October 30th. We worked till midnight and were on duty again by 7.30 this morning. From our billets to the hospital is nearly half an hour's walk, which, over the rough cobblestones in the blinding rain, is hardly attractive. At any rate, it has the advantage of clearing the haunting smell of the gas-gangrene out of our nostrils. As we came on duty this morning, laden with every old journal we could find, a huge, burly Scotsman let himself down from the ambulance train. We gave him a newspaper, but he was inclined to talk. He is the first man I've met so far who has signified his longing to get back to the firing-line.
"While I've a limb left," he said, "I should like to have a pot at the Germans. And I can fire my machine as well with two fingers as with five—if they'll let me."
AT AN IMPROVISED CASUALTY CLEARING STATION
"This is Heaven, Sister!"
The cause of his indignation was the mutilated corpse of a Red Cross nurse they had found in a little village where the Germans had been.
"God knows how far they'd dragged her round with them, but she was horribly mutilated," he said with a shiver. "I'm a big man, but our major was bigger, yet neither of us could help choking. And can ye wonder we want to get at 'em again?"
The worst part of the wounds is the fearful sepsis and the impossibility of getting them anything like clean.
"First time I've had my boots off for seven weeks!" is the kind of exclamation that recurs all day, as we literally cut them off. Hardly any of the boots have been off for three weeks, with the result that they seem glued on, whilst the feet are like iron, the nails like claws.
Some of the men have not had their wounds dressed since the first field dressing was applied, for the simple reason that the rush on the hospital trains makes it impossible to attend to any but the worst cases, many of whom, as it is, are dying of hæmorrhage, accelerated by the jolting on the journey.
There is no time to do anything but the dressings, and if we did want to wash the patients there is nothing but the red handkerchiefs we hang round the lights for shades by night, for towels by day.