the first motor
load came.

The undressing-room was a large white-stone floored room with four long
plank beds covered with mackintosh; behind was the bathroom. The first
wounded man was pushed in through the window on a stretcher, a brown
crumpled heap of misery, and groaning. We laid him carefully on the bed
while the doctor searched for the wound. While she was examining him a
second was handed in. No need to examine this one. Bloody head bandage
and great blue swollen eyelids told plainly where his wound was. We
stripped the clothes as carefully as was possible from the poor fellows.
Those who were too bad to go to the bathroom were washed where they lay.
One orderly with soap and razors shaved every hair from each; and
several plied clippers on the matted heads. Outside was one electric
lamp which threw strong lights and darker shadows, making a veritable
Rembrandt of the scene, lighting up the white clad forms of the
assistants who were drawing out the stretchers, the big square end of
the ambulance car, and picking out from the gloom of the garden a rose
tree which bore one white rose.

The wounded were indescribably dirty, and their clothes in a shocking
state, all stiff with blood. Jo took charge of the clothes bags, seeing
that no man's clothes were mixed with any others. The men all seemed
dazed, each soldier seemed to have the same protest upon his mind. "This
wasn't the idea at all, I was not to be wounded. Why am I here?" One
suddenly felt the brutal inanity of modern warfare; one felt that if the
ones who had started this war could only be forced to spend three months
in a war hospital, receiving and undressing the fruits of their plots,
they would have a different view of the glory and honour of battle.

Each man had sewn in his belt some talisman to protect him from
danger--small brass or lead image or medal, bought from the village
priest.

There was confusion at first, for almost all were new to their tasks;
the barbers were carrying stretchers when they ought to have been
barbering; the clippers were scrubbing instead of doing their proper
work; but, nevertheless, it was marvellously rapid. The motor tore back
to the station, and by the time it had returned its first load had been
washed, shaved, arrayed in clean pyjamas, and either lay in bed in the
ward, or were waiting their turn outside the operating theatre.

Mr. Berry was hard at work: there were several cases shot through the
brain, one