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My War Experiences in Two Continents

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Title: My War Experiences in Two Continents

Author: S. Macnaughtan

Editor: Betty Keays-Young Salmon


        
Release date: May 10, 2006 [eBook #18364]

Language: English

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Credits: E-text prepared by David Clarke, gvb, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/toronto)


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Transcriber's note:

     The unique headers on the odd numbered pages in the original
     book have been reproduced with [Page Heading: ] tags. They
     have been inserted in front of the paragraph or letter to
     which the heading refers.

     There are several inconsistencies in spelling and punctuation
     in the original. A few corrections have been made for obvious
     typographical errors; these, as well as some doubtful spellings
     of names, have been marked individually in the text. All
     changes made by the transcriber are enumerated in braces, for
     example {1}; details of corrections and comments are listed at
     the end of the text.

     Text in italics in the original is shown between _underlines_.





MY WAR EXPERIENCES IN TWO CONTINENTS

by

S. MACNAUGHTAN

Edited by Her Niece, Mrs. Lionel Salmon (Betty Keays-Young)

With a Portrait







[Illustration: Camera Portrait by E. O. Hoppé.]




London
John Murray, Albemarle Street, W.
1919




THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED,
IN ACCORDANCE WITH A WISH EXPRESSED BY
MISS MACNAUGHTAN BEFORE HER DEATH,

TO

THOSE WHO ARE FIGHTING AND
THOSE WHO HAVE FALLEN,

WITH ADMIRATION AND RESPECT,
AND TO

HER NEPHEWS,

CAPTAIN LIONEL SALMON, 1st Bn. the Welch Regt.
CAPTAIN HELIER PERCIVAL, M.C., 9th Bn. the Welch Regt.
CAPTAIN ALAN YOUNG, 2nd Bn. the Welch Regt.
CAPTAIN COLIN MACNAUGHTAN, 2nd Dragoon Guards.
LIEUTENANT RICHARD YOUNG, 9th Bn. the Welch Regt.




CONTENTS

                                                        PAGE
   PREFACE                                                ix


   PART I
   BELGIUM

      CHAPTER I
      ANTWERP                                              1

      CHAPTER II
      WITH DR. HECTOR MUNRO'S FLYING AMBULANCE CORPS      24

      CHAPTER III
      AT FURNES RAILWAY-STATION                           60

      CHAPTER IV
      WORKING UNDER DIFFICULTIES                          85

      CHAPTER V
      THE SPRING OFFENSIVE                               111

      CHAPTER VI
      LAST DAYS IN FLANDERS                              135


   PART II
   AT HOME

      HOW THE MESSAGE WAS DELIVERED                      159


   PART III
   RUSSIA AND THE PERSIAN FRONT

      CHAPTER I
      PETROGRAD                                          179

      CHAPTER II
      WAITING FOR WORK                                   204

      CHAPTER III
      SOME IMPRESSIONS OF TIFLIS AND ARMENIA             219

      CHAPTER IV
      ON THE PERSIAN FRONT                               237

      CHAPTER V
      THE LAST JOURNEY                                   258


   CONCLUSION                                            272

   INDEX                                                 281




PREFACE


In presenting these extracts from the diaries of my aunt, the late Miss
Macnaughtan, I feel it necessary to explain how they come to be
published, and the circumstances under which I have undertaken to edit
them.

After Miss Macnaughtan's death, her executors found among her papers a
great number of diaries. There were twenty-five closely written volumes,
which extended over a period of as many years, and formed an almost
complete record of every incident of her life during that time.

It is amazing that the journal was kept so regularly, as Miss
Macnaughtan suffered from writer's cramp, and the entries could only
have been written with great difficulty. Frequently a passage is begun
in the writing of her right, and finished in that of her left hand, and
I have seen her obliged to grasp her pencil in her clenched fist before
she was able to indite a line. In only one volume, however, do we find
that she availed herself of the services of her secretary to dictate the
entries and have them typed.

The executors found it extremely difficult to know how to deal with such
a vast mass of material. Miss Macnaughtan was a very reserved woman.{1}
She lived much alone, and the diary was her only confidante. In one of
her books she says that expression is the most insistent of human needs,
and that the inarticulate man or woman who finds no outlet in speech or
in the affections, will often keep a little locked volume in which self
can be safely revealed. Her diary occupied just such a place in her own
inner life, and for that reason one hesitates to submit its pages even
to the most loving and sympathetic scrutiny.

But Miss Macnaughtan's diary fulfilled a double purpose. She used it
largely as material for her books. Ideas for stories, fragments of plays
and novels, are sketched in on spare sheets, and the pages are full of
the original theories and ideas of a woman who never allowed anyone else
to do her thinking for her. A striking sermon or book may be criticised
or discussed, the pros and cons of some measure of social reform weighed
in the balance; and the actual daily chronicle of her busy life, of her
travels, her various experiences and adventures, makes a most
interesting and fascinating tale.

So much of the material was obviously intended to form the basis for an
autobiography that the executors came to the conclusion that it would be
a thousand pities to withhold it from the public, and at some future
date it is very much hoped to produce a complete life of Miss
Macnaughtan as narrated in her diaries. Meanwhile, however, the
publisher considers that Miss Macnaughtan's war experiences are of
immediate interest to her many friends and admirers, and I have been
asked to edit those volumes which refer to her work in Belgium, at
home, in Russia, and on the Persian front.

Except for an occasional word where the meaning was obscure, I have
added nothing to the diaries. I have, of course, omitted such passages
as appeared to be private or of family interest only; but otherwise I
have contented myself with a slight rearrangement of some of the
paragraphs, and I have inserted a few letters and extracts from letters,
which give a more interesting or detailed account of some incident than
is found in the corresponding entry in the diary. With these exceptions
the book is published as Miss Macnaughtan wrote it. I feel sure that her
own story of her experiences would lose much of its charm if I
interfered with it, and for this reason I have preserved the actual
diary form in which it was written.

To many readers of Miss Macnaughtan's books her diaries of the war may
come as a slight surprise. There is a note of depression and sadness,
and perhaps even of criticism, running through them, which is lacking in
all her earlier writings. I would remind people that this book is the
work of a dying woman; during the whole of the period covered by it, the
author was seriously ill, and the horror and misery of the war, and the
burden of a great deal of personal sorrow, have left their mark on her
account of her experiences.

I should like to thank those relations and friends of Miss Macnaughtan
who have allowed me to read and publish the letters incorporated in this
book, and I gratefully acknowledge the help and advice I have received
in my task from my mother, from my husband, and from Miss Hilda Powell,
Mr. Stenning, and Mr. R. Sommerville. I desire also to express my
gratitude to Mr. John Murray for many valuable hints and suggestions
about the book, and for the trouble he has so kindly taken to help me to
prepare it for the press.

BETTY SALMON.

ZILLEBEKE, WALTHAM ST. LAWRENCE,
TWYFORD, BERKSHIRE,
_October, 1918._




MY WAR EXPERIENCES IN TWO CONTINENTS


PART I

BELGIUM




CHAPTER I

ANTWERP


On September 20th, 1914, I left London for Antwerp. At the station I
found I had forgotten my passport and Mary had to tear back for it.
Great perturbation, but kept this dark from the rest of the staff, for
they are all rather serious and I am head of the orderlies. We got under
way at 4 a.m. next morning. All instantly began to be sick. I think I
was the worst and alarmed everybody within hearing distance. One more
voyage I hope--home--then dry land for me.

We arrived at Antwerp on the 22nd, twenty-four hours late. The British
Consul sent carriages, etc., to meet us. Drove to the large Philharmonic
Hall, which has been given us as a hospital. Immediately after breakfast
we began to unpack beds, etc., and our enormous store of medical things;
all feeling remarkably empty and queer, but put on heroic smiles and
worked like mad. Some of the staff is housed in a convent and the rest
in rooms over the Philharmonic Hall.

_23 September._--Began to get things into order and to allot each person
her task. Our unit consists of Mrs. St. Clair Stobart, its head; Doctors
Rose Turner, F. Stoney, Watts, Morris, Hanson and Ramsey (all women);
orderlies--me, Miss Randell (interpreter), Miss Perry, Dick, Stanley,
Benjamin, Godfrey,{2} Donnisthorpe, Cunliffe, and Mr. Glade. Everyone
very zealous and inclined to do anybody's work except their own. Keen
competition for everyone else's tools, brooms, dusters, etc. Great
roaming about. All mean well.

_25 September._--Forty wounded men were brought into our hospital
yesterday. Fortunately we had everything ready, but it took a bit of
doing. We are all dead tired, and not so keen as we were about doing
other people's work.

The wounded are not very bad, and have been sent on here from another
hospital. They are enchanted with their quarters, which indeed do look
uncommonly nice. One hundred and thirty beds are ranged in rows, and we
have a bright counterpane on each and clean sheets. The floor is
scrubbed, and the bathrooms, store, office, kitchens, and
receiving-rooms have been made out of nothing, and look splendid. I
never saw a hospital spring up like magic in this way before. There is a
wide verandah where the men play cards, and a garden to stump about in.

The gratitude of our patients is boundless, and they have presented Mrs.
Stobart with a beautiful basket of growing flowers. I do not think
Englishmen would have thought of such a thing. They say they never
tasted such cooking as ours outside Paris, and they are rioting in good
food, papers, nice beds, etc. Nearly all of them are able to get out a
little, so it is quite cheery nursing them. There is a lot to do, and we
all fly about in white caps. The keenest competition is for sweeping out
the ward with a long-handled hair brush!

[Page Heading: THE DEFENCES OF THE TOWN]

I went into the town to-day. It is very like every other foreign town,
with broad streets and tram-lines and shops and squares, but to-day I
had an interesting drive. I took a car and went out to the second line
of forts. The whole place was a mass of wire entanglements, mined at
every point, and the fields were studded with strong wooden spikes.
There were guns everywhere, and in one place a whole wood and a village
had been laid level with the ground to prevent the enemy taking cover.
We heard the sound of firing last night!

       *       *       *       *       *

_To Mrs. Keays-Young._

RUE DE L'HARMONIE 68, ANTWERP,
_25 September._

DEAREST BABE,

It was delightful getting your letter. Our wounded are all French or
Belgians, but there is a bureau of enquiry in the town where I will go
to try to hear tidings of your poor friends.

We heard the guns firing last night, and fifty wounded were sent in
during the afternoon. In one day 2,500 wounded reached Antwerp. I can
write this sort of thing to-day as I know my letter will be all right.
To show you that the fighting is pretty near, two doctors went for a
short motor drive to-day and they found two wounded men. One was just
dying, the other they brought back in the car, but he died also. In the
town itself everything seems much as usual except for crowds of
refugees. Do not believe people when they say German barbarity is
exaggerated. It is hideously true.

We are fearfully busy, and it seems a queer side of war to cook and race
around and make doctors as comfortable as possible. We have a capital
staff, who are made up of zeal and muscle. I do not know how long it can
last. We breakfast at 7.30, which means that most of the orderlies are
up at 5.45 to prepare and do everything. The fare is very plain and
terribly wholesome, but hardly anyone grumbles. I am trying to get girls
to take two hours off duty in the day, but they won't do it.

Have you any friends who would send us a good big lot of nice jam? It is
for the staff. If you could send some cases of it at once to Miss Stear,
39, St. James's Street, London, and put my name on it, and say it is for
our hospital, she will bring it here herself with some other things.
Some of your country friends might like to help in a definite little way
like this.

Your loving
SARAH.

---- is going to England to-night and will take this.

       *       *       *       *       *

_27 September._--Yesterday, when we were in the town, a German airship
flew overhead and dropped bombs. A lot of guns fired at it, but it was
too high up to hit. The incident caused some excitement in the streets.

[Page Heading: ARRIVAL OF WOUNDED]

Last night we heard that more wounded were coming in from the
fighting-line near Ghent. We got sixty more beds ready, and sat up late,
boiling water, sterilising instruments, preparing operating-tables and
beds, etc., etc. As it got later all the lights in the huge ward were
put out, and we went about with little torches amongst the sleeping men,
putting things in order and moving on tip-toe in the dark. Later we
heard that the wounded might not get in till Monday.

The work of this place goes on unceasingly. We all get on well, but I
have not got the communal spirit, and the fact of being a unit of women
is not the side of it that I find most interesting. The communal food is
my despair. I can _not_ eat it. All the same this is a fine experience,
and I hope we'll come well out of it. There is boundless opportunity,
and we are in luck to have a chance of doing our darndest.

_28 September._--Last night I and two orderlies slept over at the
hospital as more wounded were expected. At 11 p.m. word came that "les
blessés" were at the gate. Men were on duty with stretchers, and we went
out to the tram-way cars in which the wounded are brought from the
station, twelve patients in each. The transit is as little painful as
possible, and the stretchers are placed in iron brackets, and are
simply unhooked when the men arrive. Each stretcher was brought in and
laid on a bed in the ward, and the nurses and doctors undressed the men.
We orderlies took their names, their "matricule" or regimental number,
and the number of their bed. Then we gathered up their clothes and put
corresponding numbers on labels attached to them--first turning out the
pockets, which are filled with all manner of things, from tins of
sardines to loaded revolvers. They are all very pockety, but have to be
turned out before the clothes are sent to be baked.

We arranged everything, and then got Oxo for the men, many of whom had
had nothing to eat for two days. They are a nice-looking lot of men and
boys, with rather handsome faces and clear eyes. Their absolute
exhaustion is the most pathetic thing about them. They fall asleep even
when their wounds are being dressed. When all was made straight and
comfortable for them, the nurses turned the lights low again, and
stepped softly about the ward with their little torches.

A hundred beds all filled with men in pain give one plenty to think
about, and it is during sleep that their attitudes of suffering strike
one most. Some of them bury their heads in their pillows as shot
partridges seek to bury theirs amongst autumn leaves. Others lie very
stiff and straight, and all look very thin and haggard. I was struck by
the contrast between the pillared concert-hall where they lie, with its
platform of white paint and decorations, and the tragedy of suffering
which now fills it.

At 2 a.m. more soldiers were brought in from the battlefield, all caked
with dirt, and we began to work again. These last blinked oddly at the
concert-hall and nurses and doctors, but I think they do not question
anything much. They only want to go to sleep.

[Page Heading: A VISIT FROM SOME DESERTERS]

I suppose that women would always be tender-hearted towards deserters.
Three of them arrived at the hospital to-day with some absurd story
about having been told to report themselves. We got them supper and a
hot bath and put them to bed. One can't regret it. I never saw men sleep
as they did. All through the noise of the wounded being brought in, all
through the turned-up lights and bustle they never even stirred, but a
sergeant discovered them, and at 3 a.m. they were marched away again. We
got them breakfast and hot tea, and at least they had had a few hours
between clean sheets. These men seem to carry so much, and the roads are
heavy.

At 5 o'clock I went to bed and slept till 8. Mrs. Stobart never rests. I
think she must be made of some substance that the rest of us have not
discovered. At 5 a.m. I discovered her curled up on a bench in her
office, the doors wide open and the dawn breaking.

_2 October._--Here is a short account of one whole day. Firing went on
all night, sometimes it came so near that the vibration of it was rather
startling. In the early morning we heard that the forts had been heavily
fired on. One of them remained silent for a long time, and then the
garrison lighted cart-loads of straw in order to deceive the Germans,
who fell into the trap, thinking the fort was disabled and on fire, and
rushed in to take it. They were met with a furious cannonade. But one of
the other forts has fallen.

At 7 a.m. the men's bread had not arrived for their 6 o'clock breakfast,
so I went into the town to get it. The difficulty was to convey home
twenty-eight large loaves, so I went to the barracks and begged a
motor-car from the Belgian officer and came back triumphant. The
military cars simply rip through the streets, blowing their horns all
the time. Antwerp was thronged with these cars, and each one contained
soldiers. Sometimes one saw wounded in them lying on sacks stuffed with
straw.

I came down to breakfast half-an-hour late (8 o'clock) and we had our
usual fare--porridge, bread and margarine, and tea with tinned
milk--amazingly nasty, but quite wholesome and filling at the price. We
have reduced our housekeeping to ninepence per head per day. After
breakfast I cleaned the two houses, as I do every morning, made nine
beds, swept floors and dusted stairs, etc. When my rooms were done and
jugs filled, our nice little cook gave me a cup of soup in the kitchen,
as she generally does, and I went over to the hospital to help prepare
the men's dinner, my task to-day being to open bottles and pour out beer
for a hundred and twenty men; then, when the meat was served, to procure
from the kitchen and serve out gravy. Our own dinner is at 12.30.

Afterwards I went across to the hospital again and arranged a few
things with Mrs. Stobart. I began to correct the men's diagnosis sheets,
but was called off to help with wounded arriving, and to label and sort
their clothes. Just then the British Minister, Sir Francis Villiers, and
the Surgeon-General, Sir Cecil Herslet, came in to see the hospital, and
we proceeded to show them round, when the sound of firing began quite
close to us and we rushed out into the garden.

[Page Heading: A TAUBE OVERHEAD]

From out the blue, clear autumn sky came a great grey dove flying
serenely overhead. This was a German aeroplane of the class called the
Taube (dove). These aeroplanes are quite beautiful in design, and fly
with amazing rapidity. This one wafted over our hospital with all the
grace of a living creature "calm in the consciousness of wings," and
then, of course, we let fly at it. From all round us shells were sent up
into the vast blue of the sky, and still the grey dove went on in its
gentle-looking flight. Whoever was in it must have been a brave man! All
round him shells were flying--one touch and he must have dropped. The
smoke from the burst shells looked like little white clouds in the sky
as the dove sailed away into the blue again and was seen no more.

We returned to our work in hospital. The men's supper is at six o'clock,
and we began cutting up their bread-and-butter and cheese and filling
their bowls of beer. When that was over and visitors were going, an
order came for thirty patients to proceed to Ostend and make room for
worse cases. We were sorry to say good-bye to them, especially to a nice
fellow whom we call Alfred because he can speak English, and to Sunny
Jim, who positively refused to leave.

Poor boys! With each batch of the wounded, disabled creatures who are
carried in, one feels inclined to repeat in wonder, "Can one man be
responsible for all this? Is it for one man's lunatic vanity that men
are putting lumps of lead into each other's hearts and lungs, and boys
are lying with their heads blown off, or with their insides beside them
on the ground?" Yet there is a splendid freedom about being in the midst
of death--a certain glory in it, which one can't explain.

A piece of shell fell through the roof of the hospital to-day--evidently
a part of one that had been fired at the Taube. It fell close beside the
bed of one of our wounded, and he went as white as a ghost. It must be
pretty bad to be powerless and have shells falling around. The doctors
tell me that nothing moves them so much as the terror of the men. Their
nerves are simply shattered, and everything frightens them. Rather late
a man was brought in from the forts, terribly wounded. He was the only
survivor of twelve comrades who stood together, and a shell fell amongst
them, killing all but this man.

At seven o'clock we moved all the furniture from Mrs. Stobart's office
to the dispensary, where she will have more room, and the day's work was
then over and night work began for some. The Germans have destroyed the
reservoir and the water-supply has been cut off, so we have to go and
fetch all the water in buckets from a well. After supper we go with our
pails and carry it home. The shortage for washing, cleaning, etc., is
rather inconvenient, and adds to the danger in a large hospital, and to
the risk of typhoid.

[Page Heading: ORDERS TO EVACUATE THE HOSPITAL]

_4 October._--Yesterday our work was hardly over when Mrs. Stobart sent
a summons to all of us "heads" to come to her bureau. She had grave news
for us. The British Consul had just been to say that all the English
must leave Antwerp; two forts had fallen, and the Germans were hourly
expected to begin shelling the town. We were told that all the wounded
who could travel were to go to Ostend, and the worst cases were to be
transferred to the Military Hospital.

I do not think it would be easy to describe the confusion that followed.
All the men's clothes had to be found, and they had to be got into them,
and woe betide if a little cap or old candle was missing! All wanted
serving at once; all wanted food before starting. In the midst of the
general mêlée I shall always remember one girl, silently, quickly, and
ceaselessly slicing bread with a loaf pressed to her waist, and handing
it across the counter to the men.

With one or two exceptions the staff all wanted to remain in Antwerp. I
myself decided to abandon the unit and stay on here as an individual or
go to Ostend with the men. Mrs. Stobart, being responsible, had to take
the unit home. It was a case of leaving immediately; we packed what
stores we could, but the beds and X-ray apparatus and all our material
equipment would have to be left to the Germans. I think all felt as
though they were running away, but it was a military order, and the
Consul, the British Minister, and the King and Queen were leaving. We
went to eat lunch together, and as we were doing so Mrs. Stobart brought
the news that the Consul had come to say that reinforcements had come
up, the situation changed for the better, and for the present we might
remain. Anyone who wanted to leave might do so, but only four did.

