By twos and threes the men were called from the group outside and passed through the door of the dressing-station. The doctors waited for them in the surgery. The label on each man was read, his wound examined. A note was swiftly written ordering certain dressings and treatment. The man passed into what had been the ward of the hospital. Here the R.A.M.C. orderlies worked and with them two nurses spared for our need from a neighbouring hospital. Wounds were stripped, dressed, rebandaged. Sometimes fragments of shrapnel were picked out. The work went on almost silently hour after hour from early in the morning till long after noon. Yet there was no hurry, no fuss, and I do not think there was a moment's failure in gentleness. Some hard things have been said about R.A.M.C. orderlies and about nurses too. Perhaps they have been deserved occasionally. I saw their work at close quarters and for many days in that one place, nowhere else and not again there; but what I saw was good. With wounds dressed and bandaged, the men went out again. They were led across the camp to the quartermaster's stores and given clean underclothes in place of shirts and drawers sweat soaked, muddy, caked hard with blood. With these in their arms they went to the bath-house, to hot water, soap, and physical cleanness. Then they were fed, and for the moment all we could do for them was done. These were all lightly wounded men, but, even remembering that, their power of recuperation seemed astonishing. Some went after dinner to their tents, lay down on their beds and slept. Even of them few stayed asleep for very long. They got up, talked to each other, joined groups which formed outside the tents, wandered through the camp, eagerly curious about their new surroundings. They found their way into the recreation huts and canteens. They shouted and cheered the performers at concerts or grouped themselves round the piano and sang their own songs. Those who had money bought food at the counter. But many had no money and no prospect of getting any. They might have gone, not hungry, but what is almost worse, yearning for dainties and tobacco, if it were not for the generosity of their comrades. I have seen men with twopence and no more, men who were longing for a dozen things themselves, share what the twopence bought with comrades who had not even a penny. I passed two young soldiers near the door of a canteen. One of them stopped me and very shyly asked me if I would give him a penny for an English stamp. He fished it out from the pocket of his pay-book. It was dirty, crumpled, most of the gum gone, but unused and not defaced. I gave him the penny. "Come on, Sam," he said, "we'll get a packet of fags."