were not absolutely necessary for
them. They were sent to us. They arrived in char-a-bancs, thirty at a
time. We possessed a tiny hospital, meant for the accommodation of
cases of sudden illness in the camp. It was turned into a
dressing-station.

The wounded men sat or lay on the grass outside waiting for their
turns to go in. They wore the tattered, mud-caked clothes of the
battlefield. The bandages of the casualty clearing-station were round
their limbs and heads. Some were utterly exhausted. They lay down.
They pillowed their heads on their arms and sank into heavy slumber.
Some, half hysterical with excitement, sat bolt upright and talked,
talked incessantly, whether any one listened to them or not. They
laughed too, but it was a horrible kind of laughter. Some seemed
stupefied; they neither slept nor talked. They sat where they were
put, and stared in front of them with eyes which never seemed to
blink.

Most of the men were calm, quiet, and very patient. I think their
patience was the most wonderful thing I ever saw. They suffered, had
suffered, and much suffering was before them. Yet no word of
complaint came from them. They neither cursed God nor the enemy nor
their fate. I have seen dumb animals, dogs and cattle, with this same
look of trustful patience in their faces. But these were men who
could think, reason, feel, and express themselves as animals cannot.
Their patience and their quiet trustfulness moved me so that it was
hard not to weep.

By twos and threes the men were called from the group outside and
passed through the door of the dressing-station. The doctors waited
for them in the surgery. The label on each man was read, his wound
examined. A note was swiftly written ordering certain dressings and
treatment. The man passed into what had been the ward of the
hospital. Here the R.A.M.C. orderlies worked and with them two nurses
spared for our need from a neighbouring hospital. Wounds were
stripped, dressed, rebandaged. Sometimes fragments of shrapnel were
picked out.

The work went on almost silently hour after hour from early in the
morning till long after noon. Yet there was no hurry, no fuss, and I
do not think there was a moment's failure in gentleness. Some hard
things have been said about R.A.M.C. orderlies and about nurses too.
Perhaps they have been deserved occasionally. I saw their work at
close quarters and for many days in that one place, nowhere else and
not again there; but what I