One hospital of two hundred beds was once entirely evacuated
within sixty minutes upon a sudden order. We walked through small
ward after small ward, store-room after store-room, aseptic
operating-room and septic operating-room, all odorous with ether,
and saw little but resignation, and not much of that, for patients
happened to be few. Yet the worn face of the doctor in charge
showed that vast labours must have been accomplished in those
sombre chambers.
In the very large courtyard a tent operating-hospital was
established. The white attendants were waiting within in the pallid
obscurity, among tables, glass jars, and instruments. The surgeon's
wagon, with hot-water and sterilising apparatus, was waiting without.
The canvas organism was a real hospital, and the point about it was
that it could move off complete at twenty-five minutes' notice and set
itself up again in any other ordained location in another twenty-five
minutes.
Another short ride, and we were in an aviation park, likewise tented,
in the midst of an immense wheatfield on the lofty side of a hill.
There were six hangars of canvas, each containing an aeroplane
and serving as a dormitory; and for each aeroplane a carriage and
a motor--for sometimes aeroplanes are wounded and have to travel
by road; it takes ninety minutes to dismount an aeroplane. Each
corps of an army has one of these escadrilles or teams of
aeroplanes, and the army as a whole has an extra one, so that, if an
army consists of eight corps, it possesses fifty-four aeroplanes.
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