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polluted water which spread the equally dangerous typhoid fever.
    To save the wounded soldiers in the town from further infection, Muriel would direct typhus patients to the tented hospital at once. Even though she expected this, Kate was not prepared for what she saw as she stepped out of the staff tent at six in the morning. A row of carts stretched from the perimeter of the camp back along the road until it disappeared behind the brow of a hill. There were ox wagons and donkey carts and occasionally a smaller vehicle – hardly more than a platform on two wheels, pulled between the shafts by the mother of the child who lay on it. Old men carried babies in their arms;exhausted women slept on the verge. There was no noise, no jostling for position; the line of sufferers waited patiently until someone was ready to help them.
    Kate was already dressed in the costume which she had designed for everyone concerned in the reception of new patients. It was not beautiful, and only time would tell whether it was effective. She had rubbed her body all over with paraffin and was now wearing a one-piece garment tightly strapped round her neck, ankles and wrists. One of her first actions when she realized the dangers had been to cut off most of her thick tawny hair so that the short crop which remained could be easily contained inside a rubber cap. Long boots and rubber gloves completed the outfit.
    Careless of the impression she must make, she called for stretcher bearers and hurried to the head of the queue. A tall man with only one arm jumped down from the front of the first ox wagon and led her round to the back. He pulled the canvas aside to reveal more than a dozen children. All were between the ages of three and ten and all were either asleep or unconscious. Their hair was dirty and their clothes ragged, but that was of no importance. What made Kate stare in dismay was the state of the little girl nearest to the light. Her leg rested on a pad of folded sacks but there was no flesh on the bone of the foot and the gangrene was spreading above the knee. Several weeks must have passed since she survived the first onslaught of the typhus and it was clear that in all that time she had received no medical attention.
    The one-armed man was saying something, presumably in Serbo-Croat. Kate shook her head to indicate that she did not understand and he made a second attempt in a language equally unfamiliar to her. She put up a finger to silence him as she made a quick count of the children. Three were in need of immediate surgery, five were in the semi-comatose stage of typhus which suggested that they were approaching the point of crisis, two others –awake now and moaning for water – showed the brown blotches on their skins which were the earlier signs of infection, and three were already dead. Only one little girl appeared to be free of typhus and her state was the most serious of all, for it was clear that she was suffering from diphtheria and that an immediate tracheotomy was essential.
    Kate pointed out this child and two of the gangrene cases to be the first to go to the special admission tents, where they would undergo a routine of cleansing and disinfecting before being admitted to the ward tents. As she turned away, realizing that all the reception arrangements must be multiplied, she had to fight down a sense of panic. In the weeks of waiting she had done her best to fill the gaps in her experience, but even then she had been part of a team and had never been required to attempt the most dangerous operations. She had had some surgical experience as a medical student, but she was not a qualified surgeon. Beatrice, allowing her to join the unit, had expected her to act only as Muriel’s assisstant in this field. But to put a child who was already almost dead from diphtheria back on to a jolting wagon in order that she could be entrusted to Muriel’s safer hands would be a risk too great to take. From now on, Kate