suffering.

I spoke of the bravery of our girls in Serbia; how many of them had
laid down their lives during the typhus epidemic; how cheerfully
they had borne hardships, our doctors writing home that their tent
hospitals were like "great white birds spreading their wings under
the trees," whereas really they had often been up all night hanging
on to the tent poles to prevent the tents collapsing over their patients.

A member of the Etat Major asked how we overcame the
language difficulty. I pointed out that to diagnose typhus and watch
the progress of the patient it was not necessary to speak to him,
and that by the magic language of sympathy we managed to
establish some form of "understanding" between the patients, the
Doctors, and the Nurses. The members of our staff were chosen
as far as possible with a knowledge of French or German, and it
was possible to find many Serbians speaking either one of these
languages. We also found interpreters amongst the Austrian
prisoner orderlies. These prisoner orderlies had really proved
useful and had done their best to help us. Naturally they had their
faults. One of our Lady Doctors had as orderly a Viennese
Professor, willing but somewhat absent-minded. One morning she
sent for him and asked him: "Herr Karl, can you tell me what was
wrong with my bath water this morning?" "I really don't know,
Fraulein, but I will endeavour to find out."

Ten minutes later he returned, looking decidedly guilty and
stammered out, "I do not know how to tell you what happened to
that bath water." "Nonsense, it can't be very terrible," replied
Doctor X. "What was wrong?" "Well, Fraulein, when I went into the