Fortunately, a notice had come from the Railway Company that morning to say that the baggage was at the station, and Orderly Hodgson had started early to retrieve it. She spent hours dealing with the intricate formalities required by the Company and finding transport for the baggage; but she stuck to it resolutely, and drove in triumph to the door with it a few minutes before the first ambulance full of wounded arrived. The stretchers and the packing cases were carried into the hall side by side, and while the nurses and surgeons cared for the patients, the orderlies unpacked the equipment.
As those first stretchers with their weary burdens were carried in, a thrill of pity and dismay ran through the women who saw them. The mud-stained khaki and the unshaven faces spoke to them no less than the wounded limbs and shattered nerves. Here, for the first time, they touched the wastage and the desolation of war. In every wounded man they saw some other woman’s husband or son, and the thought of those other women made a double claim on their energy and sympathy. The battered, inarticulate, suffering men who lay there needed service, and they braced themselves for the work before them.
Organisation developed automatically: nurses for night duty were sent to rest; the theatre sister began to sterilise; chloroform, instruments, drugs and dressings were produced and distributed.
Late in the afternoon a message from the Chief Surgeon was brought from the wards:
‘Dr. Anderson wishes to know if the theatre is ready and if she can operate to-night.’
‘It is ready now,’ was the answer.
And the surgeons operated till a late hour that night.
The hospital was a smooth-running concern by the end of the week. Nurses and patients had settled down in the wards; work in the operating theatre was going well; and though it was far from perfect in all its details, the comfort of the officers and men was assured, and their contentment and satisfaction with their surroundings were very pleasant to see.
CHAPTER IV
FIRST DAYS IN PARIS
The streets of Paris were strangely altered and unfamiliar, with closed shops and whole blocks of houses empty and shuttered. The Government was at Bordeaux, and the Louvre and all places of amusement were shut. Only the churches were crowded, and from their dark interiors the side altars shone out, brilliantly lighted and surrounded by women and children on their knees. Day by day they trooped past the altars, lighting the candles and offering their prayers; and day by day the casualty lists grew longer and the number of crêpe veils in the streets increased.