on the straw on the floor ranged against the wall.
There weren't even cots. And there was only herself with one other woman to assist her in doing all that must be done for these one hundred and fifty helpless men.
The first that she remembers, a surgeon was calling out orders to her like a pistol exploding at her head. She got him a basin of water and some absorbent cotton and she managed to find the ether. Oh, his shining instruments were flashing horribly in the light from the window. He was going to cut off a man's leg. "But, Doctor," she exclaimed, "I never had that in my Red Cross training. I don't know how." She went so white that he looked at her and he hesitated. "Go out in the garden outside," he commanded, "and walk in the air." He looked at his watch. "I'll give you just three minutes. Come back then and we'll do this job."
They did this job, the Viscountess D'Azy holding the patient's leg while they did it. "After that," she has told me, "I was never nervous. I was never afraid. There wasn't anything I couldn't do."
And there wasn't anything she didn't do. There were always the one hundred and fifty men to be cared for: as fast as a cot was vacated for the grave, it was filled again from the battle-line. For six weeks the Viscountess was on her feet for seventeen hours out of every twenty-four, carrying water, preparing food, dressing wounds, closing the eyes of dying men. It took from eight in the morning until five in the afternoon just to do the dressings alone.
