The nursing staff was headed by a matron and army nursing sisters; under them were orderlies, young girls selected from the best-known schools in England; they worked excellently and most of them became very proficient. They were nearly all very good looking and were nick-named by some people "the beauty chorus" but this did not impair their efficiency and keenness. They looked very well in the uniform, which had a smart short skirt and a round cap with a crêpe veil; the colour was a light
^ khaki tending to mole-colour; the medical staff wore scarlet shoulder straps the orderlies blue. Besides nursing and other duties, the orderlies did all the stretcher-bearing except lifting down the patient from the upper stretcher in the ambulance; this was done by members of a small squad of R.A.M.C. men who were attached to the hospital under a sergeant-major. Some of the orderlies sketched well and produced amusing caricatures, even the Chiefs sometimes falling victim to their efforts. Dṛ Anderson was small, quick and energetic in her movements, Dṛ Murray tall, calm and unhurried; some slight clash of directions regarding a patient on a trolley en route for the operating theatre provoked a drawing which brought out clearly Dṛ Anderson's quick fussiness and Dṛ Murray's quietly beckoning finger. A clever sketch captured my back view as I waited in the court-yard by the lift and convinced me that a bad habit of standing with my feet wide apart needed correction. The orderlies paraded on pay-day before the Orderly Officer for the day to receive the usual army pay of 1/- a day, to which they gleefully referred as a tip.
The hospital had between 400 and 500 beds and was situated in a street parallel to Drury Lane and quite near Covent Garden and Theatre-land generally. It had been an old disused workhouse infirmary at the time that Belgian refugees were pouring into England. For a time it housed Belgians but, as these gradually found work and other accommodation, the place became empty and was offered by the War Office for the hospital. It must have looked an awkward proposition as it first appeared, for work-house infirmaries were not provided with all modern conveniences. The immediate necessity was lifts and a lift
