The cannon ball that I told you about that I picked up was used 100
years ago against the Turks; there are no end lying about the fields.
Dr. May returned to England this evening; she will be away about six
weeks. She will bring out more stores and will collect fresh funds for
the upkeep of our Hospital and Dispensary.
Transport wagons are passing along the road near our camp all night,
so perhaps we shall move on shortly. Oxen are used and they only
travel about twenty English miles a day.
We have no fresh cases in hospital because there is no fighting at
present. There are over one hundred patients at the road-side
dispensary; each day some of the cases are terrible--typhus, scarlet
fever, diphtheria, and a very bad case of small-pox, but there are no
hospitals to send these sort of cases to. To-day a poor girl arrived
with one foot black, all the flesh eaten off her leg with gangrene;
she had a tubercular foot which she had had a year and it had never
been attended to. Women arrive with dreadful diseases, some with
cancer.
People in dear old England cannot imagine the state of this part of
the world; thousands and thousands are suffering and cannot get
attention.
We are now trying to stop some of the dreadful diseases spreading, and
are starting another Hospital called the Civil, and this Hospital will
take in some of these bad cases. We are also hoping to have the six
dispensaries along the line. Our Field Hospital is only for surgical
cases.
Another wet day; we had a terrible thunderstorm which returned two
nights running; the lightning is much more vivid than in England; in
fact it lights up the hills all round and the sky seems to almost
open.
To-day is only May 9 with the Serbians; thirteen days difference; it
seems so strange.
To-day a man was seen buying Serbian whisky; he gave it to two of the
patients and made them drunk. One of my orderlies did the same and was
sent away last week. Owing to this one man the whole lot of Austrian
orderlies were called into line, twenty-seven in all, and they were
marched to the office tent, where Major Partridge talked to them all,
boxed the man's ears who bought the whisky and sent him to prison for
ten days.
There are three kinds of punishment for prisoners: first, boxing their
ears; second, sending to prison for ten days on bread and water and
solitary confinement; and third, to shoot them. It makes me quite ill
to see the men have their ears boxed. The Serbians seem really good to
their prisoners; I hope ours in Germany are being treated as well.
I had a lovely dish of wild strawberries brought me to-day as a
present; the strawberries were strung on grasses and they are sold for
1_d._ a string. I also had a bunch of cherries and some sweets, and
this evening two of the Austrian prisoners gave me their prison
badges, so I was in luck's way.
All around our camp we have funny round holes. I discovered that
black-looking beetles lived down them, but to-night I found they are
crickets; they sing all night and are such dears. I dug one out of its
hole and put it in the kitchen. We also found some of these funny
holes where great large spiders live with hairy legs, and they spin
such a nice strong web over their holes. I suppose this is their front
door. We have been up to our knees in mud the last few days, and
little streams run through our camp, but one gets used to these
things; the ground is of hard clay and the water does not disperse
quickly unless the sun comes out, then it dries up in quite a short
time. This makes us think of our poor soldiers in the trenches.