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empty boxes or barrels, eating the contents of a tin of Maconochie with the
help of a clasp knife.
Dressings were being carried out on improvised tables; blood-stained clothes,
caked in mud, which had been cut off, were stacked in heaps with rifles and
ammunition.
Further on, the sheds were being converted into wards; wooden partitions
were being run up, bedsteads carried in, the wounded meanwhile lying about on
straw or stretchers. The beds were for stretcher cases, and were soon filled with
terribly wounded men, who had just to be put into the beds as they were, clothes
and all. As fast as one could get to them the clothes were cut off, the patient
washed, and his wounds dressed. Some had both legs off, some their side blown
awayall were wounded in several places. Doctors and nurses were hopelessly
outnumbered, distractedly endeavouring to meet the demands made upon them.
Here, too, we found the Matron-in-Chief with the Expeditionary Force in France
(Dame Maud McCarthy) helping and directing. Under her supervision a miraculous
change soon took place; reinforcements of nurses began to arrive, and the sheds
took on the appearance of a well-ordered hospital.
The battle of Neuve Chapelle was one of our most terrible times, gangrene
and tetanus were rampant, and the wounded streaming in day and night. One
advantage of the sheds was that the wounded were received by one door, and were
passed to the boats by the door opposite.
How wonderful was the service of boats and trains, and with what rapidity
they were dispatched! I have known three different lots of men occupying the
beds during the twenty-four hours. In the casualty ward, where the patients
walked in, as many as three thousand were dressed and fed in a day, and passed on
to the boats. The hospital was well fitted up by this time; non-commissioned
officers met the patients as they arrived and drafted the walking cases to different
benches, according to their degree of wound. The patients were seen immediately
by the doctors, who prescribed for them, the treatment being written down by a
sister; a band of nurses followed, carrying out the treatment. Then the patients
were sent to long, comfortable tables, where a hot meal was served, with a mug of
tea. They were then passed out at the far side of the ward, decorated with
Blighty tickets," and so on, to the waiting boats.
In September, 1915, the sheds were taken over by the Army Post Office, and
the hospital moved to huts on the road leading to Wimereux.
A. L. Walker.
WE are glad to comply with the request of many of our members "To enclose
a membership form with this edition of The Ypres Times," and we should be
grateful if you would kindly write your name in the corner of the enrolment
form, in order that we may know the source from which the new member is
recruited, when we shall have much pleasure in writing to you, personally, an
expression of our sincere thanks for your valued support.
