The hospital trains seemed to be never twice the same:  South Westerns, North Westerns, Great Northerns, Midlands, Great Centrals, Lancashire and Yorkshires—­I saw them all, at one time or another, their sole affinity being the staring red crosses painted on each coach.  A coach or two consisted of ordinary compartments, for sitting-up cases; the rest were vans the interiors of which had been converted into wards by means of bunks.  Access to each van-ward was gained by a wide pair of sliding doors in its centre.  These doors, when the train had come to a standstill, were opened by pallid-looking orderlies, who lowered gangways and then gazed forth at us, while they awaited orders, with the lack-lustre eyes of men who had been deprived of the proper allowance of sleep.

As soon as the list of the Medical Officer on the train had been checked with that of the Medical Officer on the platform, the evacuation began.  Walking-cases were sent off first—­generally a tatterdemalion crew, hobbling and shuffling along the platform, and, at one stage of the war, with trench mud still clinging to their clothes.  They seldom needed our assistance:  the Bluebottles (even if feeble folk) were deemed by our corporal to be fit to give any weak walking patient an arm, or carry his kit.  The walking patients, in fact, were a mere episode.  Motor-cars whirled them off, five or six at a time, and they might be half through the process of being bathed at the hospital before the last stretcher-case was quit of the train.  The stretcher cases were our concern.  Pairs of Bluebottles, each carrying a stretcher, entered the van-wards and anon reappeared with their burden.  Now came our cue to act.  As the stretcher approached the foot of the stair two of our number stepped forth from the rank, each taking a handle from a Bluebottle; the stretcher thus proceeded on its course up the stair carried by four men, one on each handle—­two Bluebottles and two R.A.M.C.’s.

That flight of iron stairs from the platform to the road seemed no very arduous ordeal for the first half-dozen journeys.  There was a knack about keeping the stretcher horizontal:  the front bearers must hold their handles as low as possible; the rear bearers must hoist their handles shoulder-high.  It was all plain sailing and perfectly easy.  Four men to a stretcher is luxurious.  At least it is luxurious on the level, and if you have not far to go and not many consecutive stretchers to carry.  But when the convoy was a large one, when the bearers were too few and you had no sooner got rid of one stretcher than you must run down the stairs and, without regaining your breath, grab the handle of another and slowly toil up again to the ambulances ... yes, even on the coldest day it was possible to be moist with perspiration; and as for the hot weather of the 1915 summer, when one of our Big Pushes was afoot, or when returned prisoners came from Germany (those were memorable occasions!)—­you might be pardoned a certain aching in the arm-muscles.