"I think the most abiding recollection I have of our dear Doctor is the
expression in her face in the middle of a heavy bombardment by German
guns of our hospital at Krushevatz during the autumn of 1915. I was
coming across some swampy ground which separated our building from the
large barracks called after the good and gentle Czar Lazar of
Kosovofanee, when a shell flew over our heads, and burst close by with a
deafening roar. The Doctor was coming from the opposite direction; we
stood a moment to comment upon the perilous position we were all in. She
looked up into my face, and with that smile that nobody who ever knew
her could forget, and such a quizzical expression in her blue eyes,
said: 'Eve, we are having some experiences now, aren't we?' She and I
had often compared notes, and said how we would like to be in the thick
of everything--at last we were. I have never seen anyone with greater
courage, or anyone who was more unmoved under all circumstances.
"Under our little Doctor bricks had to be made, whether there was straw
or not!
"In this same hospital at Krushevatz she had ordered me to get up
bathing arrangements for the sick and wounded. There was not a corner in
which to make a bath-room, or a can, and only a broken pump 150 yards
away across mud and swamp. There was no wood to heat the water, and
nothing to heat it in even if we had the wood. I admit I could not
achieve the desired arrangement. Elsie took the matter in hand herself,
finding I was no use, and in one day had a regular supply of hot water,
and baths for the big Magazine, where lay our sick, screened off with
sheets, and regular baths were the order of the day from that time
forth.
"One never ceased to admire the tireless energy, the resourcefulness,
and the complete unselfishness of that little woman who spent herself
until the last moment, always in the service of others."
"At last, on the 9th of February, our hospital was emptied.[14] The
chronic invalids had been 'put on commission' and sent to their
homes. The vast majority of the men had been removed to Hungary,
and the few remaining, badly wounded men who would not be fit for
months, taken over to the Austrian hospitals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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