October 21st, London. It was not without a sense of relief that we watched the hands of the station clock move on to the stroke of six, heard the train doors slam, and cast a last look at the anxious little group of friends who clustered round the carriage doors to bid us farewell and God-speed.

To be quite frank, their cheering savoured somewhat of mourning and much of admonition.

Were we not the tattered remnants of a once-flourishing Red Cross detachment, whose energies and equipment alike had been left behind at the enforced evacuation of Ostend? Were we not about to face all kinds of undreamed-of perils?

So they whispered to us; but as we relapsed into our seats, to the accompaniment of a cheery chorus of rag-times from the extensive rÉpertoire of the recruits in a neighbouring carriage, our hearts beat hard with trepidation and anticipation of the Great Unknown. After all, who were we amongst the countless thousands clamouring to "get out" to the scene of action?

Merely two Englishwomen, of none too much experience and no too great age, whom it might please Fate to carry into the scene of action, there to play the smallest of parts and to be vouchsafed an insight into the vagaries of war.

Southampton. It was a clear, still, moonlight night when we reached Southampton, the docks silent and darkened. Outside many ambulance wagons awaited their turn to be loaded. The hotel to which we had been recommended had been commandeered as an embarkation office. Moreover, Mr. N——, the clergyman who was to have met us and finished the journey with us, failed to turn up. So, after passport formalities, we went straight on board.

All we carried by way of luggage was one small hand-valise apiece, containing, besides changes of underwear, the regulation Red Cross caps, aprons, dresses—that uniform so effective en masse, so unbecoming to the individual.

October 22nd, s.s. ——, 8 a.m. The cabins were nearly all taken for the officers of the Irish regiment crossing on the boat, so we passed a more or less restless night in the saloon. As the stewardess said: "We like to give the men the best of everything. Who knows when they will next sleep in a bed?" It makes one choke to see these fine strapping fellows going out so cheerfully to meet their fate. It is only then that one ceases to think of war as a great game, and sees it as a great slaughter!

When we set sail the mysterious blue, herald of dawn, was over all, but we are entering Havre harbour in a sea that is black and dreary and full of forebodings.

Le HÂvre. The post office here might be in Finsbury, the cablegram window in Leadenhall Street, for Havre is full of British Tommies in their smart new khaki and gilt numerals and badges, and they walk up and down the streets in twos and threes—very much at home, or separately—equally lost.

When we landed at Havre the Rev. E—— N——, our khaki-clad parson, joined us; and, having deposited our luggage at the station and lunched, we wended our way to the British Consulate, and British and French Red Cross offices, in the hope of gleaning some news of the rest of our party, who seemed to have vanished off the face of the globe.

Our Red Cross uniform carries with it a strange mixture of respect and suspicion—respect for the noble symbol we bear, suspicion on account of the many unlicensed people of somewhat doubtful repute who have flooded the country since the outbreak of war, perpetrating many indiscretions, opening many uncalled-for charities—all under the name of the Red Cross, with which, ten chances to one, they have no connection at all.

To us, however, everybody is so kind and courteous, and our parson, being a tall, white-haired man of military bearing, and in appearance much more like a general than a sky-pilot, commands universal respect and salutes.

We decided to spend a night at Havre and call early for news at the Consulate, and it was then that my modicum of French and savoir-faire in the ways of hotels and hotel proprietors stood us in good stead, for the rest of the party knew no word of French and appeared never before to have travelled abroad.

At the Consulate we came across Lady ——, one of the women we were seeking and who was supposed to be seeking us. As we entered the room a familiar voice rang out: "In the name of the Belgian Government you can do anything"—and we found ourselves face to face with the chic little woman who, charming though she may be at a London "at-home," is, we fear, liable to give our Allies a false impression of English women in war-time.

She has already courted notoriety quite successfully in Belgium, where she would appear at the most busy moment in the wards with a smile and a "May I see round your hospital?" only to be followed by her press-man with a camera. Seeing she has never, to our knowledge, done a day's work in the wards, we are growing tired of her portraits in the daily papers and weekly journals:

"Lady —— rendering valuable aid to a severely wounded Belgian," or:

"A war heroine who is giving her services at the front."

