I was unfortunately not able to join them until January 1915; and never
did time drag so slowly as in those intervening months. I spent the time
in attending lectures and hospital, driving a car and generally picking
up every bit of useful information I could. The day arrived at last and
Coley and I were, with the exception of the Queen of the Belgians
(travelling incognito) and her lady-in-waiting, the only women on board.

The Hospital we had given us was for Belgian Tommies, and called
Lamarck, and had been a Convent school before the War. There were fifty
beds for "_blessés_" and fifty for typhoid patients, which at that
period no other Hospital in the place would take. It was an extremely
virulent type of pneumonic typhoid. These cases were in a building apart
from the main Hospital and across the yard. Dominating both buildings
was the cathedral of Notre Dame, with its beautiful East window facing
our yard.

The top floor of the main building was a priceless room and reserved for
us. Curtained off at the far end were the beds of the chauffeurs who had
to sleep on the premises while the rest were billeted in the town; the
other end resolved itself into a big untidy, but oh so jolly, sitting
room. Packing cases were made into seats and piles of extra blankets
were covered and made into "tumpties," while round the stove stood the
interminable clothes horses airing the shirts and sheets, etc., which
Lieutenant Franklin brooded over with a watchful eye! It was in this
room we all congregated at ten o'clock every morning for twenty precious
minutes during which we had tea and biscuits, read our letters, swanked
to other wards about the bad cases we had got in, and generally talked
shop and gossiped. There was an advanced dressing station at Oostkerke
where three of the girls worked in turn, and we also took turns to go up