We have since heard what happened. The British Minister cabled home to
say that Antwerp was the key to the whole situation and must not fall,
as once in here the Germans would be strongly entrenched, supplied with
provisions, ammunition, and everything they want. A Cabinet Council was
held at 3 a.m. in London, and reinforcements were ordered up. Winston
Churchill is here with Marines. They say Colonel Kitchener is at the
forts.

The firing sounds very near. Dr. Hector Munro and Miss St. Clair and
Lady Dorothy Fielding came over to-day from Ghent, where all is quiet.
They wanted me to return with them to take a rest, which was absurd, of
course.

Some fearful cases were brought in to us to-day. My God, the horror of
it! One has heard of men whom their mothers would not recognise. Some of
the wounded to-day were amongst these. All the morning we did what we
could for them. One man was riddled with bullets, and died very soon.

It is awful work. The great bell rings, and we say, "More wounded," and
the men get stretchers. We go down the long, cold covered way to the
gate and number the men for their different beds. The stretchers are
stiff with blood, and the clothes have to be cut off the men. They cry
out terribly, and their _horror_ is so painful to witness. They are so
young, and they have seen right into hell. The first dressings are
removed by the doctors--sometimes there is only a lump of cotton-wool to
fill up a hole--and the men lie there with their tragic eyes fixed upon
one. All day a nurse has sat by a man who has been shot through the
lungs. Each breath is painful; it does not bear writing about. The pity
of it all just breaks one's heart. But I suppose we do not see nearly
the worst of the wounded.

The lights are all off at eight o'clock now, and we do our work in the
dark, while the orderlies hold little torches to enable the doctors to
dress the wounds. There are not _half_ enough nurses or doctors out
here. In one hospital there are 400 beds and only two trained nurses.

[Page Heading: ARRIVAL OF BRITISH TROOPS]

Some of our own troops came through the town in London omnibuses to-day.
It was quite a Moment, and we felt that all was well. We went to the
gate and shook hands with them as they passed, and they made jokes and
did us all good. We cheered and waved handkerchiefs.

_5-6 October._--I think the last two days have been the most ghastly I
ever remember. Every day seems to bring news of defeat. It is awful, and
the Germans are quite close now. As I write the house shakes with the
firing. Our troops are falling back, and the forts have fallen. Last
night we took provisions and water to the cellars, and made plans to get
the wounded taken there.

They say the town will be shelled to-morrow. All these last two days
bleeding men have been brought in. To-day three of them died, and I
suppose none of them was more than 23. We have to keep up all the time
and show a good face, and meals are quite cheery. To-day, Tuesday, was
our last chance of leaving, and only two went.

The guns boom by day as well as by night, and as each one is heard one
thinks of more bleeding, shattered men. It is calm, nice autumn weather;
the trees are yellow in the garden and the sky is blue, yet all the time
one listens to the cries of men in pain. To-night I meant to go out for
a little, but a nurse stopped me and asked me to sit by a dying man.
Poor fellow, he was twenty-one, and looked like some brigand chief, and
he smiled as he was dying. The horror of these two days will last
always, and there are many more such days to come. Everyone is behaving
well, and that is all I care about.

_7 October._--It is a glorious morning: they will see well to kill each
other to-day.

The guns go all day and all night. They are so close that the earth
shakes with them. Last night in the infernal darkness we were turning
wounded men away from the door. There was no room for them even on the
floor. The Belgians scream terribly. Our own men suffer quite quietly.
One of them died to-day.

Day and night a stream of vehicles passes the gate. It never ceases.
Nearly all are motors, driven at a furious pace, and they sound horns
all the time. These are met by a stream of carts and old-fashioned
vehicles bringing in country people, who are flying to the coast. In
Antwerp to-day it was "sauve qui peut"! Nearly all the men are
going--Mr. ----, who has helped us, and Mr. ----, they are going to
bicycle into Holland. A surgeon (Belgian) has fled from his hospital,
leaving seven hundred beds, and there seem to be a great many deserters
from the trenches.

[Page Heading: THE SITUATION GETS WORSE]

The news is still the same--"very bad"; sometimes I walk to the gate and
ask returning soldiers how the battle goes, but the answer never varies.
At lunch-time to-day firing ceased, and I heard it was because the
German guns were coming up. We got orders to send away all the wounded
who could possibly go, and we prepared beds in the cellars for those who
cannot be moved. The military authorities beg us to remain as so many
hospitals have been evacuated.

The wounded continue to come in. One sees one car in the endless stream
moving slowly (most of them _fly_ with their officers sitting upright,
or with aeroplanes on long carriages), and one knows by the pace that
more wounded are coming. Inside one sees the horrible six shelves behind
the canvas curtain, and here and there a bound-up limb or head. One of
our men had his leg taken off to-day, and is doing well. Nothing goes on
much behind the scenes. The yells of the men are plainly heard, and
to-day, as I sat beside the lung man who was taking so long to die,
someone brought a sack to me, and said, "This is for the leg." All the
orderlies are on duty in the hospital now. We can spare no one for
rougher work. We can all bandage and wash patients. There are wounded
everywhere, even on straw beds on the platform of the hall.

Darkness seems to fall early, and it is the darkness that is so
baffling. At 5 p.m. we have to feed everyone while there is a little
light, then the groping about begins, and everyone falls over things.
There is a clatter of basins on the floor or an over-turned chair. Any
sudden noise is rather trying at present because of the booming of the
guns. At 7 last night they were much louder than before, with a sort of
strange double sound, and we were told that these were our "Long Toms,"
so we hope that our Naval Brigade has come up.

We know very little of what is going on except when we run out and ask
some returning English soldiers for news. Yesterday it was always the
same reply "Very bad." One of the Marines told me that Winston Churchill
was "up and down the road amongst the shells," and I was also told that
he had given orders that Antwerp was not to be taken till the last man
in it was dead.

The Marines are getting horribly knocked about. Yesterday Mrs. O'Gormon
went out in her own motor-car and picked wounded out of the trenches.
She said that no one knew why they were in the trenches or where they
were to fire--they just lay there and were shot and then left.

[Page Heading: HOW WE KEPT UP OUR COURAGE]

I think I have seen too much pain lately. At Walworth one saw women
every day in utter pain, and now one lives in an atmosphere of bandages
and blood. I asked some of the orderlies to-day what it was that
supported them most at a crisis of this sort. The answers varied, and
were interesting. I myself am surprised to find that religion is not my
best support. When I go into the little chapel to pray it is all too
tender, the divine Mother and the Child and the holy atmosphere. I begin
to feel rather sorry for myself, I don't know why; then I go and move
beds and feel better; but I have found that just to behave like a
well-bred woman is what keeps me up best. I had thought that the Flag or
Religion would have been stronger incentives to me.

Our own soldiers seem to find self-respect their best asset. It is
amazing to see the difference between them and the Belgians, who are
terribly poor hands at bearing pain, and beg for morphia all the time.
An officer to-day had to have a loose tooth out. He insisted on having
cocaine, and then begged the doctor to be careful!

The firing now is furious--sometimes there are five or six explosions
almost simultaneously. I suppose we shall read in the _Times_ that "all
is quiet," and in _Le Matin_ that "pour le reste tout est calme."

The staff are doing well. They are generally too busy to be frightened,
but one has to speak once or twice to them before they hear.

On Wednesday night, the 7th October, we heard that one more ship was
going to England, and a last chance was given to us all to leave. Only
two did so; the rest stayed on. Mrs. Stobart went out to see what was to
be done. The ---- Consul said that we were under his protection, and
that if the Germans entered the town he would see that we were treated
properly. We had a deliberately cheerful supper, and afterwards a man
called Smits came in and told us that the Germans had been driven back
fifteen kilometres. I myself did not believe this, but we went to bed,
and even took off our clothes.

At midnight the first shell came over us with a shriek, and I went down
and woke the orderlies and nurses and doctors. We dressed and went over
to help move the wounded at the hospital. The shells began to scream
overhead; it was a bright moonlight night, and we walked without
haste--a small body of women--across the road to the hospital. Here we
found the wounded all yelling like mad things, thinking they were going
to be left behind. The lung man has died.

Nearly all the moving to the cellars had already been done--only three
stretchers remained to be moved. One wounded English sergeant helped us.
Otherwise everything was done by women. We laid the men on mattresses
which we fetched from the hospital overhead, and then Mrs. Stobart's
mild, quiet voice said, "Everything is to go on as usual. The night
nurses and orderlies will take their places. Breakfast will be at the
usual hour." She and the other ladies whose night it was to sleep at the
convent then returned to sleep in the basement with a Sister.

[Page Heading: THE BOMBARDMENT]

We came in for some most severe shelling at first, either because we
flew the Red Cross flag or because we were in the line of fire with a
powder magazine which the Germans wished to destroy. We sat in the
cellars with one night-light burning in each, and with seventy wounded
men to take care of. Two of them were dying. There was only one line of
bricks between us and the shells. One shell fell into the garden, making
a hole six feet deep; the next crashed through a house on the opposite
side of the road and set it on fire. The danger was two-fold, for we
knew our hospital, which was a cardboard sort of thing, would ignite
like matchwood, and if it fell we should not be able to get out of the
cellars. Some people on our staff were much against our making use of a
cellar at all for this reason. I myself felt it was the safest place,
and as long as we stayed with the wounded they minded nothing. We sat
there all night.

The English sergeant said that at daybreak the firing would probably
cease, as the German guns stopped when daylight came in order to conceal
the guns. We just waited for daybreak. When it came the firing grew
worse. The sergeant said, "It is always worse just before they stop,"
but the firing did not stop. Two hundred guns were turned on Antwerp,
and the shells came over at the rate of four a minute. They have a
horrid screaming sound as they come. We heard each one coming and
wondered if it would hit us, and then we heard the crashing somewhere
else and knew another shell was coming.

The worst cases among the wounded lay on the floor, and these wanted
constant attention. The others were in their great-coats, and stood
about the cellar leaning on crutches and sticks. We wrapped blankets
round the rheumatism cases and sat through the long night. Sometimes
when we heard a crash near by we asked "Is that the convent?" but
nothing else was said. All spoke cheerfully, and there was some laughter
in the further cellar. One little red-haired nurse enjoyed the whole
thing. I saw her carry three wounded men in succession on her back down
to the cellar. I found myself wishing that for me a shot would come and
finish the horrible night. Still we all chatted and smiled and made
little jokes. Once during that long night in the cellar I heard one
wounded man say to another as he rolled himself round on his mattress,
"Que les anglais sont comme il faut."

At six o'clock the convent party came over and began to prepare
breakfast. The least wounded of the men began to steal away, and we were
left with between thirty and forty of them. The difficulty was to know
how to get away and how to remove the wounded, two of whom were nearly
dead. Miss Benjamin went and stood at the gate, while the shells still
flew, and picked up an ambulance. In this we got away six men, including
the two dying ones. Mrs. Stobart was walking about for three hours
trying to find anything on wheels to remove us and the wounded. At last
we got a motor ambulance, and packed in twenty men--that was all it
would hold. We told them to go as far as the bridge and send it back for
us. It never came. Nothing seemed to come.

The ---- Vice-Consul had told us we were under his protection, and he
would, as a neutral, march out to meet the Germans and give us
protection. But when we enquired we heard he had bolted without telling
us. The next to give us protection was the ---- Field Hospital, who said
they had a ship in the river and would not move without us. But they
also left and said nothing.

We got dinner for the men, and then the strain began to be much worse.
We had seven wounded and ourselves and not a thing in which to get out
of Antwerp. I told Mrs. Stobart we must leave the wounded at the convent
in charge of the Sisters, and this we did, telling them where to take
them in the morning. The gay young nurses fetched them across on
stretchers.

[Page Heading: FLIGHT]

About 5 o'clock the shelling became more violent, and three shells came
with only an instant between each. Presently we heard Mrs. Stobart say,
"Come at once," and we went out and found three English buses with
English drivers at the door. They were carrying ammunition, and were the
last vehicles to leave Antwerp. We got into them and lay on the top of
the ammunition, and the girls began to light cigarettes! The noise of
the buses prevented our hearing for a time the infernal sound of shells
and our cannons' answering roar.

As we drove to the bridge many houses and sometimes a whole street was
burning. No one seemed to care. No one was there to try and save
anything. We drove through the empty streets and saw the burning houses,
and great holes where shells had fallen, and then we got to the bridge
and out of the line of fire.

We set out to walk towards Holland, but a Belgian officer got us some
Red Cross ambulances, and into these we got, and were taken to a
convent at St. Gilles, where we slept on the floor till 3 a.m. At 3 a
message was brought, "Get up at once--things are worse." Everyone seemed
to be leaving, and we got into the Red Cross ambulances and went to the
station.

_9 October._--We have been all day in the train in very hard third-class
carriages with the R.M.L.I. The journey of fifty miles took from 5
o'clock in the morning, when we got away, till 12 o'clock at night, when
we reached Ostend. The train hardly crawled. It was the longest I have
ever seen. All Ostend was in darkness when we arrived--a German airship
having been seen overhead. We always seem to be tumbling about in the
dark. We went from one hotel to another trying to get accommodation, and
at last (at the St. James's) they allowed us to lie on the floor of the
restaurant. The only food they had for us was ten eggs for twenty-five
hungry people and some brown bread, but they had champagne at the house,
and I ordered it for everybody, and we made little speeches and tried to
end on a good note.

_10 October._--Mrs. Stobart took the unit back to England to-day. The
wounded were found in a little house which the Red Cross had made over
to them, and Dr. Ramsey, Sister Bailey, and the two nurses had much to
say about their perilous journey. One man had died on the road, but the
others all looked well. Their joy at seeing us was pathetic, and there
was a great deal of handshaking over our meeting.

[Page Heading: THE UNIT RETURNS TO ENGLAND]

Miss Donnisthorpe and I got decent rooms at the Littoral Hotel, and
brought our luggage there, and had baths, which we much needed. Dr.
Hanson had got out of the train at Bruges to bandage a wounded man, and
she was left behind, and is still lost. I suppose she has gone home. She
is the doctor I like best, and she is one of the few whose nerves are
not shattered. It was a sorry little party which Mrs. Stobart took back
to England.




CHAPTER II

WITH DR. HECTOR MUNRO'S FLYING AMBULANCE CORPS


_12 October._--Everyone has gone back to England except Sister Bailey
and me. She is waiting to hand over the wounded to the proper
department, and I am waiting to see if I can get on anywhere. It does
seem so hard that when men are most in need of us we should all run home
and leave them.

The noises and racket in Ostend are deafening, and there is panic
everywhere. The boats go to England packed every time. I called on the
Villiers yesterday, and heard that she is leaving on Tuesday. But they
say that the British Minister dare not leave or the whole place would go
wild with fear. Some ships lie close to us on the grey misty water, and
the troops are passing along all day.

_Later._--We heard to-night that the Germans are coming into Ostend
to-morrow, so once more we fly like dust before a broom. It is horrible
having to clear out for them.

I am trying to discover what courage really consists in. It isn't only a
lack of imagination. In some people it is transcendent, in others it is
only a sort of stupidity. If proper precautions were taken the need for
courage would be much reduced--the "tight place" is so often the result
of sheer muddle.

This evening Dr. Hector Munro came in from Ghent with his oddly-dressed
ladies, and at first one was inclined to call them masqueraders in their
knickerbockers and puttees and caps, but I believe they have done
excellent work. It is a queer side of war to see young, pretty English
girls in khaki and thick boots, coming in from the trenches, where they
have been picking up wounded men within a hundred yards of the enemy's
lines, and carrying them away on stretchers. Wonderful little Walküres
in knickerbockers, I lift my hat to you!

Dr. Munro asked me to come on to his convoy, and I gladly did so: he
sent home a lady whose nerves were gone, and I was put in her place.

[Page Heading: ON THE ROAD TO DUNKIRK]

_13 October._--We had an early muddly breakfast, at which everyone spoke
in a high voice and urged others to hurry, and then we collected luggage
and went round to see the General. Afterwards we all got into our motor
ambulances _en route_ for Dunkirk. The road was filled with flying
inhabitants, and down at the dock wounded and well struggled to get on
to the steamer. People were begging us for a seat in our ambulance, and
well-dressed women were setting out to walk twenty miles to Dunkirk. The
rain was falling heavily, and it was a dripping day when we and a lot of
English soldiers found ourselves in the square in Dunkirk, where the
few hotels are. We had an expensive lunch at a greasy restaurant, and
then tried to find rooms.

I began to make out of whom our party consists. There is Lady Dorothy
Fielding--probably 22, but capable of taking command of a ship, and
speaking French like a native; Mrs. Decker, an Australian, plucky and
efficient; Miss Chisholm, a blue-eyed Scottish girl, with a thick coat
strapped around her waist and a haversack slung from her shoulder; a
tall American, whose name I do not yet know, whose husband is a
journalist; three young surgeons, and Dr. Munro. It is all so quaint.
The girls rule the company, carry maps and find roads, see about
provisions and carry wounded.

We could not get rooms at Dunkirk and so came on to St. Malo les Bains,
a small bathing-place which had been shut up for the winter. The owner
of an hotel there opened up some rooms for us and got us some ham and
eggs, and the evening ended very cheerily. Our party seems, to me,
amazingly young and unprotected.

_St. Malo les Bains. 14 October._--To-day I took a car into Dunkirk and
bought some things, as I have lost nearly all I possess at Antwerp. In
the afternoon I went to the dock to get some letters posted, and tramped
about there for a long time. War is such a disorganizer. Nothing starts.
No one is able to move because of wounded arms and legs; it seems to
make the world helpless and painful. In minor matters one lives nearly
always with damp feet and rather dirty and hungry. Drains are all
choked, and one does not get much sleep. These are trifles, of course.

[Page Heading: WOMEN AT THE FRONT]

To-night, as we sat at dinner, a message was brought that a woman
outside had been run over and was going to have a baby immediately in a
tram-way shelter, so out we went and got one of our ambulances, and a
young doctor with his fiancée went off with her. There was a lot of
argument about where the woman lived, until one young man said, "Well,
get in somehow, or the baby will have arrived." There is a simplicity
about these tragic times, and nothing matters but to save people.

_15 October._--To-day we went down to the docks to get a passage for Dr.
Munro, who is going home for money. A German Taube flew overhead and men
were firing rifles at it. An Englishman hit it, and down it came like a
shot bird, so that was the end of a brave man, whoever he was, and it
was a long drop, too, through the still autumn air. Guns have begun to
fire again, so I suppose we shall have to move on once more. One does
not unpack, and it is dangerous to part with one's linen to be washed.

Yesterday I heard a man--a man in a responsible position--say to a girl,
"Tell me, please, how far we are from the firing-line." It was one of
the most remarkable speeches I ever heard. I go to these girls for all
my news. Lady Dorothy Fielding is our real commander, and everyone knows
it. One hears on all sides, "Lady Dorothy, can you get us tyres for the
ambulances? Where is the petrol?" "Do you know if the General will let
us through?" "Have you been able to get us any stores?" "Ought we to
have 'laissez-passer's' or not?" She goes to all the heads of
departments, is the only good speaker of French, and has the only
reliable information about anything. All the men acknowledge her
position, and they say to me, "It's very odd being run by a woman; but
she is the only person who can do anything." In the firing-line she is
quite cool, and so are the other women. They seem to be interested, not
dismayed, by shots and shrapnel.

_16 October._--To-day I have been reading of the "splendid retreat" of
the Marines from Antwerp and their "unprecedented reception" at Deal.
Everyone appears to have been in a state of wild enthusiasm about them,
and it seems almost like Mafeking over again.

What struck me most about these men was the way in which they blew their
own trumpets in full retreat and while flying from the enemy. We
travelled all day in the train with them, and had long conversations
with them all. They were all saying, "We will bring you the Kaiser's
head, miss"; to which I replied, "Well, you had better turn round and go
the other way." Some people like this "English" spirit. I find the
conceit of it most trying. Belgium is in the hands of the enemy, and we
flee before him singing our own praises loudly as we do so. The Marines
lost their kit, spent one night in Antwerp, and went back to England,
where they had an amazing reception amid scenes of unprecedented
enthusiasm! The Government will give them a fresh kit, and the public
will cheer itself hoarse!

[Page Heading: MEN'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS WOMEN]

I could not help thinking, when I read the papers to-day, of our tired
little body of nurses and doctors and orderlies going back quietly and
unproclaimed to England to rest at Folkestone for three days and then to
come out here again. They had been for eighteen hours under heavy shell
fire without so much as a rifle to protect them, and with the immediate
chance of a burning building falling about them. The nurses sat in the
cellars tending wounded men, whom they refused to leave, and then hopped
on to the outside of an ammunition bus "to see the fun," and came home
to buy their little caps and aprons out of their own slender purses and
start work again.