We retired early, but the incessant sounds of coming and going made sleep impossible to me. As the moon peeped through the open window on to the restless form of my companion, I crept out of bed and knelt by the embrasure. She looked very young with her halo of fair hair, and for the first time I realised how utterly alone we were. It is odd how quickly people come into one's life nowadays, become the most important factor of existence, and, meteor-like, pass out of one's ken, leaving nothing but a fast-dimming memory to prove how large they once loomed on the horizon. After all—war or no war—we are absolute strangers, of different interests, different education, different social standing. Yet for weal or woe our lot is cast together. Only for a moment these thoughts assailed me; then the bigness of the Great Game in which we are to play our parts drove all little personal feelings away.

October 24th, Rouen. We arrived yesterday in the wild-goose chase after the Mrs. C—— who wired for us and was to have given us employment, and are installed at a little hotel perched on the top of the hill, from the windows of which we can enjoy the old garden, gorgeous in its autumn tints of brown, gold and green.

There being an over-sufficient number of well-equipped hospitals here, as in Havre, we have not bothered to inquire after work, but the Rev. E—— N—— has gone on to Paris, and so we spent the day enjoying the sights of Rouen. Of the beauties of the Gothic Cathedral of St. Ouen, of the smartness of our Tommies, of the less solid but strikingly lithe and businesslike-looking French soldiers, in their historic and treasured red trousers and blue coats, there is much to be said. Yet it is the incongruity of the cosmopolitan crowd that is most noteworthy.

Dusky Zouaves, in wide pantaloons and brilliant coatees, are to be seen on all sides—mostly with bandaged limbs, be it noted—and alongside swarthy Indian Mussulmans, clad in khaki and topped with turbans. Side by side with them go interpreters in mufti, Scottish soldiers in tartans and covered kilts. Little French girls walk past with R.A.M.C. badges and numerals pinned across their shawls; Army nurses, in grey and red; the usual crowd of dark Frenchwomen in their sombre weeds.

Watching the seething mass of humanity on the quay, the marching soldiers, the footsore, homeless refugees, the motley crowd culled from every conceivable race and every quarter of the globe, it seems as if the Powers Above had decided to abolish the distinction between east and west, black and white, and weld together one race to combat the oncoming Germans. For surely we are pitted against a foe so strong in physique, and so brave and cunning, that many years of strenuous training and thrift will be required to fit the united races to withstand his onslaught.

October 25th. Mr. N—— returned last night from Paris armed with introductions to Lord ---- at Boulogne headquarters, where we are to go, and the information that the Paris hospitals are being steadily cleared.

All this time we have had very little news. Since the fall of Antwerp on October 9th, and the beginning of the Ypres-ArmentiÈres battle two days later, we have had nothing but rumours to subsist on, and these alternately wildly optimistic and disquieting.

It seems so strange to think, while wandering through the churches here, glorying in the leisure to enjoy the exquisite contour of the Gothic arches, the rich mediÆval windows, the Renaissance chapels, that to those enemies, who are proving themselves such utter Vandals, we really owe so much of our knowledge of Art and Architecture. Can any cultured being who has at some time or another associated with his art-loving foe, studied his literature, perused Burckhardt, delved into the depths of Faust's philosophy and the heights of Zarathustra's madness; sat on Brunhilde's rock or felt the Valkyrie riding past in the furious sweep of the snowstorm; gazed from the heights of the Black Forest into the unknown stretch of sky beyond the blue hills with that yearning for beautiful things engendered by a land endowed by Nature with every gift; and, descending into the darkening forests, realised the milieu which inspired Grimm's "Fairy Tales" and Morgenstern, and even the translators of Ibsen and Jacobsen—can such a being fail to be nonplussed at this huge upheaval?

October 26th, Train militaire. We are passing through the lovely Norman country at a snail's pace in a military train bearing French soldiers to the front. Their distant "Marseillaise" sounds less hearty than our Tommies' "It's a long way to Tipperary," but then they already know the devastation War has wrought in their homes; they are the defenders of an invaded country.

The cost of our ticket to Abancour (military rate, for our uniform amongst the French receives the utmost consideration) is 1 franc 50 centimes. After Abancour, it appears, there are no trains to Boulogne, so how we are to get across the sixty intervening miles no man knows!

Abancour, 7.30 p.m. We reached the neat little model village of Abancour at dusk. It stands on a wind-swept plain, over which the lowering clouds are scurrying menacingly this evening. Just as at Havre market women offered us flowers "for the blessed Croix Rouge," so here the proprietor of the post-card shop insists on giving us pastilles de menthe to take on our journey.

