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
blesses" 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
boys, with rather handsome faces and clear eyes. Their absolute
exhaustion is the most pathetic thing about them. They fall asleep even
when their wounds are being dressed. When all was made straight and
comfortable for them, the nurses turned the lights low again, and
stepped softly about the ward with their little torches.

A hundred beds all filled with men in pain give one plenty to think
about, and it is during sleep that their attitudes of suffering strike
one most. Some of them bury their heads in their pillows as shot
partridges seek to bury theirs amongst autumn leaves. Others lie very
stiff and straight, and all look very thin and haggard. I was struck by
the contrast between the pillared concert-hall where they lie, with its
platform of white paint and decorations, and the tragedy of suffering
which now fills it.

At 2 a.m. more soldiers were brought in from the battlefield, all caked
with dirt, and we began to work again. These last blinked oddly at the
concert-hall an