serious matter from the point of view of our work was the absence of water in the operating theatre. We stored it as well as we could in jugs, but in a rush that was inadequate, and we began to realize what the difficulties were with which surgeons had to contend in South Africa.

We were really driven out of Antwerp at a very fortunate moment, and I have often wondered what we should have done if we had stopped there for another week. Such a very large proportion of the inhabitants of Antwerp had already disappeared that there was never any great shortage of supplies. Milk and b.u.t.ter were the first things to go, and fresh vegetables followed soon after. It was always a mystery to me that with the country in such a condition they went on for as long as they did. The peasants must have worked their farms until they were absolutely driven out, and indeed in our expeditions into the country we often saw fields being ploughed and cattle being fed when sh.e.l.ls were falling only a few fields away. However, margarine and condensed milk are not bad subst.i.tutes for the real articles, and the supply of bread held out to the very end. A greater difficulty was with our kitchen staff of Belgian women, for a good many of them took fright and left us, and it was not at all easy to get their places filled.

As the week went on the pressure of the enemy became steadily greater. On Tuesday, the 29th of September, the great fortress of Wavre St. Catherine fell, blown up, it is believed, by the accidental explosion of a sh.e.l.l inside the galleries. It had been seriously battered by the big German howitzers, and it could not in any case have held out for another day. But the results of the explosion were terrible. Many of the wounded came to us, and they were the worst cases we had so far seen.

On Thursday Fort Waelhem succ.u.mbed after a magnificent resistance. The garrison held it until it was a mere heap of ruins, and, indeed, they had the greatest difficulty in making their way out. I think that there is very little doubt that the Germans were using against these forts their largest guns, the great 42-centimetre howitzers. It is known that two of these were brought northwards past Brussels after the fall of Maubeuge, and a fragment which was given to us was almost conclusive. It was brought to us one morning as an offering by a grateful patient, and it came from the neighbourhood of Fort Waelhem. It was a ma.s.s of polished steel two feet long, a foot wide, and three inches thick, and it weighed about fifty pounds. It was very irregular in shape, with edges sharp as razors, without a particle of rust upon it. It had been picked up where it fell still hot, and it was by far the finest fragment of sh.e.l.l I have ever seen. Alas we had to leave it behind, and it lies buried in a back-garden beside our hospital. Some day it will be dug up, and will be exhibited as conclusive evidence that the Germans did use their big guns in sh.e.l.ling the town.

The destruction produced by such a sh.e.l.l is almost past belief. I have seen a large house struck by a single sh.e.l.l of a much smaller size than this, and it simply crumpled up like a pack of cards. As a house it disappeared, and all that was left was a heap of bricks and mortar.

When one considers that these guns have a range of some ten miles, giving Mont Blanc considerable clearance on the way, and that one of them out at Harrow could drop sh.e.l.ls neatly into Charing Cross, some idea of their power can be obtained.

Every day we had visits from the enemy's aeroplanes, dropping bombs or literature, or merely giving the range of hospitals and other suitable objectives to the German gunners. From the roof of the hospital one could get a magnificent view of their evolutions, and a few kindred spirits always made a rush for a door on to the roof, the secret of which was carefully preserved, as the accommodation was limited. It was a very pretty sight to watch the Taube soaring overhead, followed by the puffs of smoke from the explosion of sh.e.l.ls fired from the forts. The puffs would come nearer and nearer as the gunners found the range, until one felt that the next must bring the Taube down. Then suddenly the airman would turn his machine off in another direction, and the sh.e.l.ls would fall wider than ever. One's feelings were torn between admiration for the airman's daring and an unholy desire to see him fall.

It was evident that Antwerp could not withstand much longer the pressure of the enemy's guns, and we were not surprised when on Friday we received an official notice from the British Consul-General, Sir Cecil Herstlet, that the Government were about to leave for Ostend, and advising all British subjects to leave by a boat which had been provided for them on Sat.u.r.day. On Sat.u.r.day morning came an order from the Belgian Army Medical Service instructing us to place on tramcars all our wounded, and to send them to the railway station.

