A war nurse's diary : sketches from a Belgian field hospital . led the ambulances as they swept round the driveand lined up one behind the other. Their bleedingloads were hurried into the building, and along thewide corridor that ran the length of the house wasa double row of stretchers lying either side of thewalls. Hundreds of minor cases were turned awayto travel into France. We received sixty-five cases that first night, andperformed thirty operations! Every case was atDeaths door. There lay British, Germans, French,Belgians, their greenish-grey faces looking ghastlyin the dim light. Remem
A war nurse's diary : sketches from a Belgian field hospital . led the ambulances as they swept round the driveand lined up one behind the other. Their bleedingloads were hurried into the building, and along thewide corridor that ran the length of the house wasa double row of stretchers lying either side of thewalls. Hundreds of minor cases were turned awayto travel into France. We received sixty-five cases that first night, andperformed thirty operations! Every case was atDeaths door. There lay British, Germans, French,Belgians, their greenish-grey faces looking ghastlyin the dim light. Remember, we had only ninenurses for night and day work. There were onlytwo of us on the ground floor, where there were twolittle wards and the theatre. We called some of theday nurses to help. If these men were to be savedit was only by immediate restoratives. We flewfrom man to man, inserting hypodermic-needles,giving saline-injections by the dozen. In the X-Raydepartment we were cutting off their clothes as theylay on the stretchers. Soon a mountain of clothes. We were now in the Belgian Military Hospital THE SECOND BATTLE OF YPRES 99 lay outside the back door—British, Belgian andGerman uniforms. Gas had been used in thetrenches for the first time that day. There theylay, fully sensible, choking, suffocating, dying inhorrible agonies. We did what we could, but thebest treatment for such cases had yet to be discov-ered, and we felt almost powerless. As to the theatre, one case was lifted off, a wetcloth mopped the blood on to the floor and anotherwas lifted on. The good chauffeurs, who hadbeen under fire collecting the wounded from thetrench dressing-stations, made the journey severaltimes in one night. Yet, weary as they were, theywould seize a mop and pail and swill up some ofthe blood from the sloppy floor, or even hold a legor arm while it was sawn off. I could do nothingbut boil hundreds and hundreds of instrumentsover wretched petrol stoves that constantly gotblocked and w
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookid0111, booksubjectworldwari
