'The Cellar-House of Pervyse'

A Tale of Uncommon Things

from The Journals and Letters of

the Baroness t'Serclaes and Mairi Chisholm

 

 

A Story of Two British Volunteer Nurses on the Yser Front

see also a newsmagazine article 'Cellar House'

 

Note

Of all the things told of the Great War surely this is the most uncommon, that two women should have been at the front with the Belgian Army almost from the beginning. That they should have lived as the soldiers lived, caring for them, tending them, taking cocoa and soup into the trenches and even to the outposts. And this is what has been done by the two British ladies whose names are on the title-page. Both young themselves, one very young, they yet have mothered Belgian soldiers through their trials and made a centre of light and comfort for the soldiers bereft of all that makes life dear and often in agonized uncertainty as to where their wives, mothers, or children might be. In March, 1915, a very stern decree was passed by the allied armies at Paris to the effect that no women should be allowed in the firing-line, but an exception was made in the case of these two, mentioned by name, because they had proved themselves. How did they begin? I have often been asked that. The book answers.

What did they do? The book answers that too. They lived at first for long months in a cellar twelve feet by ten, they slept on straw, and of necessity used foul water from a ditch. As the village they were in was under constant shell-fire, the chauffeurs, and sometimes wounded soldiers, had to sleep in that cellar too. There was, of course, no possibility of changing clothes; they lay down as they were, and were often called up in the middle of the night to attend to ghastly wounds. They had none of the appliances and conveniences surgeons think necessary; there was the greatest difficulty even in getting boiling water for sterilizing any instruments which had to be used in first-aid. The air was heavy with the smell of antiseptics and decayed matter and worse! Night after night the guns roared before and behind—their own and the enemies'. There was no minute night or day when swift death might not pounce upon them. Their clothes were stained with soup and cocoa and smears of blood, their hands got engrained with coarse work—washing, cutting up, and peeling potatoes for the soup, potatoes which they had often grubbed up from neighbouring farms under fire.

They sacrificed their hair, for it was impossible to retain long hair in such conditions. Thrice they were shelled out and left without a roof over their heads. When the cellar became uninhabitable they removed to a house further up the village, which the Engineers made up with sand-bags, but it was not very long before the Germans got the range of this and smashed half of it down, burying a row of young dead boys who had been brought in past aid and laid out on the verandah. Then these indomitable women went over to England; they lectured, they told the public of their work, and the public responded. They came back with funds. Up to this time they had paid entirely for themselves with the aid of private friends. They built a wooden hut further back from the trenches, and they had not been in it three days before enormous shells thundered around, and there was nothing between their beloved wounded and death but a roof of match-boarding, so they moved further back still. But they could not rest there; it was at the trenches they were needed to save the lives of those who were so overcome • by shock that to carry them any distance over those smashed-up roads meant death, whereas rest and warmth and care for even a few hours gave them the strength to make a fight for their lives. So back the two women went to the shattered village, now more desolate than ever. With their own hands they piled up sand-bags, working at night, going in from their further post after a heavy day's work with the wounded and sick. Then they settled again in the village, and there they still carry on the work.

But it has not been unrecognized, for King Albert had heard and seen what they had done, how many lives they had saved, and how they had inspired the worn soldiers with their own bright courage; so he sent for them and pinned on their khaki tunics the Knights' Cross of the Order of Leopold II., which carries with it the right to have the Belgian soldiers present arms. He personally thanked them for all they had endured. And reward came in another way, because Mrs. Knocker, a young widow, met out there the young Baron Harold de T'Serclaes belonging to one of the oldest Belgian families. It was almost a case of love at first sight, and after the many difficulties incidental to the bride and bridegroom's belonging to different nations had been overcome, they were married, and both continue to carry on their duties just the same. It is a wonderful tale.

That it has been written is due to the suggestion of Major A. A. Gordon, M.V.O., who, since taking part in the siege of, and retreat from, Antwerp, has gone backwards and forwards regularly from England to within a few miles of Pervyse.

He had seen the Two in their posts from the days of the cellar at Pervyse through their varied vicissitudes; he had seen Mrs. Knocker (as she was then) standing with the skirt of her tunic holed with shrapnel; he knew something of what she and her companion had had to endure of dirt, discomfort, and actual want; he had known what it meant to drive up the long straight road to Pervyse when the shells hurtled around. Fully appreciating the splendour and romance of this strange life lived so quietly and untheatrically from day to day and month to month, he persuaded the Two to entrust him with their journals and to let him have their home letters, so that the tale which they had written down quite simply as a record for themselves in the years to come might be made accessible also to others. It is doubtful if they would have allowed it to be done but for their earnest devotion to the wounded Belgian soldiers, and the hope that the book might inspire interest in them in the hearts of a wider circle than their own personal appeal could reach. So the matter came into my hands in the shape of little fat, mud-stained books, written in pencil at odd moments, sometimes even under fire as one or the other sat in a car waiting to convey wounded men to a hospital. As one of them says in one of these journals, "that's the hardest part of all; it requires nerve to drive an ambulance steadily under fire, but to sit still doing nothing with the shells bursting around takes it out of you worst of all."

I should like to emphasize the fact that these journals have not been in any way touched up before they came to me; they were just as they had been written. Plain, bald facts are put down simply, find because of their very simplicity they carry conviction as to the writers' single-mindedness. Not once throughout is there any personal complaint, any whining; these journals are not used as safety-valves for feeling. After the record of some terrible experience, the comments, if any, are always, "How brave these soldiers are!" "What a terrible time for the poor soldiers!" Never for themselves, the writers.

The facts are so astounding that they need no dressing. My part has been merely that of a recorder, running the two parallel journals together and omitting repetitions or details too small to be of general interest. But I am sure that among the multitude of books written of what has happened at the front there is not one that will remain longer in the minds of those who read them than this of the heroic Two of Pervyse.

G. E. MITTON. September, 1916.

 

 

Chapter I - The Start

I shall never forget them as I saw them first, a little oddly mixed group. They might have been a party of Cook's tourists going for a week-end across the Channel as they stood there in Victoria Station; but it was more than a week-end trip they had to face. At first I thought that some of them were merely seeing the others off, especially the lady with cherries in her hat. In fact, there were only two who looked real sportswomen, and they were Mrs. Knocker and Mairi Chisholm. They were dressed in big khaki overcoats, but as these were flung open one could see the high boots and tunics underneath, and there was no manner of doubt that they were wearing knickerbocker khaki suits in London! The others were slightly scandalized—one could see it in their furtive glances, and the way they obviously avoided looking just where the khaki knickers were. We are so funny, we English; there is nothing so deeply ingrained in us as a horror of any sort of attitudinizing, and we are so much afraid of it that we will not get ready for the moment lest the moment should not come. It was little more than a month then since war had broken out, and still we were rather shamefaced about it, most of us; even the recruits felt a little foolish doing those queer exercises in public, as if they might be ridiculous and not really wanted at the front after all. Thus, of course, it was difficult for these gentle ladies, who wore correct costumes and picture hats, to think there could really be any need for stepping right outside the conventional lines, at all events until they got to the war zone. The question how it was to be done afterwards had not come within their horizon.

Then there were the men of the party. One, a most heroic padre, had gone in for the whole thing. He never considered for a moment whether he looked ridiculous or not; he was a most single-minded, upright gentleman, as he proved many a time afterwards; but the clergy are not as a rule notorious for the cut of their clothes, and he had not been able to afford the expense of an officer's khaki suit, so his was a ready-made rough Tommy's costume, serviceable enough, and it fell into the picture very completely when he "got there."

Men's clothes have this advantage over women's, they are at all events more practical, and the two clever London doctors who were going out for the sake of the experience looked very comfortable in their loose-fitting tweeds—the suits they wore when golfing at the week-ends. As for the leader of the party himself, well, he was different from anyone; he never had cared a button about his clothes, and would have handled wounded men in a frock-coat and top-hat without a care in the world. His hat was as often on wrong side as not, for his excessive carelessness about dress seemed to culminate in his headgear, and a cheap cyclist's check cap would do for him as well as a Belgian officer's gold-tasselled cap. What matter? He was a visionary, full of enthusiasm, and but for him this group of people, some of whom at least were to distinguish themselves in self-sacrificing and noble work with the Belgian Army, would never have been able to go out at all. That the doctor did not combine in himself opposite virtues was no fault of his—who does? He had a positively heroic disregard for detail; it was all one to him if his corps consisted of two members or of fifteen, as it actually did. I verily believe if I, a Londoner, with no experience whatever of medicine or surgery, had stepped forward at the minute the engine- whistle sounded, and said, "May I also come with you as a member of your corps?" he would have hauled me into the gathering speed of the train by one arm, and said, "Dear friend, yes, certainly; by all means!"

It was characteristic of him that he had managed to start the corps by a fluke. He had seen Mrs. Knocker on a motor-cycle doing despatch work for the Women's Emergency Corps, and with a stroke of genius had recognized that she was the one woman who could help him in the ambulance work he burned to do in Belgium. He was quite right about that. A more highly efficient woman could hardly have been found. Most women do difficult technical things now, but few did them before the war. Mrs. Knocker was a fully trained nurse, an excellent mechanic and chauffeur; she spoke French and German, and with all that it hardly needs adding she was a capable woman; but the genius of Dr. Munro lay in recognizing it, because she doesn't look like this, or at any rate not like the stereo typed notion of a woman who can do all these things. She is a little above medium height, very slightly built, with a beautiful profile, clear complexion, and singularly bright hazel eyes. When you look at her eyes you see at once that she is full of sensibility and very easily hurt—in fact, she is the kind of woman who would really take it to heart if, in a great emergency, you swore at her! She minds very much what her relations to her fellow-beings are, and this constitutes just the difference between the woman who can communicate vital energy to wounded men so as to set them on their feet again and the woman who, however efficient as a nurse she may be, remains outside the personality of her patients.

