p, when it is ready; at least that is what it looks like from sundry
rumours--if so--good enough.

We have been all day in caps and aprons at L'Eveche, marking linen and
waiting for orders on the big staircase. I've also been over both
hospitals. The bad cases all seem to be dropped here off the trains;
there are some awful mouth, jaw, head, leg, and spine cases, who can't
recover, or will only be crippled wrecks. You can't realise that it has
all been done on purpose, and that none of them are accidents or
surgical diseases. And they seem all to take it as a matter of course;
the bad ones who are conscious don't speak, and the better ones are all
jolly and smiling, and ready "to have another smack." One little room
had two wounded German prisoners, with an armed guard. One who was shot
through the spine died while I was there--his orderly and the Sister
were with him. The other is a spy--nearly well--who has to be very
carefully watched.

They are all a long time between the field and the Hospital. One told me
he was wounded on Tuesday--was one day in a hospital, and then
travelling till to-day, Saturday. No wonder their wounds are full of
straw and grass. (Haven't heard of any more tetanus.) Most haven't had
their clothes off, or washed, for three weeks, except face and hands.

No war news to-day, except that the Germans are well fortified and
entrenched in their positions N. of Rheims.

_Sunday, September 20th._--Began with early service at the Jesuit School
Hospital at 6.30, and the rest of the day one will never forget. The
fighting for these concrete entrenched positions of the Germans behind
Rheims has been so terrific since last Sunday that the number of
casualties has been enormous. Three trains full of wounded, numbering
altogether 1175 cases, have been dressed at the station to-day; we were
sent down at 11 this morning. The train I was put to had 510 cases. You
boarded a cattle-truck, armed with a tray of dressings and a pail; the
men were lying on straw; had been in trains for several days; most had
only been dressed once, and many were gangrenous. If you found one
urgently needed amputation or operation, or was likely to die, you
called an M.O. to have him taken off the train for Hospital. No one
grumbled or made any fuss. Then you joined the throng in the
dressing-station, and for hours doctors of all ranks, Sisters and
orderlies, grappled with the stream of stretchers, and limping,
staggering, beard