[Sidenote: Scarcity of nurses.]

The Greek Staff shared a round bowl of a mountain valley, a few miles
back from the front lines, with a clearing station. The equipment of the
little hospital had mostly been provided by the British Red Cross, but
the Venizelists had made a brave effort to furnish the staff themselves.
There were two French-trained Greek surgeons, a Greek matron, Greek
orderlies, and two Greek nurses. Since the attack began there had been
work for a dozen of the latter, but--as it had been impossible for the
women of most of the Venizelist families to get away from Old Greece--no
others were available. An English nurse, who had marched in the retreat
of the Serbians, and a French nurse from a Saloniki hospital had
volunteered to step into the breach, and these five women were
courageously trying to make up in zeal what they lacked in numbers.

[Sidenote: Working double hours.]

"We are not enough for a double shift since the fighting began," Madame
A----, the matron, had said to me the night of my arrival; "so we are
accomplishing the same end by working double hours. We are working to
atone for the dishonor our King has brought upon our country, just as
our men are fighting to atone for it; and the harder we all work and
fight the sooner it will come about."

The last thing to catch my eye as I looked back from the rim of the
valley when I rode away at midnight had been the flash of a bar of light
on a white uniform, as a tired figure had drooped against the flap of a
hospital tent for a breath of air.