200 THE ZEMSTVOS DURING THE WAR 
and female trained nurses. It took with it a complete outfit for a 
hospital of one hundred beds, together with five tents, two motor 
lorries, one passenger automobile, and fourteen wagons with the re- 
quired number of horses. The whole equipment cost less than 40,000 
rubles. 
However, it was found at the outset that this organization suf- 
fered from certain defects. The detachment was expected to follow 
zlosely the advancing armies, and to be in a position both to unpack 
and to pack up promptly. Having no permanent base, in view of the 
constantly shifting front lines, the detachment was compelled to 
sarry with it all its heavy equipment, and for this neither the staff 
nor the transport facilities of the detachment had been prepared. At 
the same time, the zemstvo representatives who had succeeded in 
making their way to the war zone, received from all directions re- 
quests that they should assist the army hospital department in look- 
ing after the wounded, pending their transfer to hospitals. Large 
aumbers of wounded, after being given a makeshift dressing, were 
being painfully transported on jolting two-wheeled vehicles, while 
sthers failed altogether to reach the regimental ambulances, and 
were compelled to drag themselves along on foot, often arriving at 
the hospitals in a terrible condition. 
To pick up these casualties in the trenches, often under the fire 
>f the enemy; to send them to the rear in comfortable carriages; to 
dress their wounds and, in urgent cases, to perform operations at 
the field hospitals; to change their clothing and to feed and trans- 
fer them to the rear hospitals situated twelve or fifteen miles behind 
the front lines—these were some of the tasks which the zemstvo field 
Jetachment was asked to undertake. It is obvious that the equipment 
of these field detachments had to be of a very special character. 
During the Japanese War a few Red Cross detachments had been 
fitted out for this purpose but their equipment and maintenance had 
proved very expensive; as they were inactive during the long inter- 
rals between battles, their usefulness had been considerably im- 
paired. 
In spite of these experiences in the past,—experiences that were 
anything but calculated to encourage repetition,—the Zemstvo Un- 
ion did not consider itself justified in shirking this urgent prob- 
lem. It set to work to introduce considerable changes in the organi- 
sation of all the detachments subsequently formed, especially in that