I shall believe in Britishers to the day of my death, and I hope I shall
die before I cease to believe in them, but I do get some disillusions.
At Antwerp not a man remained with us, and the worst of it was they made
elaborate excuses for leaving. Even our sergeant, who helped during the
night, took a comrade off in the morning and disappeared. Both were
wounded, but not badly, and two young English Tommies, very slightly
wounded, left us as soon as the firing began. We saw them afterwards at
the bridge, and they looked pretty mean.

To-night at dinner some officers came in when the food was pretty well
finished, and only some drumsticks of chicken and bits of ham were left.
I am always slow at beginning to eat, and I had a large wing of chicken
still on my plate. I offered this to an officer, who accepted it and
ate it, although he asked me to have a little bit of it. I do hope I
shall meet some cases of chivalry soon.

Firing ceased about 5 o'clock this afternoon, but we are short of news.
The English papers rather annoy one with their continual victories, of
which we see nothing. Everyone talks of the German big guns as if they
were some happy chance. But the Germans were drilling and preparing
while we were making speeches at Hyde Park Corner. Everything had been
thought out by them. People talk of the difficulty they must have had in
preparing concrete floors for their guns. Not a bit of it. There were
innocent dwelling-houses, built long ago, with floors in just the right
position and of just the right stuff, and when they were wanted the top
stories were blown off and the concrete gun-floors were ready. There
were local exhibitions, too, to which firms sent exhibition guns, which
they "forgot" to remove! While we were going on strike they were making
an army, and as we have sown so must we reap.

One almost wonders whether it might not be possible to eliminate the
personal element in war, so constant is the talk about victorious guns.
If guns decide everything, then let them be trained on other guns. Let
the gun that drives farthest and goes surest win. If every siege is
decided by the German 16-inch howitzers, then let us put up brick and
mortar or steel against them, but not men. The day for the bleeding
human body seems to be over now that men are mown down by shells fired
eight miles away. War used to be splendid because it made men strong and
brave, but now a little German in spectacles can stand behind a Krupp
gun and wipe out a regiment.

[Page Heading: PROTECTION OF LIFE OR PROPERTY]

I suppose women will always try to protect life because they know what
it costs to produce it, and men will always try to protect property
because that is what they themselves produce. At Antwerp our wounded men
were begging us to go up to the hospital to fetch their purses from
under their pillows! At present women are only repairers, darning socks,
cleaning, washing up after men, bringing up reinforcements in the way of
fresh life, and patching up wounded men, but some day they must and will
have to say, "The life I produce has as much right to protection as the
property you produce, and I claim my right to protect it."

There seems to me a lack of connection between one man's desire to
extend the area he occupies and young men in their teens lying with
their lungs shot through or backs blown off.

_19 October._--Our time is now spent in waiting and preparing for work
which will probably come soon, as there has been fighting near us again.
One hears the boom of guns a long way off, and always there is the sound
of death in it. One has been too near it not to know now what it means.

Yesterday I went to church in an empty little building, but a few of our
hospital men turned up and made a small congregation. In the afternoon
one or two people came to tea in my bedroom as we could not make our
usual expedition to de Poorter's bunshop. The pastry habit is growing
on us all.

We went to the arsenal to-day to see about some repairs to our
ambulances. I saw a German omnibus which had been captured, and the
eagles on it had been painted out with stripes of red paint and the
French colours put in their place. The omnibus was one mass of
bullet-holes. I have seen waggons at Paardeberg, but I never saw
anything so knocked about as that grey motor-bus. The engines and sides
were shattered and the chauffeur, of course, had been killed. We went on
by motor to the "Champs des Aviateurs." We saw one naval aeroplane man,
who told us that he had been hit in his machine when it was 4,000 feet
up in the air. His jacket was torn by a bullet and his machine dropped,
but he was uninjured, and got away on a bicycle.

The more I see of war the more I am amazed at the courage and nerve
which are shown. Death or the chance of death is everywhere, and we meet
it not as fatalists do or those who believe they can earn eternal glory
with a sacrifice, but lightly and with a song. An English girl at
Antwerp was horribly ashamed of some Belgians who skulked behind a wall
when the firing was hottest. She herself remained in the open.

It has been a great comfort to me that I have had a room to myself so
far on this campaign. I find the communal spirit is not in me. The noisy
meals, the heavy bowls of soup, the piles of labelled dinner-napkins,
give me an unexpected feeling of oppressive seclusion and solitude, and
only when I get away by myself do I feel that my soul is restored.

Mr. Gleeson, an American, joined his wife here a couple of days ago: it
was odd to have a book talk again.

_21 October._--A still grey day with a level sea and a few fishing-boats
going out with the tide. On the long grey shore shrimpers are wading
with their nets. The only colour in the soft grey dawn is the little
wink of white that the breaking waves make on the sand. This small empty
seaside place, with its row of bathing-machines drawn up on the beach,
has a look about it as of a theatre seen by daylight. All the seats are
empty and the players have gone away, and the theatre begins to whisper
as empty buildings do. I think I know quite well some of the people who
come to St. Malo les Bains, just by listening to what the empty little
place is saying.

Firing has begun again. We hear that our ships are shelling Ostend from
the sea. The news that reaches us is meagre, but I prefer that to the
false reports that are circulated at home.

[Page Heading: WE GO TO FURNES]

This afternoon we came out in motors and ambulances to establish
ourselves at Furnes in an empty Ecclesiastical College. Nothing was
ready, and everything was in confusion. The wounded from the fighting
near by had not begun to come in, but the infernal sound of the guns was
quite close to us, and gave one the sensation of a blow on the ear.
Night was falling as we came back to Dunkirk to sleep (for no beds were
ready at Furnes), and we passed many motor vehicles of every
description going out to Furnes. Some of them were filled with bread,
and one saw stacks of loaves filling to the roof some once beautifully
appointed motor. Now all was dust and dirt.

All my previous ideas of men marching to war have had a touch of
heroism, crudely expressed by quick-step and smart uniforms. To-day I
see tired dusty men, very hungry looking and unshaved, slogging along,
silent and tired, and ready to lie down whenever chance offers. They
keep as near their convoy as they can, and are keen to stop and cook
something. God! what is heroism? It baffles me.

_22 October. Furnes._--The bulk of our party did not return from Furnes
yesterday, so we gathered that the wounded must be coming in, and we
left Dunkirk early and came here. As I packed my things and rolled my
rugs at 5 a.m. I thought of Mary, and "Charles to fetch down the
luggage," and the fuss at home over my delicate health!

A French officer called Gilbert took us out to Furnes in his Brooklands
racing-car, so that was a bit of an experience too, for we sat curled up
on some luggage, and were told to hang on by something. The roads were
empty and level, the little seats of the car were merely an appendage to
its long big engines. When we got our breath back we asked Gilbert what
his speed had been, and he told us 75 miles an hour.

There was a crowd of motors in the yard of the Ecclesiastical College at
Furnes, engines throbbing and clutches being jerked, and we were told
that all last night the fighting had gone on and the wounded had been
coming in. There are three wards already fairly full, nothing quite
ready, and the inevitable and reiterated "where" heard on every side.

"Where are the stretchers?" "Where are my forceps?" "Where are we to
dine?" "Where are the dead to be put?" "Where are the Germans?"

No one stops to answer. People ask everybody ten times over to do the
same thing, and use anything that is lying about.

[Page Heading: THE FIGHTING AT DIXMUDE]

There are two war correspondents here--Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Ashmead
Bartlett--and they told me about the fighting at Dixmude last night. I
must try to get Mr. Gibbs's newspaper account of it, but nothing will
ever be so simple and so dramatic as his own description. He and Mr.
Bartlett, Mr. Gleeson and Dr. Munro, with young Mr. Brockville, the War
Minister's son, went to the town, which was being heavily shelled.
Dixmude was full of wounded, and the church and the houses were falling.
The roar of things was awful, and the bursting shells overhead sent
shrapnel pattering on the buildings, the pavements, and the cars.

Young Brockville went into a house, where he heard wounded were lying,
and found a pile of dead Frenchmen stacked against a wall. A bursting
shell scattered them. He went on to a cellar and found some living men,
got the stretchers, loaded the cars and bade them drive on. In the
darkness, and with the deafening noises, no one heard his orders
aright, the two motor ambulances moved on and left him behind amongst
the burning houses and flying shells. It was only after going a few
miles that the rest of the party found that he was not with them.

Mr. Gleeson and Mr. Bartlett went back for him. Nothing need be said
except that. They went back to hell for him, and the other two waited in
the road with the wounded men. After an hour of waiting these two also
went back.

I asked Mr. Gibbs if he shared the contempt that some people expressed
for bullets. He and Mr. Gleeson both said, "Anyone who talks of contempt
for bullets is talking nonsense. Bullets mean death at every corner of
the street, and death overhead and flying limbs and unspeakable sights."
All these men went back. All of them behaved quietly and like gentlemen,
but one man asked a friend of his over and over again if he was a
Belgian refugee, and another said that a town steeple falling looked so
strange that they could only stand about and light cigarettes. In the
end they gave up Mr. Brockville for lost and came home with the
ambulances. But he turned up in the middle of the night, to everyone's
huge delight.

_23 October._--A crisp autumn morning, a courtyard filled with motors
and brancardiers and men in uniform, and women in knickerbockers and
puttees, all lighting cigarettes and talking about repairs and gears and
a box of bandages. The mornings always start happily enough. The guns
are nearer to-day or more distant, the battle sways backwards and
forwards, and there is no such thing as a real "base" for a hospital.
We must just stay as long as we can and fly when we must.

About 10 a.m. the ambulances that have been out all night begin to come
in, the wounded on their pitiful shelves.

"Take care. There are two awful cases. Step this way. The man on the top
shelf is dead. Lift them down. Steady. Lift the others out first. Now
carry them across the yard to the overcrowded ward, and lay them on the
floor if there are no beds, but lay them down and go for others. Take
the worst to the theatre: get the shattered limbs amputated and then
bring them back, for there is a man just dead whose place can be filled;
and these two must be shipped off to Calais; and this one can sit up."

[Page Heading: A WOUNDED GERMAN]

I found one young German with both hands smashed. He was not ill enough
to have a bed, of course, but sat with his head fallen forward trying to
sleep on a chair. I fed him with porridge and milk out of a little bowl,
and when he had finished half of it he said, "I won't have any more. I
am afraid there will be none for the others." I got a few cushions for
him and laid him in a corner of the room. Nothing disturbs the deep
sleep of these men. They seem not so much exhausted as dead with
fatigue.

A French boy of sixteen is a favourite of mine. He is such a beautiful
child, and there is no hope for him; shot through the abdomen; he can
retain nothing, and is sick all day, and every day he is weaker.

I do not find that the men want to send letters or write messages.
Their pain is too awful even for that, and I believe they can think of
nothing else.

All day the stretchers are brought in and the work goes on. It is about
5 o'clock that the weird tired hour begins when the dim lamps are
lighted, and people fall over things, and nearly everything is mislaid,
and the wounded cry out, and one steps over forms on the floor. From
then till one goes to bed it is difficult to be just what one ought to
be, the tragedy of it is too pitiful. There is a boy with his eyes shot
out, and there is a row of men all with head wounds from the cruel
shrapnel overhead. Blood-stained mattresses and pillows are carried out
into the courtyard. Two ladies help to move the corpses. There is always
a pile of bandages and rags being burnt, and a youth stirs the horrible
pile with a stick. A queer smell permeates everything, and the guns
never cease. The wounded are coming in at the rate of a hundred a day.

The Queen of the Belgians called to see the hospital to-day. Poor little
Queen, coming to see the remnants of an army and the remnants of a
kingdom! She was kind to each wounded man, and we were glad of her
visit, if for no other reason than that some sort of cleaning and
tidying was done in her honour. To-night Mr. Nevinson arrived, and we
went round the wards together after supper. The beds were all full--so
was the floor. I was glad that so many of the wounded were dying.

The doctors said, "These men are not wounded, they are mashed."

I am rather surprised to find how little the quite young girls seem to
mind the sight of wounds and suffering. They are bright and witty about
amputations, and do not shudder at anything. I am feeling rather
out-of-date amongst them.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Page Heading: THE TRAGEDY OF PAIN]

_Letter to Miss Macnaughtan's Sisters._

DR. HECTOR MUNRO'S AMBULANCE,
FURNES, BELGIUM,
_23 October._

MY DEAR PEOPLE,

I think I may get this posted by a war correspondent who is going home,
but I never know whether my letters reach you or not, for yours, if you
write them, never reach me. I can't begin to tell you all that is
happening, and it is really beyond what one is able to describe. The
tragedy of pain is the thing that is most evident, and there is the roar
and the racket of it and the everlasting sound of guns. The war seems to
me now to mean nothing but torn limbs and stretchers. All the doctors
say that never have they seen men so wounded.

The day that we got here was the day that Dixmude was bombarded, and our
ten ambulances (motor) went out to fetch in wounded. These were shoved
in anywhere, dying and dead, and our men went among the shells with
buildings falling about them and took out all they could. Except where
the fire is hottest one women goes with each car. So far I have been
doing ward work, but one of the doctors is taking me on an ambulance
this afternoon. Most of the women who go are very good chauffeurs
themselves, so they are chosen before a person who can't drive. They
are splendid creatures, and funk nothing, and they are there to do a
little dressing if it is needed.

The firing is awfully heavy to-day. They say it is the big French guns
that have got up. Two of our ambulances have had miraculous escapes
after being hit. Things happen too quickly to know how to describe them.
To-day when I went out to breakfast an old village woman aged about 70
was brought in wounded in two places. I am not fond of horrors.

We have been given an empty house for the staff, the owners having
quitted it in a panic and left everything, children's toys on the
carpet, and beds unmade. The hospital is a college for priests, all of
whom have fled. Into this building the wounded are carried day and
night, and the surgeons are working in shifts and can't get the work
done. We are losing, alas! so many patients. Nothing can be done for
them, and I always feel so glad when they are gone. I don't think anyone
can realise what it is to be just behind the line of battle, and I fear
there would not be much recruiting if people at home could see our
wards. One can only be thankful for a hospital like this in the thick of
things, for we are saving lives, and not only so, but saving the lives
of men who perhaps have lain three days in a trench or a turnip-field
undiscovered and forgotten.

As soon as a wounded man has been attended to and is able to be put on a
stretcher again he is sent to Calais. We have to keep emptying the wards
for other patients to come in, and besides, if the fighting comes this
way, we shall have to fall back a little further.

We have a river between us and the Germans, so we shall always know when
they are coming and get a start and be all right.

Your loving
S. MACNAUGHTAN.

       *       *       *       *       *

_25 October._--A glorious day. Up in the blue even Taubes--those birds
of prey--look beautiful, like eagles wheeling in their flight. It is all
far too lovely to leave, yet men are killing each other painfully with
every day that dawns.

I had a tiresome day in spite of the weather, because the hospital was
evacuated suddenly owing to the nearness of the Germans, and I missed
going with the ambulance, so I hung about all day.

_26 October. My birthday._--This morning several women were brought in
horribly wounded. One girl of sixteen had both legs smashed. I was
taking one old woman to the civil hospital and I had to pass eighteen
dead men; they were laid out beside some women who were washing clothes,
and I noticed how tired even in death their poor dirty feet looked.

[Page Heading: TO THE EDGE OF THE FIGHTING LINE]

We started early in the ambulance to-day, and went to pick up the
wounded. It was a wild gusty morning, one of those days when the sky
takes up nearly all the picture and the world looks small. The mud was
deep on the road, and a cyclist corps plunged heavily along through it.
The car steered badly and we drove to the edge of the fighting-line.

First one comes to a row of ammunition vans, with men cooking breakfast
behind them. Then come the long grey guns, tilted at various angles, and
beyond are the shells bursting and leaving little clouds of black or
white in the sky. We signalled to a gun not to fire down the road in
much the same way as a bobby signals to a hansom. When we got beyond the
guns they fired over us with a long streaky sort of sound. We came back
to the road and picked up the wounded wherever we could find them.

The churches are nearly all filled with straw, the chairs piled
anywhere, and the sacrament removed from the altar. In cottages and
little inns it is the same thing--a litter of straw, and men lying on it
in the chilly weather. Here and there through some little window one
sees surgeons in their white coats dressing wounds. Half the world seems
to be wounded and inefficient. We filled our ambulance, and stood about
in curious groups of English men and women who looked as if they were on
some shooting-party. When our load was complete we drove home.

Dr. Munro told me that last night he met a German prisoner quite naked
being marched in, proudly holding his head up. Lots of the men fight
naked in the trenches. In hospital we meet delightful German youths.

Amongst others who were brought in to-day was Mr. "Dick" Reading, the
editor of a sporting paper. He was serving in the Belgian army, and was
behind a gun-carriage when it was fired upon and started. Reading clung
on behind with both his legs broken, and he stuck to it till the
gun-carriage was pulled up! He came in on a stretcher as bright as a
button, smoking a cigar and laughing.

[Page Heading: POPERINGHE]

Late this afternoon we had to turn out of Furnes and fly to Poperinghe.
The drive was intensely interesting, through crowds of troops of every
nationality, and the town seemed large and well lighted. It was crowded
with people to see all our ambulances arrive. We went to a café, where
there was a fire but nothing to eat, so some of the party went out and
bought chops, and I cooked them in a stuffy little room which smelt of
burnt fat.

After supper we went to a convent where the Queen of the Belgians had
made arrangements for us to sleep. It was delightful. Each of us had a
snowy white bed with white curtains in a long corridor, and there was a
basin of water, cold but clean, and a towel for each of us. We
thoroughly enjoyed our luxuries.

_28 October._--The tide of battle seems to have swung away from us again
and we were recalled to Furnes to-day. The hospital looked very bare and
empty as all the patients had been evacuated, and there was nothing to
do till fresh ones should come in. Three shells came over to-day and
landed in a field near us. Some people say they were sent by our own
naval guns firing wide. The souvenir grafters went out and got pieces of
them.

[Page Heading: DUNKIRK]

_2 November._--I have been spending a couple of nights in Dunkirk, where
I went to meet Miss Fyfe. The _Invicta_ got in late because the _Hermes_
had been torpedoed and they had gone to her assistance. No doubt the
torpedo was intended for the _Invicta_, which carries ammunition, and is
becoming an unpopular boat in consequence. Forty of the _Hermes_ men
were lost.

Dunkirk is full of people, and one meets friends at every turn. I had
tea at the Consulate one afternoon, and was rather glad to get away from
the talk of shells and wounds, which is what one hears most of at
Furnes.

I saw Lord Kitchener in the town one day; he had come to confer with
Joffre, Sir John French, Monsieur Poincaré, and Mr. Churchill, at a
meeting held at the Chapeau Rouge Hotel. Rather too many valuable men in
one room, I thought--especially with so many spies about! Three men in
English officers' uniforms were found to be Germans the other day and
taken out and shot.

The Duchess of Sutherland has a hospital at our old Casino at Malo les
Bains, and has made it very nice. I had a long chat with a Coldstream
man who was there. He told me he was carried to a barn after being shot
in the leg and the bone shattered. He lay there for six days before he
was found, with nothing to eat but a few biscuits. He dressed his own
wound.

"But," he said, "the string of my puttee had been driven in so far by
the shot I couldn't find it to get the thing off, so I had to bandage
over it."

I went down to the station one day to see if anything could be done for
the wounded there. They are coming in at the rate of seven hundred a
day, and are laid on straw in an immense goods-shed. They get nothing to
eat, and the atmosphere is so bad that their wounds can't be dressed.
They are all patient, as usual, only the groans are heartbreaking
sometimes. We are arranging to have soup given to them, and a number of
ambulance men arrived who will remove them to hospital ships and trains.
But the goods-shed is a shambles, and let us leave it at that.[1]

  [1] It must not be thought that in this and in subsequent
  passages referring to the sufferings of the wounded Miss Macnaughtan
  alludes to any hardships endured by British troops. Her time in
  Flanders was all spent behind the French and Belgian lines.--ED.

Mrs. Knocker came into Dunkirk for a night's rest while I was staying
there. She had been out all the previous day in a storm of wind and rain
driving an ambulance. It was heavy with wounded, and shells were
dropping very near. She--the most courageous woman that ever lived--was
quite unnerved at last. The glass of the car she was driving was dim
with rain and she could carry no lights, and with this swaying load of
injured men behind her on the rutty road she had to stick to her wheel
and go on.

Some one said to her, "There is a doctor in such-and-such a farmhouse,
and he has no dressings. You must take him these."

She demurred (a most unusual thing for her), but men do not protect
women in this war, and they said she had to take them. She asked one of
the least wounded of the men to get down and see what was in front of
her, and he disappeared altogether. The dark mass she had seen in the
road was a huge hole made by a shell! After steering into dead horses
and going over awful roads Mrs. Knocker came bumping into the yard,
steering so badly that they ran to see what was wrong, and they found
her fainting, and she was carried into the house. At Dunkirk she got a
good dinner and a night's rest.