It appeared evident that Antwerp was to be evacuated, and we took the order to clear out our wounded as an intimation that our services would be no longer required. We got all our men ready for transport, and proceeded to pack up the hospital. The tramcars arrived, and we bade good-bye to our patients, and saw them off, some in ordinary trams and some in specially equipped stretcher-cars. It was a dismal scene.

The hall of the hospital was still covered with stretchers on which lay patients waiting their turn for the cars to take them, and the whole hospital was in process of being dismantled, when tramcars began to arrive back from the station with the patients we had just packed off.

They told us that the whole of Antwerp was covered with tramloads of wounded soldiers, that there were five thousand in the square in front of the railway station, and that two trains had been provided to take them away! It was evident that some extraordinary blunder had been made; and while we were in doubt as to what to do, a second order came to us cancelling entirely the evacuation order which we and all the other hospitals in Antwerp had received a few hours before. It was all so perplexing that we felt that the only satisfactory plan was to go round to the British Consul and find out what it all meant. We came back with the great news that British Marines were coming to hold Antwerp. That was good enough for us. In less than an hour the hospital was in working order again, and the patients were back in their beds, and a more jubilant set of patients I have never seen. It was the most joyful day in the history of the hospital, and if we had had a case of champagne, it should have been opened. As it was, we had to be content with salt coffee.

But there was one dreadful tragedy. Some of our patients had not returned. In the confusion at the station one tramcar loaded with our patients had been sent off to another hospital by mistake. And the worst of it was that some of these were our favourite patients. There was nothing for it but to start next morning and make a tour of the hospitals in search of them. We were not long in finding them, for most of them were in a large hospital close by. I do not think we shall ever forget the reception we got when we found them. They had left us on stretchers, but they tried to get out of bed to come away with us, and one of them was a septic factured thigh with a hole in his leg into which you could put your fist, and another had recently had a serious abdominal operation.

They seized our hands and would scarcely let us go until we had promised that as soon as we had arranged with the authorities they should come back to our hospital. It was managed after a little diplomacy, and they all came back next day, and we were again a united family.

XI. Contich

Sunday, the 4th of October, dawned with an extraordinary feeling of relief and expectancy in the air. The invincible British had arrived, huge guns were on their way, a vast body of French and British troops was advancing by forced marches, and would attack our besiegers in the rear, and beyond all possibility of doubt crush them utterly. But perhaps the most convincing proof of all was the round head of the First Lord of the Admiralty calmly having his lunch in the Hotel St. Antoine. Surely nothing can inspire such confidence as the sight of an Englishman eating. It is one of the most substantial phenomena in nature, and certainly on this occasion I found the sight more convincing than a political speech. Obviously we were saved, and one felt a momentary pang of pity for the misguided Germans who had taken on such an impossible task. The sight of British troops in the streets and of three armoured cars carrying machine guns settled the question, and we went home to spread the good news and to follow the n.o.ble example of the First Lord.

In the afternoon three of us went off in one of the motors for a short run, partly to see if we could be of any use at the front with the wounded, and partly to see, if possible, the British troops. We took a stretcher with us, in case there should be any wounded to bring in from outlying posts. Everywhere we found signs of the confidence which the British had brought. It was visible in the face of every Belgian soldier, and even the children cheered our khaki uniforms as we pa.s.sed. Everywhere there were signs of a new activity and of a new hope. The trenches and wire entanglements around the town, already very extensive, were being perfected, and to our eyes they looked impregnable. We did not then realize how useless it is to attempt to defend a town, and, unfortunately, our ignorance was not limited to civilians. It is a curious freak of modern war that a ploughed field should be stronger than any citadel. But, as I say, these things were hidden from us, and our allies gave the finis.h.i.+ng touches to their trenches, to the high entertainment of the Angels, as Stevenson would have told us. If only those miles of trench and acres of barbed wire had been placed ten miles away, and backed by British guns, the story of Antwerp might have been a very different one.

