It had been decided by the German authorities that beds in the Hôpital Civil were to be reserved solely for cases requiring operation. Dr Debu therefore found that it was no longer possible for me to stay, and arranged for my being sent to another hospital.
On the 21st October I was taken away from my kind friends, and for the first time carried by Germans on a German stretcher. Outside the hospital a motor ambulance was waiting. The night was dark, wet, and very cold. My leg was soon numbed with cold, as the ambulance did not start for nearly a quarter of an hour. Through the open end I could see a flickering street lamp which threw glinting reflections on the wet cobble-stones.
A martial step, with the clink of spurs, woke echoes down the silent street; a German officer passed, came into view for an instant under the lamp, then clanked away into darkness.
The ambulance driver and another soldier, who had been conversing together in low tones, stood rigidly to attention until the sound of the officer's steps had died away in the distance. Then the French soldier for whom we were waiting was carried down and placed in the ambulance beside me, the door was closed, shutting out the cold air and the dripping street. "Eh bien, mon lieutenant," said a voice from the stretcher, "nous voila partis! My father was taken prisoner in 1870, and voila, I am now also a prisoner, but that is nothing—on les aura, cette fois ci, on les aura ces sales têtes d'alboches!"
CHAPTER IV.
LE NUMÉRO 106.
The school building, hurriedly transformed on the outbreak of war into a hospital, forms three sides of a quadrangle, the fourth side of which is blocked by a high wall, so that in the courtyard thus formed the sun can never shine.
This was the hospital of the French Red Cross—L'Hôpital Auxiliaire du Territoire, No. 106, Union des femmes de France. The accommodation for patients is limited to five rooms, all of which look on to the dismal courtyard. "Salle un," to which I was taken on arrival, the only room at all resembling a hospital ward, is a long lofty room running the whole length of one side of the quadrangle.
Along each side of the room beds of various sorts and sizes were ranged several yards apart. Mine was a large and brand-new double bedstead with large ornamental brass knobs. The sheets were of the finest Cambrai linen. Under several layers of blankets, and surrounded on all sides by hot bricks wrapped in flannel, I soon began to recover from the effects of my journey in the ambulance.
The first thing that struck me about my new quarters was the number of nurses and orderlies, most of whom were local volunteers whose experience of hospitals dated from the German invasion. They were relieved from night work by a number of extra volunteers attached to the hospital, who each took one night a week.