_Furnes. 5 November._--The hospital is beginning to fill up again, and
the nurses are depressed because only those cases which are nearly
hopeless are allowed to stay, so it is death on all sides and just a
hell of suffering. One man yelled to me to-night to kill him. I wish I
might have done so. The tragedy of war presses with a fearful weight
after being in a hospital, and wherever one is one hears the infernal
sound of the guns. On Sunday about forty shells came into Furnes, but I
was at Dunkirk. This morning about five dropped on to the station.

[Page Heading: NIEUPORT]

To-day I went out to Nieuport. It is like some town one sees in a
horrible nightmare. Hardly a house is left standing, but that does not
describe the scene. Nothing can fitly describe it except perhaps such a
pen as Victor Hugo's. The cathedral at Nieuport has two outer walls left
standing. The front leans forward helplessly, the aisles are gone. The
trees round about are burnt up and shot away. In the roadway are great
holes which shells have made. The very cobbles of the street are
scattered by them. Not a window remains in the place; all are shattered
and many hang from their frames. The fronts of the houses have fallen
out, and one sees glimpses of wretched domestic life: a baby's cradle
hangs in mid-air, some tin boxes have fallen through from the box-room
in the attic to the ground floor. Shops are shivered and their contents
strewn on all sides; the interiors of other houses have been hollowed
out by fire. There is a toy-shop with dolls grinning vacantly at the
ruins or bobbing brightly on elastic strings.

In a wretched cottage some soldiers are having breakfast at a
fine-carved table. In one house, surrounded by a very devastation of
wreckage, some cheap ornaments stand intact on a mantelpiece. From
another a little ginger-coloured cat strolls out unconcernedly! The
bedsteads hanging midway between floors look twisted and thrawn--nothing
stands up straight. Like the wounded, the town has been rendered
inefficient by war.

_6 November._--Furnes always seems to me a weird tragic place. I cannot
think why this is so, but its influence is to me rather curious. I feel
as if all the time I was living in some blood-curdling ghost story or a
horrid dream. Every day I try to overcome the feeling, but I can't
succeed. This afternoon I made up my mind to return to our villa and
write my diary. The day was lovely, and I meant to enjoy a rest and a
scribble, but so strong was the horrid influence of the place that I
couldn't settle to anything. I can't describe it, but it seemed to
stifle me, and I can only compare it to some second sight in which one
sees death. I sat as long as I could doing my writing, but I had to give
in at last, and I tucked my book under my arm and walked back to the
hospital, where at least I was with human beings and not ghosts.

Our life here is made up of many elements and many people, all rather
incongruous, but the average of human nature is good. A villa belonging
to a Dr. Joos was given to our staff. It is a pretty little house, with
three beds in it, and we are eighteen people, so most of us sleep on the
floor. It wouldn't be a bad little place (except for the drains) if only
there wasn't this horrid influence about it all. I always particularly
dislike toddling after people like a little lost dog, but here I find
that unless I am with somebody the ghosts get the better of me.

The villa is being ruined by us I fear, but I have a woman to clean it,
and I am trying to keep it in order. It is a cold little place for we
have no fires. We can, by pumping, get a little very cold water, and
there is a tap in the bath-room and one basin at which everyone tries to
wash and shave at the same time. We get our meals at a butcher's shop,
where there is a large room which we more than fill. The lights of the
town are all out by 6 o'clock, so we grope about, but there is a lamp in
our dining-room. When we come out we have to pass through the butcher's
shop, and one may find oneself running into the interior of a sheep.

We get up about 7 o'clock and fight for the basin. Then we walk round to
the butcher's shop and have breakfast at 7.30. Most people think they
start off for the day's work at 8, but it is generally quite 10 o'clock
before all the brown-hooded ambulances with their red crosses have moved
out of the yard. We do not as a rule meet again till dinner-time, and
even then many of the party are absent. They come in at all times, very
dirty and hungry, and the greeting is always the same, "Did you get
many?"--_i.e._, "Have you picked up many wounded?"

One night Dr. Munro got bowled over by the actual air force created by a
shell, which however did not hit him. Yesterday Mr. Secher was shot in
the leg. I am amazed that not more get hit. They are all very cheery
about it.

To-day we heard that a jolly French boy with white teeth, who has been
very good at making coffee at our picnic lunches, was put up against a
tree and shot at daybreak. Someone had made him drunk the night before,
and he had threatened an officer with a revolver.

[Page Heading: A DRAMATIC INCIDENT]

_7 November. St. Malo les Bains._--Lady Bagot turned up here to-day, and
I lunched with her at the Hôtel des Arcades. Just before lunch a bomb
was dropped from a Taube overhead, and hardly had we sat down to lunch
when a revolver shot rang through the room. A French officer had
discharged his pistol by mistake, and he lay on the floor in his scarlet
trews. The scene was really the Adelphi, and as the man had only
slightly hurt himself one was able to appreciate the scenic effect and
to notice how well staged it was. A waiter ran for me. I ran for
dressings to one of our ambulances, and we knelt in the right attitude
beside the hero in his scarlet clothes, while the "lady of the bureau"
begged for the bullet!

In the evening Lady Bagot and I worked at the railway-sheds till 3 a.m.
One immense shed had 700 wounded in it. The night scene, with its
inevitable accompaniment of low-turned lamps and gloom, was one I shall
not forget. The railway-lines on each side of the covered platform were
spread with straw, and on this wounded men, bedded down like cattle,
slept. There were rows of them sleeping feet to feet, with straw over
them to make a covering. I didn't hear a grumble, and hardly a groan.
Most of them slept heavily.

Near the door was a row of Senegalese, their black faces and gleaming
eyes looking strange above the straw; and further on were some Germans,
whom the French authorities would not allow our men to touch; then rows
of men of every colour and blood; Zouaves, with their picturesque dress
all grimed and colourless; Turcos, French, and Belgians. Nearly all had
their heads and hands bound up in filthy dressings. We went into the
dressing-station at the far end of the great shed and dressed wounds
till about 3 o'clock, then we passed through the long long lines of
sleeping wounded men again and went home.

       *       *       *       *       *

_To Lady Clémentine Waring._

_8 November._
MY DEAREST CLEMMIE,

I have a big job for you. Will you do it? I know you are the person for
it, and you will be prompt and interested.

The wounded are suffering from hunger as much as from their wounds. In
most places, such as dressing-stations and railway-stations, nothing is
provided for them at all, and many men are left for two or three days
without food.

I wish I could describe it all to you! These wounded men are picked up
after a fight and taken anywhere--very often to some farmhouse or inn,
where a Belgian surgeon claps something on to the wounds or ties on a
splint, and then our (Dr. Munro's) ambulances come along and bring the
men into the Field Hospital if they are very bad, or if not they are
taken direct to a station and left there. They may, and often do, have
to wait for hours till a train loads up and starts. Even those who are
brought to the Field Hospital have to turn out long before they can walk
or sit, and they are carried to the local station and put into covered
horse-boxes on straw, and have to wait till the train loads up and
starts. You see everything has to be done with a view to sudden
evacuation. We are so near to the firing-line that the Germans may sweep
on our way at any time, and then every man has to be cleared out somehow
(we have a heap of ambulances), and the staff is moved off to some safer
place. We did a bolt of this sort to Poperinghe one day, but after being
there two days the fighting swayed the other way and we were able to
come back.

[Page Heading: HUNGER OF THE WOUNDED]

Well, during all these shiftings and waitings the wounded get nothing to
eat. I want some travelling-kitchens, and I want you to see about the
whole thing. You may have to come from Scotland, because I have opened
the subject with Mr. Burbidge, of Harrods' Stores. A Harrods' man is
over here. He takes back this letter. I particularly want you to see
him. Mr. Burbidge has, or can obtain, old horse-vans which can be fitted
up as travelling-kitchens. He is doing one now for Millicent, Duchess of
Sutherland; it is to cost £15, which I call very cheap. I wish you
could see it, for I know you could improve upon it. It is fitted, I
understand, with a copper for boiling soup, and a chimney. There is also
a place for fuel, and I should like a strong box that would hold
vegetables, dried peas, etc., whose top would serve as a table. Then
there must be plenty of hooks and shelves where possible, and I believe
Burbidge makes some sort of protection against fire in the way of lining
to the van. Harrods' man says that he doesn't know if they have any more
vans or not.

I want someone with push and energy to see the thing right through and
get the vans off. The _Invicta_, from the Admiralty Pier, Dover, sailing
daily, brings Red Cross things free.

[Page Heading: PROPOSED TRAVELLING-KITCHENS]

The vans would have to have the Red Cross painted on them, and in
_small_ letters, somewhere inconspicuous, "Miss Macnaughtan's
Travelling-Kitchens." This is only for identification. I thought we
might begin with _three_, and get them sent out _at once_, and go on as
they are required. I must have a capable person and a helper in charge
of each, so that limits my number. The Germans have beautiful little
kitchens at each station, but I can't be sure what money I can raise, so
must go slow.

I want also two little trollies, just to hold a tin jug and some tin
cups hung round, with one oil-lamp to keep the jug hot. The weather will
be bitter soon, and only "special" cases have blankets.

Clemmie, if only we could see this thing through without too much red
tape!... No permission need be given for the work of these kitchens, as
we are under the Belgian Minister of War and act for Belgium.

I thought of coming over to London for a day or two, and I can still do
so, only I know you will be able to do this thing better than anyone,
and will think of things that no one else thinks of. I can get voluntary
workers, but meat and vegetables are dreadfully dear, so I shan't be
able to spend a great deal on the vans. However, any day they may be
taken by the Germans, so the only thing that really matters is to get
the wounded _a_ mug of hot soup.

Last night I was dressing wounds and bandaging at Dunkirk station till 3
a.m. The men are brought there in _heaps_, all helpless, all suffering.
Sometimes there are fifteen hundred in one day. Last night seven hundred
lay on straw in a huge railway-shed, with straw to cover them--bedded
down like cattle, and all in pain. Still, it is better than the trenches
and shrapnel overhead!

At the Field Hospital the wounds are ghastly, and we are losing so many
patients! Mere boys of sixteen come in sometimes mortally wounded, and
there are a good many cases of wounded women. You see, no one is safe;
and, oh, my dear, have you ever seen a town that has been thoroughly
shelled? At Furnes we have a good many shells dropping in, but no real
bombardment yet. After Antwerp I don't seem to care about these
visitors. We were under fire there for eighteen hours, and it was a bit
of a strain as our hospital was in a line with the Arsenal, which they
were trying to destroy, so we got more than our share of attention. The
noise was horrible, and the shells came in at the rate of four a minute.
There was something quite hellish about it.

Do you remember that great bit of writing in Job, when Wisdom speaks and
says: "Destruction and Death say, it is not in me"?

The wantonness and sort of rage of it all appalled one. Our women
behaved splendidly.

I'll come over to England if you think I had better, but I am sure you
are the person I want.... If anything should prevent your helping,
please wire to me: otherwise I shall know things are going forward.

Your loving,
S. MACNAUGHTAN.

The vans should be strong as they may have rough usage; also, to take
them to their destination they may have to be hitched on to a
motor-ambulance.

One or two strong trays in each kitchen would be useful. The little
trollies would be for railway-station work. As we go on I hope to have
one kitchen for each dressing-station as well.

SALLY.

       *       *       *       *       *

_8 November._--This afternoon I went down to the Hôtel des Arcades,
which is the general meeting ground for everyone. The drawing-room was
full and so was the Place Jean Bart, on which it looks. Suddenly we saw
people beginning to fly! Soldiers, old men, children in their Sunday
clothes, all running to cover. I asked what was up, and heard that a
Taube was at that moment flying over our hotel. These are the sort of
pleasant things one hears out here! Then Lady Decies came running in to
say that two bombs had fallen and twenty people were wounded.

Once more we got bandages and lint and hurried off in a motor-car, but
the civilian doctors were looking after everyone. The bomb by good luck
had fallen in a little garden, and had done the least damage imaginable,
but every window in the neighbourhood was smashed.

[Page Heading: NIGHT WORK AT RAILWAY SHEDS]

At night we went to the railway-sheds and dressed wounds. I made them do
the Germans; but it was too late for one of them--a handsome young
fellow with both his feet deep blue with frost-bite, his leg broken, and
a great wound in his thigh. He had not been touched for eight days.
Another man had a great hole right through his arm and shoulder. The
dressing was rough and ready. The surgeons clapped a great wad of lint
into the hole and we bound it up. There is no hot water, no sterilising,
no cyanide gauze even, but iodine saves many lives, and we have plenty
of it. The German boy was dying when we left. His eyes above the straw
began to look glazed and dim. Death, at least, is merciful.

We work so late at the railway-sheds that I lie in bed till lunch time.
Lady Bagot and I go to the sheds in the evening and stay there till 1
a.m.

_11 November. Boulogne._--I got a letter from Julia yesterday, telling
me that Alan is wounded and in hospital at Boulogne, and asking me to
go and see him.

I came here this morning and had to run about for a long time before I
started getting a "laissez-passer" for the road, as spies are being shot
almost at sight now. By good chance I got a motor-car which brought me
all the way; trains are uncertain, and filled with troops, and one never
knows when they will arrive.

[Page Heading: STORIES OF THE BRITISH FRONT]

I found poor old Alan at the Base Hospital, in terrible pain, poor boy,
but not dangerously wounded. He has been through an awful time, and
nearly all the officers of his regiment have been killed or wounded. For
my part, in spite of his pain, I can thank God that he is out of the
firing-line for a bit. The horror of the war has got right into him, and
he has seen things which few boys of eighteen can have witnessed. Eight
days in the trenches at Ypres under heavy fire day and night is a pretty
severe test, and Alan has behaved splendidly. He told me the most awful
tales of what he had seen, but I believe it did him good to get things
off his chest, so I listened. The thing he found the most ghastly was
the fact that when a trench has been taken or lost the wounded and dying
and dead are left out in the open. He says that firing never ceases, and
it is impossible to reach these men, who die of starvation within sight
of their comrades.

"Sometimes," Alan said, "we see them raise themselves on an arm for an
instant, and they yell to us to come to them, but we can't."

His own wound was received when the Germans "got their range to an
inch" and began shelling their trenches. A whole company next to Alan
was wiped out, and he started to go back to tell his Colonel the trench
could not be held. The communication trench by which he went was not
quite finished, and he had to get out into the open and race across to
where the unfinished trench began again. Poor child, running for his
life! He was badly hit in the groin, but managed just to tumble into the
next bit of the trench, where he found two men who carried him, pouring
with blood, to his Colonel. He was hastily bound up and carried four
miles on crossed rifles to the hospital at Ypres, where his wound was
properly dressed, and after an hour he was put on the train for
Boulogne.

Alan had one story of how he was told to wait at a certain spot with 130
men. "So I waited," he said, "but the fire was awful." His regiment had,
it seems, gone round another way. "I got thirty of the men away," Alan
said, "the rest were killed." It means something to be an officer and a
gentleman.

Every day the list of casualties grows longer, and I wonder who will be
left.

_19 November. Furnes._--Early on Monday, the 16th, I left Boulogne in
Lady Bagot's car and came to Dunkirk, where I was laid up with a cold
for two or three days. It was singularly uncomfortable, as no one ever
answered my bell, etc.; but I had a bed, which is always such a comfort,
and the room was heated, so I got my things dry. Very often I find the
only way to do this or to get dry clothing is to take things to bed with
one--it is rather chilly, but better than putting on wet things in the
morning.

The usual number of unexpected people keep coming and going. At Boulogne
I met Lady Eileen Elliot, Ian Malcolm, Lord Francis Scott, and various
others--all very English and clean and well fed. It was quite different
from Furnes, to which I returned on Wednesday. Most of us sleep on
mattresses on the floor at Furnes, but even these were all occupied, so
I hopped about getting in where I could. The cold weather "set in in
earnest" as newspapers say, and when it does that in Furnes it seems to
be particularly in earnest.

       *       *       *       *       *

_To Lady Clémentine Waring._

HÔTEL DES ARCADES,
DUNKERQUE,
_18 November, 1914._

DEAREST CLEMMIE,

Forgive the delay in writing again. I was too sick about it all at
first, then I was sent for to go to Boulogne to see my nephew, who is
badly wounded. I can't explain the present situation to you because it
would only be censored, but I hope to write about it later.

I shall manage the soup-kitchens soon, I hope, but next week will decide
that and many things. The objection to the _pattern_ is that those vans
would overturn going round corners when hitched on behind ambulances.
Some wealthy people are giving a regular motor kitchen to run about to
various "dressing"-stations--this will be most useful, but it doesn't do
away with the need of something to eat during those interminable waits
at the _railway_-stations.

[Page Heading: CHANGES IN THE SITUATION]

To-morrow I begin my own little soup-kitchen at Furnes. I have a room
but no van, and this is most unsatisfactory, as any day the room (so
near the station) may be commandeered. A van would make me quite
independent, but I must feel my way. The situation changes very often,
as you will of course see, and when one is quite close to the Front one
has to be always changing with it.

I want helpers and I want vans, but rules are becoming stricter than
ever. Even Adeline, Duchess of Bedford, whose good work everyone knows,
has waited for a permit for a week at Boulogne, and has now gone home.
When all the useful women have been expelled there will follow the usual
tale of soldiers' suffering and privations: when women are about they
don't let them suffer.

The only plan (if you know of any man who wants to come out) is to know
how to drive a motor-car and then to offer it and his services to the
Red Cross Society. I have set my heart on station soup-kitchens because
I see the men put into horse-boxes on straw straight off the field, and
there they lie without water or light or food while the train jolts on
for hours. I wish I had you here to back me up! We could do anything
together.

As ever, yours gratefully,
SALLY.

The motor kitchens cost £600 fitted, but the maker is giving the one I
speak of for £300. Everyone has given so much to the war I don't feel
sure I could collect this amount. I might try America, but it takes a
long time.




CHAPTER III

AT FURNES RAILWAY-STATION


_21 November._--I am up to my eyes in soup! I have started my
soup-kitchen at the station, and it gives me a lot to do. Bad luck to
it, my cold and cough are pretty bad!

It is odd to wake in the morning in a frozen room, with every pane of
glass green and thick with frost, and one does not dare to think of Mary
and morning tea! When I can summon enough moral courage to put a foot
out of bed I jump into my clothes at once; half dressed, I go to a
little tap of cold water to wash, and then, and for ever, I forgive
entirely those sections of society who do not tub. We brush our own
boots here, and put on all the clothes we possess, and then descend to a
breakfast of Quaker oat porridge with bread and margarine. I wouldn't
have it different, really, till our men are out of the trenches; but I
am hoping most fervently that I shan't break down, as I am so "full with
soup."

[Page Heading: WORK IN THE SOUP-KITCHEN]

Our kitchen at the railway-station is a little bit of a passage, which
measures eight feet by eight feet. In it are two small stoves. One is a
little round iron thing which burns, and the other is a sort of little
"kitchener" which doesn't! With this equipment, and various huge
"marmites," we make coffee and soup for hundreds of men every day. The
first convoy gets into the station about 9.30 a.m., all the men frozen,
the black troops nearly dead with cold. As soon as the train arrives I
carry out one of my boiling "marmites" to the middle of the stone
entrance and ladle out the soup, while a Belgian Sister takes round
coffee and bread.

These Belgians (three of them) deserve much of the credit for the
soup-kitchen, if any credit is going about, as they started with coffee
before I came, and did wonders on nothing. Now that I have bought my
pots and pans and stoves we are able to do soup, and much more. The
Sisters do the coffee on one side of eight feet by eight, while I and my
vegetables and the stove which goes out are on the other. We can't ask
people to help because there is no room in the kitchen; besides, alas!
there are so many people who like raising a man's head and giving him
soup, but who do not like cutting up vegetables.

After the first convoy of wounded has been served, other wounded men
come in from time to time, then about 4 o'clock there is another
train-load. At ten p.m. the largest convoy arrives. The men seem too
stiff to move, and many are carried in on soldiers' backs. The
stretchers are laid on the floor, those who can "s'asseoir" sit on
benches, and every man produces a "quart" or tin cup. One and all they
come out of the darkness and never look about them, but rouse themselves
to get fed, and stretch out poor grimy hands for bread and steaming
drinks. There is very little light--only one oil-lamp, which hangs from
the roof, and burns dimly. Under this we place the "marmites," and all
that I can see is one brown or black or wounded hand stretched out into
the dim ring of light under the lamp, with a little tin mug held out for
soup. Wet and ragged, and covered with sticky mud, the wounded lie in
the salle of the station, and, except under the lamp, it is all quite
dark. There are dim forms and frosty breaths, and a door which bangs
continually, and then the train loads up, the wounded depart, and a
heavy smell and an empty pot are all that remain. We clean up the
kitchen, and go home about 1 a.m. I do the night work alone.

