322 Ten Years of my Life. 



the Saxon troops to which he belonged standing next to the 

 Prussian Guards. • • 



In the evening of the 27th several members of our family- 

 met in Joiiy, all being with the army before Metz. There was 

 Prince Alfred, his sons Leopold and Florentine, the latter 

 serving in a regiment of jaegers ; the Counts Alfred and Otto. 

 Salm-Hoegstraeten, and Prince George Croy, a knight of 

 Malta. 



On Sunday August 28, the zinc coffins were finished, and I 

 started with them for St. Mary-aux-Chenes. It was a rainy, 

 cold day, weather quite in accordance with my dismal errand. 



Finding an abode in a kind of shed built by the knights of 

 St. John, and serving as their head-quarters there, I saw in an 

 adjoining compartment a rather stout, middle-aged woman in 

 a plain black-dress, busily employed with cooking. She was the 

 generally respected Mrs. Simon, a Saxon, who has won in that 

 war a well-merited fame by her practical good sense and energy, 

 employed with great success for the benefit of the soldiers. 

 Conquering all opposing difficulties, hovvever great, she suc- 

 ceeded in being allowed to be always with the front of 

 the army, accompanied by a well-trained body of nurses, 

 provided with everything required for the wounded on 

 the battlefield, where indeed help was most needed. The 

 activity of ' Mother Simon,' as she was called by the 

 grateful soldiers, who were all full of her praises, cannot be 

 sufficiently appreciated. She furnished the most striking 

 evidence that the leading knights of St. John * committed 

 a great mistake in placing difficulties in the way of nurses and 

 voluntary sanitary associations, who wished to go on the battle- 

 fields and not to be bullied and treated contemptibly by snobs 

 several miles behind the front. Great complaint was made 

 everywhere about this mistake, which caused a great deal of 

 suftering, which might have been prevented. Those soldiers 

 who were wounded in a manner which permitted their trans- 

 portation to the depots behind the front were tolerably well 

 cared for, but those who were wounded too severely, and who 

 had to remain on the battlefield, were sadly neglected. They 

 had to lie in yards or filthy peasant houses on the bare floor, 

 often even without straw, without any food, and not rarely even 

 without water. It was therefore not to be wondered at if, of 

 those who had undergone amputation on the battlefield such a 



