g without a stop for sixteen hours with tightly closed windows,
and every smell that can be imagined pervading it, the floor covered
with mud, blood and debris of dressings wherever there were not
stretchers on which were men who had just been operated on. The meal of
milkless tea, black bread, and cheese, was spread on a sterilized towel
on the operating-table, illuminated by two candles stuck in bottles.
Princess sat in the only chair, and the rest of us eased our weary feet
by sitting on the edge of the dressing-boxes. Two dead soldiers lay at
our feet--it was not safe just at that moment to take them out and bury
them. People would probably ask how we _could_ eat under those
conditions. I don't know how we could either, but we _did_ and were
thankful for it--for immediately after another rush began.

At eleven o'clock in the morning another ambulance train arrived and was
quickly filled. By that time we had had more than 750 patients through
our hands, and they were still being brought in large numbers. The
fighting must have been terrific, for the men were absolutely worn out
when they arrived, and fell asleep at once from exhaustion, in spite of
their wounds. Some of them must have been a long time in the trenches,
for many were in a terribly verminous condition. On one poor boy with a
smashed leg the insects could have only been counted by the million.
About ten minutes after his dressing was done, his white bandage was
quite grey with the army of invaders that had collected on it from his
other garments.

Early that afternoon we got a message that another Column was coming to
relieve us, and that we were to return to Zyradow for a rest. We were
very sorry to leave our little dressing-station, but rejoiced to hear
that we were to go up again in two days' time to relieve this second
Column, and that we were to work alternately with them, forty-eight
hours on, and then forty-eight hours off duty.

We had left Zyradow rather quiet, but when we came back we found the
cannon going hard, both from the Radzivilow and the Goosof direction. It
would have taken much more than cannon to keep _us_ awake, however, and
we lay down most gratefully on our stretchers in the empty room at the
Red Cross Bureau and slept. A forty-eight hours' spell is rather long
for the staff, though probably there would have been great difficulty in
changing the Columns more often.

I woke up in the evening to hear the church bells ringing, and