In the buffet there were double rows, and, as it was very spacious, the numbers it accommodated were proportionately great. In the ticket office were kept all the medical and surgical stores and requisites. In the telegraph office was the operation theatre, and in the station-master's private bureau the instruments to serve it were kept; there the surgeon on night duty remained during the period of his watch. In this room there was always a good fire, and outside the door paced up and down a German sentinel on guard.
At the other side of the platform, approached by the level crossing, we found the goods department, and the carriage, waggon, and engine depôt, which latter, in its general appearance, was nothing more or less than an immense shed, with open archways at both ends. In this most airy apartment lay, also, numbers of wounded.
When we pointed to several large holes in the roof (which had been made by falling shells a few days previously), and then to the open archways, suggesting to our friends that they were, perhaps, a degree too airy to be beneficial, Prof. Nussbaum informed us that the wounded in this place got better more rapidly than those in the Salles, who were kept warm, and completely protected from the weather.
We remained there nearly two hours, seeing the more interesting cases dressed, and then looked on at an operation by Nussbaum. As several of the parcel and lamp offices were also occupied by wounded, it may be conceived that the whole mass of buildings around the platforms made a very extensive hospital. It was a curious and novel sight, and for a long time afterwards I never entered a large terminus of the kind without speculating on the numbers of wounded that it would accommodate.
We were received very kindly by our German friends; and before evening were in charge of the whole place, having an efficient staff of nurses to assist us, and to look after the wants of our invalids.
As we had now enjoyed a considerable experience in the working of a military field-hospital, it took us but a few hours to get into the routine; and the Germans were evidently pleased at seeing how briskly we fell into line, and took up from them the whole management.
With regard to the Barrack across the river, which was full of sick and fever patients, it had been, I say, assigned to us; but we never actually took it over. The German surgeons who were in charge had to join their field-hospital, which was about to move in the track of the army. Nor did the Bavarians possess any medical reserve in Orleans at this time, so that we came to their assistance at a juncture when we were much needed; and they showed themselves extremely grateful. When, however, they were on the point of delivering up the second hospital to us, their orders to move were rescinded; and we were saved, thereby, an amount of labour and responsibility, to which our limited staff would have been altogether unequal.