‘We get it ourselves.’
‘Well, but who is your committee?
‘We are the committee.’
‘Ah then,’ he said, with a twinkling eye, ‘then we can talk.’
It was a very pleasant talk, in the course of which the Director General said that he required large units, for small ones were no good to him at that time. And he arranged to take the women doctors on ‘in the usual way’ and to give them charge of a hospital of five hundred or a thousand beds. The staff was to consist of women, with as few R.A.M.C. men as possible. The task of finding doctors and nurses was to rest with the organisers. In the meantime, he asked them to close the hospital in France and to bring the Unit over to London.
Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr. Flora Murray returned to France next day, and the business of closing the hospital in the Château Mauricien began at once. A number of the nursing sisters who had done arduous and devoted work in Paris and Wimereux expressed their intention of joining the Corps in its new hospital, and were consequently hurried off to England, so that they might have a rest and recuperate before the next demand was made upon their health and energy. The quartermaster and orderlies, full of delightful enthusiasm for the future, made short work of the packing and all the winding up of affairs. A large part of the equipment, especially such things as coloured blankets, linen and extras which add to the comfort of wards, were reserved for use in London. The rest was taken over by the Ordnance, to the annoyance of the quartermaster who had to receive it, because it was not according to the scheduled pattern.
Dr. Garrett Anderson and Dr. Flora Murray took an early opportunity of calling upon the Assistant Director of Medical Services, who greeted them with his usual kindness.
‘Come and tell us how you got on with the Director General—what is he going to give you?’ he asked.
‘He is going to put us in charge of a hospital of five hundred and twenty beds in London,’ replied Dr. Garrett Anderson.
‘Good God! he isn’t?’ gasped the colonel, falling back in his chair with surprise. Then, recovering from his astonishment, he added kindly: