Page:Women Wanted.djvu/146

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132
WOMEN WANTED

under them; at another three thousand fever patients overflowed the building and lay on the ground outside in their uniforms, absolutely unattended. Facing conditions like these, Lady Paget opened her hospital in a former school building. And here in the war zone she instituted for herself such a régime as probably was never before arranged for an Englishwoman of title.

She arose at four o'clock in the morning, and when she slipped from her cot, no one handed her a silk kimono. The regulation "germ proof" uniform worn by women relief workers in Serbia consisted of a white cotton combination affair, the legs of which tucked tight into high Serbian boots. Over this went an overall tunic with a collar tight about the neck and bands tight about the wrists. There was a tight-fitting cap to go over the hair. And beneath this uniform, about neck and arms, you wore bandages soaked in vaseline and petroleum. It was the protection against the attacking vermin that swarmed everywhere as thick as common flies. Wounded men from the trenches arrived infested with lice, and typhus is spread by lice. Lady Paget stood heroically at her post by their bedsides, with her own hands attending to their needs. What there was to be done in the way of every personal service, she did not shrink from. And she unpacked bales of goods. And she scrubbed floors. And she assisted with the rites for the dying. There had to be a lighted candle in a dying Serbian soldier's hand, and often her own hand closed firmly about the hand too weak to