The road to Boom is like all the main roads of Belgium. The central causeway was becoming worn by the constant pa.s.sage of heavy motor lorries tearing backwards and forwards at racing speed. The sides were deep in dust, for there had been little rain. On each side rose poplars in ordered succession, and the long, straight stretches of the road were framed in the endless vista of their tall trunks. And in that frame moved a picture too utterly piteous for any words to describe--a whole country fleeing before the Huns. The huge unwieldy carts of the Belgian farmer crept slowly along, drawn by great Flemish horses. In front walked the men, plodding along beside the splendid animals, with whose help they had ploughed their fields --fields they would never see again. In the carts was piled up all that they possessed in the world, all that they could carry of their homes wrecked and blasted by the Vandals, a tawdry ornament or a child's toy looking out pitifully from the heap of clothes and bedding. And seated on the top of the heap were the woman and the children.

But these were the well-to-do. There were other little groups who had no cart and no horse. The father and a son would walk in front carrying all that a man could lift on their strong backs; then came the children, boys and girls, each with a little white bundle over their shoulder done up in a towel or a pillowslip, tiny mites of four or five doing all they could to save the home; and last came the mother with a baby at her breast, trudging wearily through the dust. They came in an endless stream, over and over again, for mile after mile, always in the same pathetic little groups, going away, only going away.

At last, with a sigh of relief, we reached Boom, and the end of the lines of refugees, for the Germans themselves were not far beyond.

At the Croix Rouge we asked for instructions as to where we were likely to be useful. Boom had been sh.e.l.led in the morning, but it was now quiet, and there was no fighting in the neighbourhood. We could hear the roar of guns in the distance on the east, and we were told that severe fighting was in progress in that direction. The British had reinforced the Belgian troops in the trenches at Duffel, and the Germans were attacking the position in force. Taking the road to the left, we pa.s.sed the great brick-fields which provide one of the chief industries of Boom, and we drove through the poorer portion of the town which lies amongst them. It was utterly deserted. It was in this part of the town that the sh.e.l.ling had been most severe, but a large number of the sh.e.l.ls must have fallen harmlessly in the brickfields, as only a house here and there was damaged. If, however, the object of the Germans was to clear the town of inhabitants, they had certainly succeeded, for there was not a man, woman, or child to be seen anywhere. It is a strange and uncanny thing to drive through a deserted town. Only a few days before we had driven the same way, and we had to go quite slowly to avoid the crowd in the streets. This time we crept along slowly, but for a very different reason. We distrusted those empty houses. We never knew what might be hiding round the next corner, but we did know that a false turning would take us straight into the German lines. It was the only way by which we could reach our destination, but we were beyond the main Belgian lines, and our road was only held by a few isolated outposts. After a mile or so we came upon a small outpost, and they told us that we should be safe as far as Rumps, about three miles farther, where their main outpost was placed. An occasional sh.e.l.l sailed over our heads to rea.s.sure us, some from our own batteries, and some from the enemy's. We only hoped that neither side would fire short.

At Rumps we found the headquarters of the regiment, and several hundred troops. At the sight of our khaki uniforms they at once raised a cheer, and we had quite an ovation as we pa.s.sed down the street.

At the Etat Majeur the Colonel himself came out to see us, and his officers crowded round as he asked us anxiously about the British arrivals. He pulled out his orders for the day, and told us the general disposition of the British and Belgian troops. He told us that the road to Duffel was too dangerous, and that we must turn northwards to Contich, but that there might be some wounded in the Croix Rouge station there. He and his men were typical of the Belgian Army-- brave, simple men, defending their country as best they could, without fuss or show. I hope they have come to no harm. If only that army had been trained and equipped like ours, the Germans would have had a hard struggle to get through Belgium.

We turned away from the German lines northwards towards Contich.

Our road lay across the open country, between the farms which mean so much of Belgium's wealth. In one field a man was ploughing with three big horses. He was too old to fight, but he could do this much for his country. Surely that man deserves a place in his country's Roll of Honour. Sh.e.l.ls were falling not four fields away, but he never even looked up. It must take more nerve to plough a straight furrow when the sh.e.l.ls are falling than to aim a gun. I like to think of that man, and I hope that he will be left to reap his harvest in peace. A little farther on we came upon the objective of the German sh.e.l.ls--a battery so skilfully concealed that it was only when we were close to it that we realized where it was. The ammunition-carts were drawn up in a long line behind a hedge, while the guns themselves were buried in piles of brushwood. They must have been invisible from the captive balloon which hung over the German lines in the distance. They were not firing when we pa.s.sed, and we were not sorry, as we had no desire to be there when the replies came. An occasional sh.e.l.l gives a certain spice to the situation, but in quant.i.ty they are better avoided.