Eu. This is the nearest point we can get to Boulogne, and having knocked up the sleepy hotel-keeper at 10 p.m. to obtain a night's lodging, having made bovril for us all out of the tablets some good friend had thrust into my travelling kit, and served out rations of horse-flesh sandwiches and nuts to make them savoury, I have at last tumbled into my damp bed, wrapped in a travelling rug.

A dismal rain has set in, which brings to mind the words of the secretary at the Rouen Consulate: "When winter sets in the fighting must temporarily cease. I know every inch of Belgium; know, too, that no attack can be made on country so sodden that every wheel sinks at least a yard into the ground. Believe me, what the Germans have they will hold—at least this winter. For Belgium will be impregnable!"

October 27th. We arose at 5 a.m. to catch a train bound towards Abbeville, and, after a refreshing draught of black coffee in glasses, found ourselves installed in the train, with the prospect of staying there till 5 p.m. If we had wondered at finding Eu well guarded on all sides, we no longer did so when we learned that only a few weeks back it was in enemy hands, and formed, in fact, the German headquarters on the march on Paris.

Shortly before reaching Abbeville a young Belgian soldier in the carriage next door put his head in to inquire politely whether we were some of the infirmiÈres anglaises who had tended the Belgian wounded in Ostend.

It appeared he recognised Miss A——, as soon as she doffed her ugly felt uniform hat, as the nurse who had dressed his wounded back the day he was carried into the Casino hospital after the Battle of Termonde.

His career, which he sketched delightedly for our edification, perched on the arm of the window seat, had been eventful, to say the least of it.

Aged 17, Fernand L——, of Brussels, together with fifteen others of his school class of twenty, joined the ranks as volontaires and served through Namur. Captured by the Germans in a farmhouse where he was scouting, he contrived to escape and reach his native town, where the now famous burgomaster, the valiant M. Max, got his papers visÉd. By asserting that he was only fifteen years old, and therefore not liable to military service, he finally reached Cherbourg, and is now on his way back to the front, hoping to join some regiment at Calais.

A charming boy, full of enthusiasm for the war and the conviction that we shall soon be marching into Berlin, his one regret, when he heard how the hospital equipment had had to be abandoned to the enemy, was that he had not helped himself to a much-needed blanket.

"Had I but known," he exclaimed, "I would have taken four!"

Fernand L—— was clad in a wonderful combination of garments that he seemed to have gleaned on his journeyings; most remarkable amongst them were the green knitted socks and pair of canvas shoes which some Good Samaritan had given him at Ostend, in those days when even the supply of anÆsthetics was apt to run low. Proudest of all was he of the fact that he had once spent a few days in Liverpool to play in a football match, which fact, he felt, bound him to his allies more than any of the forced ties of war. His companion, a few years his senior, who spoke seven languages, was a good-looking youth with a radiant smile. They had been together through various escapades, and were full of the atrocities of the Germans, which, alas! seem authentic enough.

Once when they were fleeing they had come to a deserted village where a farmer gave them shelter. His only daughter had been brutally mutilated and murdered before her own parents because, in resisting the embraces of an officer, she scratched out one of his eyes.

"They cut off her breasts and carried away a foot as a trophy," was the tale they told.

As they got out, the Belgians, in token of gratitude, pressed into our hands the little paper flags of the Allies that they were wearing and buttons from their coats. Then, seizing a notebook from my pocket, Fernand L—— inscribed their names and addresses at Bruges, exacting at the same time promises that we would call and see them, or their families, on our way "to the Rhine in a few months"!

The well-guarded lines, the ammunition trains, the big guns and horses and other paraphernalia of war—how real it all begins to seem!

At Abbeville, where we explored the shops and camps and churches, a nasty rumour came through, via two cavalry officers, that the Germans are at Calais, and many of the townsfolk appeared at their doors to bewail their fate.

On leaving every place of beauty one wonders how long it will remain safe from the Vandals—one leaves it with a sentimental longing to linger for "one last look."

October 27th, Boulogne. The sky was a lurid red as our train steamed into Boulogne, and an evening mist hung over the town. On all sides high masts rose into the sky; hospital ships, ambulance trains, little fishing-smacks, one does not know to which to give most attention. Everywhere[Pg 43]
[Pg 44]
[Pg 45] the population of picturesque fisherfolk in their brown blouses gives way admiringly to the Red Cross ambulances and officials who carry on their work on such an enormous scale.

