of note that we had never once in our work there had to perform an amputation.  At Furnes, we drew our patients from the line between Nieuport and Dixmude, where the fighting was for the most part at close range and of a most murderous nature.  There were no forts, and the soldiers had little or no protection from the hail of high-explosive shells which the enemy poured upon them.  In Nieuport and Dixmude themselves the fighting was frequently from house to house, the most deadly form of fighting known.  The wounds we had to treat were correspondingly severe—­limbs sometimes almost completely torn off, terrible wounds of the skull, and bullet wounds where large masses of the tissues had been completely torn away.  It was difficult to see how human beings could survive such awful injuries, and, indeed, our death-roll was a long one.  Added to this, the men had been working in the wet and the mud for weeks past.  Their clothes were stiff with it, and such a thing as a clean wound was not to be thought of.  Simple cases at Antwerp were here tedious and dangerous, and they required all the resources of nursing and of surgery that we could bring to bear upon them.  Still, it was extraordinary what good results followed on common-sense lines of treatment, and we soon learnt to give up no case as hopeless.  But each involved a great amount of work, first in operating and trying to reduce chaos to reason, and then in dressing and nursing.  For everyone all round—­surgeons, dressers, and nurses—­it was real hard physical labour.

Our rapid turnover of patients involved a large amount of manual labour in stretcher work, clearing up wards, and so on, but all this was done for us by our brancardiers, or stretcher-bearers.  These were Belgians who for one reason or another could not serve with the army, and who were therefore utilized by the Government for purposes such as these.  We had some eight of them attached to our hospital, and they were of the greatest use to us, acting as hospital orderlies.  They were mostly educated men—­schoolmasters and University teachers—­but they were quite ready to do any work we might require at any hour of the day or night.  They carried the patients to the theatre and to the wards, they cleaned the stretchers—­a very difficult and unpleasant job—­they tidied up the wards and scrubbed the floors, and they carried away all the soiled dressings and burned them.  They were a fine set of men, and I do not know what we should have done without them.

Work began at an early hour, for every case in the hospital required dressing, and, as we never knew what we should have to deal with at night, we always tried to get through the routine before lunch.  At ten o’clock Colonel Maestrio arrived, with two of his medical officers, and made a complete round of the hospital with the surgeons in charge of the various cases.  They took the greatest interest in the patients, and in our attempts to cure them.  They would constantly spend an hour with me in the