Sometimes, of course, we obtained a lift in an ambulance or private car, for even to-day the laws of meum and tuum are less rigorous here than at home. It is no unusual occurrence for a driver going along a desolate road with no passengers to offer a lift to any solitary pedestrian he may find on the road. He will not, needless to say, go out of his way if duty forbids, but just drop his passenger at the nearest point to the destination for which he is bound. Nor, in a place where there are hardly any public vehicles to be had, is one shy of "asking for a lift," a proceeding which one can hardly picture at home.
November 18th. Out of evil comes good, and if ill-health has temporarily paralysed my activities, it has at least given me time and opportunity to see something of the environment of the place that has been our home for so long.
There is one hospital base fringing the sea and situated in the pine forests which once formed one of the smartest little golfing centres of the coast whither Fate took me. There can be no harm in describing it, for already we are told a most exact and minute description has appeared in the German medical papers!
Almost a year ago we had visited it, seen the magnificent wards of the —— Hospital that has now been converted for the use of officers, and visited a large French hospital.
It had been run almost entirely by untrained voluntary Englishwomen with a modicum of experience who apparently diagnosed their own cases and treated them accordingly. Well I recall the hall of dusky Zouaves gobbling up their midday meal, or disposing of what victuals they did not require on to the sanded floor, just as a vision of English beauty, clad in the daintiest of nursing creations, tripped out of a side ward, her eyes aglow with excitement.
"I know he's got enteric," she exclaimed cheerfully to our cicerone, pointing to her patient and glancing at the Red Cross book in her hand. "I know he's got enteric, and I shall treat him for it."
Exactly how many patients that charming girl managed to dispose of I haven't discovered, but, as the Court Circular announced her marriage shortly afterwards, we may assume that the Zouaves proved enough. What the hospital lacked in operating theatres in those days it made up for in "dressing-rooms," where doctors and nurses worked side by side, and when aseptic conditions always, antiseptic measures generally, were things unknown. And now? Along the roadside lie huts with accommodation for over twenty thousand patients, with all the requisite medical staff, and within quite a small area no fewer than four of our canteens have replaced the small tent of other days, whilst individual enterprises run by free lances, commonly known by their nicknames of "Lady Angelina Flapcabbage" and "Mrs. Always Huntem," still flourish.
November 19th. Of the observation airships that have passed daily over our field on their way to prospect in the Channel, I have said but little; yet they are a very interesting item of our daily programme as they search for mines and torpedoes on a still day, wirelessing their messages back to the aerodrome some miles away.