Naturally the French people thought he said trois.  This story subsequently appeared in print, I believe.

One regiment had a goat, and Billy was let out for a walk and had wandered rather far afield, when the train started to move on again.  Luckily those trains never went very fast, but it was a funny sight to see two Tommies almost throttling the goat in their efforts to drag it along, pursued by several F.A.N.Y.s (to make the pace), and give it a final shove up into a truck!

Towards the end of that week the entire staff became exceedingly short tempered.  The loss of sleep combined with hospital work probably accounted for it; we even slept in the jolting cars on the way back.  We were more than repaid though, by the smiles of the Tommies and the gratitude of the Y.M.C.A., who would have been unable to run the canteen at all but for our help.

It was at this period in our career we definitely became known as the “F.A.N.N.Y.s”—­“F.A.N.Y.,” spelt the passing Tommy—­“FANNY,” “I wonder what that stands for?”

“First anywhere,” suggested one, which was not a bad effort, we thought!

The following is an extract from an account by Mr. Beach Thomas in a leading daily: 

“Our Yeomanry nurses who, among other work, drive, clean, and manage their own ambulance cars, are dressed in khaki.  Their skirts are short, their hats (some say their feet), are large! (this we thought hardly kind).  They have done prodigies along the Belgian front.  One of their latest activities has been to devise and work a peripatetic bath.  By ingenious contrivances, tents, and ten collapsible baths, are packed into a motor car which circulates behind the lines.  The water is heated by the engine in a cistern in the interior of the car and offers the luxury of a hot bath to several score men.”

This was our famous motor bath called “James,” and belonging to “Jimmy” Gamwell.  She saw to the heating of the water and the putting up of the baths, with their canvas screens sloping from the roof of the ambulance and so forming at each side a bathroom annexe.  A sergeant marshalled the soldiers in at one end and in about ten minutes’ time they emerged clean, rosy, and smiling at the other!

The article continued:  “These women have run a considerable hospital and its ambulances entirely by themselves.  The work has been voluntary.  By doing their own household work, by feeding themselves at their own expense (except for a few supplementary Belgian Army rations), by driving and cleaning their own cars, they have made such a success on the economical side that the money laboriously collected in England has all been spent on the direct service of the wounded, and not on establishment charges.”