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To Mrs. Keays-Young.

Rue de L’HARMONIE 68, Antwerp,
25 September.

Dearest Babe,

It was delightful getting your letter.  Our wounded are all French or Belgians, but there is a bureau of enquiry in the town where I will go to try to hear tidings of your poor friends.

We heard the guns firing last night, and fifty wounded were sent in during the afternoon.  In one day 2,500 wounded reached Antwerp.  I can write this sort of thing to-day as I know my letter will be all right.  To show you that the fighting is pretty near, two doctors went for a short motor drive to-day and they found two wounded men.  One was just dying, the other they brought back in the car, but he died also.  In the town itself everything seems much as usual except for crowds of refugees.  Do not believe people when they say German barbarity is exaggerated.  It is hideously true.

We are fearfully busy, and it seems a queer side of war to cook and race around and make doctors as comfortable as possible.  We have a capital staff, who are made up of zeal and muscle.  I do not know how long it can last.  We breakfast at 7.30, which means that most of the orderlies are up at 5.45 to prepare and do everything.  The fare is very plain and terribly wholesome, but hardly anyone grumbles.  I am trying to get girls to take two hours off duty in the day, but they won’t do it.

Have you any friends who would send us a good big lot of nice jam?  It is for the staff.  If you could send some cases of it at once to Miss Stear, 39, St. James’s Street, London, and put my name on it, and say it is for our hospital, she will bring it here herself with some other things.  Some of your country friends might like to help in a definite little way like this.

Your loving
Sarah.

——­ is going to England to-night and will take this.

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27 September.—­Yesterday, when we were in the town, a German airship flew overhead and dropped bombs.  A lot of guns fired at it, but it was too high up to hit.  The incident caused some excitement in the streets.

[Page Heading:  Arrival of wounded]

Last night we heard that more wounded were coming in from the fighting-line near Ghent.  We got sixty more beds ready, and sat up late, boiling water, sterilising instruments, preparing operating-tables and beds, etc., etc.  As it got later all the lights in the huge ward were put out, and we went about with little torches amongst the sleeping men, putting things in order and moving on tip-toe in the dark.  Later we heard that the wounded might not get in till Monday.

The work of this place goes on unceasingly.  We all get on well, but I have not got the communal spirit, and the fact of being a unit of women is not the side of it that I find most interesting.  The communal food is my despair.  I can not eat it.  All the same this is a fine experience, and I hope we’ll come well out of it.  There is boundless opportunity, and we are in luck to have a chance of doing our darndest.