ectator at a far-off dream. It was
probably partly due to want of sleep; one's hands did the work, but
one's mind was mercifully numbed. Mercifully, for it was more like hell
than anything I can imagine. The never-ending processions of groaning
men being brought in on those horrible blood-soaked stretchers,
suffering unimagined tortures, the filth, the cold, the stench, the
hunger, the vermin, and the squalor of it all, added to one's utter
helplessness to do more than very little to relieve their misery, was
almost enough to make even Satan weep.

On the third day after our arrival a young Russian doctor and some
Russian sisters arrived to relieve us for a few hours, and we most
thankfully went to bed--at least it was not a bed in the ordinary sense,
but a wire bedstead on which we lay down in all our clothes; but we were
very comfortable all the same.

When we woke up we were told that the military authorities had given
orders for the patients to be evacuated, and that Red Cross carts were
coming all night to take them away to the station, where some ambulance
trains awaited them. So we worked hard all night to get the dressings
done before the men were sent away, and as we finished each case, he was
carried down to the hall to await his turn to go; but it was very
difficult as all the time they were bringing in fresh cases as fast as
they were taking the others away, and alas! many had to go off without
having had their dressings done at all. The next afternoon we were
still taking in, when we got another order that all the fresh patients
were to be evacuated and the hospital closed, as the Russians had
decided to retire from Lodz. Again we worked all night, and by ten the
next morning we had got all the patients away. The sanitars collected
all the bedding in the yard to be burnt, the bedsteads were piled high
on one another, and we opened all the windows wide to let the clean cold
wind blow over everything.

We had all our own dressings and equipment to pack, and were all just
about at our last gasp from want of food and sleep, when a very kind
Polish lady came and carried princess, we two Sisters, and Colonel S.
off to her house, where she had prepared bedrooms for us. I never looked
forward to anything so much in my life as I did to my bed that night.
Our hostess simply heaped benefits on us by preparing us each a hot bath
in turn. We had not washed or had our clothes off since we came to Lodz,
and were covere