M.
I am at the Belgian Red Cross hospital to-night. Have had supper and
have been given a room on the top floor, facing out over the sea.
This is the base hospital for the Belgian lines. The men come here
with the most frightful injuries. As I entered the building to-night
the long tiled corridor was filled with the patient and quiet figures
that are the first fruits of war. They lay on portable cots, waiting
their turn in the operating rooms, the white coverings and bandages
not whiter than their faces.
11 P.M. The Night Superintendent has just been in to see me. She says
there is a baby here from Furnes with both legs off, and a nun who
lost an arm as she was praying in the garden of her convent. The baby
will live, but the nun is dying.
She brought me a hot-water bottle, for I am still chilled from my long
ride, and sat down for a moment's talk. She is English, as are most of
the nurses. She told me with tears in her eyes of a Dutch Red Cross
nurse who was struck by a shell in Furnes, two days ago, as she
crossed the street to her hospital, which was being evacuated. She was
brought here.
"Her leg was shattered," she said. "So young and so pretty she was,
too! One of the surgeons was in love with her. It seemed as if he
could not let her die."
How terrible! For she died.
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