Before leaving me in hospital for the night Dr. Ascher paid me a final visit to make positive that I was comfortable.  But that one night’s sojourn in the hospital almost completely unnerved me.  I could not sleep, and to my alarm I found that no one ever came in to take even a cursory glance at the patients.  I got up in the darkness and went to the door.  To my astonishment I found it to be locked!  I turned to one cot.  It contained a French invalid who was jabbering away excitedly to himself, but I could not understand a single word.  I turned to the next bed and its occupant was half-delirious.  With such depressing company around me I tumbled back into bed and went off to sleep again somehow.  In the morning I learned that there were three intercommunicating wards.  The two inner ones were reserved for patients, upon whom the key was turned at night, while the third and outer room was occupied by a night warder who turned in and slept the sleep of the just, although he was nominally in charge of critical cases.  But this was immaterial.  If the patient went under during the night to be found dead in bed in the morning—­well! it was merely a case of Nature having had her own way.

I was so alarmed that the instant the hospital was opened I hurried back to my barrack.  Dr. Ascher, upon reaching the hospital and noting my absence, wondered what had happened, until at last he found me resting in my bunk.  I resolutely told him that under no circumstances would I spend another night in that hospital.  I had my own way.  The crisis had passed, and if I only took care of myself I would soon be out again, he said.

Having always led an active life, confinement to bed in utter loneliness during the day, except for a call now and again from a sympathetic colleague, soon began to pall.  So I dressed and went out to discover Dr. Ascher.  He did not upbraid me for so flagrantly disobeying his orders, as I had been anticipating, but exhorted me with all the powers of persuasion he could command, to take the utmost care of myself.  In order to give me something to occupy my mind he attached me to a few other invalids, who were also on “pass,” to light work in cleaning out the hospitals for the recruits who were evidently coming to Sennelager within the near future.

Cleaning hospitals might be officially described as light work, but it was far from being so, although this was not the fault of the doctor but of our far from amiable Commandant.  The tables, beds, chairs and other portable fixtures had to be taken into the open air to receive a thorough scrubbing with water and soft soap.  We were given buckets, and were compelled to walk some distance to draw supplies of water from the pump, to which place we also had to repair to throw away the dirty liquid, so that we were assured of an exacting load upon both journeys.