The Hun barrage
might descend at any minute. All the way, in the ditches on either
side, dead pack animals lay; in the dug-outs there were other unseen
dead making the air foul. But he drove slowly and gently, skirting the
shell-holes with diligent care so as to spare us every unnecessary
jolting. I don't know his name, shouldn't recognise his face, but I
shall always remember the almost womanly tenderness of his driving.
After two changes into other ambulances at different distributing
points, I arrived about nine on a summer's evening at the Casualty
Clearing Station. In something less than an hour I was undressed and
on the operating table.
You might suppose that when for three interminable years such a stream
of tragedy has flowed through a hospital, it would be easy for
surgeons and nurses to treat mutilation and death perfunctorily. They
don't. They show no emotion. They are even cheerful; but their
strained faces tell the story and their hands have an immense
compassion.
Two faces especially loom out. I can always see them by lamp-light,
when the rest of the ward is hushed and shrouded, stooping over some
silent bed. One face is that of the Colonel of the hospital, grey,
concerned, pitiful, stern. His eyes seem to have photographed all the
suffering which in three years they have witnessed. He's a tall man,
but he moves softly. Over his uniform he wears a long white operating
smock--he never seems to remove it. And he never seems to sleep, for
he comes wandering through his Gethsemane all hours of the night to
bend over the more serious cases.
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