Our work used to be very uneven; sometimes two or three days would pass without any calls coming, and the section would relapse into despair, and feel that our work was bad and that we had better retire to England, a miserable failure and wanted by no one; then would come an attack and the other extreme of despair would seize us. Telephone messages and telegrams would pour in night and day. Motor bicycles blocked the doors, and orderlies waited patiently at the bottom of the stairs to catch us as we went out, with demands for the car to be sent immediately in at least six different directions at the same time, and the heap of calls on the engagement-table grew higher and higher till we despaired of ever reducing the heap.

The record day when the section was at its full complement was 121 examinations in seven different hospitals, the hospitals averaging six to twelve kilometres apart, three of them being in Gorizia.

The country was very varied, the road to Gorizia being quite flat; but most of the other roads were up steep mountains, some of them difficult driving, especially at night.

Owing to a big subscription having been got up in London

by our friends, we had been able to equip a second car. The Red Cross had provided us with a Fiat chassis (besides the one which the Italian Army had given us), so we had in all two radiographic cars with apparatus complete, two Medical Association sets and several duplicate parts, so that if anything went wrong with one plant we could always supplement it with the spare parts.

The Red Cross sent us out a lot more help after our first assistant, Mrs Hicks, left us; Miss Farrar, Miss Grant, Miss Gretton, Miss Chapman, Miss Hanbury Williams, Miss North, all came at different times and stayed their six months. Some had had some experience before, others had not, but we found that whatever their experience they usually had to learn almost everything afresh. The usual X-Ray Assistant's work in a hospital was very different to ours, and more resembled the work we had done in our long apprenticeship in Paris-such as the setting of the tube correctly in the early morning, cleaning all the visible parts, handing the screen to the radiographer, timing the exposures, and cleaning the table after each patient. Then the eternal developing of the plates. All this some of them.

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could do; but the posing of the patient, the anatomical knowledge necessary for judging the position of a foreign body, and necessary above all for knowing what was normal and what was abnormal, they none of them had, and we found it very difficult, not to say impossible, to teach all this in the short time we had at our disposal.

The section were perfectly splendid in the way they put their backs into the work, and one never heard a word of remonstrance however much work there was going. During the whole two years we were in Italy, except for one or two exceptions, our assistants were splendid workers-as keen as we were to make the section a success, and never grudging of trouble or health as long as the work was got through. In fact, our difficulty often was to make them knock off Occasionally and take a rest. That is the worst and the best of women workers: they are so anxious to show how strong they are that they work till they drop, and are indignant if any rest is suggested. We used to insist on an hour's rest in the middle of the day. All Italians have their siesta, and after a bit our section followed suit, and I am sure that hour's rest, as well as the fresh air when going from hospital to hospital, enabled us all to get through so much work without breaking down.

Of course, in the winter the work was as nothing compared to the summer months. The

assistants all came out to us about December 1916, just as the Italian Army had practically gone into winter quarters, and the casualties we had to deal with were consequently but small. The time was not wasted, however, as all the newcomers were learning the work so as to be ready for the spring offensive. During the last six months the Red Cross also provided the seotion with a secretary, Miss Henderson, who proved most useful.

Mrs Hollings and I had been urged for some months to give up X-Rays, as our hands and eyes had begun to show show some signs of being slightly affected by the Rays, so our own work during the last six months that we were out there consisted mostly of supervising that of the other members of the seotion. After working so long ourselves we found it very difficult to let others take it on, but when we began lending apparatus and assistants to the different operating centres, as well as having the two X-Ray cars always on the road, we found we had plenty to do to keep the whole lot of machinery in order. We managed altogether to raise by hook or by crook five machines, and had lent many of our spare parts to hospitals whose machines would not work, so our time was spent mostly in helping to put to rights the ones that had struck work.

About three months before, the authorities had given us an

electrician, and we found him of the greatest use. At first we scandalised him by the things we used to do to our machines; but after a time he found that although we knew no theory of electricity and could not discourse on the matter, yet that experience on our apparatus for nearly three years had taught us the way to get the best results out of the machines that they were capable of giving, and that we had learnt how to locate an injury in our plant as quickly as the plant enabled us to locate a foreign body in a man. So the three of us used to travel the country in different directions, doing

our best to mend and put various apparatus in order. Another plant that we had the handling of was a big Austrian one, found in & damaged house in Gorizia. Mrs Hollings had the arrangement of that entirely, and she first put it up in a big hospital in Gorizia; but it had to be removed soon, as the hospital was shelled so often, and we obtained leave from the Governor of the town to put it up in a very large hospital in Cormons. It was a great suocess there, and I believe did a lot of work. I suppose it has gone back to its original owners now.

