breakfast warm sweaters, helmets, scarfs, and mitts were issued
to each of us and we were wrapped in warm blankets and carried out to a
hospital-train near by. Before I left, however, I wrote out the report
of my reconnoissance of the German trenches and despatched it by
orderly to G. H. Q. All my possessions I carried in my hand in a small
bag not nearly as big as a lady's knitting-bag. My kit was "somewhere
in France" and my uniform had been cut off me and was probably
ascending as incense from some incinerator, in a ritual that was an
appropriate end after much service. Everything was supposed to be
taken out of my pockets (which I have no doubt happened) and sent to me
(which certainly did not happen). I have no sympathy with the old
sanitary sergeant who superintended the last rites in the passing of my
much-lived-in clothes when he was slightly wounded by a bullet from a
cartridge that somehow or other dropped into the fire at the same time.
These incinerators frequently very nearly caused shell-shock to the
sanitary squad, and they might just as well have been in the actual
trenches, for in the gathering up of rubbish around the camp cartridges
would frequently be thrown with it into the fire and explosions would
ensue like the firing of a machine-gun, and bullets would whizz in all
directions. Once a mule got shot, but it's a wonder that other flesh
less valuable was not occasionally punctured, for these incinerators
were just on the edge of the camp and generally had a group round them
of those who preferred being fire-tenders to ramrod-shovers.

The hospital-train bore us with many interruptions and frequent
side-trackings toward the Channel and "Blighty." In England
hospital-trains take precedence over all other traffic, but here in
France there were many other things more important for the winning of
the war than wounded men, so hospital-trains had to step aside and give
the right of way to the shells, guns, cartridges, and food for the men
still facing the foe. So my third night was spent on the rails lying
snugly in a car wrapped in many blankets, and only disturbed by having
to "smoke" a thermometer every two or three hours, and by the nurse
rousing me at six "ack emma" (A. M.) to have my face and hands washed,
which is a mania that afflicts all nurses. A nurse has only one fear,
that of displeasing the doctor, and though all should perish,
everything must be spotless when he makes his rounds.