_24 November._--We are beginning to get into our stride, and the small
kitchen turns out its gallons and buckets of liquid. Mrs. ---- has been
helping me with my work. It is good to see anyone so beautiful in the
tiny kitchen, and it is quaint to see anyone so absolutely ignorant of
how a pot is washed or a vegetable peeled.

I have a little electric lamp, which is a great comfort to me, as I have
to walk home alone at midnight. When I get up in the morning I have to
remember all I shall want during the day, as the villa is a mile from
the station, so I take my lantern out at 9.30 a.m.!

I saw a Belgian regiment march back to the trenches to-day. They had a
poor little band and some foggy instruments, and a bugler flourished a
trumpet. I stood by the roadside and cried till I couldn't see.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Page Heading: A LETTER HOME]

_To Miss Mary King._

FURNES, BELGIUM,
_27 November._

DEAR MARY,

You will like to know that I have a soup-kitchen at the station here,
and I am up to my neck in soup. I make it all day and a good bit of the
night too, for the wounded are coming in all the time, and they are half
frozen--especially the black troops. People are being so kind about the
work I am doing, and they are all saying what a comfort the soup is to
the men. Sometimes I feed several hundreds in a day.

I am sure everyone will grieve to hear of the death of Lord Roberts, but
I think he died just as he would wish to have died--amongst his old
troops, who loved him, and in the service of the King. He was a fine
soldier and a Christian gentleman, and you can't say better of a man
than that.

I feel as if I had been out here for years, and it seems quite odd to
think that one used to wear evening dress and have a fire in one's room.
I am promising myself, if all goes well, to get home about
Christmas-time. I wish I could think that the war would be over by then,
but it doesn't look very like it.

Remember me to Gwennie, and to all your people. Take care of your old
self.

Yours truly,
S. MACNAUGHTAN.

       *       *       *       *       *

_1 December._--Mrs. Knocker and Miss Chisholm and Lady Dorothy went out
to Pervyse a few days ago to make soup, etc., for Belgians in the
trenches. They live in the cellar of a house which has been blown inside
out by guns, and take out buckets of soup to men on outpost duty. Not a
glimpse of fire is allowed on the outposts. Fortunately the weather has
been milder lately, but soaking wet. Our three ladies walk about the
trenches at night, and I come home at 1 a.m. from the station. The men
of our party meanwhile do some house-work. They sit over the fire a good
deal, clear away the tea-things, and when we come home at night we find
they have put hot-water bottles in our beds and trimmed some lamps. I
feel like Alice in Wonderland or some other upside-down world. We live
in much discomfort, which is a little unnecessary; but no one seems to
want to undertake housekeeping.

I make soup all day, and there is not much else to write about. All
along the Yser the Allies and the Germans confront each other, but
things have been quieter lately. The piteous list of casualties is not
so long as it has been. A wounded German was brought in to-day. Both his
legs were broken and his feet frost-bitten. He had been for four days in
water with nothing to eat, and his legs unset. He is doing well.

[Page Heading: PERVYSE]

On Sunday I drove out to Pervyse with a kind friend, Mr. Tapp. At the
end of the long avenue by which one approaches the village, Pervyse
church stands, like a sentinel with both eyes shot out. Nothing is left
but a blind stare. Hardly any of the church remains, and the churchyard
is as if some devil had stalked through it, tearing up crosses and
kicking down graves. Even the dead are not left undisturbed in this
awful war. The village (like many other villages) is just a mass of
gaping ruins--roofs blown off, streets full of holes, not a window left
unshattered, and the guns still booming.

       *       *       *       *       *

_To Mrs. Charles Percival._

FURNES, BELGIUM,
_5 December._

DARLING TAB,

I have a chance of sending this to England to be posted, so I must send
you a line to wish you many happy returns of the day. I wish we could
have our yearly kiss. I will think of you a lot, my dear, on the 8th,
and drink your health if I can raise the wherewithal. We are not famous
for our comforts, and it would amaze you to see how very nasty food can
be, and how very little one can get of it.

I have an interesting job now, and it is my own, which is rather a
mercy, as I never know which is most common, dirt or muddle. I can have
things as clean as I like, and my soup is getting quite a name for
itself. The first convoy of wounded generally comes into the station
about 11 a.m. It may number anything. Then the men are put into the
train, and there begins a weary wait for the poor fellows till more
wounded arrive and the train is loaded up, and sometimes they are kept
there all day. The stretcher cases are in a long corridor, and the
sitting-up cases in ordinary third-class carriages. The sitters are
worn, limping men, with bandaged heads, and hands bound up, who are yet
capable of sitting up in a train.

The transport is well done, I think (_far_ better than in South Africa),
but more women are wanted to look after details. To give you one
instance: all stretchers are made of different sizes, so that if a man
arrives on an ambulance, the stretchers belonging to it cannot go into
the train, and the poor wounded man has to be lifted and "transferred,"
which causes him (in the case of broken legs or internal injuries
especially) untold suffering. It also takes up much room, and gives
endless trouble for the sake of an _inch and a half_ of space, which is
the usual difference in the size of the stretchers, but that prevents
them slipping into the sockets on the train.

Another thing I have noticed is, that no man, even lying down in the
train, ever gets his boots taken off. The men's feet are always soaked
through, as they have been standing up to their knees in water in the
trenches; but, of course, slippers are unheard of. I do wonder if ladies
could be persuaded to make any sort of list or felt or even flannel
slippers? I saw quite a good pattern the other day, and will try to send
you one, in case Eastbourne should rise to the occasion. Of course,
there must be _hundreds_ of pairs, and heaps would get lost. I do
believe other centres would join, and the cost of material for slippers
would be quite trifling. A priest goes in each corridor train, and there
is always a stove where the boots could be dried. I believe slippers can
be bought for about a shilling a pair. The men's feet are _enormous_.
Cases should be marked with a red cross, and sent per S.S. _Invicta_,
Admiralty Pier, Dover.

[Page Heading: THE SHELLING OF LAMPERNESSE]

The fighting has had a sort of lull here for some time, but there are
always horrible things happening. The other day at Lampernesse, 500
soldiers were sleeping on straw in a church. A spy informed the Germans,
who were twelve miles off, but they got the range to an inch, and sent
shells straight into the church, killing and wounding nearly everyone in
it, and leaving men under the ruins. We had some terrible cases that
day. The church was shelled at 6 a.m., and by 11 a.m. all the wounded
were having soup and coffee at the station. I thought their faces were
more full of horror than any I had seen.

The parson belonging to our convoy is a particularly nice young fellow.
I have had a bad cold lately, and every night he puts a hot-water bottle
in my bed. When he can raise any food he lays a little supper for me, so
that when I come in between 12 and 1 o'clock I can have something to
eat, a lump of cheese, plum jam, and perhaps a piece of bully beef,
always three pieces of ginger from a paper bag he has of them. Last
night when I got back I found I couldn't open the door leading into a
sort of garage through which we have to enter this house. I pushed as
hard as I could, and then found I was pushing against horses, and that a
whole squad of troop horses had been shoved in there for the night, so I
had to make my entry under their noses and behind their heels. Pinned to
the table inside the house was a note from the parson, "I can't get you
any food, but I have put a bottle of port-wine in your room. Stick to
it."

I had meant to go early to church to-day, but I was really too tired, so
I am writing to you instead. Now I must be getting up, for "business
must be attended to."

Well, good-bye, my dear. I am always too busy to write now, so would you
mind sending this letter on to the family?

Your loving sister,
S. MACNAUGHTAN.

       *       *       *       *       *

_December._--Unexpected people continue to arrive at Furnes. Mme. Curie
and her daughter are in charge of the X-ray apparatus at the hospital.
Sir Bartle Frere is there as a guest. Miss Vaughan, of the _Nursing
Times_, came in out of the dark one evening. To-day the King has been
here. God bless him! he always does the right thing.

_6 December._--My horizon is bounded by soup and the men who drink it.
There is a stir outside the kitchen, and someone says, "Convoi." So then
we begin to fill pots and take steaming "marmites" off the fire. The
"sitting cases" come in first, hobbling, or carried on their comrades'
backs--heads and feet bandaged or poor hands maimed. When they have been
carried or have stiffly and slowly marched through the entrance to the
train, the "brancard" cases are brought in and laid on the floor. They
are hastily examined, and a doctor goes round reading the labels
attached to them which describe their wounds. An English ambulance and
a French one wait to take serious cases to their respective hospitals.
The others are lifted on to train-stretchers and carried to the train.

[Page Heading: A QUESTION OF STRETCHERS]

Two doctors came out from England on inspection duty to-day. They asked
if I had anything to report, and I made them come to the station to go
into this matter of the different-sized stretchers. It is agony to the
men to be shifted. Dr. Wilson has promised to take up the question. The
transport service is now much improved. The trains are heated and
lighted, and priests travel with the lying-down cases.

_8 December._--I have a little "charette" for my soup. It is painted
red, and gives a lot of amusement to the wounded. The trains are very
long, and my small carriage is useful for cups and basins, bread, soup,
coffee, etc. Clemmie Waring designed and sent it to me.

To-day I was giving out my soup on the train and three shells came in in
quick succession. One came just over my head and lodged in a haystall on
the other side of the platform. The wall of the store has an enormous
hole in it, but the thickly packed hay prevented the shrapnel
scattering. The station-master was hit, and his watch saved him, but it
was crumpled up like a rag. Two men were wounded, and one of them died.
A whole crowd of refugees came in from Coxide, which is being heavily
shelled. There was not a scrap of food for them, so I made soup in great
quantities, and distributed it to them in a crowded room whose
atmosphere was thick. Ladling out the soup is great fun.

_12 December._--The days are very short now, and darkness falls early.
All the streets are dark, so are the houses, so is the station. Two
candles are a rare treat, and oil is difficult to get.

Such a nice boy died to-night. We brought him to the hospital from the
station, and learned that he had lain for eight days wounded and
untended. Strangely enough he was naked, and had only a blanket over him
on the stretcher. I do not know why he was still alive. Everything was
done for him that could be done, but as I passed through one of the
wards this evening the nurses were doing their last kindly duty to him.
Poor fellow! He was one of those who had "given even their names." No
one knew who he was. He had a woman's portrait tattooed on his breast.

_19 December._--Not much to record this week. The days have become more
stereotyped, and their variety consists in the number of wounded who
come in. One day we had 280 extra men to feed--a batch of soldiers
returning hungry to the trenches, and some refugees. So far we have
never refused anyone a cup of soup; or coffee and bread.

I haven't been fit lately, and get fearful bad headaches. I go to the
station at 10 a.m. every morning, and work till 1 o'clock. Then to the
hospital for lunch. I like the staff there very much. The surgeons are
not only skilful, but they are men of education. We all get on well
together, in spite of that curious form of temper which war always seems
to bring. No one is affable here, except those who have just come out
from home, and it is quite common to hear a request made and refused,
or granted with, "Please do not ask again." Newcomers are looked upon as
aliens, and there is a queer sort of jealousy about all the work.

[Page Heading: WAR WORKERS' DIFFICULTIES]

Oddly enough, few persons seem to show at their best at a time when the
best should be apparent. No doubt, it is a form of nerves, which is
quite pardonable. Nurses and surgeons do not suffer from it. They are
accustomed to work and to seeing suffering, but amateur workers are a
bit headlong at times. I think the expectation of excitement (which is
often frustrated) has a good deal to do with it. Those who "come out for
thrills" often have a long waiting time, and energies unexpended in one
direction often show themselves unexpectedly and a little unpleasantly
in another.

In my own department I always let Zeal spend itself unchecked, and I
find that people who have claimed work or a job ferociously are the
first to complain of over-work if left to themselves. Afterwards, if
there is any good in them, they settle down into their stride. They are
only like young horses, pulling too hard at first and sweating off their
strength--jibbing one moment and shying the next--when it comes to
"'ammer, 'ammer, 'ammer on the 'ard 'igh road," one finds who is going
to stick it and who is not.

There has been some heavy firing round about Nieuport and south of the
Yser lately, and an unusual number of wounded have been coming in, many
of them "gravement blessés."

One evening a young French officer came to the kitchen for soup. It was
on Wednesday, December 16th, the day the Allies assumed the offensive,
and all night cases were being brought in. He was quite a boy, and
utterly shaken by what he had been through. He could only repeat, "It
was horrible, horrible!" These are the men who tell brave tales when
they get home, but we see them dirty and worn, when they have left the
trenches only an hour before, and have the horror of battle in their
eyes.

There are scores of "pieds gelés" at present, and I now have bags of
socks for these. So many men come in with bare feet, and I hope in time
to get carpet slippers and socks for them all. One night no one came to
help, and I had a great business getting down a long train, so Mrs.
Logette has promised to come every evening. The kitchen is much nicer
now, as we are in a larger passage, and we have three stoves, lamps,
etc. Many things are being "straightened out" besides, my poor little
corner and war seems better understood. There is hardly a thing which is
not thought of and done for the sick and wounded, and I should say a
grievance was impossible.

I still lodge at the Villa Joos, and am beginning to enjoy a study of
middle-class provincial life. The ladies do all the house-work. We have
breakfast (a bite) in the kitchen at 8.30 a.m., then I go to make soup,
and when I come back after lunch for a rest, "the family" are dressed
and sitting round a stove, and this they continue to do till a meal has
to be prepared. There is one lamp and one table, and one stove, and
unless papa plays the pianola there is nothing to do but talk. No one
reads, and only one woman does a little embroidery, while the small
girl of the party cuts out scraps from a fashion paper.

The poor convoy! it is becoming very squabbly and tiresome, and there is
a good deal of "talking over," which is one of the weakest sides of
"communal life." It is petty and ridiculous to quarrel when Death is so
near, and things are so big and often so tragic. Yet human nature has
strict limitations. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald came out from the committee to
see what all the complaints were about. So there were strange
interviews, in store-rooms, etc. (no one has a place to call their
own!), and everyone "explained" and "gave evidence" and tried to "put
matters straight."

It rains every day. This may be a "providence," as the floods are
keeping the Germans away. The sound of constant rain on the window-panes
is a little melancholy. Let us pray that in singleness and cheerfulness
of heart we may do our little bit of work.

[Page Heading: EXPEDITION TO DUNKIRK]

_23 December._--Yesterday I motored into Dunkirk, and did a lot of
shopping. By accident our motor-car went back to Furnes without me, and
there was not a bed to be had in Dunkirk! After many vicissitudes I met
Captain Whiting, who gave up his room in his own house to me, and slept
at the club. I was in clover for once, and nearly wept when I found my
boots brushed and hot water at my door. It was so like home again.

I was leaving the station to-day when shelling began again. One shell
dropped not far behind the bridge, which I had just crossed, and
wrecked a house. Another fell into a boat on the canal and wounded the
occupants badly. I went to tell the Belgian Sisters not to go down to
the station, and I lunched at their house, and then went home till the
evening work began. People are always telling one that danger is now
over--a hidden gun has been discovered and captured, and there will be
no more shelling. Quel blague! The shelling goes on just the same
whether hidden guns are captured or not.

I can't say at present when I shall get home, because no one ever knows
what is going to happen. I don't quite know who would take my place at
the soup-kitchen if I were to leave.

_25 December._--My Christmas Day began at midnight, when I walked home
through the moonlit empty streets of Furnes. At 2 a.m. the guns began to
roar, and roared all night. They say the Allies are making an attack.

I got up early and went to church in the untidy school-room at the
hospital, which is called the nurses' sitting-room. Mr. Streatfield had
arranged a little altar, which was quite nice, and had set some chairs
in an orderly row. As much as in him lay--from the altar linen to the
white artificial flowers in the vases--all was as decent as could be and
there were candles and a cross. We were quite a small congregation, but
another service had been held earlier, and the wounded heard Mass in
their ward at 6 a.m. The priests put up an altar there, and I believe
the singing was excellent. Inside we prayed for peace, and outside the
guns went on firing. Prince Alexander of Teck came to our service--a
big soldierly figure in the bare room.

[Page Heading: CHRISTMAS IN BELGIUM]

After breakfast I went to the soup-kitchen at the station, as usual,
then home--_i.e._, to the hospital to lunch. At 3.15 came a sort of
evensong with hymns, and then we went to the civil hospital, where there
was a Christmas-tree for all the Belgian refugee children. Anything more
touching I never saw, and to be with them made one blind with tears. One
tiny mite, with her head in bandages, and a little black shawl on, was
introduced to me as "une blessée, madame." Another little boy in the
hospital is always spoken of gravely as "the civilian."

Every man, woman, and child got a treat or a present or a good dinner.
The wounded had turkey, and all they could eat, and the children got
toys and sweets off the tree. I suppose these children are not much
accustomed to presents, for their delight was almost too much for them.
I have never seen such excitement! Poor mites! without homes or money,
and with their relations often lost--yet little boys were gibbering over
their toys, and little girls clung to big parcels, and squeaked dolls or
blew trumpets. The bigger children had rather good voices, and all sang
our National Anthem in English. "God save our nobbler King"--the accent
was quaint, but the children sang lustily.

We had finished, and were waiting for our own Christmas dinner when
shells began to fly. One came whizzing past Mr. Streatfield's store-room
as I stood there with him. The next minute a little child in floods of
tears came in, grasping her mother's bag, to say "Maman" had had her arm
blown off. The child herself was covered with dust and dirt, and in the
streets people were sheltering in doorways, and taking little runs for
safety as soon as a shell had finished bursting. The bombardment lasted
about an hour, and we all waited in the kitchen and listened to it. At
such times, when everyone is rather strung up, someone always and
continually lets things fall. A nun clattered down a pail, and Maurice
the cook seemed to fling saucepan-lids on the floor.

About 8.15 the bombardment ceased, and we went in to a cheery
dinner--soup, turkey, and plum-pudding, with crackers and speeches. I
believe no one would have guessed we had been a bit "on the stretch."

At 9.30 I went to the station. It was very melancholy. No one was there
but myself. The fires were out, or smoking badly. Everyone had been
scared to death by the shells, and talked of nothing else, whereas
shells should be forgotten directly. I got things in order as soon as I
could and the wounded in the train got their hot soup and coffee as
usual, which was a satisfaction. Then I came home alone at
midnight--keeping as near the houses as I could because of possible
shells--and so to bed, very cold, and rather too inclined to think about
home.

_26 December._--Went to the station. Oddly enough, very few wounded were
there, so I came away, and had my first day at home. I got a little
oil-stove put in my room, wrote letters, tidied up, and thoroughly
enjoyed myself.

A Taube came over and hovered above Furnes, and dropped bombs. I was at
the Villa, and the family of Joos and I stood and watched it, and a
nasty dangerous moth it looked away up in the sky. Presently it came
over our house, so we went down to the kitchen. A few shots were fired,
but the Taube was far too high up to be hit. Max, the Joos' cousin, went
out and "tirait," to the admiration of the women-kind, and then, of
course, "Papa" had to have a try. The two men, with their little gun and
their talk and gesticulations, lent a queer touch of comic opera to the
scene. The garden was so small, the men in their little hats were so
suggestive of the "broken English" scene on the stage, that one could
only stand and laugh.

[Page Heading: A BELGIAN DINNER-PARTY]

The Joos family are quite a study, and so kind. On Christmas Eve I dined
with them, and they gave me the best of all they had. There was a
pheasant, which someone had given the doctor (I fancy he is a very small
practitioner amongst the poor people); surely, never did a bird give
more pleasure. I had known of its arrival days before by seeing
Fernande, the little girl, decorated with feathers from its tail. Then
the good papa must be decorated also, and these small jokes delighted
the whole family to the point of ecstasy.

On Christmas Eve Monsieur Max conceived the splendid joke, carefully
arranged, of presenting Madame Joos--who is young and pretty--and the
doctor with two parcels, which on being opened contained the child's
umbrella and a toy gun. There wasn't even a comic address on the
parcels; but Yrma, the servant, carefully trained for the part, brought
them in in fits of delight, and all the family laughed with joy till the
tears ran down their cheeks. As they wiped their eyes, they admitted
they were sick with laughter. After supper we had the pianola, played by
papa; and I must say that, when one can get nothing else, this
instrument gives a great deal of pleasure. One gets a sort of ache for
music which is just as bad as being hungry.

_27 December._--Bad, bad weather again. It has rained almost
continuously for five weeks. Yesterday it snowed. Always the wind blows,
and _something_ lashes itself against the panes. One can't leave the
windows open, as the rooms get flooded. It is amazingly cold o' nights,
I can't sleep for the cold.

We have some funny incidents at the station sometimes. A particularly
amusing one occurred the other day, when three ladies in knickerbockers
and khaki and badges appeared at our soup-kitchen door and announced
they were "on duty" there till 6 o'clock. I was not there, but the scene
that followed has been described to me, and has often made me laugh.