The journey had seemed long enough in spite of its many incidents, as day by day we watched the pretty though uninteresting fields slip by, or restlessly paced the stations during the interminable halts, with little food for thought, save vague surmises as to the future, and little to eat save the slightly bitter bread of the people and apples, the only things obtainable at wayside stations already ransacked by the hordes of hungry soldiers who had passed through earlier; and oftentimes we had been glad enough to descend from the carriages to refresh ourselves at the station pumps, marked "drinkable" or "non-drinkable," as the case might be.

We had formed an odd trio. The tall, bent figure of the clergyman, with his dreamy demeanour and utter obliviousness of all things practical; my commandant, a young woman who, having spent most of her life at hospital work, hailed every diversion from the same gleefully. Everything to her was new, for she had never been out of England before, and to a veteran traveller her joy at the ways of this new country was extraordinarily interesting. Thirdly, there was myself, fresh from the salutary discipline of the wards of a London hospital.

And now it is all over, that journey. The destination is reached. The Unknown will soon be revealed.

The Commissioner to whom we were directed received us with open arms.

"Nurses—thank God!" was the exclamation as we were turned over to the mercies of the billeting officer, who designated an airy room overlooking the quayside, on the third floor of the Red Cross headquarters, for our use.

Yet it appears that in spite of the dearth of nurses there are many formalities to be gone through before we can begin work; and as only nurses who have had three years' training in a big London hospital are to be accepted (for is anything but the best good enough for our fighting men?), there may be some difficulty for probationers.

Thus, having deposited our bundles in our billets, we were sent to see Lady —— at the hotel, where she combines the duties of lady-in-waiting to Queen AmÉlie of Portugal and organiser-in-chief of the Red Cross nurses.

Here we learned for the first time of the confusion that arises out of the fact that both qualified nurses and members of the Voluntary Aid Detachment are wearing the same uniform; we heard, too, of the difficulties experienced by the authorities to prevent unlicensed people organising hospitals which they are unfitted to run.

As we wended our way back wearily through the lighted, crowded streets teeming with life (Miss A—— having signed a year's contract as a trained nurse), something told me that this is to be the scene of my activities too; that so long as my betrothed is in France, Providence will let me play my part.

On returning to headquarters we learned for the first time the unpleasant function of the Censor. All letters have to be left open, posted in the military box, and, if they are to pass the Censor, must contain no mention or description of places, troops, ships, people we have met on our journey, etc.

This is not merely a precaution against spies, we are told, but a measure of prudence in regard to false rumours; for men who have never got farther than Boulogne, and never been within gunshot, have been known to write home long tirades about the bloody trenches in which they stand all day, dodging fragments of shells and killing Germans by the score!

October 28th. After breakfast this morning we set out to see whether there were any letters from home at the Consulate. On our way up the hill a funeral overtook us. There were four hearses and seven coffins, each covered with a Union Jack, which contrasted strangely with the weird-shaped French funeral carriages and the drivers in costumes like beadles with large three-cornered hats.

We followed the cortÈge a quarter of an hour up the hill to the cemetery, where the newly consecrated ground was full of freshly covered graves.

The coffins were soon lowered, and as they lay there in a row not an eye of the little group of onlookers was dry.

The R.A.M.C. pall-bearers, the chaplain who went through the service with a rapidity that showed his familiarity with the job, a handful of French peasants—that was all. And they laid them to rest at the top of the hill, and only two English nurses who never saw them could bear the message of their last resting-place to their homes. God! that such wanton destruction should be.

Opposite our window, as I write, the ambulance men are deftly unloading a train and carrying their sad, still burdens aboard the hospital ship on which Miss A—— crossed from Ostend. All day long, all night long, the wagons come and go. Funerals pass, not one, but three, four, five at a time, followed by orderlies; turbaned Sikhs and Gurkhas, looking quaintly odd with their unaccustomed shirts (gifts, no doubt, from some willing helpers at home) hanging loose below their coats, like a flounced skirt, and creating a perfect sensation whenever they pass the simple peasant folk.

Later, we walked into Wimereux and took snapshots of the wounded Tommies who thronged the beach. They were mostly arm and leg cases, and a cheery, if rough-looking, lot too, in their bedraggled khaki, which, from the distance, was scarcely distinguishable from the sands.

