THE TRAGEDY OF PAIN
I think I may get this posted by a war correspondent who is going home, but I never know whether my letters reach you or not, for yours, if you write them, never reach me. I can't begin to tell you all that is happening, and it is really beyond what one is able to describe. The tragedy of pain is the thing that is most evident, and there is the roar and the racket of it and the everlasting sound of guns. The war seems to me now to mean nothing but torn limbs and stretchers. All the doctors say that never have they seen men so wounded.
The day that we got here was the day that Dixmude was bombarded, and our ten ambulances (motor) went out to fetch in wounded. These were shoved in anywhere, dying and dead, and our men went among the shells with buildings falling about them and took out all they could. Except where the fire is hottest one women goes with each car. So far I have been doing ward work, but one of the doctors is taking me on an ambulance this afternoon. Most of the women who go are very good chauffeurs themselves, so they are chosen before a person who can't drive. They are splendid creatures, and funk nothing, and they are there to do a little dressing if it is needed.
The firing is awfully heavy to-day. They say it is the big French guns that have got up. Two of our ambulances have had miraculous escapes after being hit. Things happen too quickly to know how to describe them. To-day when I went out to breakfast an old village woman aged about 70 was brought in wounded in two places. I am not fond of horrors.
We have been given an empty house for the staff, the owners having quitted it in a panic and left everything, children's toys on the carpet, and beds unmade. The hospital is a college for priests, all of whom have fled. Into this building the wounded are carried day and night, and the surgeons are working in shifts and can't get the work done. We are losing, alas! so many patients. Nothing can be done for them, and I always feel so glad when they are gone. I don't think anyone can realise what it is to be just behind the line of battle, and I fear there would not be much recruiting if people at home could see our wards. One can only be thankful for a hospital like this in the thick of things, for we are saving lives, and not only so, but saving the lives of men who perhaps have lain three days in a trench or a turnip-field undiscovered and forgotten.
As soon as a wounded man has been attended to and is able to be put on a stretcher again he is sent to Calais. We have to keep emptying the wards for other patients to come in, and besides, if the fighting comes this way, we shall have to fall back a little further.
We have a river between us and the Germans, so we shall always know when they are coming and get a start and be all right.
Your loving
S. Macnaughtan.