A doctor is the
only man who can awe a woman and obtain perfect obedience. Of course I
am referring to them professionally, and not in their domestic
relations. I knew a nurse in a military hospital who woke up a
patient, who was enjoying his first sound sleep for weeks, to
administer a sleeping-draft. When she was remonstrated with she said
"the doctor ordered it." In France there has been since the war much
"coal-saving," and had it not been that I had been careful to have with
me emergency rations of blankets, I would have perished with the cold.
I was told that the engine-drivers were given a commission on what coal
they saved, so all the steam we got through the warming-pipes hardly
took the frost off them. Only the men in the bottom cots were able to
see the scenery we passed through, and we up-stairs could have murdered
them with pleasure as they kept calling out: "By George! You should
see this!" "That's the funniest sight I've seen in my life!" "Isn't
that a lovely sight!" etc. But journeys, even on French railways, come
to an end eventually, though it only be second-class traffic, and with
much joy did we welcome the news that we were running into Rouen.

In the small hours of the morning with the mist still trailing through
the streets we were driven to the Infirmary for Aged Women (which they
had vacated), and where was housed Number Eight General Hospital.
After our labels had been examined and checked with our wounds, and it
was quite evident that we were "les hommes blesses" and not baggage, we
were carried upstairs and allotted to our wards according to the part
of the body in which we were wounded. They had some difficulty in my
case, and as I feared that they might be carrying me from ward to ward
all day and night I asked them to look on the other side of my tag to
see if it was not marked in red: "Fragile, With Care." There was in
the ward where I eventually anchored a V. A. D. (Voluntary Aid
Detachment) nurse who will ever live in my memory as the gentlest and
most attentive of all that I have known. You could not raise your hand
or turn in your sleep without her gliding noiselessly to your bedside
to see if you wanted anything. A hundred times would she straighten
the pillows, if you fancied you would get extra comfort another way,
and she ever had ready a hot glass of milk to make you sleep the
better. She was a Canadian, and if there are many more like her among
the Canadian wome