The Reverend E—— N—— has found plenty to do, and is already taking work out of the overtaxed Bishop's hands. I, in the meantime, am making the best of my leisure and enjoying every hour of the sunshine. "Father N.," as we call the padre, got into conversation with an Army veteran to-day at lunch, whose views were interesting.

"Do you think the Germans will get to Calais?" he asked.

"Probably not; but if they do, they'll make for here. This is the place they're after—as a post for their submarines. And Heaven knows what we shall do with our stores. It won't be possible to get them away in time!"

About a mile along the quay we came upon the debris of a camp with the fire still burning; piles of reaping machines, traction engines and carts, all bearing the names of English firms from Manchester to Crouch End, lay alongside; and, finally, in the distance there hove in sight the French refugee ship which was blown up in the Channel yesterday between here and Folkestone.

In the evening we joined a group of nurses round the fire. They are pleasant girls just down from Paris, where they did relieving work at some of the hotel hospitals.

The Astoria in particular they describe as a maze. "You go to get a drink of milk for a patient, and when you've found the milk you've lost your man and may hunt for hours, only to find in the end that his need has already been supplied," they say. Their assistants were culled from the French nobility, whose unflagging efforts to help are typical of France's indomitable spirit. Amusing incidents often occur.

One doctor, on being much pressed, accepted an invitation to tea with a well-known aristocratic family, who assured him they were inviting people who would be of especial interest to him. His amusement on arriving may be pictured when he found that the other guests consisted of a roomful of wounded Tommies.

Another doctor, overwhelmed by the amount of titles to whom he had been introduced, meeting a nurse in the corridor, began wearily with:

"Look here, I say, now, are you a blooming princess?" before he gave his orders!

In spite of the wonderful dirt and bad drainage that reigns in the nurses' quarters, we must be grateful, they say, for our accommodation. Nurses aren't expected to require much, it seems. Someone quoted the old chestnut from Punch of the lady who, on being asked by the newly arrived nurse in which room she was to sleep, exclaimed in blank amazement:

"Oh, but I thought you were a trained hospital nurse!"

October 29th. Let me tell the tale of No. —— Stationary Hospital. It should go down to posterity as a memorial of what British resourcefulness may achieve, even if its existence was the outcome of the proverbial British state of unpreparedness. For what in the annals of History has equalled the holocaust and chaos of modern warfare, of which there was no precedent, of which everything has had to be learned by the bitterest experience?

Three days before we left England, at the beginning of the fight for Calais, which continues to grow more violent daily, a certain Major N—— found himself in charge of the wounded who were being brought down by the thousand in trains, and left helpless on their stretchers by the quayside to await the arrival of the ever-busy hospital ships.

Already the C—— and I—— Hotels were choc-À-bloc with wounded, who lay so close together in the corridors that it was necessary to climb over one stretcher to reach the next patient, and often stand astride the pallets to dress the wounds.

The Casino was opened, but in less time than it takes to tell was as crowded as the others.

A disused sugar shed, a vast wooden barn whose cracked cement floor is piled high with dust, whose smashed glass roofing is besmirched with dirt, is hardly an ideal site for a hospital, but it is the best thing to hand, and the Major commandeered it, and here, before the lumber had been cleared, before the glass had been repaired or the walls whitewashed, the wounded began to tumble in. It wasn't much of a place, but it was out of the torrential rain which had set in and bade fair to continue, and it was less cold than the open air.

By day and night the orderlies worked, alternately preparing the place and attending to the wounded. A solitary English girl who happened to be on the spot had volunteered her services, and was doing her best single-handed in the wards. One day the Major, walking on the quay, saw some Red Cross nurses. They were the identical ones we had met on their arrival from Paris. On hearing they were waiting for their orders, and that they were all qualified women, he commandeered them, even as he had commandeered his barn. Back they came to Headquarters to fetch more assistance.

"Why don't you come too? It's a case of all hands aboard!" said one. It was thus I came to work at the first clearing station at the base. Such was the stationary hospital when, laden with all the loaves we could carry to supplement the ration biscuits, we set to work in the "casualty ward" this afternoon.

For the thousand wounded likely to come through daily there are six fully-trained nurses and myself, besides the male staff of R.A.M.C. doctors and orderlies, and two or three Red Cross surgeons and lady doctors.

