perhaps, of an English seaport. They hustle for their food, shout at the
helpers, and seem to have no notion that such words as "please" and "thank
you" exist. After three or four hours of battling with such an apparently
mannerless crew one of the helpers saw them depart to the platform where
their train was waiting for them, with very natural relief. But they were
no sooner gone, when a guardsman, with the manners, the stature, and the
smartness of his kind, came back to the counter, and asked to speak to
the lady in charge of it. "Those chaps, Miss, what have just gone out," he
said apologetically, "have never been used to ladies, and they don't know
what to say to them. So they asked me just to come in and say for them
they were very much obliged for all the ladies' kindness, but they
couldn't say it themselves." The tired helper was suddenly too choky to
answer. The message, the choice of the messenger, as one sure to do "the
right thing," were both so touching.
But there was a sudden movement in the crowd. The train was up. We all
surged out upon the platform, and I watched the embarkation--the endless
train engulfing its hundreds of men. Just as I had seen the food and
equipment trains going up from the first base laden with everything
necessary to replace the daily waste of the army, so here was the train of
human material, going up to replace the daily waste of _men_. After many
hours of travelling, and perhaps some of rest, these young soldiers--how
young most of them were!--would find themselves face to face with the
sharpest realities of war. I thought of what I had seen in the Red Cross
hospital that afternoon--"what man has made of man"--the wreck of youth
and strength, the hideous pain, the helpless disablement.
But the station rang with laughter and talk. Some one in the canteen began
to play "Keep the Home Fires Burning"--and the men in the train joined in,
though not very heartily, for as one or two took care to tell me,
laughingly--"That and 'Tipperary' are awfully stale now!" A bright-faced
lad discussed with D---- how long the war would last. "And _shan't_ we
miss it when it's done!" he said, with a jesting farewell to us, as he
jumped into the train which had begun to move. Slowly, slowly it passed
out of sight, amid waves of singing and the shouting of good-byes....
It was late that evening, when after much talk with various officers, I
went up to my room to try and write, bewildered by a multitude of
impressions--impressions of human energy, human intelligence, human
suffering. What England is doing in this country will leave, it seems to
me, indelible marks upon the national character. I feel a natural pride,
as I sit thinking over the day, in all this British efficiency and power,
and a quick joy in the consciousness of our fellowship with France, and
hers with us. But the struggle at Verdun is still in its first intensity,
and when I have read all that the evening newspapers contain about it,
there stirs in me a fresh realisation of the meaning of what I have been
seeing. In these great bases, in the marvellous railway organisation, in
the handling of the vast motor transport in all its forms, in the feeding
and equipment of the British Army, we have the scaffolding and preparation
of war, which, both in the French and English Armies, have now reached a
perfection undreamt of when the contest began. But the war itself--the
deadly struggle of that distant line to which it all tends? It is in the
flash and roar of the guns, in the courage and endurance of the fighting
man, that all this travail of brain and muscle speaks at last. At that
courage and endurance, women, after all, can only guess--through whatever
rending of their own hearts.
But I was to come somewhat nearer to it than I thought then. The morrow
brought surprise.
V
Dear H.
Our journey farther north through the deep February snow was scarcely less
striking as an illustration of Great Britain's constantly growing share in
the war than the sight of the great supply bases themselves. The first
part of it, indeed, led over solitary uplands, where the chained wheels of
the motor rocked in the snow, and our military chauffeur dared make no
stop, for fear he should never be able to start again. All that seemed
alive in the white landscape were the partridges--sometimes in great
flocks--which scudded at our approach, or occasional groups of hares in
the middle distance holding winter parley. The road seemed interminably
long and straight, and ours were almost the first tracks in it. The snow
came down incessantly, and once or twice it looked as though we should be
left stranded in the white wilderness.
