midnight
To make matters worse , one of the wagons had been overturned six miles back on the frozen road , and the assistant-surgeon who , owing to the seriousness of the business , had been sent down in attendance , lost his balance completely . Three of the poor fellows had succumbed as they lay , of cold , wounds and exhaustion , and a dozen others were in desperate case . Our surgeons went to work at once , and until midnight I attended on them , preparing the lint , washing the blood-stained instruments , changing the water in the pails , and performing other necessary but more gruesome tasks which I need not particularise . At midnight the young cavalry surgeon , who had been freely dosed with brandy , professed himself ready to take over the minor casualties . The two hospital surgeons , by this time worn out , accepted the offer and withdrew . No one thought of me . I understand that about an hour later as I sat waiting for orders on the edge of an unoccupied bed -LRB- from which a dead man had been carried out a little before midnight -RRB- I must have dropped across it in a sleep of utter exhaustion .