There have been so many young men coming into the hospital after the evacuation from Dunkirk. Many of them were treated in other hospitals at first, hospitals which have done terrible things with their burns in lots of cases: covering their seared faces in tannic acid and their eyelids with gentian violet for example. Then the patients came here because word has got around that we’re treating the very worst cases with the newest and most experimental techniques. We realise that the other hospitals were only trying to do the right thing but here at East Grinstead we have understood that this type of treatment actually creates far more problems than it solves. In particular, the treatments actually promote infection rather than preventing it. Here, we use saline baths to wash the burns and make the patients ready for surgery, which is always done by the Maestro, who on this ward, for staff and patients alike, may as well be God.

Anyway, I’ve too much to do at the moment to sit here and write this diary. The ward is full of screaming patients who require my attention. They need their dressings changing and their bed linen replacing and painkillers administering. And the volunteers need to be set cleaning and making lunch. And, oh my, Gordon has just spilt hot tea on himself in his bed.

It’s important for me to write down what is happening here, I think, but for now it will have to wait – until next week, at least.