But after a third of the journey was over, the snow began to lessen and
the roads to clear. We dropped first into a seaport town which offered
much the same mingled scene of French and English, of English nurses, and
French _poilus_, of unloading ships, and British soldiers, as the bases we
had left, only on a smaller scale. And beyond the town we climbed again on
to the high land, through a beautiful country of interwoven downs, and
more plentiful habitation. Soon, indeed, the roads began to show the signs
of war--a village or small town, its picturesque market-place filled with
a park of artillery wagons; roads lined with motor lorries with the
painted shell upon them that tells ammunition; British artillerymen in
khaki, bringing a band of horses out of a snow-bound farm; closed
motor-cars filled with officers hurrying past; then an open car with
King's Messengers, tall, soldierly figures, looking in some astonishment
at the two ladies, as they hurry by. And who or what is this horseman
looming out of the sleet--like a figure from a piece of Indian or Persian
embroidery, turbaned and swarthy, his cloak swelling out round his
handsome head and shoulders, the buildings of a Norman farm behind him?
"There are a few Indian cavalry about here," says our guide--"they are
billeted in the farms." And presently the road is full of them. Their
Eastern forms, their dark, intent faces pass strangely through the Norman
landscape.
Now we are only some forty miles from the line, and we presently reach
another town containing an important British Headquarters, where we are to
stop for luncheon. The inn at which we put up is like the song in "Twelfth
Night," "old and plain"--and when lunch is done, our Colonel goes to pay
an official call at Headquarters, and my daughter and I make our way to
the historic church of the town. The Colonel joins us here with another
officer, who brings the amazing news that "G.H.Q."--General
Headquarters--that mysterious centre and brain of all things--invites us
for two days! If we accept, an officer will come for us on the morning of
March 1st to our hotel in Boulogne and take us by motor, some forty miles,
to the guest-house where G.H.Q. puts up its visitors. "_Accept!"_ Ah, if
one could only forget for a moment the human facts behind the absorbing
interest and excitement of this journey, one might be content to feel only
the stir of quickened pulses, of gratitude for a further opportunity so
tremendous.
As it was, I saw all the journey henceforward with new eyes, because of
that to which it was bringing us. On we sped, through the French
countryside, past a great forest lying black on the edge of the white
horizon--I open my map and find it marked Bois de Crecy!--past another old
town, with Agincourt a few miles to the east, and so into a region of pine
and sand that borders the sea. Darkness comes down, and we miss our way.
What are these lines of light among the pine woods? Another military and
hospital camp, which we are to see on the morrow--so we discover at last.
But we have overshot our goal, and must grope our way back through the
pine woods to the sea-shore, where a little primitive hotel, built for the
summer, with walls that seem to be made of brown paper, receives us. But
we have motored far that day, and greet it joyfully.
The following morning we woke to a silvery sunlight, with, at last, some
promise of spring over a land cleared of snow. The day was spent in going
through a camp which has been set down in one of the pleasantest and
healthiest spots of France, a favourite haunt of French artists before the
war. Now the sandy slopes, whence the pines, alack, have been cut away,
are occupied by a British reinforcement camp, by long lines of hospitals,
by a convalescent depot, and by the training-grounds, where, as at other
bases, the newly arrived troops are put through their last instruction
before going to the front. As usual, the magnitude of what has been done
in one short year filled one with amazement. Here is the bare catalogue:
Infantry Base Depots, i.e. sleeping and mess quarters, for thousands of
men belonging to the new armies; 16 hospitals with 21,000 beds, 3 rifle
ranges; 2 training-camps; a machine-gun training-school; a vast laundry
worked by Frenchwomen under British organisation, which washes for _all_
the hospitals, 30,000 pieces a day; recreation huts of all types and
kinds, official and voluntary; a Cinema theatre, seating 800 men, with
performances twice a day; nurses' clubs; officers' clubs; a Supply Depot
for food; an Ordnance Depot for everything that is not food; new sidings
to the railway, where 1,000 men can be entrained on the one side, while
1,000 men are detraining on the other; or two full ambulance trains can
come in and go out; a Convalescent Depot of 2,000 patients, and a
Convalescent Horse Depot of 2,000 horses, etcetera. And this is the work
accomplished since last April in one camp.
