66 THE ZEMSTVOS DURING THE WAR
dreds of thousands of rubles and representing an excellent hospital
on wheels. The number of such trains, however, soon proved abso-
lutely inadequate. After serious battles they could remove at best
only a small proportion of the casualties. Moreover, during the first
months of the War the railways near the front were badly con-
gested, so that even such hospital trains as happened to be available
were not always able to reach the point where they were most
needed. In order to cope with such emergencies, the military au-
thorities were compelled to use whatever means happened to be
available at the moment. Freight cars arriving at the front with
munitions, provisions, or troops, would be immediately loaded with
the sick and wounded and sent back to the interior.
These freight cars had, of course, no sleeping accommodation
whatever and frequently lacked even straw bedding, so that the
sufferers had to lie on the hard wooden floors. In the meantime, the
nights were becoming chilly. There were no kitchens on these trains
and sometimes they would arrive during the night at the clearing
stations and canteens when the medical staffs and other attendants
were absent. As a general rule, such a train would be accompanied
by a single army surgeon, or perhaps only a junior medical officer
or a nurse from some army hospital. Lacking practically everything
that might help to alleviate the suffering of their patients, these
nurses or doctors, acting under strict orders of the military authori-
ties which required them to attend to six hundred or seven hundred
charges, were simply forced to keep out of sight of their helpless
patients, being unable to do anything for them. When these im-
provised hospital trains finally arrived at Moscow after many days,
the appearance of the patients was often shocking. As long as clear-
ing hospitals had not been established, the most that could be done
was to make a hasty round of the train, dress some of the wounds,
feed the men, and provide straw or perhaps wood shavings for
bedding, to make them a little more comfortable. Frequently, how-
ever, it was impossible to do even this. Sometimes a train might
arrive unexpectedly in the night or on holidays. when it was difficult
to obtain necessary supplies.
All these facts compelled the Zemstvo Union to insist that it
should be informed in advance of the arrival of every train. It pro-
ceeded to organize a continuous day and night watch of the medical
personnel and opened a special supply depot for the most mndis-
