I have a big job for you. Will you do it? I know you are the person for
it, and you will be prompt and interested.

The wounded are suffering from hunger as much as from their wounds. In
most places, such as dressing-stations and railway-stations, nothing is
provided for them at all, and many men are left for two or three days
without food.

I wish I could describe it all to you! These wounded men are picked up
after a fight and taken anywhere--very often to some farmhouse or inn,
where a Belgian surgeon claps something on to the wounds or ties on a
splint, and then our (Dr. Munro's) ambulances come along and bring the
men into the Field Hospital if they are very bad, or if not they are
taken direct to a station and left there. They may, and often do, have
to wait for hours till a train loads up and starts. Even those who are
brought to the Field Hospital have to turn out long before they can walk
or sit, and they are carried to the local station and put into covered
horse-boxes on straw, and have to wait till the train loads up and
starts. You see everything has to be done with a view to sudden
evacuation. We are so near to the firing-line that the Germans may sweep
on our way at any time, and then every man has to be cleared out somehow
(we have a heap of ambulances), and the staff is moved off to some safer
place. We did a bolt of this sort to Poperinghe one day, but after being
there two days the fighting swayed the other way and we were able to
come back.

[Page Heading: HUNGER OF THE WOUNDED]

Well, during all these shiftings and waitings the wounded get nothing to
eat. I want some travelling-kitchens, and I want you to see about the