As we approached Contich a soldier came running up and told us that two people had just been injured by a sh.e.l.l, and begged us to come to see them. He stood on the step of the car, and directed us to a little row of cottages half a mile farther on. At the roadside was a large hole in the ground where a sh.e.l.l had fallen some minutes before, and beside it an unfortunate cow with its hind-quarters shattered. In the garden of the first cottage a poor woman lay on her back. She was dead, and her worn hands were already cold. As I rose from my knees a young soldier flung himself down beside her, sobbing as though his heart would break. She was his mother.

Behind the cottage we found a soldier with his left leg torn to fragments. He had lost a great deal of blood, and he was still bleeding from a large artery, in spite of the efforts of a number of soldiers round who were applying tourniquets without much success. The ordinary tourniquet is probably the most inefficient instrument that the mind of man could devise--at least, for dealing with wounds of the thigh out in the field. It might stop haemorrhage in an infant, but for a burly soldier it is absurd. I tried two of the most approved patterns, and both broke in my hands. In the end I managed to stop it with a handkerchief and a stick. I would suggest the elimination of all tourniquets, and the subst.i.tution of the humble pocket-handkerchief.

It, at least, does not pretend to be what it is not. Between shock and loss of blood our soldier was pretty bad, and we did not lose much time in transferring him to our car on a stretcher. The Croix Rouge dressing-station was more than a mile farther on, established in a large villa in its own grounds. We carried our man in, and laid him on a table with the object of dressing his leg properly, and of getting the man himself into such condition as would enable him to stand the journey back to Antwerp.

Alas! the dressing-station was dest.i.tute of any of the most elementary appliances for the treatment of a seriously wounded man. There was not even a fire, and the room was icy cold. There was no hot water, no brandy, no morphia, no splints, and only a minute quant.i.ty of dressing material. A cupboard with some prehistoric instruments in it was the only evidence of surgery that we could find. The Belgian doctor in charge was doing the best he could, but what he could be expected to do in such surroundings I do not know. He seemed greatly relieved to hear that I was a surgeon, and he was most kind in trying to find me everything for which I asked. From somewhere we managed to raise some brandy and hot water, and a couple of blankets, and with the dressings we had brought with us we made the best of a bad job, and started for home with our patient. Antwerp was eight miles away. It was a bitterly cold evening, and darkness was coming on. It seemed improbable that we could get our patient home alive, but it was perfectly certain that he would die if we left him where he was. It seemed such a pity that a little more forethought and common sense could not have been expended on that dressing- station, and yet we found that with rare exceptions this was the regular state of affairs, whether in. Belgium or France. It seems to be impossible for our professional brethren on the Continent to imagine any treatment apart from a completely equipped hospital. Their one idea seems to be to get the wounded back to a base hospital, and if they die on the way it cannot be helped. The dressing-stations are mere offices for their redirection, where they are carefully ticketed, but where little else is done. Of course, it is true that the combatant forces are the first consideration, and that from their point of view the wounded are simply in the way, and the sooner they are carried beyond the region of the fighting the better; but if this argument were carried to its logical conclusion, there should be no medical services at the front at all, except what might be absolutely necessary for the actual transport of the wounded. I am glad to say that our later experiences showed that the British influence was beginning to make itself felt, and that the idea of the wounded as a mere useless enc.u.mbrance was being modified by more humanitarian considerations.

And in a long war it must be obvious to the most hardened militarist that by the early treatment of a wound many of its more severe consequences may be averted, and that many a man may thus be saved for further service. In a war of exhaustion, the ultimate result might well depend on how the wounded were treated in the field.

The road was crowded with traffic, and it was quite dark before we reached Antwerp. Our patient did not seem much the worse for his journey, though that is perhaps faint praise. We soon had him in our theatre, which was always warm and ready for cases such as this.