It seems the ladies never got further than the door!
Some people might have been firm in the "Too sorry!
Come-some-other-day-when-we-are-not-so-busy" sort of way. Not so Miss
----. In more primitive times she would probably have gone for the
visitors with a broom, but her tongue is just as rough as the hardest
besom, and from their dress ("skipping over soldiers' faces with
breeches on, indeed!") to their corps there was very little left of
them.

[Page Heading: OUR TROUBLE WITH SPIES]

It wasn't really from the dog-in-the-manger spirit that the little woman
acted. The fact is that Belgians and French run the station together,
and they are all agreed on one thing, which is, that no one but an
authorised and registered person is to come within its doors. Heaven
knows the trouble there has been with spies, and this rule is absolutely
necessary.

Two Red Cross khaki-clad men have been driving everywhere in Furnes, and
have been found to be Germans. Had we permitted itinerant workers, the
authorities gave notice that the kitchen would have to close.

In the evening, when I went to the station, another knickerbockered lady
sat there! I told her our difficulties, but allowed her to do a little
work rather than hurt her feelings. The following day Miss ---- engaged
in deadly conflict with the lady who had sent our unwelcome visitors.
Over the scene we will draw a veil, but we never saw the knickerbockered
ladies again!

_31 December, 1914._--The last day of this bad old year. I feel quite
thankful for the summer I had at the Grange. It has been something to
look back upon all the time I have been here; the pergolas of pink
roses, the sleepy fields, the dear people who used to come and stay with
me, and all the fun and pleasure of it, help one a good deal now.

Yesterday was a fine day in the middle of weeks of rain. When I came
down to breakfast in the Joos' little kitchen I remarked, of course, on
the beauty of the weather. "What a day for Taubes!" said Monsieur Max,
looking up at the clear blue sky. Before I had left home there was a
shell in a street close by, and one heard that already these horrible
birds of prey had been at work, and had thrown two bombs, which
destroyed two houses in the Rue des Trèfles. The pigeons that circle
round the old buildings in Furnes always seem to see the Taubes first,
as if they knew by sight their hateful brothers. They flutter disturbed
from roof and turret, and then, with a flash of white wings, they fly
far away. I often wish I had wings when I see them.

I went to the station, and then to the hospital for slippers for some
wounded men. Five aeroplanes were overhead--Allies' and German--and
there was a good deal of firing. I was struck by the fact that the night
before I had seen _exactly_ this scene in a dream. Second sight always
gives me much to think about. The inevitableness of things seems much
accentuated by it. In my dream I stood by the other people in the yard
looking at the war in the air, and watching the circling aeroplanes and
the bursts of smoke.

At the station there was a nasty feeling that something was going to
happen. The Taubes wheeled about and hovered in the blue. I went to the
hospital for lunch, and afterwards I asked Mr. Bevan to come to the
station to look at some wounded whose dressings had not been touched for
too long. He said he would come in half an hour, so I said I wouldn't
wait, as he knew exactly where to find the men, and I came back to the
Villa for my rest. As I walked home I heard that the station had been
shelled, and I met one of the Belgian Sisters and told her not to go on
duty till after dark, but I had no idea till evening came of what had
happened. Ten shells burst in or round the station. Men, women, and
children were killed. They tell me that limbs were flying, and a French
chauffeur, who came on here, picked up a man's leg in the street. Mr.
Bevan sent up word to say none of us was to go to the station for the
present.

At Dunkirk seven Taubes flew overhead and dropped bombs, killing
twenty-eight people. At Pervyse shells are coming in every day. I can't
help wondering when we shall clear out of this. If the bridges are
destroyed it will be difficult to get away. The weather has turned very
wet again this evening. We have only had two or three fine days in as
many months. The wind howls day and night, and the place is so well
known for it that "vent de Furnes" is a byword. No doubt the floods
protect us, so one mustn't grumble at a sore throat.

[Page Heading: SHELLS AT FURNES]

_1 January._--The station was shelled again to-day. Three houses were
destroyed, and there was one person killed and a good many more were
wounded. A rumour got about that the Germans had promised 500 shells in
Furnes on New Year's Day.

In the evening I went down to the station, and I was evidently not
expected. Not a thing was ready for the wounded. The man in charge had
let all three fires out, and he and about seven soldiers (mostly drunk)
were making merry in the kitchen. None of them would budge, and I was
glad I had young Mr. Findlay with me, as he was in uniform, and helped
to get things straight. But these French seem to have very little
discipline, and even when the military doctors came in the men did
nothing but argue with them. It was amazing to hear them. One night a
soldier, who is always drunk, was lying on a brancard in the doctor's
own room, and no one seemed to mind.

_3 January, Sunday._--I have had my usual rest and hot bath. I find I
never want a holiday if I may have my Sundays. I spent a lazy afternoon
in Miss Scott's room, she being ill, then went to Mr. Streatfield's
service, dinner, and the station. A new officer was on duty there, and
was introduced to the kitchen. He said, "Les anglais, of course. No one
else ever does anything for anybody."

I believe this is very nearly the case. God knows, we are full of
faults, but the superiority of the British race to any other that I know
is a matter of deep conviction with me, and it is founded, I think, on
wide experience.

_6 January._--I went to Adinkerke two days ago to establish a
soup-kitchen there, as they say that Furnes station is too dangerous. We
have been given a nice little waiting-room and a stove. We heard to-day
that the station-master at Furnes has been signalling to the enemy, so
that is why we have been shelled so punctually. His daughter is engaged
to a German. Two of our hospital people noticed that before each
bombardment a blue light appeared to flash on the sky. They reported
the matter, with the result that the signals were discovered.

[Page Heading: THE SHELLING GETS WORSE]

There has been a lot of shelling again to-day, and several houses are
destroyed. A child of two years is in our hospital with one leg blown
off and the other broken. One only hears people spoken of as, "the man
with the abdominal trouble," or "the one shot through the lungs."

Children know the different aeroplanes by sight, and one little girl,
when I ask her for news, gives me a list of the "obus" that have
arrived, and which have "s'éclaté," and which have not. One can see that
she despises those which "ne s'éclatent pas." One says "Bon soir, pas
des obus," as in English one says, "Good-night, sleep well."

_10 January._--Prince Alexander of Teck dined at the hospital last
night, and we had a great spread. Madame Sindici did wonders, and there
were hired plates and finger-bowls, and food galore! We felt real
swells. An old General--the head of the Army Medical Corps--gave me the
most grateful thanks for serving the soldiers. It was gracefully and
delightfully done.

I am going home for a week's holiday.

_14 January._--I went home _via_ Calais. Mr. Bevan and Mr. Morgan took
me there. It was a fine day and I felt happy for once, that is, for once
out here.

Some people enjoy this war. I think it is far the worst time, except
one, I ever spent. Perhaps I have seen more suffering than most people.
A doctor sees a hospital, and a nurse sees a ward of sick and wounded,
but I see them by the hundred passing before me in an endless train all
day. I can make none of them really better. I feed them, and they pass
on.

One reviews one's life a little as one departs. Always I shall remember
Furnes as a place of wet streets and long dark evenings, with gales
blowing, and as a place where I have been always alone. I have not once
all this time exchanged a thought with anyone. I have lived in a very
damp attic, and talked French to some kind middle-class people, and I
have walked a mile for every meal I have had. So I shall always think of
Furnes as a wet, dark place, and of myself with a lantern trudging about
its mean streets.




CHAPTER IV

WORKING UNDER DIFFICULTIES


I have not written my diary for some weeks. I went home to England and
stayed at Rayleigh House. On my way home I met Mr. F. Ware, who told me
submarines were about. As I had but just left a much-shelled town, I
think he might have held his peace. The usual warm welcome at Rayleigh
House, with Mary there to meet me, and Emily Strutt.

I wasn't very tired when I first arrived, but fatigue came out on me
like a rash afterwards. I got more tired every day, and ended by having
a sort of breakdown. This rather spoilt my holiday, but it was very nice
seeing people again. It was difficult, I found, to accommodate myself to
small things, and one was amazed to find people still driving serenely
in closed broughams. It was like going back to live on earth again after
being in rather a horrible other world. I went to my own house and
enjoyed the very smell of the place. My little library and an hour or
two spent there made my happiest time. Different people asked me to
things, but I wasn't up to going out, and the weather was amazingly
bad.

I was to have gone back to work on the Thursday week after I arrived
home, but I got a telegram from Madame Sindici saying Furnes was being
shelled, and the hospital, etc., was to be evacuated. Dr. Perrin, who
was to have taken me back, had to start immediately without me. It was
difficult to get news, and hearing nothing I went over on Saturday,
January 23rd, as I had left Mrs. Clitheroe in charge of my soup-kitchen,
and thought I had better do the burning deck act and get back to it.

Mr. Bevan and Mr. Morgan met me at Calais, and told me to wait at
Dunkirk, as everyone was quitting Furnes. One of our poor nurses was
killed, and the Joos' little house was much damaged. I stopped at Mrs.
Clitheroe's flat, very glad to be ill in peace after my seedy condition
in London and a bad crossing. Rested quietly all Sunday in the flat by
myself. It is an empty, bare little place, with neither carpets nor
curtains, but there is something home-like about it, the result, I
think, of having an open fire in one room.

On Monday, the 25th, I went back to work at Adinkerke station, to which
place our soup-kitchen has been moved. I got a warm welcome from the
Belgian Sisters. It is very difficult doing the station work from
Dunkirk, as it is 16 kilometres from Adinkerke; but the place itself is
nice, and I just have to trust to lifts. I fill my pockets with
cigarettes and go to the "sortie de la ville," and just wait for
something to pass--and some queer, bumpy rides I get. Still, the
soldiers who drive me are delightful, and the cigarettes are always
taken as good pay.

One day I went and spent the night at Hoogstadt, where the hospital now
is, and that I much enjoyed. Dr. Perrin gave up his little room to me,
and the nurses and staff were all so full of welcome and pleasant
speeches.

On Monday, February 8th, I went out to La Panne to start living in the
hotel there; but I was really dreadfully seedy, and suffered so much
that I had to return to the flat at Dunkirk again to be nursed. My day
at La Panne was therefore very sad, as I nearly perished with cold, and
felt so ill. Not a soul came near me, and I wished I could be a Belgian
refugee, when I might have had a little attention from somebody.

On Tuesday, February 9th, a Belgian officer came into Adinkerke station,
claimed our kitchen as a bureau, and turned us out on to the platform. I
am trying to get General Millis to interfere; but, indeed, the rudeness
of this man's act makes one furious.

[Page Heading: ILLNESS AT DUNKIRK]

_14 February._--I have been laid up for some days at the flat at
Dunkirk. It is amazing to realise that this place should be one's
present idea of comfort. It has no carpets, no curtains, not a blind
that will pull up or down, and rather dirty floors, yet it is so much
more comfortable than anything I have had yet that I am too thankful to
be here. There is a gas-ring in the kitchen, on which it is possible to
cook our food, and there are shops where things can be got.

Mr. Strickland and I are both laid up here, and Miss Logan nurses us
devotedly. Our joy is having a sitting-room with a fire in it. Was
there ever anything half so good as that fire, or half so homely, half
so warm or so much one's own? I lie on three chairs in front of it, and
headache and cold and throat are almost forgotten. The wind howls, the
sea roars, and aeroplanes fly overhead, but at least we have our fire
and are at home.

_17 February._--Another cold, wet day. I am alone in the flat with a
"femme de ménage" to look after me. A doctor comes to see me sometimes.
Miss Logan and Mr. Strickland left this morning. There was a tempest of
rain, and I couldn't think of being moved. They were sweet and kind, and
felt bad about leaving me; but I am just loving being left alone with
some books and my fire.

I have been lying in bed correcting proofs. Oh, the joy of being at
one's own work again! Just to see print is a pleasure. I believe I have
forgotten all I ever knew before the war began. A magazine article comes
to me like a language I have almost forgotten.

_18 February._--This is the day that German "piracy" is supposed to
begin. We heard a great explosion early this morning, but it was only a
mine that had been found on the shore being blown up. The sailors'
aeroplane corps is opposite us, and we see Commander Samson and others
flying off in the morning and whirling back at night, and then we hear
there has been a raid somewhere. When a Taube comes over here the
sailors fire at it with a gun just opposite us, and then tell us they
only do it to give us flower-vases--_i.e._, empty shell-cases!

[Page Heading: SOME STORIES OF THE WAR]

Mr. Holland came here to-day, and told me some humorous sides of his
experiences with ambulances. One man from the Church Army marched in,
and said: "I am a Christian and you are not. I come here for petrol, and
I ask it, not for the Red Cross, but in the name of Christ." Another man
came dashing in, and said: "I want to go to Poperinghe. I was once there
before, and the mud was beastly. Send someone with me."

My own latest experience was with an American woman of awful vulgarity.
I asked her if she was busy, like everyone else in this place, and she
said:

"No. I was suffering from a nervous breakdown, so I came out here. What
is your _war_ is my _peace_, and I now sleep like a baby."

I want adjectives! How is one to describe the people who come for
one brief visit to the station or hospital with an intense
conviction that they and they only feel the suffering or even notice
the wants of the men. Some are good workers. Others I call
"This-poor-fellow-has-had-none." Nurses may have been up all night,
doctors may be worked off their feet, seven hundred men may have passed
through the station, all wounded and all fed, but when our visitors
arrive they discover that "This poor fellow has had none," and firmly,
and with a high sense of duty and of their own efficiency, they make the
thing known.

No one else has heard a man shouting for water; no one else knows that a
man wants soup. The man may have appendicitis, or colitis, or
pancreatitis, or he may have been shot through the lungs or the abdomen.
It doesn't matter. The casual visitor knows he has been neglected, and
she says so, and quite indiscriminately she fills everyone up with
soup. Only she is tender-hearted. Only she could never really be
hardened by being a nurse. She seizes a little cup, stoops over a man
gracefully, and raises his head. Then she wants things passed to her,
and someone must help her, and someone must listen to what she has to
say. She feeds one man in half an hour, and goes away horrified at the
way things are done. Fortunately these people never stay for long.

Then there is another. She can't understand why our ships should be
blown up or why trenches should be taken. In her own mind she proves
herself of good sound intelligence and a member of the Empire who won't
be bamboozled, when she says firmly and with heat, "Why don't we _do_
something?" She would like to scold a few Generals and Admirals, and she
says she believes the Germans are much cleverer than ourselves. This
last taunt she hopes will make people "_do_ something." It stings, she
thinks.

I could write a good deal about this "solitary winter," but I have not
had time either to write or to read. I think something inside me has
stood still or died during this war.

_21 February, Sunday._--The Munro corps has swooped down in its usual
hurry to distribute letters, and to say that someone is waiting down
below and they can't stop. They eat a hasty sardine, drink a cup of
coffee, and are off!

To-day I have made this flat tidy at last, and have had it cleaned and
scrubbed. I have thrown away old papers and empty boxes, and can sit
down and sniff contentedly. No convoy-ite sees the difference!

[Page Heading: THE COMMUNAL LIFE]

I think I have learnt every phase of muddle and makeshift this winter,
but chiefly have I learnt the value of the Biblical recommendation to
put candles on candlesticks. In the "convoi Munro" I find them in
bottles, on the lids of mustard-tins, in metal cups, or in the necks of
bedroom carafes. Never is the wax removed. Where it drips there it
remains. Where matches fall there they lie. The stumps of cigarettes
grace even the insides of flower-pots, knives are wiped on bread,
and overcoats of enormous weight (khaki in colour, with a red cross
on the arm) are hung on inefficient loose nails, and fall down.
Towels are always scarce; but then, they serve as dinner-napkins,
pocket-handkerchiefs, and even as pillow-cases, so no wonder we are a
little short of them. There is no necessity for muddle. There never is
any necessity for it.

The communal life is a mistake. I wonder if Christ got bored with it.

On Sundays I always want to rest, and something always makes me write.
The attack comes on quite early. It is irresistible. At last I am a
little happy after these dreary months, and it is only because I can
think a little, and because the days are not quite so dark. I think the
nights have been longer here than I ever knew them. No doubt it is the
bad weather and the small amount of light indoors that make the days
seem so short.

I am going back to-morrow to the station, with its train-loads of
wounded men. I _want_ to go, and to give them soup and comforts and
cigarettes, but just ten days' illness and idleness have "balmed my
soul."

_22 February._--Waited all day for a car to come and fetch me away. It
was dull work as I could never leave the flat, and all my things were
packed up, and there was no coal.

_23 February._--Waited again all day. I got very tired of standing by
the window looking out on a strip of beach at the bottom of the street,
and on the people passing to and fro. Then I went down to the dock to
try and get a car there, but the new police regulations made it
impossible to cross the bridge. I went to the airmen opposite. No luck.

There is a peculiar brutality which seems to possess everyone out here
during the war. I find it nearly everywhere, and it entails a good deal
of unnecessary suffering. Always I am reminded of birds on a small ledge
pushing each other into the sea. The big bird that pushes another one
over goes to sleep comfortably.

I remember one evening at Dunkirk when we couldn't get rooms or food
because the landlady of the hotel had lost all her servants. The staff
at the ---- gave me a meal, but there was a queer want of courtesy about
it. I said that anything would do for my supper, and I went to help get
it myself. I spied a roll of cold veal on a shelf, and said helpfully
that that would do splendidly, but the answer was: "Yes, but I believe
that is for our next meal." However, in the end I got a scrap,
consisting mostly of green stuffing.

"But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room"--ah, my
dear Lord, in this world one may certainly take the lowest place, and
keep it. It is only the great men who say, "Friend, come up higher."

"You can't have it," is on everyone's lips, and a general sense of
bustle goes with the brutality. "You can't come here," "We won't have
her," are quite common phrases. God help us, how nasty we all are!

I find one can score pretty heavily nowadays by being a "psychologist."
All the most disagreeable people I know are psychologists, notably ----,
who breaks his promises and throws all his friends to the wolves, but
who can still explain everything in his sapient way by saying he is a
psychologist.

One thing I hope--that no one will ever call me "highly strung." I wish
good old-fashioned bad temper was still the word for highly strung and
nervy people.

... I am longing for beautiful things, music, flowers, fine thoughts....

[Page Heading: LA PANNE]

_La Panne. 25 February._--At last I have succeeded in getting away from
Dunkirk! The Duchess of Sutherland brought me here in her car. Last
night I dined with Mrs. Clitheroe. She was less bustled than usual, and
I enjoyed a chat with her as we walked home through the cold white mist
which enshrouded La Panne.

This long war has settled down to a long wait. Little goes on except
desultory shelling, with its occasional quite useless victims. At the
station we have mostly "malades" and "éclopés"; in the trenches the
soldiers stand in the bitter cold, and occasionally are moved out by
shells falling by chance amongst them. The men who are capable of big
things wait and do nothing.

If it was not for the wounded how would one stand the life here? A man
looks up patiently, dumbly, out of brown eyes, and one is able to go on
again.

_La Panne. 27 February_.--I have been staying for three nights at the
Kursaal Hotel, but my room was wanted and I had to turn out, so I packed
my things and came down to the Villa les Chrysanthèmes, and shared Mrs.
Clitheroe's room for a night. In the morning all our party packed up and
left to go to Furnes, and I took on these rooms. I may be turned out any
minute for "le militaire," but meanwhile I am very comfortable.

The heroic element (a real thing among us) takes queer forms sometimes.
"No sheets, of course," is what one hears on every side, and to eat a
meal standing and with dirty hands is to "play the game." Maxine Elliott
said, "The nervous exhaustion attendant upon discomfort hinders work,"
and she "does herself" very well, as also do all the men of the regular
forces. But volunteer corps--especially women--are heroically bent on
being uncomfortable. In a way they like it, and they eat strange meals
in large quantities, and feel that this is war.

Lord Leigh took me into Dunkirk in his car to-day, and I managed to get
lots of vegetables for the soup-kitchen, and several other things I
wanted. A lift is everything at this time, when one can "command"
nothing. If one might for once feel that by paying a fare, however high,
one could ensure having something--a railway journey, a motor-car, or
even a bed! My work isn't so heavy at the kitchen now, and the hours are
not so long, so I hope to do some work of a literary nature.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Page Heading: LA PANNE]

_To Miss Macnaughtan's Sisters._

VILLA LES CHRYSANTHÈMES
LA PANNE, BELGIUM,
_Sunday, 28 February._

MY DEAR FAMILY,

It is so long since I wrote a decently long letter that I think I must
write to you all, to thank you for yours, and to give you what news
there is of myself.

Of war news there is none. The long war is now a long wait, and the huge
expense still goes on, while we lock horns with our foes and just sway
backwards and forwards a little, and this, as you know, we have done for
weeks past. Every day at the station there is a little stream of men
with heads or limbs bandaged, and our work goes on as before, although
it is not on quite the same lines now. I used to make every drop of the
soup myself, and give it out all down the train. Now we have a
receiving-room for the wounded, where they stay all day, and we feed
them four times, and then they are sent away. The whole thing is more
military than it used to be, the result, I think, of officers not having
much to do, and with a passion for writing out rules and regulations
with a nice broad pen. Two orderlies help in the kitchen, the soup is
"inspected," and what used to be "la cuisine de la dame écossaise" is
not so much a charitable institution as it was.