Yet, as I look back upon it, my chief impression of that long day is an
impression, first, of endless hospital huts and marquees, with their rows
of beds, in which the pale or flushed faces are generally ready--unless
pain or weariness forbid--as a visitor ventures timidly near, to turn and
smile in response to the few halting words of sympathy or inquiry which
are all one can find to say; and, next, of such a wealth of skill, and
pity, and devotion poured out upon this terrible human need, as makes one
thank God for doctors, and nurses, and bright-faced V.A.D.'s. After all,
one tremblingly asks oneself, in spite of the appalling facts of wounds,
and death, and violence in which the human world is now steeped, is it yet
possible, is it yet true, that the ultimate thing, the final power behind
the veil--to which at least this vast linked spectacle of suffering and
tenderness, here in this great camp, testifies--is _not_ Force, but Love?
Is this the mysterious message which seems to breathe from these crowded
wards--to make them _just_ bearable. Let me recollect the open door of an
operating theatre, and a young officer, quite a boy, lying there with a
bullet in his chest, which the surgeons were just about to try and
extract. The fine, pale features of the wounded man, the faces of the
surgeon and the nurses, so intent and cheerfully absorbed, the shining
surfaces and appliances of the white room--stamp themselves on memory. I
recollect, too, one John S----, a very bad case, a private. "Oh, you must
come and see John S----," says one of the Sisters. "We get all the little
distractions we can for John. Will he recover? Well, we thought
so--but"--her face changes gravely--"John himself seems to have made up
his mind lately. He knows--but he never complains." Knows what? We go to
see him, and he turns round philosophically from his tea. "Oh, I'm all
right--a bit tired--that's all." And then a smile passes between him and
his nurse. He has lost a leg, he has a deep wound in his back which won't
heal, which is draining his life away--poor, poor John S----! Close by is
a short, plain man, with a look of fevered and patient endurance that
haunts one now to think of. "It's my eyes. I'm afraid they're getting
worse. I was hit in the head, you see. Yes, the pain's bad--sometimes."
The nurse looks at him anxiously as we pass, and explains what is being
tried to give relief.
This devotion of the nurses--how can one ever say enough of it! I recall
the wrath of a medical officer in charge of a large hospital at Rouen.
"Why don't they give more Red Crosses to the _working nurses_? They don't
get half enough recognition. I have a nurse here who has been twelve
months in the operating theatre. She ought to have a V.C.!--It's worth
it."
And here is a dark-eyed young officer who had come from a distant colony
to fight for England. I find him in an officer's hospital, established not
long after the war broke out, in a former Casino, where the huge
baccarat-room has been turned into two large and splendid wards. He is
courteously ready to talk about his wound, but much more ready to talk
about his Sister.
"It's simply _wonderful_ what they do for us!" he says, all his face
lighting up. "When I was worst there wasn't an hour in the day or night my
Sister wasn't ready to try anything in the world to help me. But they're
all like that."
Let me here gratefully recall, also, the hospitals organised by the
Universities of Chicago and Harvard, entirely staffed by American Sisters
and Doctors, each of them providing 34 doctors and 80 nurses, and dealing
with 1,040 patients. Harvard has maintained a general hospital with the
British Force in France since July, 1915. The first passages and uniforms
were paid for by the British Government, but the University has itself
paid all passages, and provided all uniforms since the start; and it is
proposed, I am told, to carry on this generous help indefinitely.
Twenty thousand wounded!--while every day the ambulance trains come and go
from the front, or to other bases--there to fill up one or other of the
splendid hospital ships that take our brave fellows back to England, and
home, and rest. And this city of hospitals, under its hard-pressed
medical chief, with all its wealth of scientific invention, and painsaving
device, and unremitting care, with its wonderful health and recovery
statistics, has been the growth of just twelve months. The mind wavers
between the two opposing images it suggests: war and its havoc on the one
hand--the power of the human brain and the goodness of the human heart on
the other.
