quickly filled. By that time we had had more than 750 patients through
our hands, and they were still being brought in large numbers. The
fighting must have been terrific, for the men were absolutely worn out
when they arrived, and fell asleep at once from exhaustion, in spite of
their wounds. Some of them must have been a long time in the trenches,
for many were in a terribly verminous condition. On one poor boy with a
smashed leg the insects could have only been counted by the million.
About ten minutes after his dressing was done, his white bandage was
quite grey with the army of invaders that had collected on it from his
other garments.
Early that afternoon we got a message that another Column was coming to
relieve us, and that we were to return to Zyradow for a rest. We were
very sorry to leave our little dressing-station, but rejoiced to hear
that we were to go up again in two days' time to relieve this second
Column, and that we were to work alternately with them, forty-eight
hours on, and then forty-eight hours off duty.
We had left Zyradow rather quiet, but when we came back we found the
cannon going hard, both from the Radzivilow and the Goosof direction. It
would have taken much more than cannon to keep _us_ awake, however, and
we lay down most gratefully on our stretchers in the empty room at the
Red Cross Bureau and slept. A forty-eight hours' spell is rather long
for the staff, though probably there would have been great difficulty in
changing the Columns more often.
I woke up in the evening to hear the church bells ringing, and
remembered that it was Christmas Eve and that they were ringing for the
Midnight Mass, so I got up quickly. The large church was packed with
people, every one of the little side chapels was full and people were
even sitting on the altar steps. There must have been three or four
thousand people there, most of them of course the people of the place,
but also soldiers, Red Cross workers and many refugees mostly from
Lowice. Poor people, it was a sad Christmas for them--having lost so
much already and not knowing from day to day if they would lose all, as
at that time it was a question whether or not the Russian authorities
would decide for strategic reasons to fall back once more.
And then twelve o'clock struck and the Mass began.
Soon a young priest got up into the pulpit and gave them a little
sermon. It was in Polish, but though I could not understand the words, I
could tell from the people's faces what it was about. When he spoke of
the horrors of war, the losses and the deaths and the suffering that had
come to so many of them, one woman put her apron to her face and sobbed
aloud in the tense silence. And in a moment the whole congregation began
sobbing and moaning and swaying themselves to and fro. The young priest
stopped and left them alone a moment or two, and then began to speak in
a low persuasive voice. I do not know what he said, but he gradually
soothed them and made them happy. And then the organ began pealing out
triumphantly, and while the guns crashed and thundered outside, the
choir within sang of peace and goodwill to all men.
Christmas Day was a very mournful one for us, as we heard of the loss of
our new and best automobile, which had just been given as a present to
the Column. One of the boys was taking it to Warsaw from Skiernevice
with some wounded officers, and it had broken down just outside the
village. The mud was awful, and with the very greatest difficulty they
managed to get it towed as far as Rawa, but had to finally abandon it to
the Germans, though fortunately they got off safely themselves. It was a
great blow to the Column, as it was impossible to replace it, these big
ambulance cars costing something like 8000 roubles.
So our Christmas dinner eaten at our usual dirty little restaurant could
not be called a success.
Food was very scarce at that time in Zyradow; there was hardly any meat
or sugar, and no milk or eggs or white bread. One of us had brought a
cake for Christmas from Warsaw weeks before, and it was partaken of on
this melancholy occasion without enthusiasm. Even the punch made out of
a teaspoonful of brandy from the bottom of Princess's flask mixed with
about a pint of water and two lumps of sugar failed to move us to any
hilarity. Our menu did not vary in any particular from that usually
provided at the restaurant, though we did feel we might have had a clean
cloth for once.
MENU
CHRISTMAS 1914
Gravy Soup.
Roast Horse. Boiled Potatoes.
Currant Cake.
Tea. Punch.
We were very glad to go up to Radzivilow once more. Our former
dressing-station had been abandoned as too dangerous for staff and
patients, and the dressing- and operating-room was now in a train about
five versts down the line from Radzivilow station. Our train was a
permanency on the line, and we lived and worked in it, while twice a day
an ambulance train came up, our wounded were transferred to it and taken
away, and we filled up once more. We found things fairly quiet this
time when we went up. The Germans had been making some very fierce
attacks, trying to cross the river Rawka, and therefore their losses
must have been very heavy, but the Russians were merely holding their
ground, and so there were comparatively few wounded on our side. This
time we were able to divide up into shifts for the work--a luxury we
were very seldom able to indulge in.
