of the
bandages were visible moving as far along the parapet as the sight could
could reach.

Macgillivray moved out from the broken trench and hurried across the
open. There were not more than fifty yards to cross, but in that narrow
space the bodies lay huddled singly and heaped in little clumps. They
reminded one exactly of the loafers who sprawl asleep and sunning
themselves in the Park on a Sunday afternoon. Only the dead lay in that
narrow strip; the living had been moved or had moved themselves long
since. Macgillivray pushed on into the trench, along it to a
communication trench, and up and down one alley after another, until he
reached the most advanced trench which the British held. Here a
pandemonium of fighting was still in progress, but to this Macgillivray
after the first couple of minutes paid no heed. A private with a bullet
through his throat staggered back from his loophole and collapsed in the
doctor's arms and after that Macgillivray had his hands too full with
casualties to concern himself with the fighting. Several dug-outs had
been filled with wounded, and the doctor crawled about amongst these and
along the trench, applying dressings and bandages as fast as he could
work, seeing the men placed on stretchers or sent back as quickly as
possible towards the rear. He stayed there until a message reached him
by one of the stretcher-bearers who had been back to the dressing station
that he was badly needed there, and that Mr. Dewar hoped he would get
back soon to help them.

Certainly the dressing station was having a busy time. The darkness had
made it possible to get back hundreds of casualties from places whence
they dare not be moved by day. They were pouring into the station
through the doctors' hands--three of them were hard at work there by this
time--and out again to the ambulances as rapidly as they could be
handled. Despite the open, shell-wrecked end and the broken roof, the
cottage was stiflingly close and sultry, the heavy scent of blood hung
sickeningly in the stagnant air, and the whole place swarmed with
pestering flies. There was no time to do much for the patients. All had
been more or less efficiently bandaged by the regimental
stretcher-bearers who picked them up. The doctors did little more than
examine the bandagings, loosening these and tightening those, making
injections to ward off tetanus, performing an operation or an amputation
now and again in urgent cases,