they were to nurse and keep until convalescent; for there was no
stationary hospital behind us, and forty miles of the worst of bad roads
robbed us of the chance of transporting them to the railway.

So every afternoon I went to German planters' houses (empty, of course),
for forty miles around, in a swift Ford car. And back in triumph we bore
bedsteads and soft mattresses that heavy German bodies so lately had
impressed. Warm from the Hun, we brought them to our wounded. Down
pillows, soft eiderdown quilts for painful broken legs; mattresses for
pain-racked bodies. And one's reward the pleasure and appreciation our
men showed at these attempts to ameliorate _their_ lot. They were so
"bucked" to see us coming back at night laden with the treasures of
German linen chests. It would have done your heart good to see their
dirty, unwashed faces grinning at me from lace-edged pillows.
Silk-covered cushions from Hun drawing-rooms for painful amputation
stumps!

So I had the double pleasure, all the expectancy and the delight of
seeing our men so pleased. Forty bedsteads and beds complete we found in
that district, until the bare white-washed walls of the jail were
transformed. White paint, too, we discovered in plenty, and soon our
wards were virginal in their whiteness. And when I tell you that at one
time I had no less than thirteen gunshot fractures of thigh and leg
alone and other wounds in proportion, in the hospital, you may judge how
necessary beds were.

But the natives had nearly always been before us, and the confusion was
indescribable, drawers turned out, the contents strewed upon the floors,
cupboards broken into, and all portable articles removed. Pathetic
traces everywhere of the happy family life before war's devastating