cenic effect and
to notice how well staged it was. A waiter ran for me. I ran for
dressings to one of our ambulances, and we knelt in the right attitude
beside the hero in his scarlet clothes, while the "lady of the bureau"
begged for the bullet!

In the evening Lady Bagot and I worked at the railway-sheds till 3 a.m.
One immense shed had 700 wounded in it. The night scene, with its
inevitable accompaniment of low-turned lamps and gloom, was one I shall
not forget. The railway-lines on each side of the covered platform were
spread with straw, and on this wounded men, bedded down like cattle,
slept. There were rows of them sleeping feet to feet, with straw over
them to make a covering. I didn't hear a grumble, and hardly a groan.
Most of them slept heavily.

Near the door was a row of Senegalese, their black faces and gleaming
eyes looking strange above the straw; and further on were some Germans,
whom the French authorities would not allow our men to touch; then rows
of men of every colour and blood; Zouaves, with their picturesque dress
all grimed and colourless; Turcos, French, and Belgians. Nearly all had
their heads and hands bound up in filthy dressings. We went into the
dressing-station at the far end of the great shed and dressed wounds
till about 3 o'clock, then we passed through the long long lines of
sleeping wounded men again and went home.

* * * * *

_To Lady Clementine Waring._

_8 November._
MY DEAREST CLEMMIE,

I have a big job for you. Will you do it? I know you are the person for
it, and you will be prompt and interested.

The wounded are suffering from hunger as much as from their wounds. In
most places, such as dressing-stations and railway-stations, nothing is
provided for them at all, and many men are left for two or three days
without food.

I wish I could describe it all to you! These wounded men are picked up
after a fight and taken anywhere--very often to some farmhouse or inn,
where a Belgian surgeon claps something on to the wounds or ties on a
splint, and then our (Dr. Munro's) ambulances come along and bring the
men into the Field Hospital if they are very bad, or if not they are
taken direct to a station and left there. They may, and often do, have
to wait for hours till a train loads up and starts. Even those who are
brought to the Field Hospital have to turn out long before they can walk
or sit, and they are carried to the local station and put i