Ten beds and a number of sacks of straw form the main equipment. Planks, supported by two packing-cases, are the dressing-table. At one end men are engaged in putting in three extemporary baths, others whitewashing the walls.

A boatload had just left for England as I came in, and we proceeded to get a meal for those who remained. But it was a struggle to get sufficient tea out of the orderlies, who had been working all night and were dead beat. The men's delight at the bread and old newspapers we had brought in was incredible.

Those who were able to, clustered round the solitary stove in the centre. Great rough, bearded fellows, covered with mud from the trenches in which they have lived for weeks, how different they look from those who set out! The worst cases lay on their stretchers as they had arrived. One said simply, as I took him his tea, "This is heaven, Sister."

A tall, dark man entered—the C.O., someone said. "Take those two Germans down to the boat," I heard him order. Then, turning to us, "You'd better come to our mess-room and get some tea yourselves," he said. "Four trainloads are expected in shortly."

We trooped into the small sanctum dignified by the name of "mess-room," where the Major's orderly was busy preparing tea on a Primus stove. There was no milk, but the bitter black beverage out of the large tin mugs was welcome none the less. Someone had secured a cake that we cut with a sword as the cleanest thing present.

Next to the mess-room are the officers' quarters (into which we were privileged to take one glance)—small whitewashed cubicles furnished with a camp bed, a shaving-glass about three inches by six inches in size, and an old sugar-box converted into a washstand.

Tea finished, we set to work to get "beds" ready for the next batch, the first of the four trainloads expected. Ten bedsteads for a thousand men! It sounds almost incredible, but it is nevertheless true; and although we are told that more are expected at any moment, we have only wooden pallets at present and a limited supply of blankets. One to lie on, two for cover, a coat for a pillow was the order of the day until a pile of mattresses came in.

October 30th. We worked till midnight and were on duty again by 7.30 this morning. From our billets to the hospital is nearly half an hour's walk, which, over the rough cobblestones in the blinding rain, is hardly attractive. At any rate, it has the advantage of clearing the haunting smell of the gas-gangrene out of our nostrils. As we came on duty this morning, laden with every old journal we could find, a huge, burly Scotsman let himself down from the ambulance train. We gave him a newspaper, but he was inclined to talk. He is the first man I've met so far who has signified his longing to get back to the firing-line.

"While I've a limb left," he said, "I should like to have a pot at the Germans. And I can fire my machine as well with two fingers as with five—if they'll let me."

The cause of his indignation was the mutilated[Pg 57]
[Pg 58]
[Pg 59] corpse of a Red Cross nurse they had found in a little village where the Germans had been.

"God knows how far they'd dragged her round with them, but she was horribly mutilated," he said with a shiver. "I'm a big man, but our major was bigger, yet neither of us could help choking. And can ye wonder we want to get at 'em again?"

The worst part of the wounds is the fearful sepsis and the impossibility of getting them anything like clean.

"First time I've had my boots off for seven weeks!" is the kind of exclamation that recurs all day, as we literally cut them off. Hardly any of the boots have been off for three weeks, with the result that they seem glued on, whilst the feet are like iron, the nails like claws.

Some of the men have not had their wounds dressed since the first field dressing was applied, for the simple reason that the rush on the hospital trains makes it impossible to attend to any but the worst cases, many of whom, as it is, are dying of hÆmorrhage, accelerated by the jolting on the journey.

There is no time to do anything but the dressings, and if we did want to wash the patients there is nothing but the red handkerchiefs we hang round the lights for shades by night, for towels by day.

Water, especially boiling water, is at a premium, as it all has to be fetched from outside where the veteran cook stokes hard all day in the driving rain, ladling us out a modicum into each bowl from his cauldrons.

"I never thought to see such sights," exclaimed a nurse of thirty years' experience as a new trainload came in. But we have no time to think of our own sensations.

Fingerless hands, lungs pierced, arms and legs pretty well gangrenous, others already threatening tetanus (against which they are now beginning to inoculate patients), mouths swollen beyond all recognition with bullet shots, fractured femurs, shattered jaws, sightless eyes, ugly scalp wounds; yet never a murmur, never a groan except in sleep. As the men come in they fall on their pallets and doze until roused for food.

A few are enraged to madness at the sight of a German.

