l the comfort I
could give was that we would be there soon, and the doctor would do
something to ease the pain.

Thank God, at last we arrived at the Casino. One of the most trying
things about ambulance driving is that while you long to get the patient
to hospital as quickly as possible you are forced to drive slowly. I
jumped out and cautioned the orderlies to lift him as gently as they
could, and he clung on to my hand as I walked beside the stretcher into
the ward.

"You're telling me the truth, Sister? I don't want to die, I tell you
that straight," he said. "Goodbye and God bless you; I'll come and see
you in the morning," I said, and left him to the nurses' tender care. I
went down early next day but he had died at 3 a.m. Somebody's son and
only nineteen. That sort of job takes the heart out of you for some
days, though Heaven knows we ought to have got used to anything by that
time.

To make up for the wet autumn a hard frost set in early in the year.

The M.T. provided us with anti-freezing mixture for the radiators, but
the antifreezing cheerfully froze! We tried emptying them at night,
turning off the petrol and running the engine till the carburettor was
dry (for even the petrol was not above freezing), and wrapping up the
engines as carefully as if they were babies, but even that failed.

Starting the cars up in the morning (a detail I see I have not mentioned
so far), even in ordinary times quite a hard job, now became doubly so.

It was no uncommon sight to see F.A.N.Y.s lying supine across the
bonnets of their cars, completely winded by their efforts. The morning
air was full of sobbing breaths and groans as they swung in vain! This
process was known as "getting her loose"--(I'm referring to the car not
the F.A.N.Y., though, from personal experience, it's quite applicable to
both.)

Brown or Johnson (the latter had replaced Kirkby) was secured to come if
possible and give the final fillip that set the engine going. It's a
well-known thing that you may turn at a car for ten minutes and not get
her going, and a fresh hand will come and do so the first time.

This swinging left one feeling like nothing on earth, and sometimes was
a day's work in itself.

In spite of all the precautions we took, whatever water was left in the
water pipes and drainings at the bottom of the radiators froze solidly,
and sure enough, when we had got them going, clouds of steam rose into
the air. The frost had come to