To Mrs. Knocker Dr. Munro had confided the choosing of the rest of the corps, and the first member of it she had selected was a capital Scottish girl called Mairi Chisholm. Though Mairi hailed from Inverness originally, she had recently lived in Devon near Mrs. Knocker. They had been friends before the war, and ridden motor- cycles together, and it was shrewd Mairi who had christened her friend "Gipsy," a name which suits her down to the ground, and is so much more suitable than her own hard married name (which, however, she no longer possesses) that I shall henceforth use it.

When the war began Gipsy and Mairi had immediately come up to London and offered their services to the War Office as despatch- riders. You see, Gipsy has vision, and though at that time the idea that women could do men's work seemed utterly ludicrous to most people, she had the courage of her convictions. The War Office, of course, was too dignified to scoff, but its contemptuous indifference was quite as bad. After many hopeless attempts the two friends gave it up and got a job as despatch-riders for the Women's Emergency Corps, which also had the faculty of seeing ahead. Mairi had had no training as a nurse, and was only eighteen, but she had the fundamental qualities of balance, common sense, and loyalty, and so, when the idea of the corps was mooted, Gipsy chose her at once to belong to it. Mairi had no money, but possessed with a burning fervour to help, she sold her beloved motor-cycle to provide the funds for her expenses. The next selection was a golden-haired American lady, also untrained, but very willing and eager; she turned out to be a beautiful pianist. Miss May Sinclair, the novelist, heard of the project and decided to go too, not as an ambulance helper, but to be useful in any capacity. She offered herself as secretary, and the difficulties she surmounted during her three weeks in Belgium have been ably told in her book A Journal of Impressions in Belgium. When the party was thus nearly made up Dr. Munro accepted Lady Dorothie Feilding, whose name became very well known in connection with her work for the corps. The British Red Cross had scoffed at this amateur band, but the Belgian Red Cross was willing enough to accept their useful services; and when the British one found this out it actually rose at length to giving them two cars, which necessitated the addition of two working chauffeurs to the party, and furthermore it eventually gave them their passages to Belgium. Thus when they set out from Victoria for Ostend on that momentous day at the end of September, 1914, the corps had a field of useful work open to them.

There was not one heart among them that was not thrilled as they steamed across the sea amid numerous ships of our own, which gave a cheer when they recognized the Red Cross. All that lay ahead was utterly unknown even to the most experienced of the party, for what likeness does the ordinary healing work in sickness bear to the violent wounds and unnatural smashes of the human body in the grip of war?

Antwerp had not then fallen; the Germans had certainly got a grip on Belgium, but it was not a strangle-hold. The horrible monster was advancing, reaching out with his claws to deal red death to soldier and civilian alike if they lay in his path; and this incomparable little company of gallant people, with a reckless disregard of danger and a divine carelessness as to how they were to be supported, advanced across the water to meet the monster and to rescue from his jaws, it might be, "two legs or a piece of an ear."

In September, 1913, the crude blues and reds and yellows of the bathing-machines on the yellow plage at Ostend had been almost lost amid the still more gaily-hued paddlers and merry-makers who considered that to dip one toe in the water was bathing sufficiently and delightfully. In September, 1914, the bathing-machines were still there, but the crowd was gone. The melancholy-looking crudely painted wooden erections stood up forlornly like huge fungi, and no one used them.

Until a day or so before the ambulance corps arrived in Ostend the place had been fairly full, certainly, but with a different crowd from the gay crowd of holiday-makers. No one believed that the Germans would ever get so far as this, but the shadow of the Hun was over the land, rising up ominously on the eastern horizon, and the chill of it cut off the gaiety from a nation which, in one of its sections, was the most pleasure-loving on earth. Then, only the night before, a message had come from the Germans in the shape of a bomb dropped on the principal hotel adjoining the railway-station. A great exodus of the people occurred at once. The bomb had fallen in the garden and there made a great hole, and one of the first things the party of English people did on arrival was to go out to look at it with awe and excitement—a wonderful thing, a hole made by a bomb, the first any of them had seen! Most of them were to gain so much familiarity with shell-holes that they were heartily sickened of them. "Shells, shells, shells!" writes Gipsy in one of her home letters later. "How I wish I could never see them again!"

Except for the hole, it was certainly not much like war-time in Ostend, for the huge hotel, with its luxurious bath-rooms provided en suite to every bedroom, was still just as usual; but the message that all lights were to be out by 8.30 gave a touch of novelty—it was long before lights had been lowered in England.

The next morning the members of the corps awoke to face a wild scramble and much running to and fro, arising from lack of adequately-thought-out detail.

The party were to go to Ghent, to make their headquarters there for the present. But how were they to get there? There were two cars certainly, one a 42 h.p. Daimler, with pneumatic tyres, for passenger service, and the other a 40 h.p. Fiat, with solid tyres, suitable for carrying baggage. There were the cars and there were the chauffeurs, but where was the motive power—the petrol? No one had thought of this, apparently, and at first, it was suggested that as petrol seemed unprocurable in Ostend, the cars should be put on a truck and taken by rail to Ghent; but after a weary delay even this was found to be impracticable, for the cars, being very large, refused to go on the trucks. At length, after endless skirmishing up and down and a good deal of irritation, due to pent-up excitement among the members of the party, the military authorities lent them enough petrol to carry them on to Bruges, and about 1.30 they got off, after what seemed an interminable morning, for they had been up by 6.

The road to Bruges runs almost due east, straight into the jaws of that devouring monster which, like the dragon of the old fairy-stories, was scorching up the country-side with his breath. The road, like all the main roads in Belgium, had stones in the middle, the pavé sloping down a little at each side, and it was bordered by a ditch and a line of poplar-trees, straight and sentinel-like. There were very few signs of war. Even the guns could not be heard; the ambulance corps motored, as many a hundred parties had motored before them, in perfect serenity; and if it had not been for the sentries whom they had to pass occasionally when passports were demanded, it might have seemed an ordinary holiday. They were all very innocent of what it was they were going to face.

How little did those two bright-eyed girls—for Gipsy herself was little more than a girl—foresee the weeks of cramped quarters, hardly a minute without danger, the horrors of sights and sounds beyond thought, the horrors of want of baths and change of clothes, the horrors of creeping things they had never yet encountered, the icy cold, the continual strain, the rough food and lack of all the refinements of civilization 1

As they ran through the villages, little children in wooden clogs and women with apple-red faces or wrinkled nut-brown skins, came out to watch and smile and wave. The very sight of the cars brought hope to them, for were not these British the vanguard of those powerful forces which were coming to save Belgium? Poor souls! They were later to know what German rule meant, with grinding torture when the iron-shod heel of the Hun pressed down upon their daily lives, and screwed as they writhed; for all the good-will in the world could not manufacture troops in time to stop the Hun before he reached them.

In the generosity of her heart Gipsy showered the cigarettes she had with her on every man she saw; but Mairi, with a characteristic touch, held back hers, knowing that when her friend's ran out and she had no more there would be woe and wailing.

Bruges looked totally undisturbed. The glorious belfry reared itself in all its delicate glory, straight and slender, peeping over the roofs to greet them as the cars thumped over the vile pavé. A woman with a little cross-over shawl wrapped round her shoulders was delivering milk from a tiny cart drawn by a patient square-built dog, just as she had done every day for years. The cows must be milked and people must have milk—and there, well, the Germans wouldn't come to Bruges, they would be stopped long before that! It was difficult even for educated people to picture beforehand the destruction and misery which swept like an avalanche on these peaceful towns, and much more so for the uneducated, who had never been anywhere else, and to whom these towns were the world.

Bruges is encircled by a canal, and the cars had to cross it to enter, and then ran on to the Grand Place, pulling up before the Post Office. A Belgian trooper was standing outside, and the untried French of the party was quite sufficient to make him understand that petrol was the chief need; he came to show where it might be bought, and then, with no further delay, out and on they went to Ghent. They were all so incredibly keen to get there, to fling themselves into the red zone of war, to begin to bind up wounds, that the intense stillness of this flat country was almost unendurable.

In the flatness of the calmest sea there is movement and ceaseless stir; the sea is for ever whispering some tale to those who have ears to hear. The flatness of the prairie is full of anticipation; no one knows what may not be revealed as each roll of the land is surmounted. The flatness of the desert conceals an infinite mystery, for no human eye, unless it be that of a Bedouin, can sort out into definiteness the shining gradations of lilac and grey and biscuit colour. But all these are as nothing to the flatness of parts of Belgium, which merely waits. And the numb tension of it settled on the hearts of those who were longing for action.

Ghent was reached at about 5.30, and here indeed, everything woke up vividly; about a thousand people were collected in the Grand Place shouting and waving; upper windows were opened and many leaned out; handkerchiefs were flourished, and the cars had to go cautiously in the crowded streets, making a kind of triumphal progress. The whole aspect of the city was as if it had been eagerly awaiting just these two little carloads of English.

There were two military hospitals in Ghent, and it was to the second, which had received about a hundred wounded men, that the English ambulance was attached. It was really the Flandria Palace Hotel, and the ambulance members were to live there and to have their meals in a great stately room, waited on by two orderlies, Jean and Max, little Belgian soldiers who had been to the front and were convalescing from wounds. No hardship here. For one moment in the evening a thrill of excitement burst out, when the party heard that some of them might be wanted to go out to fetch some wounded, and thus would come in contact with the real thing, and "begin." But it was a false alarm; only one wounded man came in3 and he was brought by a horse ambulance. Mairi, indeed, went to see him, thinking in her young zeal she could not begin too soon; she was rewarded by a sight of the bullet which had just been taken from his leg.