II
It was late on the 29th of February that we reached our next
resting-place, to find a kind greeting from another Base Commandant and
final directions for our journey of the morrow. We put up at one of the
old commercial inns of the town (it is not easy to find hotel quarters of
any kind just now, when every building at all suitable has been pressed
into the hospital service) and I found delight in watching the various
types of French officers, naval and military, who came in to the _table
d'hôte_, plunging as soon as they had thrown off their caps and cloaks,
and while they waited for their consommé, into the papers with the latest
news of Verdun. But we were too tired to try and talk! The morning came
quickly, and with it our escort from G.H.Q. We said good-bye to Colonel
S., who had guided our journey so smoothly through all the fierce
drawbacks of the weather, and made friends at once with our new guide,
the staff-officer who deals with the guests of G.H.Q. Never shall I
forget that morning's journey! I find in my notes: "A beautiful drive--far
more beautiful than I had expected--over undulating country, with distant
views of interlocking downs, and along typical French roads, tree or
forest bordered, running straight as a line up-hill and down-hill,
over upland and plain. One exquisite point of view especially comes
back to me, where a road to the coast--that coast which the Germans
so nearly reached!--diverged upon our left, and all the lowlands
westward came into sight. It was pure Turner, the soft sunlight of
the day, with its blue shadows, and pale-blue sky; the yellow chalk
hills, still marked with streaks of snow; the woods, purple and madder
brown, the distances ethereally blue; and the villages, bare and unlovely
compared with the villages of Kent and Sussex, but expressing a strong
old historic life, sprung from the soil, and one with it. The first
distant glimpse, as we turned a hill-corner, of the old town which was
our destination--extraordinarily fine!--its ancient church a towered
mass of luminous grey under the sunshine, gathering the tiled roofs
into one harmonious whole."
But we avoided the town itself and found ourselves presently descending an
avenue of trees to the eighteenth-century château, which is used by G.H.Q.
as a hostel for its guests--allied and neutral correspondents, military
attachés, special missions, and the like. In a few minutes I found myself
standing bewildered by the strangeness and the interest of it all, in a
charming Louis-Quinze room, plain and simple in the true manner of the
genuine French country house, but with graceful panelled walls, an old
_armoire_ of the date, windows wide open to the spring sun, and a
half-wild garden outside. A _femme de ménage_, much surprised to be
waiting on two ladies, comes to look after us. And this is France!--and we
are only thirty miles from that fighting line, which has drawn our English
hearts to it all these days.
A map is waiting for each of us down-stairs, and we are told, roughly,
where it is proposed to take us. A hurried lunch, and we are in the motor
again, with Captain ---- sitting in front. "You have your passes?" he asks
us, and we anxiously verify the new and precious papers that brought us
from our last stage, and will have to be shown on our way. We drive first
to Arques, and Hazebrouck, then southeast. At a certain village we call at
the Divisional Headquarters. The General comes out himself, and proposes
to guide us on. "I will take you as near to the fighting line as I can."
On we went, in two motors; the General with me, Captain ---- and D.
following. We passed through three villages, and after the first we were
within shell range of the German batteries ahead. But I cannot remember
giving a thought to the fact, so absorbing to the unaccustomed eye were
all the accumulating signs of the actual battle-line; the endless rows of
motor-lorries, either coming back from, or going up to the front, now with
food, now with ammunition, reserve trenches to right and left of the road;
a "dump" or food-station, whence carts filled from the heavy lorries go
actually up to the trenches, lines of artillery wagons, parks of
ammunition, or motor-ambulances, long lines of picketed horses,
motor-cyclists dashing past. In one village we saw a merry crowd in the
little _place_ gathered round a field-kitchen whence came an excellent
fragrance of good stew. A number of the men were wearing leeks in their
ears for St. David's Day. "You're Welsh, then?" I said to one of the cooks
(by this time we had left the motor and were walking). "I'm not!" said the
little fellow, with a laughing look. "It's St. Patrick's Day I'm waitin'
for! But I've no objection to givin' St. David a turn!"
He opened his kitchen to show me the good things going on, and as we moved
away there came up a marching platoon of men from the trenches, who had
done their allotted time there and were coming back to billets. The
General went to greet them. "Well, my boys, you could stick it all right?"
It was good to see the lightening on the tired faces, and to watch the
group disappear into the cheerful hubbub of the village.
