mare with the awful
struggle for the Russian names of dressings and instruments and with
their different methods of working, but after that I settled down very
happily.

Sister G. was in the operating-room on the next floor, and she, too,
found that first week a great strain. The other two Sisters who had come
out with us and had been sent to another hospital apparently found the
same, for they returned to England after the first five days, much to my
disappointment, as I had hoped that our little unit of four might have
got a small job of our own later, when we could speak Russian better and
had learnt their ways and customs.

After the first few days we began to be very busy. In England we should
consider that hospital very badly staffed, as there were only twenty
Sisters to sometimes nearly a thousand patients, all very serious cases
moreover, as we were not supposed to take in the lightly wounded at all
in this hospital. The sanitars, or orderlies, do all that probationers
in an English hospital would do for the patients, and all the heavy
lifting and carrying, so that the work is not very hard though very
continuous. There was no night staff. We all took it in turns to stay up
at night three at a time, so that our turn came about once a week. That
meant being on duty all day, all night, and all the next day, except for
a brief rest and a walk in the afternoon. Most of the Sisters took no
exercise beyond one weekly walk, but we two English people longed for
fresh air, and went out whenever possible even if it was only for ten
minutes. English views on ventilation are not at all accepted in Russia.
It is a great concession to open the windows of the ward for ten minutes
twice a day to air it, and the Sisters were genuinely frightened for the
safety of the patients when I opened the windows of a hot, stuffy ward
one night. "It is _never_ done," they reiterated, "before daylight."

The Sister Superior was the mainspring of the hospital. She really was a
wonderful person, small and insignificant to look at, except for her
eyes, which looked you through and through and weighed you in the
balance; absolutely true and straight, with a heart of gold, and the
very calmest person in all the world. I remember her, late one evening,
when everybody was rather agitated at a message which had come to say
that 400 patients were on their way to the hospital, and room could only
be made for 200 at the most. "Never mind," she said,