The next morning all sorts of tiresome formalities about passports were again necessary, and up and down the crowded streets they passed. Broad clean streets they are—or were—with electric trams running along them, a very different place from sleepy Bruges! Canals run here and there throughout the whole town, cutting it up into slices and chunks, and at almost every street corner there is a view of a quaint bridge and some motionless barges. Down one of the narrow back streets an old woman was sitting by her wooden door; she wore a frilled granny-cap and worked away with heavily knuckled fingers upon a piece of the pillow lace by which she earned her bread. At her feet, jumping endlessly up and down the sunk step of the doorway, was a hideous tiny tortoise-shell kitten, quite pleased with itself and its prospects in life; it would have been hard to say which was the most unmoved by the gathering of the great cataclysm, the kitten of a few weeks, or the old grandmother who had long left behind the romance of her life. Possibly her grandsons were now among the hundreds of sturdily built, ruddy- cheeked young men who faced the terrific blasts of the German artillery.

In the Béguinage de Mont St. Armand lived nuns, in immense flapping white headgear. For years they had been within those sheltering walls, praying and fasting and doing a little lace-making, and now they were soon to be suddenly thrust into a world running red with blood, with every vestige of the curtain concealing the fierce realities of life torn away. Not far from their wall, which was still intact and seemed to radiate something of the somnolence from within, as bricks radiate the heat when the sun has passed on, stood a German car, captured and brought in by the great armoured car that stood beside it—a conscious conqueror. The German car shrieked of the force that had been used in its destruction, which had riddled its radiator with holes, smashed its screen to powder, and crushed its vital power. Across the twisted steering-wheel were smears of half-dried blood, and wavering over the driving-seat hung a torn and ghastly rag.

The next two days were dreadfully trying to Gipsy Knocker and Mairi Chisholm, for here they were "on the spot," but, as they phrased it, "nothing doing." They could not help in nursing the wounded, for there were plenty of nurses— besides, that was not their job; their part was to go out to the firing-line to fetch the wounded and render first-aid, and bring them in, but no one had sent for them and they had no permission to go.

They visited the refugees who had come in from the country-side, escaping from under the fringe of the great cloud that rolled ever westward. There were as many as eight thousand at that time in Ghent, and they had been housed, by a strange irony, in the Palais des Fêtes! Straw had been heaped up round some of the halls, and here they lay, whole families together, robbed by shock of all power of initiative, stunned by the earthquake that had flung them up and out of the places where they had lived their simple lives. All links with the past, every treasured household remembrance, had been wrenched from them, and the future was an utter blank. Something of that bewilderment, amounting to agony, which overtakes one occasionally when one awakes after a deep dream and cannot regain the everyday self was theirs in terrible measure. In the spacious storey above mothers were even now bringing forth babies, with no country, no place in the world, no prospects.

The feeding of all these people was an enormous task, and it is to the credit of Ghent that it was so well tackled. Some of the ambulance party helped, cutting up huge chunks of bread, setting out bowls of soup, and working till their backs ached, on the principle of doing anything that might be useful; but even this was denied them, for they were recalled by authority, for fear they might carry germs to the wounded when they handled them.

 

Belgian artillery

 

Chapter II - In the Thick of a Battle

By September 29, three days after they had arrived in Ghent, Gipsy's vital energy had got too much for her, and she had to do something or explode; so she found a job in driving the car of the Belgian Colonel, whose own chauffeur had disappeared. She fell into this niche, which fitted her to a nicety, in the simplest and most feminine way possible, because she walked up to look at the Belgian trenches outside the town, and found the Colonel minus a coat button. Of course she sewed it on, and followed up the obvious opening by offering to fill the place as chauffeur. Though the Belgian Army was not nearly so much swathed about with red tape as some of the older countries, yet it was rather an innovation that the Colonel should accept a woman as chauffeur in war-time, and therefore certain formalities had to be faced. These were got through with the speed born of necessity, and the following day Gipsy took the Colonel on his rounds to various outposts, picking up a wounded man on the way. She had coffee with her new employer before he went on to the actual front, and she concluded that he was "a dear, so kind and considerate;" he had not taken any advantage of the unusual position.

Already it was beginning to be apparent that there was a fatal lack of organization in the ambulance corps. The men part of it were rushing hither and thither bravely enough, but in a most haphazard manner, wasting much precious petrol, and even joy-rides were not unknown, whereas much real ability and energy was running to waste.

Various signs of military activity were to be seen through Ghent from time to time. Some field-guns caused a diversion, and when numbers of sturdy plucky Belgian troops marched through, the lady members of the corps gave them cigarettes to express that sympathy which for the moment they seemed to have no other way of expressing.

The post of chauffeur, after all, took up very little time, and even this outlet was blocked, for Dr. Munro, rather naturally, objected to one of his corps being taken off for such work, and it had to be stopped. Gipsy and Mairi therefore amused themselves playing games with the convalescent soldiers, but all the while brain and heart were under a terrific strain; there is no strain quite so bad as waiting in the certainty that any moment you may be called upon to put forth all your resources and face scenes so horrible that you may fail, for even the best of us never knows his calibre until tried. "We mouched around," says Mairi miserably. "I felt bored with life. Another day of waiting! One must have patience beyond everything!" Then there swam into their ken the gay and gallant figure of a young Belgian officer; he was slim and tall, with fair hair, showing up in contrast with his well-fitting dark green uniform. They nicknamed him "Gilbert the Filbert." At that time he was with the Voluntary Cyclists Corps, and used to go out at nights on his motorcycle to pick off German outposts; he had accounted for forty- eight Germans in the weeks preceding, so his presence was inspiriting. He was to be very closely associated with them in their work, but at the time he was merely a passer-by.

The first serious work came when the trainloads of wounded men had to be met at the station at any hour of the night, and conveyed to the hospitals. In the dark and icy-cold station the friends waited hour after hour for the trains which never came when they were expected. They snatched hurried moments trying to rest in a railway carriage, but the cold was so intense that sleep was out of the question. Sometimes they talked to the men in charge of the solid, heart-cheering British omnibuses, straight from London, having their shiny sides painted with Clapham, Cricklewood, and other names which seemed more lovable and attractive than London suburbs ever did before. There was a dramatic moment when a trainload of terribly smashed and maimed Belgians came in at one platform of the station, just as a trainload of self-confident, clean, fresh British Tommies was going out from another. The little Belgians had not as yet seen such assurances of help, and one and all, exhausted and faint as they were, cheered and waved their poor bandaged hands; while, as the other train began to move, the Tommies looked at them in pleased shyness, not in the least knowing how to show they appreciated the welcome. "Give them a cheer, boys!" shouted Gipsy, letting loose the spring at the psychological moment, and the resounding shout in response echoed through the vaults of the gloomy station roof.

The girls worked with the strength of ten; when none of the men of the party were available they even did the heavy lifting, raising the dead weight of unconscious or helpless men on stretchers. They worked sometimes right through the night, so that when they got back to their quarters in the morning there was only time to wash and be ready again for what the day should bring forth, for they might be wanted at any moment. "I never felt so googly and utterly played out in my life," says Mairi after one such night. Still, they had comfortable rooms to go back to, and good food when they wanted it; this was child's-play to what came afterwards. The waiting, which had seemed so interminable to their eager hearts strung up to expectation, really endured for only a few days, and they soon began to range around the outlying villages to find wounded men. By the beginning of October they had learnt many things. They had seen the Belgians working busily at digging trenches, in absolute silence, so as not to attract the Germans, who were only a hundred yards away. They had run along in the open, expecting any moment to be noticed and made a target for shells. They had had the most discouraging of all experiences, that of seeing their allies obliged to retreat. In one place they passed through one of those experiences which remain like a hurt on the heart. Fifty men had been left to guard the retreat of the rest, left to what was almost certain death. Theirs to hold up the flood-tide so long as they might before going under. There was a look on the faces of these men seen only on the faces of the dead who have died in peace. There was no uncertainty, no disquietude. They awaited their fate as if they had already met it, not lightly or discounting what it meant, but with the calm willingness of those who had seen all they loved in the world swept away. The clear blue eyes of every rough soldier had in them something of the light that comes from a vision of the beyond. There was no faltering, but no braggart conceit; they were invincible alive or dead.

And the fate that descended on them was not left only to the imagination of those who perhaps might have found it difficult to imagine, having had no previous experience of such things. For a few days later Gipsy, going out with some of the men of the ambulance, came upon what was left of just such another group, at Nazareth, not far from Zele. Twenty-six military police holding an outpost had been surrounded by about three hundred Germans, who had acted according to their kind and passed on.

The Belgians had resisted to the death, and the whole twenty-six lay there, pitched about in various attitudes. They had been shot at by a ring of their foes at a range of from ten to fifteen yards, but that was not all. Even this finished slaughter had not satiated the Germans' stomach for blood, and they had deliberately set to work to mutilate and rob the dead foe. That tiny plot of grass was rusty with blood. Every face was smashed in except that of the Captain, who had been shot through the heart and left as he was, to be identified, possibly with the cool intention of showing that the leader had not escaped. From the others everything had been stolen—boots, purses, stockings, and other clothes—so that the dead were nearly naked, and even their identification discs had been removed.

One of the first times Gipsy and Mairi were actually under fire was on October 5, and it was at Berleare, a little village about four miles west of Termonde and a good way east of Ghent. The account is best told in Gipsy's own simple wording, taken from one of her letters home, which was afterwards reproduced in a local paper:

"We went through busy lines of cavalry, and all the way along the firing got louder and louder."

