e tangible form.

After finishing one case each, the four surgeons and anaesthetists
changed back again.

"Surgery, isn't so bad as I thought it would be."

"Isn't it--you wait till you get an abdominal!"

"Giving an anaesthetic's rather a ticklish affair. I thought my man was
going to choke to death, he got so blue in the face."

A few more Germans with slight flesh wounds that only required dressing
were brought in, and then the work of the night shift was over.

The surgeons, anaesthetists and sisters trooped out gaily to have tea and
cakes in the shed opposite the entrance to the theatre.

Our work was not yet over, for we still had to put everything in order
for the day shift.

The operating theatre looked like a butcher's shop. There were big pools
and splashes of blood on the floor. Bits of flesh and skin and bone were
littered everywhere. The gowns of the orderlies were stained and
bespattered with blood and yellow picric acid. Each bucket was full of
blood-sodden towels, splints, and bandages, with a foot, or a hand, or
a severed knee-joint overhanging the rim.

Two of us got pails of hot water and set to work with swabs, scrubbing
brushes and soap. We mopped up the pools of blood and wrung our swabs
out over the pails until the dirty water became dark red. We scrubbed
till our arms ached. With our bare hands we brushed the bits of flesh,
skin and bone into little heaps and threw them into the buckets, and
these we emptied into a big tub after picking out the amputated limbs
which we carried off to the incinerator to be burnt. Within an hour and
a half the theatre was clean and tidy.

A heap of blankets and articles of clothing had been left in a corner.
We loaded them on to a stretcher and carried them to a small tent some
distance away, taking a candle with us.

We folded the blankets and stacked them carefully. Some of them were
clammy and slippery to the touch. Others were hard and stiff. The rank
smell of stale, clotted blood was sickening.

The clothing we carried to the pack store, a large marquee, where we
sorted it, putting great-coats, tunics and shirts on separate heaps. I
was holding a shirt when I became aware of a tickling sensation across
one hand. I hurriedly dropped the garment and lowered the candle so that
I could see it distinctly. It was swarming with lice.

We walked out into the darkness and made for our own marquee. As we
passed the prisoners' ward an orderly called out fr