e, Clearing Hospital, and train are blocked with them.
The M.O.'s neither eat nor sleep. I got up early yesterday and went down
to the barge to see if they wanted any extra help (as the other two were
coping with the wounded officers), and had a grim afternoon and evening
there. One M.O., no Sisters, four trained orderlies, and some other men
were there. It was packed with all the worst cases--dying and bleeding
and groaning. After five hours we had three-fourths of them out of their
blood-soaked clothes, dressed, fed, haemorrhage stopped, hands and faces
washed, and some asleep. Two died, and more were dying. They all worked
like bricks. The M.O., and another from the other barge which hadn't
filled up, sent up to the O.D.S., when my hour for night duty there
came, to ask if I could stay, and got leave. At 11 P.M. four Sisters
arrived (I don't know how--they'd been wired for), two for each barge;
so I handed over to them and went to the O.D.S. to relieve the other two
there for night duty. The place was unrecognisable: every corner of
every floor filled with wounded officers--some sitting up and some all
over wounds, and three dying and others critical; and they still kept
coming in. They were all awfully good strewing about the floor--some
soaked to the skin from wet shell holes--on their stretchers, waiting to
be put to bed.

One had had "such a jolly Sunday afternoon" lying in a shell hole with
six inches of water in it and a dead man, digging himself in deeper with
his trench tool whenever the shells burst near him. He was hit in the
stomach.

One officer saw the enemy through a periscope sniping at our wounded.

4 P.M.--In bed. It seems quiet to-day; there are so few guns to be
heard, and not so many ambulances coming. All except the hopeless cases
will have been evacuated by now from all the Field Hospitals. There was
a block last night, and none could be sent on. The Clearing Hospitals
were full, and no trains in.

Those four Sisters from the base had a weird arrival at the barge last
night in a car at 11 P.M. It was a black dark night, big guns going, and
a sudden descent down a ladder into that Nelson's cockpit. They were
awfully bucked when we said, "Oh, I am glad you have come." They buckled
to and set to work right off. The cook, who had been helping
magnificently in the ward, was running after me with hot cocoa
(breakfast was my last meal, except a cup of tea), and promised to give
them some. One wound