oms, each containing a
number of baths, which are used by walking patients and also by the
orderlies. The more recently built of these bathrooms is divided into
private cubicles. In the older one the baths are on a more sociable
plan, with no partition walls sundering them. The spectacle, in the
"old" bathroom, when a convoy of walking cases has arrived, is one which
should appeal to a painter. Clouds of steam fill the air, and through
the fog you perceive a fine melee of figures, some half dressed, some
statuesquely nude, towelling themselves or preparing to wash, or shaving
at bits of mirror propped on the window-sills. Pink bodies wallow
voluptuously in the deep porcelain-ware tubs, which are of the shape and
superb dimensions of Egyptian sarcophagi. Sometimes a patient with a
wounded arm, unable to help himself, is being soaped and sponged by an
orderly; or you may see a cheerful soul, with an injured foot, balanced
on the rim of the bath and giving himself all the ablutions which are
practicable without the disturbance of bandages. No one who has
frequented our bathrooms would ever doubt that the British Army loves
cleanliness and hot water. Of cold water I cannot speak with the same
enthusiasm.

A newly-arrived convoy of course monopolises the bathroom; but
throughout the whole day, at almost any hour, you will find a patient or
two here; for by the rule of the hospital it is allowable for any
patient--once he has been given permission to take an unsupervised bath
at all--to take a bath whenever he likes. Consequently it happens often
that half a dozen orderlies may be bathing at the same time as half a
dozen patients--and it need not be added that the occasion is one for
pleasant chats and the barter of anecdotes. For this reason, if for no
other, I always elected to use the "old" bathroom: the "new" one, with
its closed cubicles, was less fruitful in conversations.

The "old" bathroom was the exchange (and perhaps the starting-point) of
many of our hospital rumours. I imagine that every war hospital is a
hotbed of rumours. Ours certainly was, and is. Amongst the orderlies
there are incessant rumours about promotions, about the chances of the
unit being sent abroad, about surprise inspections, about the imminent
arrival of impossibly large convoys, about news--received privately by
the Colonel over the telephone--of defeats or victories. Nine times out
of ten the rumour turns out to be groundless. But this does