EXTEMPORISED HOSPITAL IN A HUT
"Fifteen thousand wounded are expected down here alone, and to cope with the work every available nook and cranny has been converted into a hospital"
The place has been scoured out, and makes an excellent ward, but for the elements, whose fierceness baffles all efforts to heat the interior.
Apart from the wounded there is no denying that Thomas Atkins has a strong penchant for stuffy rooms. Maybe it is the reaction after months of enforced outdoor life, but the fact remains that if he can shut every door and window, and huddle round a fireplace instead of enjoying the fresh air, he will, without fail, continue to do so.
Icy blasts penetrate the cracks of the unlined wooden wall, rain pours through the ventilators—which the French workmen had unthinkingly built inwards—quite oblivious of the fact that the sleeping figures on the beds are deserving of more consideration. We have just put red lampshades on to mellow the light, and even have dreams of varnishing the floor one day, when things are slack.
Outside, in the marquee devoted to the storage of our tables and usual equipment, we are carrying on our own work—at a disadvantage, to be sure—but still carrying on, to facilitate which an extemporary boiler has been erected near the door.
In the kitchen, where daily we are gleaning undreamt-of wisdom on the scores of ration-drawing, diet sheets, order forms, chaos would reign but for the continual presence of one of us. For the two French girls and two orderlies are tumbling over each other in their anxiety to get things done up to time. As it is, things work admirably, and we are all growing adepts at brandishing heavy meat choppers and cooking in the cauldrons and stewpots, so large that no two women can move them.