odation of wounded men--an officer of the Corps accompanying
each in the dual capacity of surgeon and potential pilot. When he
allowed his practical mind to wander among the vast possibilities of
the distant future, he dreamed of bigger and bigger aeroplanes until
they became fully equipped flying hospitals themselves, and removed
the wounded from the danger zone to the nearest salubrious spot for
their convalescence. Meanwhile, he saw no reason why the more powerful
biplanes should not carry an operating-table and all surgical
accessories, a surgeon, and two or three wounded men who could not be
made sitting-up cases.

To Colonel John Decies it seemed that if soldiers schemed to adapt the
flying-machine to purposes of death and destruction, doctors might do
the same to purposes of life and salvation. Think of the difference
between being jolted for hours in a bullock-cart in the dust and heat
and being borne through the air without jerk or jar. Think of the
hundreds of men who, in the course of one campaign, would be saved
from the ghastly fate of lying unfound, unseen by the
stretcher-bearers, to starve to death, to lie weltering in their
blood, to live through days of agony....

He was making quite a name for himself by his experiments at the Kot
Ghazi flying-school and by his articles and speeches on the formation
and training of a R.A.M.C. flying branch. Small beginnings would
content him (provided they were intended to lead to great
developments)--an aeroplane at first, that could carry one or two
special cases to which the ordinary means of transport would be
fatal, and that could scour the ground, especially in the case of very
broken terrain and hill-country, for overlooked cases, wounded men
unable to move or call, and undiscovered by the searchers.

He was hard at work on the invention of a strong collapsible
operating-table (that could readily be brought into use in the field
and also be used in aerial transport) and a case for the concentration
of equipment--operation instruments, rubber gloves, surgical
gauntlets, saline infusion apparatus, sterilizer, aseptic towels,
chloroform, bandages, gauze, wool, sponges, drainage-tubing, inhaler,
silk skeins, syringes, field tourniquets, waterproof cloth,
stethoscope--everything, and the whole outfit, table and all, weighing
forty pounds. This would be an improvement on the system of having to
open half a dozen medical and surgical cases when operating on the
li