What a contrast to the scene within! The restless figures of the wounded—the busy nurses.
Everyone is exhausted, for it is an almost superhuman task for seven women to tackle by day and by night; but they say the Army Nursing Service will be here in sufficient numbers soon. The lady doctors have been invaluable, their zeal unflagging. They are splendid operators, and in the midst of the worst rushes never careless. Besides their work here they spend much time at the "Women's Hospital" at a château some three miles out of Boulogne, where everything is run by volunteer women workers, who act as doctors, nurses, orderlies and quartermasters.
The theatre looks quite smart, with the large sterilisers that have been installed and the operating table. What tales those whitewashed walls could tell!
Will those who are knitting away at home ever realise the value of their own handiwork, I wonder?
If they could but see the eager faces of the men as the meagre stores are issued, and they receive those ill-fitting coats, and socks, and card-board-footed shoes (the nightingales they one and all disdain); could they for a single moment glance at the contented expression of the "movable cases" as they wriggle out of their creeping shirts, so torn, so stiff with congealed blood and stained with Flanders mud, into garments that are both soft and warm, all those hours of patient knitting would be well rewarded; they would know they are not labouring in vain.
In spite of the so-called "Red Cross Store Room" that is being replenished daily by stock drawn from all sources, of course there aren't enough things to go round, and although we grouse at the wise quartermaster's inquiries as to whether each article we need is an imperative necessity or not, in our heart of hearts we know him to be in the right.
EXTEMPORISED OPERATING THEATRE AT A CLEARING STATION
"The theatre looks quite smart with the huge sterilisers that have been installed and the operating table"
A strange thing happened to-day. A man came in with a badly shattered forearm. I dressed it myself, and can vouch for the fact that in other respects he seemed fit enough.