of circumstances and
the fortune of war that the place had been taxed far beyond its possible
capacities.

All night long the most terribly wounded men were being brought in from
the field, some were already dead when they arrived, others had only a
few minutes to live; all the rest were very cold and wet and exhausted,
and we had _nothing_ to make them comfortable. What a blessing hot-water
bottles would have been--but after all there would have been no hot
water to fill them if we had had them. But the wounded _had_ to be
brought in for shelter somewhere, and at least we had a roof over their
heads, and hot tea to give them.

At 5 A. M. there came a lull. The tragic procession ceased for
a while, and we went to lie down. At seven o'clock we were called
again--another batch of wounded was being brought in.

The shelling had begun again, and was terrific; crash, crash, over our
heads the whole time. A clock-tower close to the hospital was demolished
and windows broken everywhere. The shells were bursting everywhere in
the street, and civilians were being brought in to us severely wounded.
A little child was carried in with half its head blown open, and then an
old Jewish woman with both legs blown off, and a terrible wound in her
chest, who only lived an hour or two. Apparently she suffered no pain,
but was most dreadfully agitated, poor old dear, at having lost her wig
in the transit. They began bringing in so many that we had to stop
civilians being brought in at all, as it was more than we could do to
cope with the wounded soldiers that were being brought in all the time.

At midday we went to a hotel for a meal. There was very, very little
food left in Lodz, but they brought what they could. Coming back to the
hospital we tried everywhere to get some bread, but there was none to be
had anywhere--all the provision shops were quite empty, and the
inhabitants looked miserable and starved, the Jewish population
particularly so, though they were probably not among the poorest.

On our way back a shell burst quite close to us in the street, but no
one was hurt. These shells make a most horrible scream before bursting,
like an animal in pain. Ordinarily I am the most dreadful coward in the
world about loud noises--I even hate a sham thunderstorm in a
theatre--but here somehow the shells were so part of the whole thing
that one did not realize that all this was happening to _us_, one felt
rather like a disinterested sp