's all." And then a smile passes between him and
his nurse. He has lost a leg, he has a deep wound in his back which won't
heal, which is draining his life away--poor, poor John S----! Close by is
a short, plain man, with a look of fevered and patient endurance that
haunts one now to think of. "It's my eyes. I'm afraid they're getting
worse. I was hit in the head, you see. Yes, the pain's bad--sometimes."
The nurse looks at him anxiously as we pass, and explains what is being
tried to give relief.
This devotion of the nurses--how can one ever say enough of it! I recall
the wrath of a medical officer in charge of a large hospital at Rouen.
"Why don't they give more Red Crosses to the _working nurses_? They don't
get half enough recognition. I have a nurse here who has been twelve
months in the operating theatre. She ought to have a V.C.!--It's worth
it."
And here is a dark-eyed young officer who had come from a distant colony
to fight for England. I find him in an officer's hospital, established not
long after the war broke out, in a former Casino, where the huge
baccarat-room has been turned into two large and splendid wards. He is
courteously ready to talk about his wound, but much more ready to talk
about his Sister.
"It's simply _wonderful_ what they do for us!" he says, all his face
lighting up. "When I was worst there wasn't an hour in the day or night my
Sister wasn't ready to try anything in the world to help me. But they're
all like that."
Let me here gratefully recall, also, the hospitals organised by the
Universities of Chicago and Harvard, entirely staffed by American Sisters
and Doctors, each of them providing 34 doctors and 80 nurses, and dealing
with 1,040 patients. Harvard has maintained a general hospital with the
British Force in France since July, 1915. The first passages and uniforms
were paid for by the British Government, but the University has itself
paid all passages, and provided all uniforms since the start; and it is
proposed, I am told, to carry on this generous help indefinitely.
Twenty thousand wounded!--while every day the ambulance trains come and go
from the front, or to other bases--there to fill up one or other of the
splendid hospital ships that take our brave fellows back to England, and
home, and rest. And this city of hospitals, under its hard-pressed
medical chief, with all its wealth of scientific invention, and painsaving
device, and unremitting care, with its wonderful
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