Dr. Elsie Inglis / by Lady Frances Balfour.

  • Balfour, Frances, Lady, 1858-1931.
Date:
[1918]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Dr. Elsie Inglis / by Lady Frances Balfour. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    231/282 (page 209)
    struck the camp—we were nursing and operating the whole time, and evacuating rapidly too, and our cars were on the road practically always. ‘ The first notice we got of the retreat was our field hospital being brought back five versts. Then the transport. Then we were told to send the equipment to Galatz, but to keep essential things and the 'personnel. Then came orders to go ourselves. I never saw such a retreat. Serbia was nothing to it. The whole country was covered with groups of soldiers who had lost their regiments. Russians, Serbs, and Rumanians. The Rumanian guns were simply being rushed back, through the crowds of refugees. The whole country was moving : in some places the panic was awful. One part of our scattered unit came in for it. You would have thought the Bulgars were at the heels of the people. One man threw away a baby right in front of the cars. They were throwing everything off the carts to lighten them, and our people, being of a calmer disposition, picked up what they wanted in the way of vegetables, etc. Men, with their rifles and bayonets, climbed on to the Red Cross cars to save a few minutes. We simply went head over heels out of the country. I want to collect all the different stories of our groups. My special lot slept the first night on straw in Caromacat; the next night on the roadside round a lovely fire ; the next (much reduced in numbers, for I had cleared the majority off in barges for Galatz), we slept in an empty room at Hershova, and spent the next day dressing at the wharf. And by the next night we were o