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wounds dressed.
Mrs. Bickerdyke and myself assisted in the operation.
Poor boys!
how my heart ached that I could do so little.
After doing what we could in Hospital No. 1, to render the condition of the poor fellows tolerable, we proceeded to No. 2, and did what we could there, distributing our sanitary comforts in the most econonomical manner, so as to make them go as far as possible.
We found that what we brought in the ambulance was giving untold comfort to our poor exhausted wounded men, whose rough hospital couches were made by pine boughs with the stems cut out, spread upon the ground over which their blankets were thrown.
This forms the bed, and the poor fellows' blouses, saturated with their own blood, is their only pillow, their knapsacks being left behind when they went into battle.
More sanitary goods are on the way, and will be brought to relieve the men as soon as possible.
Amidst all this care for others, there was little thought for her own comfort.
She says in another place:
Our bed was composed of dry leaves, spread with a rubber and soldier's blanket-our own blankets, with pillows and all, having been given out to sufferers long before night.
In this diary we find another illustration of her extreme modesty.
Though intended but for the eyes of her own family, she says much of
Mrs. Bickerdyke's work, and but little of her own. Two, three, or four hundred men, weary and exhausted, would be sent to them, and they must exert every nerve to feed them, while they snatched a little rest.
Pickles, sauer-kraut, coffee and hard bread they gave to these — for the sick and wounded they reserved their precious luxuries.
With a fire made out of doors, beneath a burning sun, and in kettles such as they could find, and of no great capacity, they made coffee, mush, and cooked
dried fruit and vegetables, toiling unweariedly through the long hot days and far into the nights.
Many of the men knew
Mrs. Bickerdyke, for many of them she had nursed through