One sees a good deal of that sort of thing during this war. Women have
been seeing what is wanted, and have done the work themselves at really
enormous difficulty, and in the face of opposition, and when it is a
going concern it is taken over and, in many cases, the women are turned
out. This was the case at Dunkirk station, which was known everywhere as
"the shambles." I myself tried to get the wounded attended to, and I
went there with a naval doctor, who told me that he couldn't uncover a
single wound because of the awful atmosphere (it was quite common to see
15,000 men lying on straw). One woman took this matter in hand, purged
the place, got mattresses, clean straw, stoves, etc., and when all was
in order the voice of authority turned her out.

This long waiting is being much more trying for people than actual
fighting. In every corps the old heroic outlook is a little bit fogged
by petty things. One sees the result of it in some wrangling and
jealousy, but this will soon be forgotten when fighting with all its
realities begins again.

I think Britain on the subject of "piracy" is about as fine as anything
in her history. Her determination to ignore ultimatums and threats is
really quite funny, and English people still put out in boats as they
have always done, and are quite undismayed. Our own people here continue
to travel by sea, as if submarines were rather a joke, and when going
over to England on some small and useless little job they say
apologetically, "Of course, I wouldn't go if I hadn't got to." The fact
is, if there is any danger about they have to be in it.

Some of our own corps have gone back to Furnes--I believe because it is
being shelled. The rest of us are at La Panne, a cold seaside place
amongst the dunes. In summer-time I fancy it is fashionable, but now it
contains nothing but soldiers. They are quartered everywhere, and one
never knows how long one will be able to keep a room. The station is at
Adinkerke, where I have my kitchen. It is about two miles from La Panne,
and it also is crammed with soldiers. There seems to be no attempt at
sanitation anywhere.

I wish I had more interesting news to tell you, but I am at my station
all day, and if there is anything to hear (which I doubt) I do not hear
it.

There is a barge on the canal at Adinkerke which is our only excitement.
It is the property of Maxine Elliott, Lady Drogheda, and Miss Close, and
to go to tea with them is everyone's ambition. The barge is crammed with
things for Belgian refugees, and Maxine told me that the cargo
represents "nearer £10,000 than £5,000." It is piled with flour in
sacks, clothing, medical comforts, etc. The work is good.

I am sending home some long pins like nails. They are called "Silent
Death," and are dropped from German aeroplanes. Boys pick them up and
give them to us in exchange for cigarettes.

[Page Heading: MRS. PERCIVAL'S SLIPPERS]

I want to tell Tabby how immensely pleased everyone is with her
slippers. The men who have stood long in the trenches are in agonies of
frost-bite and rheumatism, and now that I can give them these slippers
when they arrive at the station, they are able to take off their wet
boots caked with mud.

If J. would send me another little packet of groceries I should love it.
Just what can come by post. That Benger's Food of hers nearly saved my
life when I was ill at Dunkirk. What I should like better than anything
is a few good magazines and books. I get _Punch_ and the _Spectator_,
but I want the _English Review_ and the _National_, and perhaps a
_Hibbert_. I enclose ten shillings for these. What is being read?
Stephen Coleridge seems to have brought out an interesting collection,
but I can't remember its name. I wonder if any notice will be taken of
"They who Question." The reviews speak well of the Canadian book.

Love to you all, and tell Alan how much I think of him. Bless you, my
dears. Write often.

Yours as ever,
SARAH.

       *       *       *       *       *

_1 March._--Woe betide the person who owns anything out here: he is
instantly deprived of it. "Pinching" is proverbial, and people have
taken to carrying as many of their possessions as possible on their
person, with the result that they are the strangest shapes and sizes.
Still, one hopes the goods are valuable until one discovers that they
generally consist of the following items: a watch that doesn't go, a
fountain-pen that is never filled, an electric torch that won't light, a
much-used hanky, an empty iodine bottle, and a scarf.

_5 March._--I went as usual to-day to the muddy station and distributed
soup, which I no longer make now that the station has become
militarised. My hours are from 12 noon to 5 o'clock. This includes the
men's dinner-hour and the washing of the kitchen. They eat and smoke
when I am there, and loll on the little bench. They are Belgians and I
am English, and one is always being warned that the English can't be too
careful! We are entertaining 40,000 Belgians in England, but it must be
done "carefully."

[Page Heading: THIEVING AND GIVING]

It is a great bore out here that everything is stolen. One can hardly
lay a thing down for an instant that it isn't taken. To-day my Thermos
flask in a leather case, in which I carry my lunch, was prigged from the
kitchen. Things like metal cups are stolen by the score, and everyone
begs! Even well-to-do people are always asking for something, and they
simply whine for tobacco. The fact is, I think, the English are giving
things away with their usual generosity and want of discrimination,
and--it is a horrid word--they are already pauperising a nice lot of
people. I can't help thinking that the thing is being run on wrong
lines. We should have given or lent what was necessary to the Belgian
Government, and let them undertake to provide for soldiers and refugees
through the proper channels. No lasting good ever came of gifts--every
child begs for cigarettes, and they begin smoking at five years old.

I often think of our poor at home, and wish I had a few sacks full of
things for them! I have not myself come across any instances of poverty
nearly as bad as I have seen in England. I understand from Dr. Joos and
other Belgians who know about these things that there is still a good
deal of money tucked away in this country. I hope there is, and we all
want to help the Belgians over a bad time, but it would be better and
more dignified for them to get it through their own Government.

I had tea with Lady Bagot the other day, and afterwards I had a chat
with Prince Francis at the English Mission. Another afternoon I went
down to the Kursaal Hotel for tea. The stuffy sitting-room there is
always filled with knickerbockered, leather-coated ladies and with
officers in dark blue uniform, who talk loudly and pat the barmaid's
cheeks. She seems to expect it; it is almost etiquette. A cup of bad
tea, some German trophies examined and discussed, and then I came away
with a "British" longing for skirts for my ladies, and for something
graceful and (odious word) dainty about them. Yesterday evening Lady
Bagot dined with me. This Villa is the only comfortable place I have
been in since the war began: it makes an amazing difference to my
health.

It is odd to have to admit that one has hardly ever been unhappy for a
long time before this war. The year my brother died, the year one went
through a tragedy, the year of deadly dullness in the country--but now
it isn't so much a personal matter. War and the sound of guns, and the
sense of destruction and death abroad, the solitude of it, and the
disappointing people! Oh, and the poor wounded--the poor, smelly, dirty
wounded, whom one sees all day, and for whom one just sticks this out.

I have only twice been for a drive out here, and I have not seen a
single place of interest, nor, indeed, a single interesting person
connected with the war. That, I suppose, is the result of being a
"cuisinière!" It is rather strange to me, because for a very long time I
always seem to have had the best of things. To-day I hear of this
General or that Secretary, or this great personage or that important
functionary, but the only people whom I see are three little Sisters and
two Belgian cooks.

To give up work seems to me a little like divorcing a husband. There is
a feeling of failure about it, and the sense that one is giving up what
one has undertaken to do. So, however dull or tiresome husband or work
may be, one mustn't give them up.

[Page Heading: THE POWER OF THE BIBLE]

_6 March._--To-day I have been thinking, as I have often thought, that
the real power of the Bible is that it is a Universal Human Document.
The world is based upon sentiment--_i.e._, the personality of man and
his feelings brought to bear upon facts. It is also the world's dynamic
force. Now, the books of the Bible--especially, perhaps, the magical,
beautiful Psalms--are the most tender and sentimental (the word has been
misused, of course) that were ever written. They express the thoughts
and feelings of generations of men who always did express their thoughts
and feelings, and thought no shame of it. And so we northern people,
with our passionate inarticulateness, love to find ourselves expressed
in the old pages.

I find in the Gospels one of the few complaints of Christ. "Have I been
so long time with you and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?" All one
has ever felt is said for one in a phrase, all that one finds most
isolating in the world is put into one sentence. There is a wan feeling
of wonder in it; "so long," and yet you think that of me! "so long," and
yet such absolute inability to read my character! "so long," and yet
still quite unaware of my message! The humour of it (to us) lies in the
little side of it! The dear people who "thought you would like this or
dislike that"--the kind givers of presents even--the little people who
shop for one! The friends who invite one to their queer, soulless, thin
entertainments, with their garish lights; the people who choose a book
for one, who counsel one, even with importunity, to go to some play
which they are "sure we shall like." "So long"--they are old friends,
and yet they thought we should like that play or that book! "So
long"--and yet they think one capable of certain acts or feelings which
do not remotely seem to belong to one! "So long"--and yet they can't
even touch one chord that responds!

We are always quite alone. The communal life is the loneliest of all,
because "yet thou hast not known me." The world comes next in
loneliness, but it is _big_, and with a big soul of its own. The family
life is almost naïve in its misunderstanding--no one listens, they just
wait for pauses....

... The worship of the "sane mind" has been a little overdone, I think.
The men who are prone to say of everyone that they "exaggerate a
little," or "are morbid," are like weights in a scale--just, but oh,
how heavy!...

... This war is fine, _fine_, FINE! I know it, and yet I don't get near
the fineness except in the pages of _Punch_! I see streams of men whose
language (Flemish) I don't speak, holding up protecting hands to keep
people from jostling a poor wounded limb, and I watch them sleeping
heavily, or eating oranges and smoking cigarettes down to the last hot
stump, but I don't hear of the heroic stands which I know are made, or
catch the volition of it all. Perhaps only in a voluntary army is such a
thing possible. Our own boys make one's heart beat, but these poor,
dumb, sodden little men, coming in caked with mud--to be patched up and
sent into a hole in the ground again, are simply tragic.

[Page Heading: "THE WOMAN'S TOUCH"]

_7 March._--"The woman's touch." When a woman has been down on her knees
scrubbing for a week, and washing for another week, a man, returning and
finding his house in order, and vaguely conscious of a newer and fresher
smell about it, talks quite tenderly of "a woman's touch."...

... There are some people who never care to enter a door unless it has
"passage interdite" upon it....

... The guns are booming heavily this morning. Nothing seems to
correspond. Are men really falling and dying in agonies quite close to
us? I believe we ought to see less or more--be nearer the front or
further from it. Or is it that nothing really changes us? Only war
pictures and war letters remain as a fixed blazing standard. The
soldiers in the trenches are quite as keen about sugar in their coffee
as we are about tea. No wonder men have decided that one day we must put
off flesh. It is far too obstrusive....

... To comfort myself I try to remember that Wellington took his old
nurse with him on all his campaigns because she was the only person who
washed his stocks properly....

... Surely the expense of the thing will one day put a stop to war. We
are spending two million sterling per day, the French certainly as much,
the Germans probably more, and Austria and Russia much more, in order to
keep men most uncomfortably in unroofed graves, and to send high
explosives into the air, most of which don't hit anything. Surely, if
fighting was (as it is) impossible in this flooded country in winter, we
might have called a truce and gone home for three months, and trained
and drilled like Christians on Salisbury Plain!...

... Health--_i.e._, bad health--obtrudes itself tiresomely. I am ill
again, and, fortunately, few people notice it, so I am able to keep on.
A festered hand makes me awkward; and as I wind a bandage round it and
tie it with my teeth, I once more wish I was a Belgian refugee, as I am
sure I would be interesting, and would get things done for me!

A sick Belgian artist, M. Rotsartz{3}, is doing a drawing of me. I go to
Lady Bagot's hospital, where he is laid up, and sit to him in the
intervals of soup. That little wooden hospital is the best place I have
known so far. Lady Bagot is never bustled or fussy, nor even "busy," and
her staff are excellent men, with the "Mark of the Lamb" on them.

I gave away a lot of things to-day to a regiment going into the
trenches. The soldiers were delighted with them.

_11 March._--There was a lot of firing near La Panne to-day, and a
British warship was repeatedly shelled by the Germans from Nieuport. I
went into Dunkirk with Mr. Clegg, and got the usual hasty shopping done.
No one can ever wait a minute. If one has time to buy a newspaper one is
lucky. The difficulty of communicating with anyone is great--no
telephone--no letters--no motor-car. I am stranded.

[Page Heading: FRENCH MARINES]

I generally go in the train to Adinkerke with the French Marines, nice
little fellows, with labels attached to them stating their "case"--not
knowing where they are going or anything else--just human lives battered
about and carted off. I don't even know where they get the little bit of
money which they always seem able to spend on loud-smelling oranges and
cigarettes. The place is littered with orange-skins--to-day I saw a long
piece lying in the form of an "S" amid the mud; and, like a story of a
century old, I thought of ourselves as children throwing orange-skins
round our heads and on to the floor to read the initial of our future
husband, and I seemed to hear mother say, "'S' for Sammy--Sammy C----,"
a boy with thick legs whom we secretly despised!

I have found a whole new household of "éclopés" at Adinkerke, who want
cigarettes, socks, and shoes all the time. They are a pitiful lot, with
earache, toothache, and all the minor complaints which I myself find so
trying, and they lie about on straw till they are able to go back to the
trenches again.

The pollard willows between here and Adinkerke are all being cut down to
build trenches. They were big with buds and the promise of spring.

_14 March._--I went to the station yesterday, as usual. Suddenly I
couldn't stand it any more. Everyone was cleaning. I was getting swept
up with straw and mopped up with dirty cloths. The kitchen work was
done. I ate my lunch in a filthy little out-building and then I fled. I
had to get into the open air, and I hopped on to an ambulance and drove
to Dunkirk. I had a good deal to do there getting vegetables,
cigarettes, etc., and we got back late to the station, where I heard the
Queen had paid a visit. Rather bad luck on almost the only day I have
been away.

I am waiting anxiously to hear if the report of the new British advance
yesterday is true. When fighting really begins we are going to be in for
a big thing; one dreads it for the sake of the boys we are going to
lose. I want things to start now just to get them over, but I rather
envy the people who died before this unspeakable war began.

       *       *       *       *       *

_To Mrs. Keays-Young._

CARE OF FIELD POST OFFICE, DUNKIRK,
_17 March._

MY DEAREST BABY,

[Page Heading: CAPTAIN L. M. B. SALMON]

I have (of course) been getting letters and parcels very badly lately. I
am sending this home by hand, which is not allowed except on Red Cross
business, but this is to ask how Lionel is, so I think I may send it. My
poor Bet! What anxiety for her! This spring weather is making me long to
be at home, and when people tell me the crocuses are up in the
park!--well, you know London and the park belong to me! Are the catkins
out? We can get flowers at Dunkirk, but not here.

Not a word of war news, because that wouldn't be fair. A shilling wire
about Lionel would satisfy me--just "Better, and Bet well," or something
of that sort.

Always, my dear,
Your loving,
S. MACNAUGHTAN.

P.S.--Your two letters and Bet's have just come. To be in touch with you
again is _very_ pleasant. I can't tell you what it was like to sit down
to a pretty, clean breakfast to-day with my letters beside me. Someone
brought them here early.

I heard to-day that I am going to be decorated by the King of the
Belgians, but don't spread this broadcast, as anything might happen in
war.

       *       *       *       *       *

_20 March._--I met an Englishman belonging to an armoured car in Dunkirk
a couple of days ago. He told me that the last four days' fighting at La
Bassée has cost the British 13,000 casualties. Three lines of holes in
the ground, and fighting only just beginning again! Bet's fiancé has
been shot through the head, but is still alive. My God, the horror of it
all! And England is still cheerful, I hear, and is going to hold
race-meetings as usual.

At the station to-day I saw a mad man, who fought and struggled. I
thought madmen raved. This one fought silently, like a man one sees in a
dream. Another soldier shook all over like an old man. Many were blind.

"On the whole," someone said to me in England, "I suppose you are having
a good time."

There is a snowstorm to-day, and it is bitterly cold. It is very odd how
many small "complaints" seem to attack one. I can't remember the day out
here when I felt well all over.

Last night some Belgians came in to dinner. It was like old times trying
to get things nice. I had some flowers and a tablecloth. I believe in
making a contrast with the discomfort I see out here. We forced open a
piano, and had some perfect music.

_21 March._--The weather is brighter to-day; the sound of firing is more
distant; it is possible to think of other things besides the war.

Mrs. ---- came to the station this morning. I think she has the most
untidy mind I have ever met with.

With all our faults, I often wish that there were more Macnaughtans in
the world. Their simple and plain intelligence gives one something to
work upon. Mrs. ---- came and told me to-day that last night "they
laughed till they cried" over her attempt at making a pudding. I should
have cried, only, over a woman of fifty who wasn't able to make a
pudding. She and ---- are twin nebulæ who think themselves
constellations.

       *       *       *       *       *

_To Miss Mary King._

CARE OF FIELD POST OFFICE, DUNKIRK,
_22 March._

DEAR MARY,

My plans, like those of everybody else, are undecided because of the
war. If it is going to stop in May I should like to stay till the end,
but if it is likely to go on for a long time, I shall come home. I don't
think hot soup (which is my business) can be wanted much longer, as the
warm weather will be coming.

I have been asked to take over full charge of a hospital here. It is a
great compliment, but I have almost decided to refuse. I have other
duties, and I have some important writing to do, as I am busy with a
book on the war. I begin work as early as ever, and then go to my
kitchen.

[Page Heading: LONGING FOR HOME]

When I do come home I want to be in my own house, and I am longing to be
back. Many of my friends go backwards and forwards to England all the
time, but when I return, I should like to stay.

I am in wonderfully comfortable rooms at present, and the landlady is
most kind and attentive. She gives me a morning cup of tea, and the care
and comfort are making me much better. I get some soup before I go off
to my station, and last night I was really a fine lady. When I came in
tired, the landlady, who is a Belgian, took off my boots for me!

When I come home I think I'll lie in bed all day, and poor old Mary
will get quite thin again nursing me. The things you will have to do for
me, and all the pretty things I shall see and have, are a great pleasure
to think about!

Yours truly,
S. MACNAUGHTAN.




CHAPTER V

THE SPRING OFFENSIVE


_Villa les Chrysanthèmes, La Panne._--I have been to London for a few
days to see about the publication of my little war book. I got frightful
neuralgia there, and find that as soon as I begin to rest I get ill.

I went to a daffodil show, and found myself in the very hall where the
military bazaar was held last year. I saw the place where the Welch had
their stall. What fun we had! How many of the regiment are left? Only
one officer not killed or wounded. Lord Roberts, who opened the bazaar,
is gone too. All the soldiers whom I knew best have been taken, and only
a few tough women seem to weather the storm of life.

I had to see publishers in London, and do a lot of business, and just
when I was beginning to love it all again my holiday was over. There had
been heavy fighting out here, and I felt I must come back. My dear
people didn't want me to return, and were very severe on the subject,
and Mary scolded me most of the time. It was all affection on their
part, although it made "duty" rather a criminal affair!

There was endless difficulty about my passport when I returned. The
French Consulate was besieged by people, and I had to go there at 8.30
a.m. and wait till the doors were opened, and was then told I must first
go to the Foreign Office to get an order from Colonel Walker. I went
down to Whitehall from Bedford Square, and was told I must get a letter
from Mr. Coventry. I went to Pall Mall and Mr. Coventry said it was
quite impossible to do anything for me without instructions from Mr.
Sawyer. Mr. Sawyer said the only thing he could do (if I could establish
my identity) was to send me to a matron who would make every enquiry
about me, and perhaps in three days I might get an Anglo-French
certificate, through which Mr. Coventry might be induced to give me a
letter to give to Colonel Walker, who might then sign the passport,
which I could then take to Bedford Square to be visé{4}.

I got Sir John Furley to identify me, and then began a dogged going from
place to place and from official to official till at last I got the
thing through. I felt just like a Russian being "broken." There is a
regular system, I believe, in Russia of wearing people out by this sort
of official tyranny. I do not know anything more tiring or more
discouraging! I had all my papers in order--my passport{5}, my "laissez
passer," a letter from Mr. Bevan, explaining who I was and asking for
"every facility" for me, and my photograph, properly stamped. I am now
so loaded with papers that I feel as if I were carrying a library about
with me. Oh, give me intelligent women to do things for me! The best-run
things I have seen since the war began have been our women's unit at
Antwerp and Lady Bagot's hospital at Adinkerke.

[Page Heading: QUARRELLING]

I came back refreshed. I think everyone (every woman) out here has
noticed how indifferent and really "nasty" people are to each other at
the front. It is one of the singular things about the war, because one
always hears it said that it is deepening people's characters, purifying
them, and so on. As far as my experience goes, it has shown me the
reverse. I have seldom known so much quarrelling, and there is a sort of
queer unhappiness which has nothing to do with the actual war or loss of
friends. I can't be mistaken about it, because I see it on all sides.

