"Why don't you come too? It's a case of all hands aboard!" said one. It was thus I came to work at the first clearing station at the base. Such was the stationary hospital when, laden with all the loaves we could carry to supplement the ration biscuits, we set to work in the "casualty ward" this afternoon.
For the thousand wounded likely to come through daily there are six fully-trained nurses and myself, besides the male staff of R.A.M.C. doctors and orderlies, and two or three Red Cross surgeons and lady doctors.
Ten beds and a number of sacks of straw form the main equipment. Planks, supported by two packing-cases, are the dressing-table. At one end men are engaged in putting in three extemporary baths, others whitewashing the walls.
A boatload had just left for England as I came in, and we proceeded to get a meal for those who remained. But it was a struggle to get sufficient tea out of the orderlies, who had been working all night and were dead beat. The men's delight at the bread and old newspapers we had brought in was incredible.
Those who were able to, clustered round the solitary stove in the centre. Great rough, bearded fellows, covered with mud from the trenches in which they have lived for weeks, how different they look from those who set out! The worst cases lay on their stretchers as they had arrived. One said simply, as I took him his tea, "This is heaven, Sister."
A tall, dark man entered—the C.O., someone said. "Take those two Germans down to the boat," I heard him order. Then, turning to us, "You'd better come to our mess-room and get some tea yourselves," he said. "Four trainloads are expected in shortly."
We trooped into the small sanctum dignified by the name of "mess-room," where the Major's orderly was busy preparing tea on a Primus stove. There was no milk, but the bitter black beverage out of the large tin mugs was welcome none the less. Someone had secured a cake that we cut with a sword as the cleanest thing present.
Next to the mess-room are the officers' quarters (into which we were privileged to take one glance)—small whitewashed cubicles furnished with a camp bed, a shaving-glass about three inches by six inches in size, and an old sugar-box converted into a washstand.
Tea finished, we set to work to get "beds" ready for the next batch, the first of the four trainloads expected. Ten bedsteads for a thousand men! It sounds almost incredible, but it is nevertheless true; and although we are told that more are expected at any moment, we have only wooden pallets at present and a limited supply of blankets. One to lie on, two for cover, a coat for a pillow was the order of the day until a pile of mattresses came in.