We had previously made great friends with a Siberian captain, and we
found to our delight that he was living in a little hut close to our
train. He asked me one day if I would like to go up to the positions
with him and take some Christmas presents round to the men. Of course I
was more than delighted, and as he was going up that night and I was not
on duty, the general very kindly gave permission for me to go up too. In
the end Colonel S. and one of the Russian Sisters accompanied us as
well. The captain got a rough cart and horse to take us part of the way,
and he and another man rode on horseback beside us. We started off about
ten o'clock, a very bright moonlight night--so bright that we had to
take off our brassards and anything that could have shown up white
against the dark background of the woods. We drove as far as the
pine-woods in which the Russian positions were, and left the cart and
horses in charge of a Cossack while we were away. The general had
intended that we should see the reserve trenches, but we had seen plenty
of them before, and our captain meant that we should see all the fun
that was going, so he took us right up to the front positions. We went
through the wood silently in single file, taking care that if possible
not even a twig should crackle under our feet, till we came to the very
front trenches at the edge of the wood. We crouched down and watched for
some time. Everything was brilliantly illuminated by the moonlight, and
we had to be very careful not to show ourselves. A very fierce German
attack was going on, and the bullets were pattering like hail on the
trees all round us. We could see nothing for some time but the smoke of
the rifles.
The Germans were only about a hundred yards away from us at this time,
and we could see the river Rawka glittering below in the moonlight. What
an absurd little river to have so much fighting about. That night it
looked as if we could easily wade across it. The captain made a sign,
and we crept with him along the edge of the wood, till we got to a
Siberian officer's dug-out. At first we could not see anything, then we
saw a hole between two bushes, and after slithering backwards down the
hole, we got into a sort of cave that had been roofed in with poles and
branches, and was absolutely invisible a few steps away. It was
fearfully hot and frowzy--a little stove in the corner threw out a great
heat, and the men all began to smoke, which made it worse.
We stayed a while talking, and then crawled along to visit one of the
men's dug-outs, a German bullet just missing us as we passed, and
burying itself in a tree. There were six men already in the dug-out, so
we did not attempt to get in, but gave them tobacco and matches, for
which they were very grateful. These men had an "ikon" or sacred picture
hanging up inside their cave; the Russian soldiers on active service
carry a regimental ikon, and many carry them in their pockets too. One
man had his life saved by his ikon. He showed it to us; the bullet had
gone just between the Mother and the Child, and was embedded in the
wood.
It was all intensely interesting, and we left the positions with great
reluctance, to return through the moonlit pine-woods till we reached our
cart. We had indeed made a night of it, for it was five o'clock in the
morning when we got back to the train once more, and both the doctor and
I were on duty again at eight. But it was well worth losing a night's
sleep to go up to the positions during a violent German attack. I wonder
what the general would have said if he had known!
We finished our forty-eight hours' duty and returned once more to
Zyradow. I was always loth to leave Radzivilow. The work there was
splendid, and there more than anywhere else I have been to one feels the
war as a High Adventure.
War would be the most glorious game in the world if it were not for the
killing and wounding. In it one tastes the joy of comradeship to the
full, the taking and giving, and helping and being helped in a way that
would be impossible to conceive in the ordinary world. At Radzivilow,
too, one could see the poetry of war, the zest of the frosty mornings,
and the delight of the camp-fire at night, the warm, clean smell of the
horses tethered everywhere, the keen hunger, the rough food sweetened by
the sauce of danger, the riding out in high hope in the morning; even
the returning wounded in the evening did not seem altogether such a bad
thing out there. One has to die some time, and the Russian peasants
esteem it a high honour to die for their "little Mother" as they call
their country. The vision of the High Adventure is not often vouchsafed
to one, but it is a good thing to have had it--it carries one through
many a night at the shambles. Radzivilow is the only place it came to
me. In Belgium one's heart was wrung by the poignancy of it all, its
littleness and defencelessness; in Lodz one could see nothing for the
squalor and "frightfulness"; in other places the ruined villages, the
flight of the dazed, terrified peasants show one of the darkest sides of
war.