At the ---- hospital men and women alike are quarrelling all the time.
Resignations are frequent. So-and-so has got So-and-so turned out;
someone has written to the committee in London to report on someone
else; a nice doctor is dismissed. Every nurse has given notice at
different times. Most people are hurt and sore about something. Love
seems quite at a discount, and one can't help wondering if Hate can be
infectious! It is all frightfully disappointing, for surely one's heart
beat high when one made up one's mind to do what one could for suffering
Belgium and for the sake of the English name.

Those two poor girls at ----! I know they meant well, and had high ideas
of what they were going to do. Now they "use langwidge" to each other
(although I know a very strong affection binds them), and very, very
strong that language is.

Poor souls, the people here aren't a bit happy. I wonder if the work is
sufficiently "sanctified." One never knows. Lady Bagot's is the happiest
and most serene place here; her men are Church Army people, and they
have evening prayers in the ward. It _does_ make a difference.

Scandals also exist out here, but they are merely silly, I think, and
very unnecessary, though a little conventionality wouldn't hurt anyone.
Sometimes I think it would be better if we were all at home, for
Belgians are particular, and I hate breeches and gaiters for girls, and
a silly way of going on. I do wish people could sometimes leave sex at
home, but they never seem to. I wonder if Crusaders came back with
scandals attached to their names!

I got back here in one of those rushes of work that come in war time
when fighting is near. At first no car could be spared to meet me at
Boulogne, so I had to wait at the Hôtel Maurice for two or three days. I
didn't mind much as I met such a lot of English friends, and also
visited some interesting hospitals; but I knew by the thousands of
wounded coming in that things must be busy at the front, and this made
one champ one's bit.

The Canadians and English who poured in from Ypres were terribly
damaged, and the asphyxiating gas seems to have been simply diabolical.
It was awful to see human beings so mangled, and I never get one bit
accustomed to it. The streets were full of British soldiers, and the
hospitals swarmed with wounded. I went to visit the Casino one. The
bright sun streamed through lowered blinds on hundreds of beds, and on
stretchers lying between them. Many Canadians were there, and rows of
British. God! how they were knocked about! The vast rooms echoed to the
cries of pain. The men were vowing they could never face shells and hand
grenades any more. They were so newly wounded, poor boys; but they come
up smiling when their country calls again.

But it _isn't right_. This damage to human life is horrible. It is
madness to slaughter these thousands of young men. Almost at last, in a
rage, one feels inclined to cry out against the sheer imbecility of it.
Why bring lives into the world and shell them out of it with jagged
pieces of iron, and knives thrust through their quivering flesh? The
pain of it is all too much. I am _sick_ with seeing suffering.

[Page Heading: DUNKIRK SHELLED]

On Thursday, April 29th, Mr. Cooper, and another man came for us, and we
left Boulogne. At Dunkirk we could hardly credit our eyes--the place had
been shelled that very afternoon! I never saw such a look of
bewilderment and horror as there was on all faces. No one had ever
dreamed that the place could be hit by a German gun, yet here were
houses falling as if by magic, and no one knew for a moment where on
earth or in heaven the shells were coming from. Some people said they
came from the sea, but the houses I saw hadn't been hit from the sea,
which lies north, but from the east. Others talked of an armoured train,
but armoured trains don't carry 15-inch shells. So all anyone could do
was to _gape_ with sheer astonishment.

Dunkirk, that safest of places, the haven to which we were all to fly
when Furnes or La Panne were bombarded! Everybody contradicted one, of
course, when one declared that no naval gun had been at work, but the
fact remains that a long-range field-piece had been hidden at Leke, and
Dunkirk was shelled for three days, and, as far as I know, may be
shelled again. The inhabitants have all fled. The shops are not even
shut; one could help oneself to anything! The "état major" has left, and
so have all the officials; 23,000 tickets have been taken at the railway
station, and the road to Calais is{6} blocked with fleeing refugees.

It was rather odd that the day I left here and passed through Furnes it
was being shelled, and we had to wait a little while before we could get
through; and when I arrived at Dunkirk the bombardment was just over,
and a huge shell-hole prevented us passing down a certain road.

Well, I got back to my work at Adinkerke in the midst of the fighting,
and reached it just as the sun was setting. What a scene at the station,
where I stopped before reaching home to leave the chairs and things I
had bought for the hospital there! They were bringing in civilians
wounded at Ypres and Poperinghe, which place also has been shelled (and
yet we say we are advancing!), and there were natives also from
Nieuport.

[Page Heading: WOUNDED WOMEN AND CHILDREN]

One whole ambulance was filled with wounded children. I think King Herod
himself might have been sorry for them. Wee things in splints, or with
their curly heads bandaged; tiny mites, looking with wonder at their
hands swathed in linen; babies with their tender flesh torn, and older
children crying with terror. There were two tiny things seated opposite
each other on a big stretcher playing with dolls, and a little
Christmas-card sort of baby in a red hood had had its mother and father
killed beside it. Another little mite belonged to no one at all. Who
could tell whether its parents had been killed or not? I am afraid many
of them will never find their relations again. In the general scrimmage
everyone gets lost. If this isn't frightfulness enough, God in heaven
help us!

On the platform was a row of women lying on stretchers. They were
decent-looking brown-haired matrons for the most part, and it looked
unnatural and ghastly to see them lying there. One big railway
compartment was slung with their stretchers, and some young men in
uniform nursed the babies. I shall never forget that railway compartment
as long as I live. A man in khaki appeared, thoughtful, as our people
always are, and brought a box of groceries with him, and sweet biscuits
for the children, and other things. Thank Heaven for the English!

At the hospital it was really awful, and the doctors were working in
shifts of twenty-four hours at a time.

I left my tables, chairs, trays, etc., for the hospital at the station,
and returned early the next day, for numbers of wounded were still
coming in. I wanted slippers for everyone, but my Belgian helpers had
given a hundred pairs of mine away in my absence. They were overworked a
little, I think, so I overlooked the fact that they lost their tempers
rather badly. Besides, I will _not_ quarrel. In a small kitchen it
would be too ridiculous. The three little people fight among themselves,
but I don't fancy I was made for that sort of thing.

There was nothing but work for some time. My "éclopés" had been entirely
neglected, and no one had even bothered to buy vegetables for the men.

On Sunday, May 2nd, I went to see Dr. de Page's hospital. I saw a baby
three weeks old with both his feet wounded. His mother came in one mass
of wounds, and died on the operating table--a young mother, and a pretty
one. A young man with tears in his eyes looked at the baby, and then
said, "A jolly good shot at fifteen miles."

They can't help making jokes.

There were two Scots lying in a little room--both gunners, who had been
hit at Nieuport. One, Ochterlony from Arbroath, had an eye shot away,
and some other wounds; the other, McDonald, had seven bad injuries.
Ochterlony talked a good deal about his eyes, till McDonald rolled his
head round on the pillow, and remarked briefly, "I'd swop my stomach for
your eyes."

Sunday wasn't such a nasty day as I usually have--in fact, Sunday never
is. But that station, with its glaring hot platform, its hotter kitchen,
and its smells, takes a bit of sticking. I have discovered one thing
about Belgium. Everything smells exactly alike. To-day there have been
presented to my nose four different things purporting to have different
odours, drains, some cheese, tobacco, and a bunch of lilac. There was no
difference at all in the smells!

[Page Heading: WAR WEARINESS]

I am much struck by the feeling of sheer weariness and disgust at the
war which prevails at present. People are "soul sick" of it. A man told
me last night that he longed to be wounded so that he might go home
honourably. Amongst all the volunteer corps I notice the same thing.
"Fed up" is the expression they all use, fed up with the suffering they
see, fed up even with red crosses and khaki.

When one thinks of primrose woods at home, and birds singing, and
apple-blossom against blue sky, and the park with its flower-beds newly
planted, and the fresh-watered streets, and women in pretty dresses--but
one mustn't!

_6 May._--Mrs. Guest arrived here to stay yesterday, and her chauffeur,
Mr. Wood, dined here. It is nice to be no longer quite alone. Last night
we were talking about how horrible war is. Mrs. Guest told me of a sight
she had herself seen. Some men, horribly wounded, were being sent away
by rail in a covered waggon ("fourgon"). One man had only his mouth left
in his face. He was raving mad, and raged up and down the van, trampling
on other men's wounded and broken limbs.

Certainly war is a pretty game, and we must go on singing "Tipperary,"
and saying what fun it is. A young friend of mine at home gave me a
pamphlet (price 2d.) written by a spinster friend of hers who had never
left England, proving what a good thing this war was for us all. When I
said I saw another aspect of it, the kind, soothing suggestion was that
I must be a little over-tired.

_7 May._--They say La Panne is to be bombarded to-day. The Queen has
left. Some people fussed a good deal, but if one bothered one's poor
head about every rumour of this sort (mostly "dropped from a German
aeroplane") where would one be?

I was much touched when some people at home clubbed together and sent me
out a little car a short time ago. But, alas! it had not been chosen
with judgment, and is no use. It has been rather a bother to me, and now
it must go back. Mr. Carlile drove it up from Dunkirk, and it broke down
six times, and then had to be left in a ditch while he got another car
to tow it home. Since then it has lain at the station.

I can't get anyone to come and inspect it. The extraordinary habit which
prevails here of saying "No" to every request makes things difficult,
for no privileges can be bought. Sometimes, when I hear people ask for
the salt, I fancy the answer will be, "Certainly not." Two of our own
chauffeurs live quite close to the station: they say they are busy, and
can't look at my car. One smiles, and says: "When you _have_ time I
shall be _so_ grateful, etc." Inwardly one is feeling that if one could
_roar_ just for once it would be a relief.

Sometimes at home I have felt a little embarrassed by the love people
have shown me--as if I have somehow deceived them into thinking I was
nicer than I really am. Out here I have to try to remember that I have a
few friends! In London I couldn't understand it when people praised me
or said kind things.

There is only one straight tip for Belgium--have a car, and understand
it yourself. Never did I feel so helpless without one. But the roads are
too bad and too crowded to begin to learn to drive, and there are
difficulties about a garage.

[Page Heading: MY CAR]

This evening Mr. Wood and I went to Hoogstadt, and towed that
_corpse_--my car--up to La Panne for ---- to inspect. The whole Belgian
army seemed to gather round us as we proceeded on our toilsome journey,
with breaking tow-ropes (for the "corpse" is heavy) and defective
steering-gear. _They_ were amused. I was just cracking with fatigue.
Needless to say, ---- didn't come. As the car was a present I can't send
it back without the authority of a chauffeur. If I keep it any longer
they will say I used it and broke it....

There were some fearful bad cases at Hoogstadt to-day, and we were
touched to see an old man sitting beside his unconscious son and keeping
the flies off him, while he sobbed in great gusts. One Belgian officer
told us that the hardest thing he had to do in the war was to give the
order to fire on a German regiment which was advancing with Belgian
women and children in front of it. He gave the order, and saw these
helpless creatures shot down before his eyes.

At the Yser the other night two German regiments got across the river
and found themselves surrounded. One regiment surrendered, and the men
of the other coolly turned their guns on it and shot their comrades
down.

Some of our corps were evacuating women and children the other day. One
man, seeing his wife and daughter stretched out on the ground, went
mad, and ran up and down the field screaming. We see a lot of madness.

_8 May._--The guns sound rather near this morning, and the windows
shake. One never knows what is happening till the wounded come in. I sat
with my watch in my hand and counted the sound of bursting shells. There
were 32 in one minute. The firing is continuous, and very loud, and
living men are under this fire at this moment, "mown down," "wiped out,"
as the horrible terms go. I loathe even the sound of a bugle now. This
carnage is too horrible. If people can't "realise" let them come near
the guns.

They were shelling Furnes again when I was at Steenkerke the other day,
and it was a strange sound to hear the shells whizzing over the peaceful
fields. One heard them coming, and they passed overhead to fall on the
old town. Under them the brown cattle fed unheeding, and old women hoed
undisturbed, and the sinking sun threw long shadows on the grass. And
then a busy ambulance would fly past on the road; one caught a glimpse
of blood-covered forms. "Yes, a few wounded, and two or three killed."

Old women are the most courageous creatures on this earth. When everyone
else has fled from a place you can see them sitting by their cottage
doors or hoeing turnips in the line of fire.

It was touching to see a little family of terrified children sheltering
with their mother in a roadside Calvary when the shells were coming
over. The poor young mother was holding up her baby to Christ on His
cross.

[Page Heading: THE CRUCIFIX UNDAMAGED]

There is a matter which seems almost more than a coincidence, and one
which has been too often remarked to be ignored, and that is, that in
the midst of ruins which are almost totally destroyed the figure of
Christ in some niche often remains untouched. I have seen it myself, and
many writers have commented on the fact. Sometimes it is only a crucifix
on some humble wall, or it may be a shrine in a church. The solitary
figure remains and stands--often with arms raised to bless. At Neuve
Chapelle one learns that, although the havoc is like that wrought by an
earthquake, and the very dead have been uprooted there, a crucifix
stands at the cross-roads at the north end of the village, and the
pitiful Christ still stretches out His hands. At His feet lie the dead
bodies of young soldiers. At Nieuport I noticed a shrine over a doorway
in the church standing peacefully among the ruins, and at Pervyse also
one remained, until the tower reeled and fell with an explosion from
beneath, which was deliberately ordered to prevent accidents from
falling masonry.

I had to go to Dunkirk this afternoon and while I was there I heard that
the _Lusitania_ had been torpedoed and sunk with 1,600 souls on board
her. What change will this make in the situation? Is America any use to
us except in the matter of supplies, and are we not getting these
through as it is? A nation like that ought to have an army or a navy.

Dunkirk was nearly deserted owing to the bombardment, and it was
difficult to find a shop open to buy vegetables for my soup-kitchen.
Still, I enjoyed my afternoon. There was a chance that shelling might
begin again at any time, and a bitter wind blew up clouds of prickly
dust and sand; but it was a great relief to be out in the open and away
from smells, and to have one's view no longer bounded by a line of
rails. God help us! What a year this has been! It tires me even to think
of being happy again, cheerfulness has become such an effort.

_10 May._--I went to see my Scottish gunner at the hospital to-day. He
said, "I can't forget that night," and burst out crying. "That night" he
had been wounded in seven places, and then had to crawl to a "dug-out"
by himself for shelter.

Strong healthy men lie inert in these hospitals. Many of them have face
and head wounds. I saw one splendid young fellow, with a beautiful face,
and straight clear eyes of a sort of forget-me-not blue. He won't be
able to speak again, as his jaw is shot away. The man next him was being
fed through the nose.

The matron told me to-day that last night a man came in from Nieuport
with the base of a shell ("the bit they make into ash trays," she said)
embedded in him. His clothing had been carried in with it. He died, of
course.

One of our friends has been helping with stretcher work, removing
civilians. He was carrying away a girl shot to pieces, and with her
clothing in rags. He took her head, and a young Belgian took her feet,
and the Belgian looked round and said quietly, "This is my fiancée."

[Page Heading: THE "LUSITANIA"]

_11 May._--To-day being madame's washing day--we ring the changes on
the "nettoyage," "le grand nettoyage," and "le lavage"--everything was
late. The newspaper came in, and was full of such words as "horror,"
"resentment," "indignation," about the _Lusitania_, but that won't give
us back our ship or our men. I wish we could do more and say less, but
the Press must talk, and always does so "with its mouth." M. Rotsartz
came to breakfast. The guns had been going all night long, there was a
sense of something in the air, and I fretted against platitudes in
French and madame's washing. At last I got away, and went to the sea
front, for the sound of bursting shells had become tremendous.

It was a sort of British morning, with a fresh British breeze blowing
our own blessed waves, and there, in its grey grandeur, stood off a
British man-of-war, blazing away at the coast. The Germans answered by
shells, which fell a bit wide, and must have startled the fishes (but no
one else) by the splash they made. There were long, swift torpedo-boats,
with two great white wings of cloven foam at their bows, and a great
flourish of it in their wake, moving along under a canopy of their own
black smoke. It was the smoke of good British coal, from pits where
grimy workmen dwell in the black country, and British sweat has to get
it out of the ground. Our grey lady was burning plenty of it, and when
she had done her work, she put up a banner of smoke, and steamed away
with a splendid air of dignity across the white-flecked sea. One knew
the men on board her! Probably not a heart beat quicker by a second for
all the German shells, probably dinner was served as usual, and men got
their tubs and had their clothes brushed when it was all over.

I went down to my kitchen a little late, but I had seen something that
Drake never saw--a bit of modern sea-fighting. And in the evening, when
I returned, my grey mistress had come back again. The sun was westering
now, and the sea had turned to gold, and the grey lady looked black
against the glare, but the fire of her guns was brighter than the
evening sunset, and she was a spit-fire, after all, this dignified
queen, and she, "let 'em have it," too, while the long, lean
torpedo-boats looked on.

I went to the kitchen; I gave out jam, I distributed socks, I heard the
fussy importance of minor officials, but I had something to work on
since I had seen the grey lady at work.

In the evening I dined quietly on the barge with Miss Close and Maxine
Elliott. We had a game of bridge--a thing I had not seen for a year and
more (the last time I played was down in Surrey at the Grange!), and the
little gathering on the old timbered barge was pleasant.

Some terrible stories of the war are coming through from the front. An
officer told us that when they take a trench, the only thing which
describes what the place is like is strawberry jam. Another said that in
one trench the sides were falling, and the Germans used corpses to make
a wall, and kept them in with piles fixed into the ground. Hundreds of
men remain unburied.

[Page Heading: GERMAN PRISONERS]

Some people say that the German gunners are chained to their guns. There
were six Germans at the station to-day, two wounded and four prisoners.
Individually I always like them, and it is useless to say I don't. They
are all polite and grateful, and I thought to-day, when the prisoners
were surrounded by a gaping crowd, that they bore themselves very well.
After all, one can't expect a whole nation of mad dogs. A Scotchman
said, "The ones opposite us (_i.e._, in the trenches) were a very
respectable lot of men."

The German prisoners' letters contain news that battalions of British
suffragettes have arrived at the front, and they warn officers not to be
captured by these!

_12 May._--To-day, when I got to the station, I was asked to remove an
old couple who sat there hand in hand, covered with blood. The old woman
had her arm blown off, and the man's hand was badly injured. We took
them to de Page's hospital.

The firing has been continuous for the last few days, and men coming in
from Ypres and Dixmude and Nieuport say that the losses on both sides
have been enormous. There were four Belgian officers who lived opposite
my villa, whom one used to see going in and out. Last night all were
killed.

At Dixmude the other day the Duke of Westminster went to the French
bureau to get his passport visé. The clerks were just leaving, but he
begged them to remain a minute or two and to do his little business.
They did so, and came to the door to see him off, but a shell came
hurtling in and killed them both, and of a woman who stood near there
was literally nothing left.

Last night ---- and I were talking about the _gossip_, which would fill
ten unpublishable volumes out here.... Why do these people come out to
the front? Give me men for war, and no one else except nuns. Things may
be all right, but the Belgians are horrified, and I hate them to "say
things" of the English. The grim part of it is that I don't believe I
personally hear one half of what goes on and what is being said. They
are afraid of shocking me, I believe.

The craze for men baffles me. I see women, _dead tired_, perk up and
begin to be sparkling as soon as a man appears; and when they are alone
they just seem to sink back into apathy and fatigue. Why won't these mad
creatures stop at home? They _are_ the exception, but war seems to bring
them out. It really is intolerable, and I hate it for women's sake, and
for England's.

The other day I heard some ladies having a rather forced discussion on
moral questions, loud and frank.... Shades of my modest ancestresses! Is
this war time, and in a room filled with men and smoke and drink, are
women in knickerbockers discussing such things? I know I have got to
"let out tucks," but surely not quite so far!

Beautiful women and fast women should be chained up. Let men meet their
God with their conscience clear. Most of them will be killed before the
war is over. Surely the least we can do is not to offer them temptation.
Death and destruction, and horror and wonderful heroism, seem so near
and so transcendent, and then, quite close at hand, one finds evil
doings.

[Page Heading: A TREASURE]

_14 May._--I heard two little stories to-day, one of a British soldier
limping painfully through Poperinghe with a horrid wound in his arm and
thigh.

"You seem badly wounded," a friend of mine said to him.

"Yus," said the soldier; "there were a German, and he wounded me in
three places, but"--he drew from under his arm a treasure, and his poor
dirty face was transformed by a delighted grin--"I got his bloody
helmet."

Another story was of an English officer telephoning from a church-tower.
He gave all his directions clearly and distinctly, and never even hinted
that the Germans had taken the town and were approaching the church. He
just went on talking, till at last, as the tramp of footsteps sounded on
the belfry stairs, he said, "Don't take any notice of 

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