“We ran into Berleare about 9.30 a.m., and about 9.45 a big shell fell on a neighbouring house and shattered the roof. I was able to get a large piece. While we were standing listening to the fearful noise of shell and rifle fire, the order came through that there were wounded at Appels to be fetched. Off we went, and we found that we were bound to leave the ambulance close to the main road and walk with the stretchers, as we had to go toward the river, and the Germans were the other side. We had to walk about three miles, and then came to the river (Dendre). The river was, I suppose, about fifty yards wide, with a high trench built on either side. We had to creep, bent double, all along the side, until we came to these wounded men. I will try and explain the position. The river bank had been highly trenched, and there was a pathway along the side of the trench, about five yards wide. There was a steep bank descent, and at the bottom a boggy water-meadow country, with only a small foot pathway, raised out of the water, across each field. At 2 p.m. it began to rain heavily, and it was difficult keeping one's feet on the muddy, wet ground, as it was thought safer to walk on the bottom of the bank in the water.”

"So our little band trudged on with four damp stretchers and our heavy box of dressings. At last, lying on the soaking grass and wet through, we discovered a Belgian Tommy almost exhausted and terribly wounded; his right foot carried away by shrapnel and also shot badly in the back. We did what we could for him, but we could only put him on a damp stretcher and leave him in charge of someone while we went on. No talking was allowed, as sounds carry over the river. All this time the shells were whizzing over our heads and rifle-fire was heard all round.”

"We crept along the bank, slipping and falling, until we saw on the river pathway, just behind the trench, the uniform of a Belgian Major. He was badly shot in the thigh, and had to be carefully attended. It was terribly difficult work, as the German patrol spotted us on the other side of the river, and it was not a pleasant moment. If you can imagine us exactly between the two firing-lines, you have some idea of our position. You can imagine those big shells whizzing over our heads, and with lives to save, it was not a moment to laugh. We had to carry the Major practically along the ground—that is, we had to be bent nearly double, so that our heads were below the level of the river trench. I wonder if anyone can realize what it means. I only ask them to put a heavy grown man on a stretcher and attempt to carry him by bending double; it is a terribly difficult and exhausting proceeding, and all the time that awful heavy fire. And it was getting so dark that it was hard to see. Suddenly everything was lit up by the firing of some houses in Berleare by the Germans.”

"We nearly got lost on the way home. We had to tramp over the fields those three miles back to rejoin the ambulances, resting every fifty yards to change arms and bearers. I shall never forget the evening. We could not light a match on account of being watched by the Germans. But we managed to find our ambulance and get the men home at last. How plucky these little Belgians are!"

To this account it may be added that the danger of getting back to Berleare was much emphasized by the great dykes full of water to be crossed somehow, and that the cheeriness of the whole expedition was enhanced by a steady downpour of rain.

One day came the news that Antwerp had been evacuated. Even if they had not heard it they would have known it by the flood of fugitives which poured into Ghent. The roads were choked by them, men and women and children, piled on carts or dragging handbarrows, some, who had lost all they loved—children, husbands, wives, or mothers, without much prospect of ever again discovering them—were still clinging grimly and quite unconsciously to a tawdry ornament or some such trifle, snatched up automatically and gripped with the grip that death does not loosen. Out of all this welter of horror one or two scenes stand out by reason of the pathetic touch. An old woman of the working classes was conveying a small cart dragged by a dog; in the cart sat two wee babes, probably her grandchildren. The dog had been wounded, for his fore-paw was bleeding, and he limped along painfully, but with great determination and full consciousness of his immense responsibility. Every now and then he turned his brown eyes on his mistress, as if asking permission, and then sank down on the roadside to lick his paw, while the stream of amazingly mixed traffic swept by on each side of him. The old granny looked at him mutely, but did not hurry him; she knew that in him lay the sole chance of her babies reaching safety, for she was too old and weak to carry them. If the dog failed they would die, and therefore she waited with feeble resignation until he himself, without being urged, took up the collar- work of his little living load and staggered on.

It was the sense of personal isolation which struck one most in these crowds. In normal life if one falls out by the way there are always any number of healthy and well-to-do folk to give a hand; but here, where each tiny group was tried to the utmost in struggling up out of their own avalanches of misfortune, there was no one who, however willing, could help. It was sink or swim for each family or individual, alone.

Most of the people in this crowd were Flemings, and they are a curious race. Nothing seems to disturb them. As they tramped along in hundreds it was rare to see a woman in tears. They seemed to accept the inevitable with a stoical patience; no questions were asked, no complaints made, and there was certainly not the least sign of panic. They trudged along, scarcely paying any attention to the troops they met, or those that passed them marching, also in retreat. Their absolute lack of emotion was almost uncanny; their faces were unnaturally calm. To an outsider it appeared as if it might be the calm of un-intelligence, but the look of pain in the eyes of some of them contradicted that theory. The Two could not help asking, "What lies behind that mask of indifference? Are there any feelings there at all?" It is difficult for one of another race to understand the Flamand. Is he only stupid, or is there a lack of frankness in his nature which forbids one to trust him entirely? Most of these people were agriculturists—the Flamand does not take kindly to mechanical work. These strong, thick-set men and women looked what they were, farm-labourers born and bred, without any streak of the vivacity of their fellow-countrymen the Walloons.

One day a message was brought to the ambulance corps that there was a wounded officer awaiting rescue in a shattered house at Lokeren, then on the very furthest fringe of the Belgian territory, up against the German lines. On the way out indeed, the ambulance in which Gipsy was, passed part of the Belgian Army in retreat. But this did not deter the party; on they went past those stained and worn men who were still unconquered and as resolute in retreat as in advance. Some of the last of them stopped a minute and pointed out the house where the wounded man was to be found, before they hurried after their comrades, and were lost in that dull-coloured mass of muddy clothes and torn uniforms. The place was a little cottage, which had received some battering, but was still comparatively whole; it looked utterly deserted. With tense expectation the rescuers pushed open the door, and stopped for a moment to get used to the gloom; there was a horribly eerie sound ringing through the emptiness, a drip, drip, steady and unexplained, like the drip of a kitchen tap. Then the cause was revealed, for on the table lay an officer, a young man in the prime of life, in a beautiful new uniform with brightly polished buttons and stars gleaming, and as he lay there his blood dropped slowly and steadily on to the floor, draining away his life. He was beyond help.

As the party left the house the German forces poured in at the other end of the village.

However, the ambulances had already picked up three other wounded soldiers, and they felt their perilous dash into danger had been worth while. When they were almost clear of the houses on the way back a blind man came slowly groping towards them, and they stopped for him, though they knew that the Germans were right behind them. He advanced, but his movements were slow, and he had only placed one foot on the step when a burst of rifle-fire told them that they were fully in range, and were being deliberately made a target of. It was a choice between the life of one civilian and three wounded soldiers, and they decided for the latter, and went off at full speed. It is, however, satisfactory to hear that the blind man was afterwards brought in safely by an armoured car.

The party had hardly returned to Ghent when a call came for them to go to Melle, a little village about six miles off on the main road running southeast from Ghent. Here the Two were to have one of the greatest experiences of their lives—one of those experiences which scores a deep mark across consciousness, so that the "after" can never again be quite as the "before."

When they arrived at Melle at about 8 o'clock at night they were told by soldiers who were dodging round the houses that the main street was "cleared for action," and that they must on no account go there; so the ambulance was drawn up in a side-street right in the heart of the battle, for close behind it was the Belgian artillery. Wounded men soon began to require aid, and the car was quickly filled and ran back to Ghent, to return again just as the Germans made a rush and swept down the main street. Unimaginable uproar and confusion resulted. Shells were not actually bursting in the town, because neither side could be sure of not hitting their own men, but the artillery were hard at work sky-rocketing their missiles at one another overhead to prevent reinforcements coming up, and in among the houses a perfect storm of bullets hissed like deadly hail, rebounding off the houses or lodging in the crevices of the woodwork. It cannot have been given to many women, especially those of another race than the combatants, to have been in the thick of such a battle.

The French marines were helping the Belgians, and both together were resisting in a desperate fight, the most deadly fighting of all, hand-to-hand combats hemmed in by houses. It was quite dark, for there was no moon, and all around the ambulance party were little groups of French marines awaiting the word of command to spring into action. Some of them brought up a stretcher, whispering about the blessé who was on it, hit in the leg. Groping to feel the horrible wound, Gipsy leant over him and began bandaging, and then some inertness made her aware she could do nothing. At her request a match was struck, and she saw her surmise was true, the man was already dead. Then there were sudden shouts and the jangle of field equipment and a hideous scuffle, and all in the dark, right around the car, Belgians and French and Germans inextricably mixed in bayonet-fighting swept past. The car held already one badly wounded man, and it was about time to move, so when the tense moment was past they worked their way out of the town to go back. But in doing so they naturally came under shell-fire, and hardly had they started than shells burst within fifty yards of them, crashing into the ground and exploding with volumes of sickening smoke, leaving great pits.

II was mere touch-and-go whether one would not land on the top of the ambulance and exterminate the whole party, but they escaped injury as by a miracle, and arriving at the hospital, left their precious burden and actually returned once more through the deadly fire- zone. The scene had changed; the combined Belgians and French had thrust back the invaders, and the town was saved, the line being where it had been before. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the whole episode was the coolness of Mairi. This girl of eighteen, who had so little experience to prepare her, had been under fire the whole afternoon and through this awful turmoil; and in her diary, written with no intention of anyone ever seeing it, but merely as a personal record, she writes: "It was most interesting; the shrapnel was screaming overhead the whole time—a most fascinating sound."

