The open-air life has apparently built up the men.  Again and again the extraordinary power of resistance shown has astonished the surgeons.  It is as if, in forcing men to face overwhelming hardships, a watchful Providence had granted them overwhelming vitality.

Perhaps the infection of the soil, the typhoid-carrying waters that seep through and into the trenches, the tetanus and gangrene that may infect the simplest wounds, are due to the long intensive cultivation of that fertile country, to the fertilisation by organic matter of its fields.  Doubtless the vermin that cover many of the troops form the connecting link between the soil and the infected men.  In many places gasoline is being delivered to the troopers to kill these pests, and it is a German army joke that before a charge on a Russian trench it is necessary to send ahead men to scatter insect powder!  So serious is the problem in the east indeed that an official order from Berlin now requires all cars returning from Russia to be placarded “Aus Russland!  Before using again thoroughly sterilise and unlouse!” And no upholstered cars are allowed to be used.

Generally speaking, a soldier is injured either in his trench or in front of it in the waste land between the confronting armies.  In the latter case, if the lines are close together the situation is still further complicated.  It may be and often is impossible to reach him at all.  He must lie there for hours or even for days of suffering, until merciful death overtakes him.  When he can be rescued he is, and many of the bravest deeds of this war have been acts of such salvage.  In addition to the work of the ambulance corps and of volunteer soldiers who often venture out into a rain of death to bring in fallen officers and comrades in the western field, some five hundred ambulance dogs are being used by the Allies to locate the wounded.

When a man is injured in the trenches his companions take care of him until night, when it is possible to move him.  His first-aid packet is opened, a sterilised bandage produced, and the dressing applied to the wound.  Frequently he has a small bottle of iodine and the wound is first painted with that.  In cases where iodine is used at once, chances of infection are greatly lessened.  But often he must lie in the trench until night, when the ambulances come up.  His comrades make him as comfortable as they can.  He lies on their overcoats, his head frequently on his own pack.

Fighting goes on about him, above him.  Other comrades fall in the trench and are carried and laid near him.  In the intervals of fighting, men bring the injured men water.  For that is the first cry—­a great and insistent need—­water.  When they cannot get water from the canteens they drink what is in the bottom of the trench.

At last night falls.  The evening artillery duel, except when a charge is anticipated, is greatly lessened at night, and infantry fire is only that of “snipers.”  But over the trench and over the line of communication behind the trench hang always the enemy’s “starlights.”