"They fired on our Red Cross!" they cry. "Burnt every man alive! Why do we treat them so well?"

Quite a number of prisoners who had been taken near Lille were brought into the clearing station this morning. Being the only linguist present, I was installed as interpreter. They were in a horrible state of nerves, and asked when they were likely to be killed.

One of them was nastily peppered about the heart with shrapnel and asked: "When shall we be shot?" I explained whilst dressing his wounds that Britain is a civilised country, and, in contrast to the Huns, does not hit a man when he is down. Never shall I forget the look of relief on the man's face.

"They told us we'd be tortured if you got us!" he exclaimed.

Later on I was asked to send a card to his mother. It was difficult to know what to say, but "Your son, though a prisoner and wounded, is safe and being well cared for," seemed to meet the occasion. Suddenly without a word he seized the scissors from my belt. Recalling tales of vindictive prisoners, I stepped back. The precaution was unnecessary, for the little Hun was only cutting a button off his coat pocket.

"Hier, Sie haben ja nichts genommen" ("Here, you have not taken anything"), he exclaimed, Teuton boorishness veiling the kindliness as he handed me the "souvenir."

A strangely human incident occurred a little later.

A group of Tommies were watching a Boche having a bayoneted hand dressed. He spoke quite good English, but was apparently too frightened to answer any of their sallies. Presently, however, he turned to me with a request that he might be allowed to send a line to his wife to say he was alive.

"'E's young to 'ave a wife, Sister," suggested a lame man, the maintenance of whose large family apparently proved a burden to him.

"'Ow old are yer? You?" he added, addressing the prisoner.

The Hun pulled out an old letter-case and abstracted the portrait of a pretty English-looking girl in a garden arbour.

"My vife," he exclaimed. "She has seventeen years, I nineteen. Ve was married two days when I come away!"

In a moment the hostile crowd round him was turned to one of sympathisers. "Poor beggar! After all, he probably doesn't want to fight any more than we do," said the lame man.

[Pg 64]
[Pg 65]

"No," replied the prisoner, and all the racial antagonism of Saxon versus Prussian showed itself in his words, "Ve Saxons not want war—ve want peace—but they not ask us!"

October 31st. Who could believe, had they not seen for themselves, the manifold horrors of war? The vermin, against which there is no coping, vermin that in ordinary times one never saw. The men are alive with them, so are we, a fact which necessitates a tremendous "search" at every available opportunity. Even amputated limbs are found to be crawling.

The girl who was working single-handed in this barn until we arrived was walking along the quay yesterday when a feeble voice called her from a stretcher. It was her brother. He died in the night, but she is on duty all the same.

All day long the rush continues. The question "Shrapnel or bullet?" rings incessantly in our ears as each man comes up to get his dressing done.

One boy of nineteen had no fewer than six bullet wounds in one arm and two in each leg. It took two of us an hour to dress his wounds, and afterwards, as I washed his beardless face in response to a gentle request, I could scarce refrain from sending up a prayer of gratitude that my own brothers are dead and not mutilated like these boys.

Towards sunset I was called to the side of a youthful Saxon already rigid with tetanus.

Through his clenched teeth he could still groan to the orderly's command to lie still: "Ich kann nicht still liegen" ("I can't lie still").

At seven o'clock (after nearly twelve hours' work) we went home to dinner, and, it being our turn to take night shift, were back again at our posts, with clean aprons and a satisfied inner man, two hours later. The orderly officer called for any who had not yet had their second anti-typhoid injection, and I, being one of them, was injected on the spot.

During the long night, as we hurried from patient to patient in the darkened cry-haunted ward, covering the restless sleeping figures, moving them into more comfortable positions, with a prayer for each one's mother, I could screw up no feeling of resentment towards the dying Saxon boy, in spite of the cries of our men, but only against that vile Prussianism that brought up its children to regard rapine and slaughter as a divine necessity. By midnight things were quiet enough to allow us to cut up dressings as best we might. By this time, owing to there not being a chair in the place, I confess my legs were almost giving way. Moreover, the injection took speedy effect, and a stiffening arm and rising temperature do not facilitate work of this kind. Frankly, I do not think any of us will ever be as busy again, and our one prayer was for strength to "carry on." Many of the men were tormented by coughs that kept the others awake. All we had to give them was lukewarm water and the rinsings of a condensed milk tin. (For euphony we called it "milk.")