With energetic treatment his condition rapidly improved, and when we left him to go to dinner we felt that our afternoon had not been entirely wasted.

XII. The Bombardment--Night

We had had plenty of notice that we might expect a bombardment. On Sat.u.r.day a boat had left with most of the English Colony. On Tuesday morning the Germans sent in official notice that they intended to bombard the city, and in the evening the Government and the Legations left by boat with the remainder of our countrymen who lived in Antwerp. We had faced the prospect and made every preparation for it, and yet when it did come it came upon us as a surprise. It is sometimes fortunate that our capacities for antic.i.p.ation are so limited.

It was almost midnight on Wednesday, the 7th of October, and two of us were sitting in the office writing despatches home. The whole building was in absolute silence, and lit only by the subdued light of an occasional candle. In the distance we could hear the dull booming of the guns. Suddenly above our heads sounded a soft whistle, which was not the wind, followed by a dull thud in the distance. We looked at one another.

Again it came, this time a little louder. We ran up to the roof and stood there for some moments, fascinated by the scene. From the dull grey sky came just sufficient light to show the city laying in darkness around us, its tall spires outlined as dim shadows against the clouds.

Not a sound arose from streets and houses around, but every few seconds there came from the south-east a distant boom, followed by the whistle of a sh.e.l.l overhead and the dull thud of its explosion. The whole scene was eerie and uncanny in the extreme. The whistle changed to a shriek and the dull thud to a crash close at hand, followed by the clatter of falling bricks cutting sharply into the stillness of the night. Plainly this was going to be a serious business, and we must take instant measures for the safety of our patients.

At any moment a sh.e.l.l might enter one of the wards, and--well, we had seen the hospital at Lierre. We ran downstairs and told the night nurses to get the patients ready for removal, whilst we went across to the gymnasium to arouse those of the staff who slept there. We collected all our stretchers, and began the methodical removal of all our patients to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

In a few minutes there was a clang at the front-door bell, and our nurses and a.s.sistants who lived outside began to arrive. Two of the dressers had to come half a mile along the Malines road, where the sh.e.l.ls were falling thickest, and every few yards they had had to shelter in doorways from the flying shrapnel. The bombardment had begun in earnest now, and sh.e.l.ls were fairly pouring over our heads. We started with the top floor, helping down those patients who could walk, and carrying the rest on stretchers. When that was cleared we took the second, and I think we all breathed a sigh of relief when we heard that the top floor was empty. We were fortunate in having a bas.e.m.e.nt large enough to accommodate all our patients, and wide staircases down which the stretchers could be carried without difficulty; but the patients were all full-grown men, and as most of them had to be carried it was hard work.

I shall never forget the scene on the great staircase, crowded with a long train of nurses, doctors, and dressers carrying the wounded down as gently and as carefully as if they were in a London hospital. I saw no sign of fear in any face, only smiles and laughter. And yet overhead was a large gla.s.s roof, and there was no one there who did not realize that a sh.e.l.l might come through that roof at any moment, and that it would not leave a single living person beneath it. It made one proud to have English blood running in one's veins. We had 113 wounded, and within an hour they were all in places of safety; mattresses and blankets were brought, and they were all made as comfortable as possible for the night. Four were grave intestinal cases. Seven had terrible fractures of the thigh, but fortunately five of these had been already repaired with steel plates, and their transport was easy; in fact, I met one of them on the staircase, walking with the support of a dresser's arm, a week after the operation! Some of the patients must have suffered excruciating pain in being moved, but one never heard a murmur, and if a groan could not be kept back, it was pa.s.sed over with a jest for fear we should notice it. It was a magnificent bas.e.m.e.nt, with heavy arched roofs everywhere, and practically sh.e.l.l-proof. The long pa.s.sages and the large kitchens were all tiled and painted white, and as the electric light was still running and the whole building was well warmed, it would have been difficult to find a more cheerful and comfortable place. Coffee was provided for everyone, and when I took a last look round the night nurses were taking charge as if nothing had happened, and the whole place was in the regular routine of an ordinary everyday hospital.