Of course the wounded who had been operated upon, or the greater part of them, had to lie out all night on the water-soaked ground; and in order to appreciate the suffering they endured the reader must try to imagine the conditions and the environment. It rained in torrents there almost every afternoon for a period of from ten minutes to half an hour, and the ground, therefore, was usually water-soaked and soft. All the time that it did not rain the sun shone with a fierceness of heat that I have seldom seen equaled, and yet at night it grew cool and damp so rapidly as to necessitate the putting on of thicker clothing or a light overcoat. Many of the wounded soldiers, who were brought to the hospital from a distance of three miles in a jolting ambulance or army wagon, had lost their upper clothing at the bandaging-stations just back of the battle-line, where the field-surgeons had stripped them in order to examine or treat their wounds. They arrived there, consequently, half naked and without either rubber or woolen blankets; and as the very limited hospital supply of shirts and blankets had been exhausted, there was nothing to clothe or cover them with. The tents set apart for wounded soldiers were already full to overflowing, and all that a litter-squad could do with a man when they lifted him from the operating-table on Friday night was to carry him away and lay him down, half naked as he was, on the water-soaked ground under the stars. Weak and shaken from agony under the surgeon's knife and probe, there he had to lie in the high, wet grass, with no one to look after him, no one to give him food and water if he needed them, no blanket over him, and no pillow under his head. What he suffered in the long hours of the damp, chilly night I know because I saw him, and scores more like him; but the reader, who can get an idea of it only through the medium of words, can hardly imagine it. When the sun rose Saturday morning, the sufferings of the wounded who had lain out all night in the grass were intensified rather than relieved, because with sunshine came intense heat, thirst, and surgical fever. An attempt was made to protect some of them by making awnings and thatched roofs of bushes and poles; but about seven o'clock ambulances and wagons loaded with wounded began again to arrive from the battle-line, and the whole hospital force turned its attention to them, leaving the suffering men in the grass to the care of the camp cooks and a few slightly wounded soldiers, who, although in pain themselves, could still hobble about carrying hard bread and water to their completely disabled and gasping comrades.