We often had to use our X-Rays for the unfortunate inhabitants of the town, children who would play in the streets, and women who had been caught when returning from the Municipio, where coal and food was served out to them. One poor woman for whom we were called in had eleven wounds in her back. She had been asleep in bed and a shell had pitched into the basement of her house, and the pieces had come up through the floor and through her bed. Women were very hard to radiograph. It was something in the consistency of their flesh. We found the same difficulty with some men who had very fine skin, and nearly always had to give ten or fifteen seconds longer pose for their radiographs.

Some of the hospitals were hit pretty nearly every day, and we often wondered how the surgeons were able to do their work, as they could never know when & shell would choose to come into their operating-room. I have seen one or two of them just mad with nerves and rage, asking how any one could expect them to do good work under the circumstances; but as a rule they took it very calmly and shrugged their shoulders say ing it was "Destino." One hospital in particular was always catching it, and we never could imagine why it was not moved. Twice when we arrived there its operatingroom had been blown out, and once our radiographic room; at another time a shell had come in and smashed part of

the staircase. They always used to invite us to go up to the roof of that hospital when our work was done, as it afforded the best view in Gorizia of the enemy's trenches; but to me it was a doubtful pleasure, as, being very high up, I always felt what horrible long way it would be to fall if a shell came just when we were there.

The Austrian shooting was very good. I remember one house, the house of a General that they meant to get, and there they had put one shell into the dining-room, where it went to ground behind a case of empty syphons and did not explode; another fell in the General's bedroom, which he had happened to leave half an hour earlier than usual that morning (luckily for him, he would have been caught, as this one blew the side of the house out), and a third exploded in the garden in front of the room where he worked. No one was even wounded, but it was not the fault of the shooting!

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Our journeys in and out of Gorizia were unceasingly full of interest, and we hardly went in or out during those first months without something happening.

There was one day that stands out in the memory of both of us. We had sent Whitehead and an orderly on with the apparatus, and we were following quietly after in the ambulance car. We had got nearly down to the bridge over the Isonzo, the Grafenberg Bridge as it was called, when

a sentry stopped us and said, "The bridge is not passable, it is being shelled." We pulled olose in under the banks for shelter (they are luckily very steep just there) and composed ourselves to wait until the bridge became healthy again. The sight was a very fine one, the shells plopping into the water all round the bridge and the splash going mountainhigh. Other cars came and ranged themselves in behind us and well under the bank. A Staff car bustled up, and the occupant, a stout old colonel, tumbled out and hurried into a dug-out. An Italian ambulance driver, a Red Cross officer called Gotland, came up and talked to us, and we were watching the shells with much interest when the ory went up for an ambulance. There were only two ambulances there, ours and the Italian one; we bowed politely and said "Your turn," but his car turned out to be already full of sick officers he was taking back to hospital in Cormons, so we hastily emptied the radiographic table and one or two other things that we had in the car on to the ground, and bundled up the hill to the bridgehead, whence the cry had come. We stopped just short of it in a place where I knew I could turn, as the car I was driving had the unpleasant habit of turning round and round on her own axis when asked to turn to the right in a tight place, and plenty of room was needed or she would have taken us into the river. While I was engaged in my cautious

turn, Mrs Hollings jumped out and ran up to the bridgehead, where the wounded were being collected. They packed eight into the car and some others into a lorry, and I started off with my lot to the nearest hospital. I had looked round for my companion, but she was only just visible up at the bridge, which they were still shelling, helping with the other wounded, so I went off without her and deposited my load at the hospital. The oar behaved quite well until I had got rid of the wounded, when it proceeded to turn round and round in the hospital yard, and I had to get two soldiers to disentangle the wheels for me. the way up to the hospital, in passing the English ambulance section, I had shouted to them that there was work for them at the bridge, and by the time I had unloaded my men and started to go back the Englishmen had already gone.

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When I got back the firing had stopped, and I was lieved to find Mrs Hollings waiting for me by the side of the road. She had stayed at the bridgehead with a man who had been very badly hit, until he died; that is why she had not been able to come up with the ambulance.

