We then drove up to the hospital, where Miss Hill, the plucky and youthful-looking matron, received us and showed us round.
This girl--for she was little more--had been the life and prop of the place for the past two months, during which time the resources of the little hospital had been taxed almost past belief.

Where twenty was the usual number of patients, there were actually sixty-four on the occasion of my first visit.

The staff was composed of only a matron and three trained nurses.

In addition to their anxieties for the patients, who were being so frequently brought in with the most terrible injuries, these nurses underwent considerable risks from the bombardment, which, no doubt from accident, had been all along directed to the vicinity of the hospital and convent, which lay close together.

The latter had temporarily been abandoned by the nuns, who were living in an adjacent bomb-proof, and the former had not escaped without having a shell through one of the wards, at the very time a serious operation was taking place.