| Description | Letter from Amelia Nyasa Laws, Valence, to her relatives, regarding Mme. Soureillat going to mass; her offer to keep Amelia's dinner for her if she wants to go to church; another easier Sunday as no dressing to do; she is now free to have her meals when they are fresh as Mlle. Combe no longer holds her back; if she is late she must eat while the volunteers wash up, which they do with needless noise; the omelettes do not taste like Roman ones as they are made with oil, but the oil is from a kind of cabbage grown for the purpose and tastes good; the patients are convalescent and mischievous; description of a good-natured fight amongst several; Mme. Soureillat is quite kittenish, too, and treats Amelia like a sister; she has given her a photograph as a souvenir de guerre; Asteggiano has been removed to the Séminaire, regardless of Dr. Jacquin's opposition; he threatened Mme. Soureillat with a revolver; he comes from Piedmont, was a cabin boy, and never wore shoes till he was 18; the latest officers are much better; Lt. Arnaud is very young and has a shoulder wound for her to massage; he and two other officers come downstairs to listen to the music but do not sit with the men; most of the men like waltzes and dances, while Arnaud and Liénart like classical music; Hergaux is to leave, cured, this week, and will be missed; Mestre, a new case, has blood poisoning as the result of spending one night in an Italian hospital; description of the event. Third page is key to a group photograph [absent] of Michel; Tréhart with bone missing in his arm (to be mended with a silver hook); Vayr; a rascally Marseillais; Seguin with an arm 'threatened with disarticulation at the shoulder owing to a fistula of the bone'; Cruau; Mme. Chabaud; Girou (fractured clavicle and shoulder blade broken by a dozen splinters, five of which remain and cuse slight suppuration); Villeneuve, with a fractured rib; Kappler with an elephantine toe; Taillefer, wounded at Verdun in 1916 (fistula of left radius still suppurates and bone constantly yielding splinters). Second group photograph of Rouillon; Mme. Chabaud; Hergaux; Pitaval; Bergaud, and others. |