“For a week or so after they come in lots of them are dazed; they just lie there scarcely stirring.  All that part of it—­the shock to their nerves—­we see more of than the doctors do.  When the word comes to go out again they have all the physical symptoms of intense nervous excitement, even nausea sometimes.”  The train came at last—­two long sections of sleeping-cars.  An officer stepped off, clicked his heels, and saluted, and the orderlies started unloading the men.  Those who could walk at all were helped from the doors; the others—­men with broken hips, legs in casts, and so on—­were passed out of the windows on stretchers held over the orderlies’ heads.  In the receiving-ward they were set down in rows before the three tables, most of them clutching their papers as they came.  Each man gave his name and regiment, and such particulars, and the address of some one of his family to whom notice could be sent.  It was one clerk’s duty to address a post-card telling his family of his condition and that he was in the hospital.

These cards were already ruled off into columns in each of which the words “Lightly wounded,” “Wounded,” “Severely wounded,” “Ill,” “Very ill” were printed in nine of the languages spoken in Austria-Hungary.  The clerk merely had to put a cross on the proper word.  Here, for instance, is the Lightly wounded column, in German, Hungarian, and the other dialects:  “Leicht verwundet, Konnyen megse-besult, Lehce ranen, Lekko raniony, Lecko ranenki, Leggiermente Jcrzto, Lako ranjen, Lahko ranjen, Usor ranit.”

A number were Russians—­fine, big, clear-eyed fellows with whom these genuine “Huns” chatted and laughed as if they were their own men.  On one stretcher came a very pale, round-faced, little boy about twelve, with stubbly blond hair clipped short and an enchanting smile.  He had been carrying water for the soldiers, somebody said, when a piece of shrapnel took off one of his feet.  Possibly he was one of those little adventurers who run away to war as boys used to run away to sea or the circus.  He seemed entirely at home with these men, at any rate, and when one of the Hungarians brought him a big tin cup of coffee and a chunk of black bread, he wriggled himself half upright and went to work at it like a veteran.

As soon as the men were registered they were hurried out of their uniforms and into the bathroom.  At the door two nurses in white—­so calm and clean and strong that they must have seemed like goddesses, in that reek of steam and disinfectants and festering wounds—­received them, asked each man how he was wounded, and quickly, as if he were a child, snipped off his bandages, unless the leg or arm were in a cast, and turned him over to the orderlies.  Those who could walk used showers, the others were bathed on inclined slabs.  Even the worst wounded scarcely made a sound, and those who could take care of themselves limped under the showers as if they had been hospital boarders before, and waited for, and even demanded, with a certain peremptoriness, their little bundle of belongings before they went on to the dressing-room.