"Our Unit left Liverpool for Russia on August 31, 1916; like the Israelites of old, we went out not knowing exactly where we were bound for. We knew only that we had to join the Serbian division of the Russian Army, but where that Division was or how we were to get there we could not tell. We were seventy-five all told, with 50 tons of equipment and sixteen automobiles. We had a special transport, and after nine days over the North Sea we arrived at Archangel.
"From Archangel we were entrained for Russia, and sent down via Moscow to Odessa, receiving there further instructions to proceed to the Roumanian front, where our Serbs were in action.
"We were fourteen days altogether in the train. I remember Dr. Inglis, during those long days on the journey, playing patience, calm and serene, or losing her own patience when the train was stopped and would not go on. Out she would go, and address the Russian officials in strenuous, nervous British—it was often effective. One of our interpreters heard one stationmaster saying: 'There is a great row going on here, and there will be trouble to-morrow if this train isn't got through.'
"At Reni we were embarked on a steamer and barges, and sent down the Danube to a place called Cernavoda, where once more we were disembarked, and proceeded by train and motor to Medjidia, where our first hospital was established in a large barracks on the top of a hill above the town, an excellent mark for enemy aeroplanes. The hospital was ready for wounded two days after our arrival; until then it was a dirty empty building, yet the wounded were received in it some forty-eight hours after our arrival. It was a notable achievement, but for Dr. Inglis obstacles and difficulties were placed in her path for the purpose of being overcome; if the mountains of Mahomet would not move, she removed them!
"In connection with the establishment of these field hospitals I have vivid recollections of her. The great empty upper floor of the barracks at Medjidia, seventy-five of us all in the one room. The lines of camp beds. Dr. Inglis and her officers in one corner; and how quietly in all the noise and hubbub she went to bed and slept. I remember how I had to waken her when certain officials came on the night of our arrival to ask when we would be ready for the wounded. 'Say to-morrow,' she said, and slept again!
"'It's a wonder she did not say now,' one of my fellow-officers remarked!
"We were equipped for two field hospitals of 100 beds each, and our second hospital was established close to the firing-line at Bulbulmic. We were at Bulbulmic and Medjidia only some three weeks when we had to retreat."
Three weeks of strenuous work at these two places ended in a sudden evacuation and retreat—Hospital B and the Transport got separated from Hospital A. We can only, of course, follow the fortunes of Hospital A, which was directly under Dr. Inglis.
The night of the retreat is made vivid for us by Dr. Inglis:
"The station was a curious sight that night. The flight was beginning. A crowd of people was collected at one end with boxes and bundles and children. One little boy was lying on a doorstep asleep, and against the wall farther on lay a row of soldiers. On the bench to the right, under the light, was a doctor in his white overall, stretched out sound asleep between the two rushes of work at the station dressing-room; and a Roumanian officer talked to me of Glasgow, where he had once been invited out to dinner, so he had seen the British 'custims.' It was good to feel those British customs were still going quietly on, whatever was happening here—breakfasts coming regularly, hot water for baths, and everything as it should be. It was probably absurd, but it came like a great wave of comfort to feel that Britain was there, quiet, strong, and invincible, behind everything and everybody."