boiling water, sterilising instruments, preparing operating-tables and
beds, etc., etc. As it got later all the lights in the huge ward were
put out, and we went about with little torches amongst the sleeping men,
putting things in order and moving on tip-toe in the dark. Later we
heard that the wounded might not get in till Monday.

The work of this place goes on unceasingly. We all get on well, but I
have not got the communal spirit, and the fact of being a unit of women
is not the side of it that I find most interesting. The communal food is
my despair. I can _not_ eat it. All the same this is a fine experience,
and I hope we'll come well out of it. There is boundless opportunity,
and we are in luck to have a chance of doing our darndest.

_28 September._--Last night I and two orderlies slept over at the
hospital as more wounded were expected. At 11 p.m. word came that "les
blessés" were at the gate. Men were on duty with stretchers, and we went
out to the tram-way cars in which the wounded are brought from the
station, twelve patients in each. The transit is as little painful as
possible, and the stretchers are placed in iron brackets, and are
simply unhooked when the men arrive. Each stretcher was brought in and
laid on a bed in the ward, and the nurses and doctors undressed the men.
We orderlies took their names, their "matricule" or regimental number,
and the number of their bed. Then we gathered up their clothes and put
corresponding numbers on labels attached to them--first turning out the
pockets, which are filled with all manner of things, from tins of
sardines to loaded revolvers. They are all very pockety, but have to be
turned out before the clothes are sent to be baked.

We arranged everything, and then got Oxo for the men, many of whom had
had nothing to eat for two days. They are a nice-looking lot of men and