e daily round, the
common task, gave quite enough occupation to one member of
the community.

XVIII. Work At Furnes

Our work at Furnes differed in many ways from that at Antwerp.
All its conditions were rougher, and, as we had to deal with a
number of patients out of all proportion to our size, it was
impossible to keep any but a few special cases for any length of
time. We admitted none but the most serious cases, such as
would be instantly admitted to any London hospital, and when I
mention that in five weeks we had just a thousand cases in our
hundred beds, the pressure at which the work was carried on
will be realized. There is no hospital in England, with ten times
the number of beds, that has ever admitted to its wards
anything like this number of serious surgical cases. We were
essentially a clearing hospital, with this important proviso, that
we could, when it was required, carry out at once the heaviest
operative work, and retain special cases as long as we thought
fit. Our object was always to get each patient into such a
condition that he could be transferred back to the base without
injury to his chances of recovery, and without undue pain, and I
believe we saved the life of many a patient by giving him a
night's rest in the Straw Ward, and sending him on next day
with his wound properly dressed and supported. The cases
themselves were of a far more severe type than those we had
at Antwerp. There, indeed, I was astonished at the small
amount of injury that had in many cases resulted from both
shrapnel and bullet wounds, and it was certainly worthy of note
that we had never once in our work there had to perform an
amputation. At Furnes, we drew our patients from the line
between Nieuport and Dixmude, where the fighting was for the
most part at close range and of a most murderous nature.
There were no forts, and the soldiers had little or no protection
from the hail of high-explosive shells which the enemy poured
upon them. In Nieuport and Dixmude themselves the fighting
was frequently from house to house, the most deadly form of
fighting known. The wounds we had to treat were correspondingly
severe--limbs sometimes almost completely torn off, terrible
wounds of the skull, and bullet wounds where large masses of
the tissues had been completely torn away. It was difficult to
see how human beings could survive such awful injuries, and,
indeed, our death-roll was a long one. Added to this, the me