[1] It would be truer to say she was in love with duty which was often dangerous.

[2] She very soon let us know why. "Followed" is the wrong word.

[3] He didn't. People never do mean these things.

[4] This only means that, whether you attended to it or not (you generally didn't), as long as you were in Belgium, your sub-consciousness was never entirely free from the fear of Uhlans—of Uhlans in the flesh. The illusion of valour is the natural, healthy reaction of your psyche against its fear and your indifference to its fear.

[5] Nobody need have been surprised. She had distinguished herself in other wars.

[6] One is a church and not a cathedral.

[7] I am puzzled about this date. It stands in my ambulance Day-Book as Saturday, 3rd, with a note that the British came into Ghent on their way to Antwerp on the evening of that day. Now I believe there were no British in Antwerp before the evening of Sunday, the 4th, yet "Dr. Wilson" and Mr. Davidson, going into Saint Nicolas before us, saw the British there, and "Mrs. Torrence" and "Janet McNeil" saw more British come into Ghent in the evening. I was ill with fever the day after the run into Antwerp, and got behindhand with my Day-Book. So it seems safest to assume that I made a wrong entry and that we went into Antwerp on Sunday, and to record Saturday's events as spreading over the whole day. Similarly the events that the Day-Book attributes to Monday must have belonged to Tuesday. And if Tuesday's events were really Wednesday's, that clears up a painful doubt I had as to Wednesday, which came into my Day-Book as an empty extra which I couldn't account for in any way. There I was with a day left over and nothing to put into it. And yet Wednesday, the 7th, was the first day of the real siege of Antwerp. On Thursday, the 8th, I started clear.

[8] It wasn't. This was only the first slender trickling. The flood came three days later with the bombardment of the city.

[9] Of all the thousands and thousands of refugees whom I have seen I have only seen three weep, and they were three out of six hundred who had just disembarked at the Prince of Wales's Pier at Dover. But in Belgium not one tear.

[10] This is all wrong. The main stream went as straight as it could for the sea-coast—Holland or Ostend.

[11] The outer forts were twelve miles away.

[12] At the time of writing—February 19th, 1915. My Day-Book gives no record of anything but the hospitals we visited.

[13] There must be something wrong here, for the place was, I believe, a convent.

[14] Every woman did.

[15] This was made up to her afterwards! Her cup fairly ran over.

[16] I have heard a distinguished alienist say that this reminiscent sensation is a symptom of approaching insanity. As it is not at all uncommon, there must be a great many lunatics going about.

[17] Except that nobody had any time to attend to us, I can't think why we weren't all four of us arrested for spies. We hadn't any business to be looking for the position of the Belgian batteries.

[18] More than likely our appearance there stopped the firing.

[19] I have since been told that he was not. And I think in any case I am wrong about his "matchboard" car. It must have been somebody else's. In fact, I'm very much afraid that "he" was somebody else—that I hadn't the luck really to meet him.

[20] He did. She was not a lady whom it was possible to leave behind on such an expedition.

[21] I'm inclined to think it may have been the dogs of Belgium, after all. I can't think where the guns could have been. Antwerp had fallen. It might have been the bombardment of Melle, though.

[22] The fate of "Mr. Lambert" and the scouting-car was one of those things that ought never to have happened. It turned out that the car was not the property of his paper, but his own car, hired and maintained by him at great expense; that this brave and devoted young American had joined our Corps before it left England and gone out to the front to wait for us. And he was kept waiting long after we got there.

But if he didn't see as much service at Ghent as he undertook to see (though he did some fine things on his own even there), it was made up to him in Flanders afterwards, when, with the Commandant and other members of the Corps, he distinguished himself by his gallantry at Furnes and in the Battle of Dixmude.

(For an account of his wife's services see Postscript.)

[23] I record these details (March 11th, 1915) because the Commandant accused me subsequently of a total lack of "balance" upon this occasion.

[24] This is no reflection on Tom's courage. His chief objection was to driving three women so near the German lines. The same consideration probably weighed with the Commandant and M. ——.

[25] The whole thing was a piece of rank insubordination. The Commandant was entirely right to forbid the expedition, and we were entirely wrong in disobeying him. But it was one of those wrong things that I would do again to-morrow.

[26] Antwerp had surrendered on Friday, the 9th.

[27] All the same it was splendidly equipped and managed.

[28] Even now, when I am asked if I did any nursing when I was in Belgium I have to think before I answer: "Only for one morning and one night"—it would still be much truer to say, "I was nursing all the time."

[29] My Day-Book ends abruptly here; and I have no note of the events that followed.

[30] Incorrect. It was, I believe, the uniform of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps.

[31] It was so bad that it made me forget to pack the Commandant's Burberry and his Gillette razors and his pipe.

[32] The Commandant had had an adventure. The Belgian guide mistook the road and brought the car straight into the German lines instead of the British lines where it had been sent. If the Germans hadn't been preoccupied with firing at that moment, the Commandant and Ascot and the Belgian would all have been taken prisoner.

[33] Even now, five months after, I cannot tell whether it was or was not insanity.

[34] It is really dreadful to think of the nuisance we must have been to these dear people on the eve of their own flight.

[35] The Commandant had his own scheme for going back to Ghent, which fortunately he did not carry out.

[36] This girl's courage and self-devotion were enough to establish our innocence—they needed no persuasion. But I still hold myself responsible for her going, since it was my failure to control my obsession that first of all put the idea in her head.

[37] I saw nothing sinister about this arrangement at the time. It seemed incredible to me that I should not return.