Gipsy's comment is: "We got more than we wanted: we nearly lost the ambulance. Mairi and I were on the step under heavy fire, and I saw a German soldier with a good eye taking deliberate aim at us."

One would feel instinctively that he had a good eye!

She too, ends up on a note of exultation: "It was a wonderful and grand day, and I would not have missed it for anything."

Chapter III - The Field Of Mercy

In the midst of this whirlpool of madness and misery Melle was inhabited. There were old men and women and children whose homes were in those shot-torn houses, and they had cowered there while the shells hurtled overhead and the piercing bullets flew like arrows. After this fearful day there were a larger number of wounded civilians than usual. The nuns at the convent had their hands quite full. The dull dreamy current of their lives had dashed into a vortex, and in it they had had to stretch out hands of help and pity to those who were drowning beside them. As Gipsy came into the convent next morning, she was overwhelmed with pity at the spectacle of the wounded people there. Somehow it is so much worse to see civilians wounded than soldiers; soldiers, at all events, know what they are out for, but these poor sheep. She stepped over to one little girl of about eight, who was horribly torn in the stomach and lay gazing wide-eyed at Fear. At least that was what the expression in her eyes conveyed; she seemed to have seen "Fear" large and personified in front of her, and was unable to wrench her gaze from the grisly spectre. As Gipsy drew near she started and tried to pull away her hand with a little terrified moan, but after a moment nestled nearer to her, as if she wanted to shut out that awful sight that was burnt in all the while in her own poor brain. The village was a village of horrors; the dead were piled up in hundreds, friend and foe together, and there was no time to bury them while the danger was so imminent.

It was known that there must be lying around the town at no great distance hundreds of wounded and maimed, longing for aid, and desperate measures must be taken to get at them and shepherd them in. Gipsy and Mairi Chisholm, whose friendship had been cemented by the ghastly night, so that it was firmer than ever, walked out alone across three fields in the direction of the hottest fighting, and they climbed off the road to what looked like a peaceful turnip-field; and not until they reached it did they notice that among the turnips were many curious grey humps, and with a sudden thrill realized that here were the dead and the dying they had come to seek. Some doctors, in fact, were already at work crouching down, and seeing them, called out to them to come and help. Most of the bodies were in that cold grey-green uniform the colour of which seemed somehow to have got into the air and sky, and tinted them a cold grey-green too—a colour which will for ever after be associated in the mind of every Belgian with horrors unspeakable.

The very first man they saw lying by the hedge was stone-dead, shot through the jaw. Another not far off lay on his back, his face a bloody mask upturned to the frowning sky; he was still as marble, except for his right knee, which twitched regularly, ceaselessly, like a returning pulse. Gipsy hastened over to the help of the doctor who had called her, as Mairi fell on her knees beside this man, and at that moment, without warning or expectation, a salvo of German shells burst around them. They had been observed in their work of mercy and were being shot at! "Catch them, wipe them out! Good job too! Why bother with the wounded—our own or the others? What use is a wounded man any more? Let them die!" Thus spoke the batteries, and the shells fell faster.

If the wounded had been Belgians or French, it is probable that the devoted workers would not have left them even then; but to be fired at by Germans while succouring Germans was rather too much, and they fled for the time.

But the thought of those wretched wounded men, with broken and smashed bone and muscle, agonizing in thirst, their life-blood draining into the broad-leaved turnips, pulled at the warm hearts of the men and women from England, and once again later they tried to get at them. They took the ambulance, and left it at the nearest point on the road, and went off again across that stretch of field where dead cows with grotesquely inflated bodies lay in the corners. When they reached the turnip-field, they found some pigs rootling among those dead heaps of clothing, a sight that turned them sick for all their courage; but they went on, and had hardly gained their field of mercy, hardly had time to note that the awful pulsing movement of that right knee was still ceaselessly continuing without cessation or rest, when the guns were burst upon them again, and they had to withdraw once more.

They still stayed in the town, in the hope that somehow after dark they might reach that field of death and carry out a rescue. During the afternoon a car came in to Melle with three dead German officers and a chauffeur who had escaped with his life by the merest fraction. They had driven too near the Belgian lines, and three of the four had been wiped out by the Belgian armoured car.

When dusk fell at last Gipsy and Mairi made an urgent request to Dr. Munro that they might be allowed to go back to the turnip-field, for they would have risked their lives indifferently for friend or foe, so long as they were wounded and helpless. Dr. Munro, however, quite rightly refused. They had been twice driven off by the fire of the Germans—why jeopardize valuable lives and the precious ambulance? As they discussed the question a Belgian Red Cross car ran into the village, and the Two eagerly applied to the doctor in charge to help them. He could not resist their earnest pleading, and carried them along with him to the field.

It was almost dark when they worked softly into position as near to the scene of action as possible, and then stepped gently down, and thrusting aside the osier bushes that line the road, crept, holding their breath, out to those awfully still humped grey forms. They reached the man that the doctor and Gipsy had begun to bandage that day, but he was already dead, killed by the brutality of his own comrades when he might have had a chance of life. Then they instinctively drew nearer to each other as they glanced toward that other silent form, and there, regularly as the secondhand of a clock, that awful galvanic movement went on, as it had done for hour after hour: the twitching of the right knee up and down, up and down! They picked up the poor wretch, who seemed quite unconscious, on a stretcher and carried him back to the ambulance, but he died the same night.

When the wounded had been safely transferred to cars to go back to Ghent, yet once again the two women went out with the Belgian military doctor, past the French outposts, and waited there for him under a railway bridge while he and another man went off to reconnoitre. It was all so still it might have been the day after death and before resurrection, as indeed it was for many. A tense dead stillness surrounded them, hanging heavily on ears vibrating still with the hellish scream of the shells. There was no moon, but a kind of diffused greyness which conveyed a curious idea that it might any moment burst into brilliant and unearthly light.

The car went back to Melle and then to Ghent, and there Gipsy, hearing that someone was needed at Melle all night, went yet again back in it, leaving Main to go to bed. But hardly had Mairi been in bed an hour, and fallen asleep with the heavy overpowering sleep of a child, than a light flashed in her eyes and she was told to get up, as all the ambulances had been called out. No wonder each day seemed as if it had been a month! She went out in the big Daimler car with two of the men of the party, and half-way to Melle the big car bumped wildly and danced off the pave into the mud; a tyre was punctured! When everyone is dog-tired such incidents are bound to happen, but despair is a word unknown to members of ambulance corps of the right sort.

By great good luck another car came cautiously along in the dark, almost tumbling on the top of the first. It belonged to a Belgian doctor, who picked up the little Scottish girl and carried her on to Melle. Here she was greeted by her friend, white and worn, but quite cheery, and heard it was a false alarm, for after all they were not needed! So back they went to the Flandria in the same car, landing there about four in the morning.

No wonder Melle is written ineffaceably on their minds! It was here that they first saw the dead and wounded in masses. Here they found themselves in the thick of an actual battle. It was the chief centre of their activities in those days at Ghent, the village they saw first and last, and the name will always stand out in letters of flame.

 

 

Chapter IV - The Retreat

But Ghent did not long remain a refuge; well before the middle of the month earnest warnings to evacuate it were given. The way in which the final summons came was dramatic. Mairi was in bed, sleeping with her usual heart-whole earnestness, when she was awakened suddenly, and saw standing by her one of the doctors attached to the ambulance, telling her the Germans were upon them and they must fly. Then followed a scramble. The first thing was to save the wounded soldiers, who must not be left to fall into the hands of the foe. Alas! the order had come through the day before that all the kits belonging to these men were to be sent to Ostend as a measure of precaution. One of those "decisions in blinkers" which cause such infinite suffering. The patients were mostly in thin cotton pyjamas; the night was foggy and bitterly cold; the only conveyance was an open transport waggon with a scanty layer of straw on the boards. Gipsy and Mairi rummaged for all the blankets they could find, and wrapped the poor fellows up in them; but it must have been a terrible journey for many of them. They were drawn by horses, and could only go at a walking pace on account of the direful roads, the quantity of traffic already occupying them, and the darkness of the night. And they had to cover fifty miles to gain safety! When they were finally sent off the members of the corps had to think of themselves.

There was none too much room in the cars, and they had to pack in like sardines. As Gipsy had been sitting up with a wounded officer when the summons came, and since then, having been occupied with the soldiers, had not been able to change the cotton hospital dress she happened to be wearing, she suffered frightfully from the cold. The cars crawled along to Eccloo, where they stopped at the house of an Englishwoman, a friend of Dr. Munro's. Although this lady and her husband were themselves preparing to fly, they received the rather forlorn party with the utmost kindness, and spread abundance of blankets on the floor of the drawing-room, where they made up a-roaring fire. There they all waited till daybreak. A strangely assorted party they were, lying about in all directions, some on the window-seats, some on the floor, and the two chauffeurs betrayed their qualifications by falling sound asleep with their mouths open, sitting bolt upright on two stiff-backed chairs, a feat that filled some of the others with admiration.

After breakfast next morning they all followed the wounded, and reached Bruges in time to get them into the convent hospital by midday. The stiff cold men had been unpacked, and fed, and laid in comfortable beds, and were beginning to recover a little from their awful night, when like a thunderbolt came the news that the Germans had entered Ghent at seven that morning, and that twelve thousand of them, ruthless men, without pity or consideration for the fallen, were hastening forward to Bruges; so all the poor tired soldiers had to be carried down again, and sent onward once more. It was heart-rending work.

