out and carried into the reception hall and laid upon the floor. At once
each man--the nature of whose wounds permitted it--was given a cup of
hot tea or of cold water, and a cigarette. Two by two they were lifted
on to the trestles, and examined and dressed by the surgeons. Their
fortitude was, as one of the surgeons said to me, uncanny. It was
supernatural. I could not have believed what could be endured without
complaint, often without even a word to express the horrid pain, unless
I had seen it. Amid all that battered, bleeding, shattered flesh and
bone, the human spirit showed itself a very splendid thing that night.
The reception room at last filled to overflowing and could not be
emptied. All the wards and lofts and tents were crammed. By the time the
other station was filled the two had taken in three thousand men. They
remained with us for a week, because the hospital trains were too busy
behind Loos to come our way. Every day every man had to have his wounds
dressed. Some were covered with wounds; many of the wounds were
dangerous, all were painful; and gas gangrene, which the surgeon so
hates to see, had to be fought again and again. The medical staff, seven
in number, worked on day after day, and night after night, skilfully,
tenderly, ruthlessly. There were also a great many operations, and
scores of difficult critical decisions.

As we stepped out from among the blanketed forms I thought bitterly of
the 'glory' of war. Yet if there was any glory in war this was it. It
was here, in this patient suffering and obedience. These men might well
glory in their infirmities. This was heroism, the real thing, the spirit
rising to incredible heights of patient endurance in the foreseen
possible result of positive action for an ideal. The reaction from
battle is overwhelming. Passions that the civilised man simply does not
know, so colourless is his experience of them in ordinary days, are let
loose, anger and terror and horror and lust to kill. So for a while, as