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Updated: May 8, 2025
Around the operating-tables there was a sound of half-audible conversation as the surgeons gave directions to their assistants or discussed the injuries of the men upon whom they were at work, and now and then a peremptory call for "Litter-squad here!" showed that another man was about to be brought to the operating-table, or carried from it into the field and laid on the ground.
A lot of guns fired at it, but it was too high up to hit. The incident caused some excitement in the streets. Last night we heard that more wounded were coming in from the fighting-line near Ghent. We got sixty more beds ready, and sat up late, boiling water, sterilising instruments, preparing operating-tables and beds, etc., etc.
Others were brought down in army wagons by the load, as few ambulances were at hand. Fortunately, there were some tents here that had been used by troops before going to the front. Under these hay was spread and covered with blankets, and the improvised hospital was ready. One tent was taken for operating-tables, and the work of surgeons and nurses began.
We were met by a smart-looking nurse, who told us that the doctor was at present engaged in an operation, and would be with us shortly. He soon appeared, and, apologising for the simplicity of the building, started taking us round. First he led us into the accident-room, where the injured are first treated. There were the usual operating-tables and cases of instruments.
They stood at the operating-tables, wholly without sleep, and almost without rest or food, for twenty-one consecutive hours; and yet, in spite of their tremendous exertions, hundreds of seriously or dangerously wounded men lay on the ground for hours, many of them half naked, and nearly all without shelter from the blazing tropical sun in the daytime, or the damp, chilly dew at night.
I took charge of the theatre as I knew where the things went, and I think the British working man would have been rather astonished to see how fast the big sterilizers fell apart and the operating-tables slid into their cases.
Wounded men from the front continued to come into the hospital camp on Saturday until long after midnight, and the exhausted surgeons worked at the operating-tables by candlelight until 3 A. M. I noticed, carrying stretchers and looking after the wounded, two or three volunteer assistants from civil life, among them Mr. Brewer of Pittsburg, who died of yellow fever a few days later at Siboney.
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