In March 1917, when the assistants had become fairly proficient, Mrs Hollings made up her mind to go and live entirely in Gorizia; she said she found it more peaceful and soothing, infinitely preferring the incessant noise of three or four batteries below the garden, and the frequent scream and bursting of shells in the neighbourhood, to our pleasant conversation at the headquarters of the section at Cormons! So we divided up the orderlies and cars, and she stayed there practically always, until our departure from the section. I was very much against it for some time, as I thought splitting our forces might lead to confusion. I think it did at times! But her theory was that the cases in Gorizia were of such an urgent type, that the three-quarters of an hour

that it took us to get in there might just make all the difference to some men's lives. In this she was right, as she had an enormous number of cases there, and when we established an apparatus in Hospital No. 86, with two of our members to live there, Mrs Hollings' presence was quite indispensable, as she looked after their plant, as well as doing the work of the other hospitals in the town. Our house in Gorizia had a most convenient roof, and when we had time to spare we used to lie flat on the top of it, so as not to show above the parapet, and watch the troops assaulting San Marco and San Gabriele. So near were we that we could hear them shouting as they ran to the attack. San Marco was assaulted again and again while we were there, but the Italians, try as they

might, could not get it; they used, with great effort and sometimes terrible losses, to get half-way up, and rumours used to float down to us that they had taken it, but they were always driven back again. The top was practically impregnable, having machine-guns hidden in caves all round; and a little Bersagliere officer, who had led his men over and over again to the assault, told us that there was one point beyond which his men simply could not go, for they were mown down in rows and nothing could live. San Marco was never taken while we were there, but San Gabriele was several times, and then lost again. We had a very personal interest in the taking of San Gabriele. The road we usually took to pay our daily visit to the tunnel at Plava, or rather Zagora, was a long and a very steep one. We were both cowardly about hairpin bends and very steep gradients. There was a beautifully flat road which led from Zagora along a narrow valley to Gorizia, but unfortunately it was completely overlooked by the Austrian batteries on San Gabriele, and so long as Gabriele remained Austrian we could not go down this road. At last one day news got about that Gabriele was really taken. I murmured at the tunnel hospital that we thought we would try that road that evening, as it was so much quicker. No one made any remark, so we conoluded that it was open, and off we started. We crossed the bridge to the other side of the river and slowly picked our

way through the immense throng of mules, guns, and troops of all sorts, who were going up to reinforce the tired men who had just rushed Monte Kuch with such wonderful élan. At one place an officer signed to us to stop, and shouted something that we could not hear; we pulled up, but not soon enough, and a big mortar hidden just below the edge of the road went off exactly in our ears. Why we had not the drum of our ears broken I cannot imagine. I was sitting on the side of the car nearest to it, and had my hat whirled off my head, but nothing else happened. We proceeded quietly, very quietly, so as to make no dust, and presently came to a turn in the road. There we met two stretohers with men who had just been hit being carried back to the dressing station that we had passed some way back. The valley was getting narrower and narrower, and there were fewer and fewer people to be seen. We came to a Major of Artillery standing behind a screen, staring up the road with his glasses, so we stopped and asked him if the road was open. He saluted politely, and said, "It wasn't half an hour ago, but you might find it so now." By this time, what with the fearsomeness of the grey rocky sides descending into the rushing river and the growing and eerie silence, we were both beginning to wonder whether we should ever get home any more. Then the protective screens on each side of the road ceased, and for the

first time for many months we were on a road without any oover. We felt very lonely, and were creeping cautiously along, when there came an outburst of firing, shrapnel overhead and machine-guns along the road. You can imagine that we did not stay long! The road had bits spurting out of it not 100 yards away, and we backed the car more hurriedly than I have ever seen a car backed before. There was no time to turn nor was there room, so we had to back. We passed that Major a little way up the road. There was no need to explain, and we smiled sweetly at each other, and continued our way; but it was a pity, as the road was so much shorter and so much safer, if only it had been open. Our car chose to break down completely about ten minutes afterwards, and had to be towed home, so perhaps it was as well that we did not succeed in taking our short out!

A few days after the flight of the Austrians over the Bainsizza Plateau, we received a message from the General asking us to go up to the new ground just taken by the Italians, and see whether the roads were possible for our apparatus. So we took our little touring Fiat up to sample the going for the heavier cars, and packed it full of gauze, swabs, and thermometers, which we knew were much needed by the advanced dressing stations. We crossed the river half-way between Plava and Canale, as the usual bridge was down, and finding ourselves so far

already from our objective, we decided to go up by a new road that we heard existed near Canale. Canale must have been beautiful before it was destroyed, as it was situated on the river itself, with a series of bridges connecting both banks. There were still remains of houses to be seen on the bridges, and its position was on a lovely ourve of the river, with high wooded mountains on either side.

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The road proved not to be finished, so we had to return to Plava and go up by the wonderful road which the Italian engineers had made up Monte Kuch: 7 metres of road with fourteen hairpin bends, and wide enough to take three lorries abreast, all made in twenty-one days! It was very orowded, and we stuck hopelessly at one of the bends; a big naval gun being towed up by two huge tractors had refused to turn the sharp corner, and had stuck right across the road. The only way to move it was for one of the tractors to climb the steep bank, towing the gun with it, and then to insert jacks under the gun, and once on the balance, to put twenty or thirty men to swing it bodily round to the new direction, with twenty others to steady its nose with a rope for fear it might possibly overbalance. We sat and watched this wonderful performance, which went off without hitch. It took about an hour and a half, and we remained comfortably in our ear and ate our luncheon.

The Bainsizza Plateau is