This time the objective was Ostend, and along that poplar-lined road, which had seemed so peaceful when they ran the other way in high hopes about three weeks ago, back the Munro ambulance people went with heavy hearts. The nearer they drew to Ostend, the greater grew the crush. It seemed as if the whole population of Belgium must be converging on the port, the last link of the chain which England held. Hospital ambulances, troops, refugees, guns, transport, carts, were surging together and every now and then jammed. There was much cursing and swearing in a variety of tongues. In the town, streets, shops, houses, were packed with people; it seemed as if they must all be welded into a jelly, and unable to extricate themselves until the Germans arrived. The mental harassment of seeing to the wounded added tenfold to the strain on those responsible, and the relief was great when, at last, they were got on to a boat going across to England, which carried no less than seven thousand wounded men!

With the lifting of this terrible load the personal troubles of the ambulance were by no means ended, only now they had time to think of themselves. So desperate was the situation considered that no baggage was allowed to be taken off the cars. Still in her cotton dress, now soiled and crushed in a way to depress the heart of the most careless of women, Gipsy had to pass another night; and all night long consciousness was beating at the back of her half-awake brain that any moment the summons to continue the weary flight might sound. Rumours flew fast. The advance of the Germans was at a terrible pace. They would be here before morning! Already they were here! Their numbers swelled to hundreds of thousands— all was over! Though the worst of these forebodings proved untrue, yet the situation was bad enough. The work seemed smashed across the middle, past possibility of recovery, and there was a horrid knell of defeat to deaden and depress energies already heavily overtaxed.

That evening in Ostend, Mairi came across an elderly man in civilian clothes, much too small for him, standing at a street-corner, with tears running down his cheeks. She remembered having noticed him a few hours earlier in a garde civique uniform, and greeting him in the informal way that necessity teaches, she learnt his tale of woe. It was poured out on her in a flood of mingled French and Flemish, in that half-whimsical, half-serious way that told her he was sorely hurt; and as her French had already improved, she gathered the gist of it even before she was helped out by a Cockney Tommy who stood beside him.

' 'E sys, lydy, that orders is froo for 'em to put off of them clothes; he ain't a soldier, and them Boches, if they cetch 'im, why, they'll 'eng him I seen 'im done it. 'E's pitched 'em in the sea, all them noo clothes. Gord! I wish I had had 'em on a Sunday morning in the East End! I'd 'ev got more'n a quid for 'em! 'E's right-down sore, 'e is, pore old blighter! And thet's what 'tis all about. Na, I not speak his lingo—for why? 'Tain't necessary; I can understand these chaps wifout, and that's for why."

Mairi left them with a mingled feeling of laughing and crying; it seemed so preposterous that the great stout citizen who had given up his spare time and trained in peace should now have this awful humiliation forced upon him, the knowledge that he was only a play- soldier and no use at all. To be held in disdain; to be forced, by his own action in throwing away his beloved uniform, to confess it was all make-believe and no use when real war came—this was worse than being wounded. And there were hundreds of his kind doing the same thing. In Ghent the canals were choked with the heavy coats and belts flung away at the fierce threat of a shameful and ignominious end. It seemed, after all, as if the plight of the Gardes Civiques was more pitiable than that of the ambulance corps.

By nine the next morning a greatly swelled procession was marshalled out of the town on the road to Dunkirk; everyone had to keep in position and go at one pace, which was necessarily a crawl. There were about three hundred and fifty cars in the line, including those of two Belgian Generals and others belonging to Ministers. Most depressing of all was the news—which turned out after all to be untrue—that the Diplomats accredited to Belgium had gone to England. That horrible morning left its mark on the Two. Each hour, spun to extremity by the tension within, had upon them the effect of three in power of exhaustion, and yet they really got to Dunkirk not much after midday. Here again was the inextricable confusion, the crush and push. In contemplating war one looks at it usually in the light of history, when events are clear-cut and told with precision. Of the horrible uncertainties, the dubious outlook, the impossibility of reliable information, the difficulty of correct judgment on the spot, only those who are in the midst of it are aware.

Even at Dunkirk there was no room; men were sleeping on the billiard-tables in the hotels. So the two friends went out to a little bathing-place on the coast called Malo-les-Bains. But they were now in Belgium no longer, and the feeling that they had been forced to leave the country they had come to help weighed heavily on them. "I think I never felt so truly miserable," says Gipsy, "as the moment when we passed the frontier line between Belgium and France. I have left my heart behind me in that brave, honest little country. I shall always think of Belgium as the first country in the world for bravery, honesty, chivalry, and patriotism, and it will be my fervent prayer that they may some day get their country back again. There is something about Belgium that no other country has. I think my heart will always feel more Belgian than British in future"—which embodied an unconscious prophecy.

It was probably the first time Malo-les-Bains had ever had any visitors so late in October, and it must have been puzzled and overwhelmed by this strange honour. Inexpressibly dreary was Malo, with its long level plage and straight sea-line, seen through a curtain of steadily pouring rain. The rows of empty bathing-sheds faced the sea like sentry-boxes, and the little, cold, inadequate fringes of foam crept hesitatingly to their doors as if they hardly knew what to make of it all. There were still a few fishing-boats about, and a few men shrimping, mostly very old men, who "must eat."

The whole of this place was transformed by war, and the overflow from Dunkirk more than sufficed to overcrowd it as it had never been overcrowded in its gayest season. It was here that the party were joined by the authoress, the late Miss Macnaughtan, who afterwards established a soup-kitchen in Furnes, and did excellent work there at the railway-station among the hungry and bewildered soldiers.

Malo was crammed with troops. There were the British with the strong unmistakable Manchester accent of self-confidence; the French in their heavy and clumsy-looking overcoats; Senegalese shivering and wilted by a climate which spoilt the delightful game of war; and, of course, plenty of Belgians. Now and again a Taube hovered overhead, fiercely hawk-like, and got well shot at; and once a British aeroplane descended hurriedly, emitting sulphurous language, because it had been unrecognized and included in the too cordial welcome. At night all lights were out save the great searchlights which, like the Flaming Swords of the Angel of Eden, pierced the flatness of the forsaken sands.

On October 20 began what resulted in the tremendous fight for Ypres, when the Germans were thrust back, and those who had thought Belgium all lost took heart again. The mixed population on the coast thinned down again. Those who had given up heart went on further into France, the soldiers were moved, the refugees absorbed elsewhere. The place in these circumstances looked more dreary than ever, and, to add to their woes, the friends had a personal grief.

Gilbert was missing—Gilbert, who had so endeared himself to the corps that they felt for him as for a lifelong friend. They had seen nothing of him after the hasty summons to leave Ghent, and they greatly feared he had fallen, and was lost in the great swathes of the nameless and unburied. Dr. Munro had gone over to England to get help to start the work anew, and Mairi and Gipsy spent the few uncertain days at Malo wandering about, walking into Dunkirk on the pretence of shopping, and trying to make the best of the contradictory news that filtered in. One day they suddenly saw a familiar green uniform on a straight, slim young figure, with the head held proudly and lightly as ever. There was no mistaking that gait and that gay insouciance; even before they had caught a glimpse of his face they had flown toward him with outstretched hands. Gilbert laughed and seemed pleased at their solicitude. Oh, he was all right. He had stayed with his regiment to hold up the German vanguard and allow time for the evacuation of Ghent; but he had got off all right, scot-free not even a wound. "You won't have the pleasure of nursing me; I believe you're really disappointed," he chaffed in his quick French, and Mairi's shrewd eyes saw the tender, quizzical look he gave her friend. Instantly it darted into her mind that there was something behind all this. Gipsy's white face and worried, preoccupied manner had not been only for a surface friend. Mairi was clever beyond her years, and a loyal little soul; she led the way to the sea-shore, indicating the road back to Malo, and then quietly absented herself, and they did not miss her!

As she turned rather sadly by herself to go back into the town she was hailed by one of the British naval officers she knew. He caught sight of her at once, for the streets were comparatively empty; every kind of vehicle had been requisitioned for the flight. There was a hideous, dead-alive look settling down on Dunkirk.

"Come along and have a joy-ride in the last taxi-cab left in Dunkirk," he cried out cheerily. "An experience to record!" She assented readily, feeling rather lost without her almost inseparable companion. Her mind, indeed, was busily at work as she sat there beside this clean frank boy, who looked like a Spaniard, so dark was his colouring. Of course, it was inevitable that Gipsy would marry again some time. She was so good-looking, so high-spirited, so charming, that many, many men would want to marry her; and oh, she did so love to be loved! Therein lay the danger! Was Gilbert good enough? After all, they knew very little about him. He was attractive enough personally, but he was not of their race. Mairi would, of course, never spoil sport; if Gipsy was glad to walk alone with him, walk alone with him she should Î If she wanted to marry him, marry him she must; only she could decide. But then she was impulsive, her enthusiasm could be caught at the high tide, and what if such a match were not for her happiness? In some ways Mairi often felt older than her friend. "The dear kid!" she said half aloud.

"The blue eyes are very clouded to-day," remarked Lieutenant N---, turning his own black ones on his companion.

He said it very nicely and not offensively, but Mairi sat up, on her dignity at once.

That sort of thing was all right for Gipsy, who had been married already and could put up with it; but as for her, she had other things to do than marry— at present, at all events. In the far future, of course, it would be all right, but when it came in her case it would be a very serious, for-ever-and-a-day business.

"Do you believe in mixed marriages?" she asked, refusing to respond to the personality.

"Depends what sort of 'mixed,' " the naval man replied briskly, making an opening for himself out of the most unpromising material, as is the way of the navy. "Old and young? Rich and poor? Fair and dark? Land and sea?" The last two very significantly, bending his own close-cropped, dark head down toward the girl's fair hair. "I believe in the last two all the time!"