Those who could not sleep for vermin lit cigarette after cigarette until their supply ran out. At 2 A.M. we retired to the nurses' "bunk"—a whitewashed, rat-ridden, ill-smelling partitioned compartment, whose sole furniture consisted of two shelves—until someone was inspired to fetch the "dressing-table" (two empty boxes—oh, joy of joys! upon which we took it in turns to sit)—and a coke fire, on which we boiled eggs for our midnight meal. Half-way through my egg the orderly called me: "The prisoner can't last much longer. Will you come and speak to him, Sister?" It seemed as if the ward were one huge battlefield, for cries greeted me on all sides. "Get at 'em, lads!" shouted the burly Scot in the corner as he urged forward his comrades in his sleep. "Christ help us!" groaned an armless dragoon, coming round from the anÆsthetic.

I soothed the dying German as best I could when the awful spasms came, and through his clenched teeth he signified the pain in the "kreuz" (small of the back). What could I say but "Guter Junge—bleib still. Es dauert nicht mehr lange!" ("Good boy—lie still. It will not last long now!") With his remaining hand he pressed mine as I wiped the pouring sweat from his brow. After all, suffering is a great leveller.

The orderly, an old South African campaigner, looked at the light that began to flood the sky.

"They usually go West at this hour," he remarked grimly, with a shudder. I shuddered too; the place was alive with spirits.

For a moment we seemed to hear the sigh of the departing, feel the rushing of many wings as they brushed past. Then a gaunt, muffled figure appeared at the door bearing a lantern, for all the world like a hoary figure of "Time," and we awoke to reality.

"I've brought down a trainload," he said. "A round dozen of them are urgent cases and must have beds."

Perforce we had to shift the sleeping forms on to the concrete floor, all bruised and torn and bleeding though they were, cutting shorter their all too short rest.

An officer was brought in wounded in the abdomen, but cheerfully talking of getting home. He, too, passed away before eight o'clock.

From the nursing point of view the work is most unsatisfactory, as disinfectants, to say nothing of dressings, are continually at low ebb. To-day the iodine ran out. One of the surgeons came round and signified his intention to dress a bad femur case. I had got together what things I could when he called for iodine. There being none to be had, he sighed resignedly, and with "Then we will leave the dressings for the present," walked off, only to return an hour later with a quantity he had found in the town.

Of course there can be no attempt at asepsis in a place so ill ventilated, or, rather, not ventilated at all, for there are no side windows, and, although the skylight is sufficient for lighting purposes, the ventilation is effected by means of the excessively draughty entrances.

It is distinctly unhealthy, and the odours in the place are indescribable and never to be forgotten. There is no lavatory accommodation—although latrines are situated along the quay, whither the blind are led by the armless, the lame carried on orderlies' backs.

Refuse of all sorts that cannot be burned in the incinerator is disposed of in the sea, and it is good to note that the sacks of straw are being gradually replaced by real beds and the supply of blankets is greatly augmented.

Unsatisfactory, too, from the nursing point of view is the fact that the men pass through the clearing station so rapidly that we seldom do the same dressing twice; and though there are days when, owing to rough seas or overladen boats, we are able to watch the progress of the patients, for the most part it is only the immovable cases that remain, and the rest are hurried through, leaving one wondering how they will get on.

Did I say hurried through? There is no need to hurry the men who are to go home, for no sooner is a boat announced than a general scramble ensues, and they will leave their breakfast, clothing, even their treasured trophies behind, in order not to be late.

"Just a bit of 'ome, and we'll be twice as strong for the next bit o' fightin'," they say.

There follows the inspection of labels (for each man is labelled for his destination: blue for England, yellow for Havre, white for a convalescent depot), and sad indeed are the faces of those to whom the medical officer has not vouchsafed the coveted blue ticket.

Just as day dawned, with a last spasm, more awful than the others, the little Saxon prisoner died. As his close-clenched jaws relaxed the orderly remarked: "Not bad-looking for a corpse, Sister; must have been a pretty child!"

I asked for his corpse number, but it was not to be found. In my heart I wished the boy's mother could have known he died well cared for.

It is all very primitive; we have no screens to hide what once was mortal from the others.

We came off duty at 10 A.M., just as another batch of 1,100 men began to arrive, and on our way home caught a glimpse of K. of K., who is paying an incognito visit, as he stepped from a destroyer.