"Not much room in
the eye-wound wards," he ponders; or, "A lot of empties in the
medicals." And then ... the tinkle of the telephone....
"Another convoy expected at 6.15? Twenty walking-cases and seventeen
cots. Right you are!"
And at 6.15 the party of orderlies will be back again at the front door,
again the motor-cars will stream up the drive, again the ambulances will
come with their stretchers, and again the receiving hall will awaken
from its interlude of silence to echo with the activities incidental to
a clearing house of those damaged human bundles which are the _raison
d'etre_ of our great war-hospital.
VII
"T.... A...."
War-hospital patients are of many sorts. It is a common mistake of the
arm-chair newspaper devourer to lump all soldiers together as quaint,
bibulous, aitch-dropping innocents, lamblike and gauche in
drawing-rooms, fierce and picturesque on the field, who (to judge by
their published photographs) are continually on the grin and continually
shaking hands either with each other or with equally grinsome French
peasant women at cottage doors or with the local mayor who congratulates
them on the glorious V.
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