* * * * *
It was New Year's Eve when we returned to Zyradow, and found ourselves
billeted in a new house where there was not only a bed each, but a
bathroom and a bath. Imagine what that meant to people who had not
undressed at night for more than three weeks.
Midnight struck as we were having supper, and we drank the health of the
New Year in many glasses of tea. What would the lifted veil of time
disclose in this momentous year just opening for us?
It did not begin particularly auspiciously for me, for within the first
few days of it I got a wound in the leg from a bit of shrapnel, was
nearly killed by a bomb from a German Taube, and caught a very bad chill
and had to go to bed with pleurisy--all of which happenings gave me
leisure to write this little account of my adventures.
The bomb from the Taube was certainly the nearest escape I am ever
likely to have in this world. I was walking over a piece of open ground,
saw nothing, heard nothing, was dreaming in fact, when suddenly I heard
a whirring overhead, and just above me was a German aeroplane. Before I
had time to think, down came a bomb with a fearful explosion. I could
not see anything for a minute, and then the smoke cleared away, and I
was standing at the edge of a large hole. The bomb had fallen into a bed
of soft mud, and exploded upwards. Some soldiers who were not very far
off rushed to see if I were killed, and were very surprised to find that
I was practically unhurt. A bomb thrown that same afternoon that
exploded on the pavement killed and wounded nine people.
The wound was from a stray bit of shrapnel and was only a trifle,
fortunately, and soon healed. The pleurisy was a longer job and
compelled me to go to bed for a fortnight. I was very miserable at being
the only idle person I knew, till it occurred to me to spend my time in
writing this little book, and a subsequent short holiday in Petrograd
enabled me to finish it.
My enforced holiday is over now and I am on my way back to my beloved
column once more--to the life on the open road--with its joys and
sorrows, its comradeship, its pain and its inexplicable happiness--back
once more to exchange the pen for the more ready weapon of the forceps.
And so I will leave this brief account of what I have seen in this great
war. I know better than anyone can tell me what an imperfect sketch it
is, but the history of the war will have to be studied from a great many
different angles before a picture of it will be able to be presented in
its true perspective, and it may be that this particular angle will be
of some little interest to those who are interested in Red Cross work in
different countries. Those who are workers themselves will forgive the
roughness of the sketch, which was written during my illness in snatches
and at odd times, on all sorts of stray pieces of paper and far from any
books of reference; they will perhaps forget the imperfections in
remembering that it has been written close to the turmoil of the
battlefield, to the continual music of the cannon and the steady tramp
of feet marching past my window.
Index
Aeroplanes, Taube, 145, 176
throwing down proclamations, 53
_Affiches_, of the Burgomaster of Antwerp, 53
of the Burgomaster of Brussels, 10, 11, 181, 182
forbidding a menacing look, etc., 32
German, proclaiming victories, 30, 67
German, of Von der Golst, 67, 68
instructions to citizens, 67
American Consul, help from, 66, 77
Antwerp, the forts of, 73
the heavy guns, 73
news of the downfall of, 96
Austrian prisoners, 148
Automobiles of the Flying Column, 146, 169
Belgian Red Cross Society, 5, 12
Bishop, sad fate of the, 103
Boden, a night at, 103, 104
Brassard, the Red Cross, 61
Brussels, fortifications of, 9
German patients in fire-station hospital at, 20
hospitals in, 13
occupied by the Germans, 14
the start to, 6, 7
Burgomaster of Antwerp, 53
of Brussels, 10, 11, 54, 74