Mairi looked at him quite candidly and fearlessly, without a trace of coquetry. "I haven't any use for that sort of thing," she announced simply; "I'm a Scot," and she wondered why he laughed so merrily.

Dr. Munro returned next day with the news that all was well, and that they were to have headquarters at Furnes, in Belgium, and continue the work. The party was to be reorganized, and M. de Broqueville, one of the sons of the Belgian War Minister, was to command one division of it. This was a great help, as naturally, with all the good-will in the world, an ambulance party, which has to go into the most secret places and which can't help poking into matters that must be kept secret, is on delicate ground when run entirely by another race, even though they be the closest of allies. This addition would put them on an unassailable footing. The British Field Hospital was also to be re-established at Furnes and work in connection with the corps.

Gilbert also was to be attached to the party, and was to drive one of the cars and take some sort of command.

Even in the three weeks that she had been with the corps Gipsy had already been dissatisfied with her own position; she felt that so much energy and usefulness was being run to waste for want of proper grip and organization. Nevertheless, she and Mairi knew one thing, for lack of which knowledge so many well-intentioned women fall by the way when they attempt to do hard public work. They knew how to wait. In all work of world importance there are dreary intervals of waiting, and, as Mairi said, "patience is necessary beyond everything." A great many women live on a kind of spurious excitement; they must be rushing from one thing to another, and if this stimulant fails them they collapse altogether. It is the woman who knows how to wait who can take the opportunity when it comes. Therefore, though the first start had not been auspicious, yet Gipsy was willing to wait, for with the additions to the party, and the knowledge born of experience, she was hopeful of better things for the future. It was a new start.

She and Mairi went through their clothes, and discovered that many things that had been considered absolute necessities on leaving were merely encumbrances; so they sent back to England all but the strictest minimum, or what they now considered so. They had passed one milestone on the way, but there were others ahead! Three of the ladies of the party were to work with the forward ambulances in future, collecting the wounded, and the other two, at first, were to remain at the hospital. Naturally there was great competition for the danger-line. Mrs. Knocker, it was unanimously acknowledged, must be a "forward" as, owing to her expert knowledge of cars, she was invaluable. "My driving was much more use than my nursing," she remarked, in speaking of these days; but there were difficulties in placing the rest of the party. It eventually fell to Mairi and the American lady to toss for the last place at the front, and Mairi, to her great joy, won.

Furnes is south of Nieuport, about a third of the way between it and Dunkirk, but further inland than either. It is not a coast town, and is a meeting-place for many canals. Like all these quiet old Belgian towns, it has a Grand Place, and to this day Furnes still embodies something of the restful Sunday-afternoon feeling which was a characteristic of so many of these little towns before they were rudely awakened out of their sleep to be mutilated and smashed. There are two great churches in the Place, and a beautiful Hôtel de Ville with a verandah or balcony in front.

In one corner of the Square are some quaint old Spanish houses with crow-stepped gables and red roofs, in contrast with the grey stone of the other buildings. As the cars rolled in on October 21 the red light of the autumn sun caught these roofs and showed up between the flying buttresses of St. Walburga. The little groups of soldiery standing about gave the impression of terriers with their ears pricked. They wore an air of expectancy; yet Dixmude was held, and while Dixmude remained Furnes was safe.

Year by year on the last Sunday in July the inhabitants of Furnes have turned out in holiday garb to watch, with mingled awe and excitement, the strange procession organized by the “Confrérie de la Sodalité". Weird men covered by dark brown robes which came over their heads like palls, leaving only two slits for their bright narrowed eyes to peep out, walked solemnly through the streets; they bent beneath burdens of heavy crosses, and their bare feet struck the uneven stones. Yes, and there were women too, thus disguised, doing penance for sins of which their own consciences accused them. They were followed by other oddly dressed characters, which seemed to the startled children, who kept one hand on their mother's gown, to have marched straight out of the Bible. There was Abraham flourishing the very sword with which he prepared to kill Isaac, and Aaron with his snaky rod. Then the hot grip relaxed a little, for there came next a real babe, one that they knew was like themselves. But the awe and the mystery gathered again as they saw Jesus crowned with thorns, stately though in agony, with the sharp points actually pressing into his flesh, and the same Christ bending beneath the cross. Then, as the evening darkened, and the serious mummers, doing their part with intense earnestness and solemnity, paraded round the Square, there appeared the Host, most mysterious of all, with flaming torches and shadowy figures beside it. All these sights were of the nature of a mystery-play, and were reverently carried out by the people themselves: they were not done for purposes of gain or to attract tourists, for very few tourists ever discovered Furnes. With this annual ceremony and the remembrance of the Inquisition in their midst, of which dread stories were whispered, while the very house where those awful torturers sat in conclave is still standing in their sight, the people of Furnes grew up with more of seriousness in their nature than their fellow-subjects.

And now reality had come upon them. What need any more to represent these things in mummery when the via crucis was on every high-road in Belgium; when strings of weary men and women, parched with thirst and nearly dead with fear, bowed beneath their loads, trudged solemnly along they knew not whither; when these very churches, so sacred and so grand, St. Walburga with its high steeple and St. Nicholas with its tall, blunt tower, were packed with dying and agonized men suffering from tortures as real as any dealt by the Inquisition? The remembrance of those garbed figures peeping through the slits in their hoods became almost friendly in comparison with the ruddy-faced, brutal German soldier in the hated grey-green uniform. When Furnes revives her Passion-play, it will seem a play indeed against the background of reality.

The convent close up against St. Nicholas is now a hospital, and it was into this courtyard that the cars of the ambulance party turned when they reached their destination. The battle of Dixmude had filled the little rooms with wounded, and even the reading-rooms and the chapel were requisitioned. The courtyard was crowded with the ambulances, and every ten minutes a fresh load of wounded was brought in.

No words can describe the horror of the scene that unrolled before them in the wards. There was so much to be done and so few to do it. The great influx of the wounded had swamped all attempts at order. Those who had just been attended to were lying side by side with the dead, and all the loathsome sights and smells of an operating-theatre were mingled with those of a charnel-house. Some men lay dying silently, the perspiration standing in beads on their foreheads as they gasped for each difficult breath that might be the last; others were hideous spectacles, with smashed faces or lack of limbs. They twisted and groaned in irrepressible agony, uttering low, heartrending moans that would not be suppressed. Valiantly the whole party of the new-comers set to work to separate the living from the dead, and carry out the bodies to the room set apart for them opposite.

"Twice we were called into the operating-room with our stretcher, and twice I received the full weight of a man off the operating-table. I supported the head-end of the stretcher, as I was the stronger," said Mairi. The doctors had not a second to lose, or life might be wasted; if a man died, he must be tumbled off hastily to make way for one for whom there might be a chance. The dead were laid out in rows together, some wrapped in winding-sheets; but here and there the uniformity of the still lines was broken by a homely, mud-stained uniform, just as if a soldier had lain down to sleep among them.

For five hours these noble women worked at this terrible task. As fast as the beds in the wards were emptied of their inert burdens they were re-occupied by others, for the ambulances brought in fresh cases continually, and it might be that the next man also died, and was in his turn carried out within the next few moments. Meantime, two small boys with a hand-cart were all the transport available for transferring the bodies from the ever-filling mortuary to the place of burial. The lads took hold of the stretcher, tilted it up a little, slid the dead man into the cart, and when they had as many bodies as they could manage they went off with their load. Thus the men who had stood up for honour and right against an overwhelming foe, who had preferred that their country might for a while be overrun in order that her soul might live for ever, were huddled into nameless graves.

There was no room in the already overflowing convent for any of the party to lodge, and so they were told to hunt up quarters for themselves anywhere in the town. Many of the houses were empty, as the inhabitants had fled. A Belgian gentleman who had lost everything he possessed by the war had attached himself to the ambulance corps as chauffeur, and when at last Gipsy and Mairi, feeling as if they had been bruised all over, body and soul, with the body-breaking and heartrending work, were free to think of themselves, they found him waiting.

"You will want somewhere to live; I can show you a house that belonged to my cousin," he said in French. "It has, at all events, a good pianola and is clean."

They followed him gratefully, for to start house-hunting in an unknown town at that hour of the night was a pastime that had no attractions to offer. When they reached the house, he gave them the key and told them to go in and take possession, and himself vanished.

It might have been one of those houses in Pompeii where everyone was eating and drinking and going on with their ordinary avocations when swift death descended on them from the sky. On the table in the dining-room was the horrible débris of what had been the last meal, scraps of food lying on the dirty plates where the dust had hardly had time to settle. Flowers still unwilted were in the vases, and the promised pianola was open. As the two tired women penetrated from one room to another they became very silent, and ceased to remark on the familiar evidences of life. It was as if the house were tenanted with ghosts; it was almost impossible to believe that these people who had lived and loved in that place were not there silently resenting the intrusion. The evacuation must have been in the night, for the beds had obviously been used, and the coverings were hastily flung aside as by those who rise in haste. In the largest bedroom, that of the lady of the house, clothes were lying about on chair-backs and on the floor—dainty delicate garments, in accordance with the dressing-table appointments, and the violet-scented sachet carelessly dropped among them. It was horrible to think of the occupant of that room as a homeless wanderer, possibly dependent on charity!

They could picture the scene. The scepticism as the tale of the oncoming Germans became more insistent; the refusal to go. "They will never come to Fumes," and then the cry ringing through the silence of the night: "Dixmude is fallen; the Germans are almost here." No matter whether the cry were true or false, it pierced like truth into those startled ears, and almost stopped the beating of the heart for an agonized second. Then the thoughts of husband and wife simultaneously leapt to the nursery. "The children!"