We walked on, and outside the village I heard the guns for the first time.
We were now "actually in the battle," according to my companion, and a
shell was quite possible, though not probable. Again, I can't remember
that the fact made any impression upon us. We were watching now parties of
men at regular intervals sitting waiting in the fields beside the road,
with their rifles and kits on the grass near them. They were waiting for
the signal to move up toward the firing line as soon as the dusk was
further advanced. "We shall meet them later," said the General, "as we
come back."
At the same moment he turned to address a young artillery-officer in the
road: "Is your gun near here?" "Yes, sir, I was just going back to it." He
was asked to show us the way. As we followed I noticed the white puff of a
shell, far ahead, over the flat, ditch-lined fields; a captive balloon was
making observations about half a mile in front, and an aeroplane passed
over our heads. "Ah, not a Boche," said Captain ---- regretfully, "but we
brought a Boche down here yesterday, just over this village--a splendid
fight."
Meanwhile, the artillery fire was quickening. We reached a ruined village
from which all normal inhabitants had been long since cleared away. The
shattered church was there, and I noticed a large crucifix quite intact
still hanging on its chancel wall. A little farther and the boyish
artillery-officer, our leader, who had been by this time joined by a
comrade, turned and beckoned to the General. Presently we were creeping
through seas of mud down into the gun emplacement, so carefully concealed
that no aeroplane overhead could guess it.
There it was--how many of its fellows I had seen in the Midland and
northern workshops!--its muzzle just showing in the dark, and nine or ten
high-explosive shells lying on the bench in front of the breech. One is
put in. We stand back a little, and a sergeant tells me to put my fingers
in my ears and look straight at the gun. Then comes the shock--not so
violent as I had expected--and the cartridge-case drops out. The shell has
sped on its way to the German trenches--with what result to human flesh
and blood? But I remember thinking very little of that--till afterwards.
At the time, the excitement of the shot and of watching that little group
of men in the darkness held all one's nerves gripped.
In a few more minutes we were scrambling out again through the deep, muddy
trench leading to the dugout, promising to come back to tea with the
officers, in their billet, when our walk was done.
Now indeed we were "in the battle"! Our own guns were thundering away
behind us, and the road was more and more broken up by shell holes. "Look
at that group of trees to your left--beyond it is Neuve Chapelle," said
our guide. "And you see those ruined cottages, straight ahead, and the
wood behind." He named a wood thrice famous in the history of the war.
"Our lines are just beyond the cottages, and the German lines just in
front of the wood. How far are we from them? Three-quarters of a mile." It
was discussed whether we should be taken zigzag through the fields to the
entrance of the communication-trench. But the firing was getting hotter,
and Captain ---- was evidently relieved when we elected to turn back.
Shall I always regret that lost opportunity? You did ask me to write
something about "the life of the soldiers in the trenches"--and that was
the nearest that any woman could personally have come to it! But I doubt
whether anything more--anything, at least, that was possible--could have
deepened the whole effect. We had been already nearer than any woman--even
a nurse--has been, in this war, to the actual fighting on the English
line, and the cup of impressions was full.
As we turned back, I noticed a little ruined cottage, with a Red Cross
flag floating. Our guide explained that it was a field dressing-station.
It was not for us--who could not help--to ask to go in. But the thought of
it--there were some badly wounded in it--pursued me as we walked on
through the beautiful evening.
A little farther we came across what I think moved me more than anything
else in that crowded hour--those same companies of men we had seen sitting
waiting in the fields, now marching quietly, spaced one behind the other,
up to the trenches, to take their turn there. Every day I am accustomed to
see bodies, small and large, of khaki-clad men, marching through these
Hertfordshire lanes. But this was different. The bearing was erect and
manly, the faces perfectly cheerful; but there was the seriousness in them
of men who knew well the work to which they were going. I caught a little
quiet whistling, sometimes, but no singing. We greeted them as they
passed, with a shy "Good luck!" and they smiled shyly back, surprised, of
course, to see a couple of women on that road. But there was no shyness
towards the General. It was very evident that the relations between him
and them were as good as affection and confidence on both sides could make
them.