of Charleroi, 20
Camp, a German, 61, 62
Cannon, distinction between French and German, 40
Cholera, rumours of, 97
Charleroi, burning of, 20, 22, 32
and Charleville, 36
terrorization of peasants in, 33
Christmas Eve in Zyradow, 167
fare, 170
Cologne, arrival at, 85-87
Copenhagen, arrival at, 92
Danish-German soldiers as guards, 81
Danish welcome, a, 92
Death of a Breton soldier, 44
of a certain French count, 48, 49
Difference in French and German equipment, 47
Echevins of Brussels, 74
Empress Marie Federovna, interview with, 111
Equipment of French and German soldiers, 47
Expulsion of nurses and doctors from Brussels, 80
Firing at the Red Cross, 35
Fire-station hospital, 13, 19, 20
_Flandres Libérale_, 71
Flying Column, 125, 126
Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul, 107
French convent, a, 60
prisoners as patients, 28, 29
German officers' behaviour at Herbesthal, 83
patients at fire-station, 20
patients at M----, 41
preparations for war, 33
surgeon at M----, 31
Grand Duchess Cyril's Hospital in Warsaw, 144
Hamburg, 88, 89
Hansen, Dr. Norman, 95
Harsh treatment of wounded, 42
Haparanda, 104
Herbesthal, search at, 83
Holland, rumoured war with, 31
"Hoosh," 85
Hotel Cosmopolite, Copenhagen, 92
Hotel d'Europe, Warsaw, 124
Hotel at Lodz, 140
Ikons, 115, 173
Improvised hospital from theatre, 152
Infiladed trench, a, 162
Insects, 139
Inscription over gateway in Charleroi, 30
Interview with Dowager Empress of Russia, 111
St. John Ambulance Society, 5, 97
Jumet, the burning of, 21
Karungi, 104
Kiel Canal, 90
Liège, 65, 83
Lodz, 131
hospital at, 132-38
shelling of, 132, 135
London, first week of the war, 2
Louvain, destruction of, 81
refugees from, 11
Lowice, 150
Luggage problem, the, 126
Mâlines, 60, 63, 81
M---- Red Cross Hospital, 23
Committee, 28
dinner-time, 27
a night on duty, 23-24
the curé of, 44
Max, Monsieur, 10, 11, 55, 74
Maubeuge taken, 41
Münster, breakfast at, 88
Neutrality of Belgium, 82
of Denmark, 100
Newspaper boy caught by Germans, 71, 72
Night in the trenches, a, 171-74
Nurses in Brussels, 8, 19, 66
Operation, a severe, 25, 26
Ostend in August, 7
Patients sent off to Germany, 41, 46
Petrograd, 107, 108
Pigeons, loss of, 55
Poem to British surgeons and nurses, 95
Poland, distress in, 97
Prisoners, Austrian, 148
French, 28
German, 148
Proclamation of Burgomaster of Brussels, 10, 11
forbidding "a menacing look," 32
German announcing victories, 30, 67
of Von der Golst, 67, 68
Queen of Holland, 31
Radzivilow, 161
Castle, 151
Raphael, St., 104
Rawka, the river, 172
Refugees from Termonde and Louvain, 11
in Poland, 142
Registration of trained nurses, 4
Red Cross flag in Brussels, 55
hospital in Warsaw, 113-21
workers in Belgium, 23, 28, 46
Russian factory laws, 158
Russian Red Cross, Committee, 108
permission to serve, 97
Russian roads, 146
Russian sisterhoods, 109
Russian soldiers, 123
their relationship with their officers, 123
Scarcity of supplies, 24, 37, 169
Searched by German sentries, 62
Siberian ponies, 128
Skiernevice, 146
Skirmish between Belgian and German outposts, 59
Spies, 148
Stamps, issue of Belgian, 74
State registration of nurses, 4
St. Raphael, 104, 106
Stockholm, 102
Taube aeroplane, 147, 176
Termonde, refugees from, 11
Theatre at Skiernevice, 152
_Times_, the price of, 70
Tirlemont, 57, 82
Torchlight tattoo, 1
Turco soldiers, 29
Turkestan soldiers, 151, 152
Untrained nurses, the danger, 5, 120
Vendrup, 91
Voluntary Aid Detachments, 5
Waelheim, forts of, 73
Water-supply difficulties, 39
Warsaw, the city of, 121
the Red Cross Hospital, 113-20
Wavre St. Catherine, forts of, 73
Wounded French prisoners sent to Germany, 46
German soldiers at M----, 41
Zeppelins, 81
Zouave patients, 45
Zyradow Hospital, 158
_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. LTD.
_At the Ballantyne Press_
LONDON AND EDINBURGH
* * * * *
Transcriber's note: Spelling and punctuation have been normalized.