The very next day we had an episode of the same description: a shell burst in the road in front of us, and a worker in the road had the top of his head blown off. We did what we could, which was not much, and put him into our car under the shelter of a wall, where he could lie comfortably

without any one to worry him, and Mrs Hollings sat with him; but there was nothing to be done, and he died in about half an hour without having shown any sign of consciousness or pain. There was another man hit at the same time, who was much hurt in his feelings at our not paying more attention to him. He had been hit between the fingers, a piece of shell having torn the flesh. He whined like an offended baby, but was soon comforted when I paid attention and poured iodine on it and tied it up.

The approaches to the bridges were generally crammed with incident, and often, especially at night, were very difficult driving. The road was generally crowded with troops, lorries, and mules going both ways, usually in dead silence and pitch darkness, as no light was allowed of any kind. The high screens on each side of the road blocked out even the flashes from the guns which lit the sky, and except for the noise of the distant enemy batteries, broken occasionally by the roar of one of ours stationed alongside the road, the only noise was the shuffling of many feet and an occasional muttered curse when some one bumped into some one else.

One night, about 11 P.M., I had left Mrs Hollings in Gorizia, and was on my way back to Cormons, with Whitehead driving. It was pitohy dark, and when we got down to the banks of the river we found ourselves in an unholy jam. It was impossible to move one

way or the other: there were kicking mules, backing horses, and huge lorries or camions, while the usual carabiniere seemed to be absent for once. I descended from the front of the car into the crowd, and found there was barely room to get between the various carts and motors, so tightly jammed were they. At last I wriggled my way through, and discovered an agitated carabiniere with a small lantern, carefully shaded, in his hand. On my appeal to him to make way for us, he said it was impossible, that the jam had been there almost an hour already, and that he was quite helpless alone. I suggested that if I went to one end of the block with my electric torch, and if he stayed at this end, perhaps we might get them on the move. He agreed hopefully, and back I toiled through the crowd, telling them as I passed to be ready to move directly the one in front moved, even if it was only an inch. I forget how it was eventually done, but between us we soon got them on the move, and we managed to get our motor through and down to the bridge. There it was so dark we could not see where the bridge, a pontoon, ended or began. Out I had to get again and walk over just in front of the car with my electric torch lit inside my hand, so that only a little red glow showed Whitehead where I was and where the centre of the bridge was. I was in a blue funk, because it was so slippery from wet that I nearly fell at every

step, and if I had gone down the car would have been sure to run over me, as Whitehead owned he could not see an inch in front of his face, and my light was very small!

We always had adventures on that bridge: one time

shell caught a cart immediately behind us, and at the same time another landed in the road immediately before us. It must be remembered that the nearest Austrian trenches were barely a mile beyond the town.

The Italians used to send operating sections very close up to the Front. They consisted of two or three of the best surgeons, and established themselves in the most advanced posts, so as to treat the abdominal wounds and the worst head wounds. They said that if you could operate on abdominal cases within an hour, or at most two hours, there was a chance of saving them which they certainly would not have if sent back to a field hospital in a shaky ambulance_before being operated on. These sections used us very much; and later, when we had more apparatus at our disposal, we used to lend complete plants to some of them, sometimes with an assistant to do the work for them, or, if we had not an assistant free, we used to leave a plant with them and go there ourselves when there was a big attack expeoted. They established themselves in cellars or in the same house as a dressing station, or sometimes in a cave.

For the Bainsizza attack one of these sections was established in a tunnel, and we were asked to place an apparatus and two assistants in it. It

used formerly as a railway tunnel, the line running through it to Gorizia; then, during the fighting for the Plava Valley, the Austrians had used it to house infantry. After that the Italians used it for guns, and later for a mule stable, so the mess was knee-deep! It was about 300 metres long. It will give you an idea of the general state of the ground when I tell you that outside I had slipped going up the railway embankment, and, having fallen on my hands and knees, I could not get the smell of putrefaction off my hands for two or three days, try as I might.

The top and sides of the tunnel were all soot, and the ground, in places where there was not solid slime, was