Lights out at 9.
Much attention was attracted by our novel form of hospital, and all day long, visitors, official and otherwise, flocked to see all the arrangements. These seemed to be highly approved.
The kitchen department was under the supervision of Miss M. Stanley; dispensary under Miss Wolseley; laundry, Miss Johnstone; linen, Mrs. Dearmer. The X-ray Department was managed by Dr. Tate and Mr. Agar. The Secretary was Miss McGlade, and the Hon. Treasurer, John Greenhalgh.
The sanitation was in the hands of Miss B. Kerr, and was a subject of interested and invariably of favourable criticism. And it required some system to cope successfully with open-air sanitation, on a fixed spot, for more than two hundred people. Colonel Hunter, sometimes twice a day, brought visitors to whom he was anxious to show certain features in the scheme of which he specially approved. He told me that we were useful to him as object-lessons, and he cabled home in favourable terms to the War Office, concerning our hospital work, and also, later, concerning the dispensary scheme, with which he was well pleased.
It soon, indeed, came to be considered quite the correct thing for visitors to Kragujevatz to come up and visit the camp, and the only relief from the monotony of showing people round, was the variety of language which had to be employed. Sometimes, simultaneously, a Serbian, who, in addition to his own language, only spoke German, another who only spoke French, another who could only talk Serbian, and perhaps an Englishman who could only talk English—these must all be entertained together. It was like the juggler's feat with balls in the air.
Almost everybody of note in Serbia visited us at one time or another, and our visitors' book, now, alas! in the hands of the Germans, was an interesting record.
His Royal Highness the Crown Prince (Alexander) honoured us with a visit as soon as he learnt that he would be able to converse in French or German. He speaks good English, but has presumably not had the same opportunities of practice in this language. But in the visitors' book, which he took back to the palace for the purpose, he wrote a page and a half, in excellent English, describing his impression of the work of the hospital, and expressing his gratitude for the help given to his brave soldiers.
A fine fellow this Prince: straightforward, unostentatious, full of sympathy and quick intelligence; in every way worthy of a throne. He looked at every detail of the camp with critical interest, then as he walked, in the scorching sun, from the hospital quarters to the tents reserved for the staff, he asked, as he looked around, "Have you no sun-shelters?" We had none, and he immediately turned to a member of his staff, and told him to see that "ladniaks," or arbours, made of young trees, and dead branches, were at once arranged for us.
Accordingly, in a few days, a procession of wagons arrived, carrying a whole forest of young trees for props, and dead branches for roof and sides; and arbours were erected, and much comfort to us all was the result.
On the evening of the Prince's visit, the convalescent soldiers celebrated the event by giving us an impromptu entertainment after supper. Dressed in their light-coloured pyjamas, scarlet bed-jackets, and big mushroom-shaped straw hats, they formed, outside our mess tent, a picturesque group, silhouetted against the white tents which were aglow with fairy lamps, and looked like inflated stars.