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At Zyradow these cannon sounded distant, but as we neared Radzivilow the guns were crashing away as they did at Lodz, and we prepared for a hot time. The station had been entirely wrecked and was simply in ruins, but the station-master's house near by was still intact, and we had orders to rig up a temporary dressing-station there.
Our automobiles had started off to Warsaw with some wounded officers, but the rest of the column had orders to go to Zyradow by the last train to leave Skiernevice. The sanitars now began to pack up the hospital; we did not mean to leave anything behind for the enemy if we could help it.
About ten minutes after his dressing was done, his white bandage was quite grey with the army of invaders that had collected on it from his other garments. Early that afternoon we got a message that another Column was coming to relieve us, and that we were to return to Zyradow for a rest.
Zyradow is one very large cotton and woollen factory, employing about 5000 hands. In Russia it is the good law that for every hundred workmen employed there shall be one hospital bed provided. In the small factories a few beds in the local hospital are generally subsidized, in larger ones they usually find it more convenient to have their own.
But our destination was Zyradow, only the next station but one down the line.
It was a great blow to the Column, as it was impossible to replace it, these big ambulance cars costing something like 8000 roubles. So our Christmas dinner eaten at our usual dirty little restaurant could not be called a success. Food was very scarce at that time in Zyradow; there was hardly any meat or sugar, and no milk or eggs or white bread.
We had left Zyradow rather quiet, but when we came back we found the cannon going hard, both from the Radzivilow and the Goosof direction. It would have taken much more than cannon to keep us awake, however, and we lay down most gratefully on our stretchers in the empty room at the Red Cross Bureau and slept.
But it was well worth losing a night's sleep to go up to the positions during a violent German attack. I wonder what the general would have said if he had known! We finished our forty-eight hours' duty and returned once more to Zyradow. I was always loth to leave Radzivilow. The work there was splendid, and there more than anywhere else I have been to one feels the war as a High Adventure.
When we arrived at Zyradow about three o'clock we were looking forward to a bath and tea and bed, as we had been up all night and were very tired; but the train most unkindly dropped us about a quarter of a mile from the station, and we had to get out all our equipment and heavy cases of dressings, and put them at the side of the line, while Julian, the Prince's soldier servant, went off to try and find a man and a cart for the things.
It was New Year's Eve when we returned to Zyradow, and found ourselves billeted in a new house where there was not only a bed each, but a bathroom and a bath. Imagine what that meant to people who had not undressed at night for more than three weeks. Midnight struck as we were having supper, and we drank the health of the New Year in many glasses of tea.
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