This was on the next storey, and the toys of the children proved their presence. They lay on the floor in a pathetic little row. Near the door were a furry bear, a doll without a head, and a cart. It was as if the little ones had snatched up their treasures, and had had them pulled away from them one by one by the frightened nurse. Would they ever return? And what would be their future, torn up by the roots like this? Lucky for them, indeed, if their parents clung tightly to them in that modern Exodus, for if not, it might be that those very children, whose soft little fingers had clung so determinedly to the beloved bear, might be hopelessly lost, as thousands of Belgian children have been, to be brought up in one great group, not knowing their own names or the names of their forbears, forlorn waifs, in spite of all that human kindness could do.

 

 

Chapter V - On The Road

There was no question about the amount of work waiting to be done at Furnes. Calls from Dixmude, where hot fighting was going on, were incessant, and the ambulances were kept hard at it. Dixmude is about eight miles south-east of Furnes as the crow flies, but much more by road; and the way along the scattered and smashed pavé was rolled out many times in a day by the coming and going of the motors. Chauffeurs were difficult to get, and there were many cars requiring drivers now; so early next morning Gipsy had hardly had time to get on her clothes before there was a shout, and she ran down to find Gilbert waiting outside with the heavy 40 h.p. Napier. There was no one else to take it, and he ordered her to do so. Put upon her mettle, she obeyed at once, but as she climbed into the seat she realized that she did not even know which were the levers for the various gears, for she had never driven that sort of car before. A trifle like that was soon rectified by a few little experiments, and she managed all right. Before she had been in Belgium long she had driven an extraordinary number of different makes of car, including a Daimler, Wolseley, Mercedes, Napier, Pipe, Sunbeam, and Fiat, and she had had to take a great many of them at a moment's notice too.

It was not like driving on an English road, for here the pavé in the centre is made of cobbles, and just wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other with care; it slopes down a little at each side, and is usually, in the winter at all events, greasy with a thin layer of mud, whereas, if you fail to hold on, you land in unfathomable depths of mud like thick porridge which borders the sides. Beyond this again there is usually a ditch filled to the brim with water, and with no sort of guard to protect the sides, so that a plunge into icy water is not outside the bounds of possibility. With a top-heavy ambulance the joys of getting off into the mud are enhanced by knowing that it is quite as likely as not that if your wheel goes deep into that quagmire the whole thing may turn right over, a particularly cheerful prospect if it happens to be full of wounded men! At the very best, the feat of regaining the pavé entails a tearing strain on a woman's hand and arm. There is a choice of two roads between Furnes and Dixmude. The northern one is more direct, but it was not considered feasible at this time, so the party went by the southern one, turning up by Oudecappelle within sight of Dixmude.

It was the last part of the straight, open road, when they were well within range of the German guns, that strained the nerves most. Mairi was beside her friend on the front of the ambulance, and they were the last of the whole cavalcade, so that if anything had happened to them none of the others would have seen it. Gilbert, who was leading, always went "hell for leather," with a disregard of adverse conditions little less than miraculous, and he never went faster than when he was heading straight for danger. The vile road was broken and pitted with the huge, irregular craters where the shells had fallen. Far ahead was the little bunch of houses, of which some were already burning. Shoved to one side of the route by someone who had had to get off his car to do it was a dead horse on his back, with all his legs in the air in a grotesque parody of a comfortable back-scratching roll. Not far off him was an "awful warning " in the shape of a big car smashed to pieces by a. shell which must have landed plump into the middle of it and wiped out of time and space any occupants it contained. Ahead the firing was like a tropical thunderstorm, with ominous flashes and a deep, menacing growl, and instead of fleeing from it, as would be man's natural instinct, they were steering straight into the heart of it. They could not get actually into Dixmude itself, but reached Caeskerke, where Gilbert, who was in charge of the party, told them to reverse the cars, facing them homewards, ready to plunge off any second. They were up against some small cottages, and about them some of the French soldiers were entrenched, while others lay along the sloping sides of the road along which they had just come. They were there for half an hour watching with a kind of fascination the sharp, stabbing flame, followed by a cloud of white smoke, or a red roar as a shell caught one of the remaining cottages out in the open and sent it up in a furnace of fire. Nearer and nearer came the warning hiss and scream, until at last they could actually see the pieces flying as the shells burst, exactly as sometimes represented in an illustration, a thing pooh-poohed by those who have never been under shell-fire. Then with a roar and a deafening noise a farm-house not more than fifty yards from them received a shell full upon it, and Gilbert waved a commanding arm ordering them to begone.

It required more than common nerve to get the engine started in such conditions, but it was achieved at last, and they went back the way they had come, out into the open, passing by a huge new pit that had been made in the last half-hour, a pit which yawned across the way and would easily have swallowed up the whole car.

They drew up near a church about a mile out, and waited here for further orders; they had not been there ten minutes when an armoured car came bumping painfully along with a burst back tyre. Some Belgian officers jumped down, and after standing round for a few minutes in discussion together, one of them advanced, with the fascinating little tassel swinging from his cap as he saluted, and asked if the ladies would take back to Furnes some German prisoners he had in the armoured car, otherwise he did not know what to do with them. It certainly was a strange request to make to a woman not of his own nationality, and the trust implied in her skill and courage was unbounded. Gipsy rose to the occasion at once.

"I think it was the proudest moment of my life," she says in her diary.

The five Germans, well set up, fair, hard-eyed striplings, were transferred to the ambulance without delay, and as they were installed and the order given to start the two friends saw with a sort of terrified glee that the Belgian officers did not think it necessary to provide an escort; they had too much to do elsewhere. They seemed to take the whole abnormal proceeding very much as a matter of course, and stood in a row and saluted while the two women drove off with the very strangest carload it had ever been woman's fate to convoy.

Eight miles lay between them and safety, and at any moment, if those unemotional, ruthless young brutes inside had taken it into their heads, they could have got out and knocked the amateur chauffeurs on the head, and escaped with the car. As they went cautiously along this aspect of it was naturally very much to the fore in the minds of the Two on the front seat, and they spoke of it in whispers; but possibly the Germans themselves were glad enough to get safely out of that hell of shot and shell, for they made no attempt at an escape.

The job was accomplished safely, the men handed over to authority, and the car went on to take a load of wounded soldiers to the station. Then, conscious of having accomplished an excellent day's work, the Two returned to their quarters and supped off bully beef and soldier's biscuit. "It was a great day," they said.

In the days that followed they were constantly backwards and forwards on that long and dangerous road, and recognized without difficulty each new shell-hole along the way. The road was so broken in parts that men were sent out with great faggots of wood on their shoulders to throw into the holes and fill them up, and constant repairing was necessary to keep the route open for the heavy military transport. All this work in the open air, with hard physical lifting and driving, took it out of the Two so much that they were always thankful, when the day's work was done, to get back and drop into bed—a real bed, too, a great luxury in those times. A few other members of the party were installed in the same house, but Mairi and Gipsy retained their bedroom to themselves. They were usually able to obtain food at the hospital, where they fared very simply. Porridge for breakfast was acceptable, and occasionally fried potatoes were added, if they had time to cook them and they did not get spoiled just as they were ready, which is the way of potatoes in the hands of amateur cooks all the world over. "These" porridge must have felt gratified at its appreciation; even in Scotland, where it is ennobled by the use of the plural number, it can rarely have been referred to as "a joyful basin of porridge!"

The night work was perhaps the greatest strain, for there could of course be no lights, and the way was lit up grimly by the sudden flare of the exploding shells, or the dim light of distant buildings which they had set on fire. It was a curious sight to see the roof of one of these huge torches collapse suddenly, apparently in absolute silence, for the ceaseless cannonade drowned all lesser sounds; then the flames would shoot up like a great cascade of fireworks, brightening everything for hundreds of yards around, and illuminating the great holes cut in the road till they appeared like an irregular procession of monstrous tortoises who had eaten the "Food of the Gods."

Sometimes so many of these devil's fires were alight at once that they brought back a reminiscence of bonfires on Coronation night. "Farmhouses burning, trees burning, everything burning. It was a grand sight, and one I shall never forget," says Mairi enthusiastically. And in the midst of that great amphitheatre set for a life and death drama Luck and Fate stalking alongside, determined that these particular actors should live to play a great part.

The effect of the shells, even on the presumably tough chauffeurs, was eloquent of the nerve-racking strain. One man was perfectly ill with it, and yet he had the right sort of pluck, for he owned up to the cause of his malady, but set his teeth and went on in grim determination. He stuck to his wheel one day, when he was driving Mrs. Knocker, until he became fairly paralyzed, and was manifestly unable to go on, so she changed places with him and took the driving-wheel herself. They were carrying four wounded men, and she brought them into safety, and then said she must go back, as she had left Mairi at Oudecappelle, but that as he was feeling ill he had better stay at Furnes. He looked at her with a face that was like the face of one of the dead in the convent wards, and said doggedly through stiff lips: "Can't drive, but I ain't going to give in to it. I'm coming back right alongside of you this very minute." She could not but admire this heroic triumph of mind over matter.

"Poor fellow! When we turned the corner of the road and got within range of those big guns, and each flash could be clearly seen, he turned suddenly sick, and I had to stop and give him brandy and cover him with a rug. I begged him not to look. It is a sight which requires a peculiar kind of nerves." She does not add that it requires a kind of courage so peculiar that it is rare indeed!

It was getting dusk, and those great bulbs of flame were horribly vivid, and everywhere the masses of farm-buildings or haystacks showed their effect. The continuous deafening noise was killing, and always above the deep bass of the guns the high alto of the screaming shells never ceased for one instant. It seemed as if it were too frightful to continue for another second, yet if it stopped suddenly one's skull would fall to pieces!