The undressing-room was a large white-stone floored room with four long plank beds covered with mackintosh; behind was the bathroom.  The first wounded man was pushed in through the window on a stretcher, a brown crumpled heap of misery, and groaning.  We laid him carefully on the bed while the doctor searched for the wound.  While she was examining him a second was handed in.  No need to examine this one.  Bloody head bandage and great blue swollen eyelids told plainly where his wound was.  We stripped the clothes as carefully as was possible from the poor fellows.  Those who were too bad to go to the bathroom were washed where they lay.  One orderly with soap and razors shaved every hair from each; and several plied clippers on the matted heads.  Outside was one electric lamp which threw strong lights and darker shadows, making a veritable Rembrandt of the scene, lighting up the white clad forms of the assistants who were drawing out the stretchers, the big square end of the ambulance car, and picking out from the gloom of the garden a rose tree which bore one white rose.

The wounded were indescribably dirty, and their clothes in a shocking state, all stiff with blood.  Jo took charge of the clothes bags, seeing that no man’s clothes were mixed with any others.  The men all seemed dazed, each soldier seemed to have the same protest upon his mind.  “This wasn’t the idea at all, I was not to be wounded.  Why am I here?” One suddenly felt the brutal inanity of modern warfare; one felt that if the ones who had started this war could only be forced to spend three months in a war hospital, receiving and undressing the fruits of their plots, they would have a different view of the glory and honour of battle.

Each man had sewn in his belt some talisman to protect him from danger—­small brass or lead image or medal, bought from the village priest.

There was confusion at first, for almost all were new to their tasks; the barbers were carrying stretchers when they ought to have been barbering; the clippers were scrubbing instead of doing their proper work; but, nevertheless, it was marvellously rapid.  The motor tore back to the station, and by the time it had returned its first load had been washed, shaved, arrayed in clean pyjamas, and either lay in bed in the ward, or were waiting their turn outside the operating theatre.

Mr. Berry was hard at work:  there were several cases shot through the brain, one through the lungs, one through the heart, and one through the spine; this latter was paralysed.

Some wounded came in carriages; it was very difficult to get them on to the stretchers without giving them unnecessary pain, because of the shape of the “fiacres.”  At last all were passed through.

Do not think us heartless if we rubbed our hands and said, “Some very good cases, what!” for emotional pity can be separated from professional pleasure, and if these things had to be we were pleased that the serious ones had come to us; had not gone to a Serbian hospital.