We are going to make an attempt upon Miss Night-
ingale. She keeps all our men when they are dis-
charged from hospital, and makes nurses of them,
not considering that the other men are doing their
duty in the trenches. I believe she has about 300
men of the Highland Brigade thus employed. There
ought to be men enlisted as nurses, and the soldiers



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should be left to fight. The Chief Medical Officer out
here ought to have been intrusted with Nightingale
powers. Depend upon it that it is the interest and
the glory of a Medical Officer to take care of his sick ;
nothing but want of power has been the cause of de
ficiencies. Every department has a pluck at us :
clerks, orderlies, officers' servants, all prime soldiers.
The Commissary of the Highland Brigade alone has
seven ; all the officers one each, the mounted officers
and the staff, two. I think between these servants,
and regimental Hospital Orderlies, and various
others employed by the Quartermasters, that the
absentees may be reckoned at least at sixty per
Battalion, besides Miss Nightingale's 300 — in fact,
nearly one battalion out of three. There is, besides,
the band and pioneers non-combatants — some
30 more. The nominal strength is over 800, and
it is doing well in these times to bring 500 into the
field.
15th February.
