When we woke up we were told that the military authorities had given orders for the patients to be evacuated, and that Red Cross carts were coming all night to take them away to the station, where some ambulance trains awaited them.  So we worked hard all night to get the dressings done before the men were sent away, and as we finished each case, he was carried down to the hall to await his turn to go; but it was very difficult as all the time they were bringing in fresh cases as fast as they were taking the others away, and alas! many had to go off without having had their dressings done at all.  The next afternoon we were still taking in, when we got another order that all the fresh patients were to be evacuated and the hospital closed, as the Russians had decided to retire from Lodz.  Again we worked all night, and by ten the next morning we had got all the patients away.  The sanitars collected all the bedding in the yard to be burnt, the bedsteads were piled high on one another, and we opened all the windows wide to let the clean cold wind blow over everything.

We had all our own dressings and equipment to pack, and were all just about at our last gasp from want of food and sleep, when a very kind Polish lady came and carried princess, we two Sisters, and Colonel S. off to her house, where she had prepared bedrooms for us.  I never looked forward to anything so much in my life as I did to my bed that night.  Our hostess simply heaped benefits on us by preparing us each a hot bath in turn.  We had not washed or had our clothes off since we came to Lodz, and were covered with vermin which had come to us from the patients; men and officers alike suffer terribly from this plague of insects, which really do make one’s life a burden.  There are three varieties commonly met with:  ordinary fleas that no one minds in the least; white insects that are the commonest and live in the folds of one’s clothes, whose young are most difficult to find, and who grow middle-aged and very hungry in a single night; and, lastly, the red insects with a good many legs, which are much less numerous but much more ravenous than the other kinds.

After the bath and the hunt, we sat down to a delicious supper, and were looking forward to a still more delicious night in bed, when suddenly Prince V. arrived and said we must leave at once.  We guessed instantly that the Germans must be very near, but that he did not wish us to ask questions, as it seemed very mean to go off ourselves and leave our kind hosts without a word of explanation, though of course we could only obey orders.  So we left our unfinished supper and quickly collected our belongings and took them to the hotel where our Red Cross car should have been waiting for us.  But the Red Cross authorities had sent off our car with some wounded, which of course was just as it should be, and we were promised another “seechas,” which literally translated signifies “immediately,” but in Russia means to-day or to-morrow or not at all.