Page:Women Wanted.djvu/110

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100
WOMEN WANTED

this they respond for any service to which the exigencies of war may call. There was the time of the first serious Zeppelin raid on London when amid the crash of falling bombs and the horror of fire flaming suddenly in the darkness, the shrieks of the maimed and dying filled the night with terror and the populace seemed to stand frozen to inaction at the scene about them. Right up to the centre of the worst carnage rolled a Green Cross ambulance from which leaped out eight khaki clad women. They were, mind you, women of the carefully sheltered class, who sit in dinner gowns under soft candle light in beautifully appointed English houses. And they never before in all their lives had witnessed an evil sight. But they set to work promptly by the side of the police to pick up the dead and the dying, putting the highway to order as calmly as they might have gone about adjusting the curtains and the pillows to set a drawing-room to rights. "Thanks," said the police, when sometime later an ambulance arrived from the nearest headquarters, "the ladies have done this job." Since then the Woman's Reserve Ambulance Corps is officially attached to the "D" Division of the Metropolitan Police for air raid relief.

That girl in khaki who is serving as a hospital orderly, you notice, wears shoulder straps of blue. She comes from the great military hospital in High Holborn that is staffed entirely by women. We may walk through the wards there where we shall see many of her. Above her in authority are women