We were up early in the morning, and our first business was to go
round to the British Headquarters to find out what they intended to do,
and what they expected of us as a British base hospital. If they
intended to stay, and wished us to do likewise, we were quite
prepared to do so, but we did not feel equal to the responsibility of
keeping more than a hundred wounded in a position so obviously
perilous. From shrapnel they were fairly safe in the basement, but
from large shells or from incendiary bombs there is no protection. It is
not much use being in a cellar if the house is burnt down over your
head. So two of us started off in our motor to get news.
The Headquarters were in the Hotel St. Antoine, at the corner of the
Place Verte opposite to the Cathedral, so we had to go right across
the town. We went by the Rue d'Argile and the Rue Leopold, and we
had a fair opportunity of estimating the results of the night's
bombardment. In the streets through which we passed it was really
astonishingly small. Cornices had been knocked off, and the
fragments lay in the streets; a good many windows were broken, and
in a few cases a shell had entered an attic and blown up the roof.
Plainly only small shells had been used. We did not realize that many
of the houses we passed were just beginning to get comfortably
alight, and that there was no one to put out the fires that had only
begun so far to smoulder. A few people were about, evidently on their
way out of Antwerp, but the vast bulk of the population had already
gone. It is said that the population of half a million numbered by the
evening only a few hundreds. We passed a small fox terrier lying on
the pavement dead, and somehow it has remained in my mind as a
most pathetic sight. He had evidently been killed by a piece of
shrapnel, and it seemed very unfair. But probably his people had left
him, and he was better out of it.
We turned into the Marche aux Souliers, and drew up at the Hotel St.
Antoine, and as we stepped down from the car a shell passed close to
us with a shriek, and exploded with a terrific crash in the house
opposite across the narrow street. We dived into the door of the hotel
to escape the falling debris. So far the shells had been whistling
comfortably over our heads, but it was evident that the Germans were
aiming at the British Headquarters, and that we had put our heads
into the thick of it, for it was now positively raining shells all round
us. But we scarcely noticed them in our consternation at what we
found, for the British Staff had disappeared. We wandered through
the deserted rooms which had been so crowded a few days before,
but there was not a soul to be seen. They had gone, and left
no address. At last an elderly man appeared, whom I took to be
the proprietor, and all he could tell us was that there was no one
but himself in the building. Of all the desolate spots in the world
I think that an empty hotel is the most desolate, and when you have
very fair reason to believe that a considerable number of guns are
having a competition as to which can drop a shell into it first, it
becomes positively depressing. We got into our car and drove
down the Place de Meir to the Belgian Croix Rouge, where we
hoped to get news of our countrymen, and there we were told
that they had gone to the Belgian Etat Majeur near by. We had
a few minutes' conversation with the President of the Croix Rouge,
a very good friend of ours, tall and of striking appearance, with
a heavy grey moustache. We asked him what the Croix Rouge
would do. "Ah," he said, "we will stay to the last!" At that very
moment a shell exploded with a deafening crash just outside
in the Place de Meir. I looked at the President, and he threw
up his hands in despair and led the way out of the building. The
Belgian Red Cross had finished its work.
At last at the Etat Majeur we found our Headquarters, and I sincerely
hope that wherever General Paris, Colonel Bridges, and Colonel
Seely go, they will always find people as pleased to see them as we
were. They very kindly told us something of the situation, and said
that, though they had every intention of holding Antwerp, they advised
us to clear out, and they placed at our disposal four motor omnibuses
for the transport of the wounded. So off we drove back to the hospital
to make arrangements for evacuating. It was a lively drive, for I
suppose that the Germans had had breakfast and had got to work
again; at any rate, shells were coming in pretty freely, and we were
happier when we could run along under the lee of the houses.
However, we got back to the hospital safely enough, and there we
held a council of war.
It was in the office, of course--the most risky room we could have
chosen, I suppose--but somehow that did not seem to occur to
anyone. It is curious how soon one grows accustomed to shells. At
that moment a barrel-organ would have caused us far more
annoyance. We sat round the table and discussed the situation. It
was by no means straightforward. In the first place several members
of the community did not wish to leave at all; in the second, we could
not leave any of our wounded behind unattended; and in the third, it
seemed unlikely that we could get them all on to four buses. After a
long discussion we decided to go again and see General Paris, to ask
for absolute instructions as a hospital under his control, and if he told
us to go, to get sufficient transport. And then arose a scene which will
always live in my mind. We had impressed into consultation a retired
officer of distinction to whose help we owed much, and now owe far
more, and whom I shall call our Friend. Perhaps he wished to give us
confidence--I have always suspected that he had an ulterior motive
--but he concluded the discussion by saying that he felt hungry and
would have something to eat before he started, and from his
haversack he produced an enormous German sausage and a large
loaf of bread, which he offered to us all round, and he said he would
like a cup of tea! The shells could do what they liked outside, and if
one of them was rude enough to intrude, it could not be helped. We
must show them that we could pay no attention to anything so vulgar
and noisy. At any rate, the effect on us was electrical. The contrast
between the German shells and the German sausage was too much
for us, and the meeting broke up in positive confusion. Alas that
sausage, the unparalleled trophy of an incomparable moment, was
left behind on the table, and I fear the Germans got it.
General Paris had been obliged to shift his headquarters to the
Pilotage, on the docks and at the farthest end of the city from us. He
was very considerate, and after some discussion said that we had
better leave Antwerp, and sent Colonel Farquharson with us to get six
buses. The Pilotage is at the extreme north end of the Avenue des
Arts, which extends the whole length of Antwerp, and the buses were
on the quay by the Arsenal at the extreme south end, so that we had
to drive the whole length of this, the most magnificent street of
Antwerp, and a distance of about three miles. It was an extraordinary
drive. In the whole length of that Avenue I do not think that we passed
a single individual. It was utterly deserted. All around were signs of
the bombardment--tops of houses blown off, and scattered about
the street, trees knocked down, holes in the roadway where shells
had struck. On the left stood the great Palais de Justice, with most of
its windows broken and part of the roof blown away, and just beyond
this three houses in a row blazing from cellar to chimney, the front
wall gone, and all that remained of the rooms exposed. As I said, only
small shells had been used, and the damage was nothing at all to that
which we afterwards saw at Ypres; but it gave one an impression of
dreariness and utter desolation that could scarcely be surpassed.
Think of driving from Hyde Park Corner down the Strand to the Bank,
not meeting a soul on the way, passing a few clubs in Piccadilly
burning comfortably, the Cecil a blazing furnace, and the Law Courts
lying in little bits about the street, and you will get some idea of
what it looked like. The scream of the shells and the crash when
they fell near by formed quite a suitable if somewhat Futurist
accompaniment.
But the climax of the entertainment, the bonne bouche of the
afternoon, was reserved for the end of our drive, when we reached
the wharf by the Arsenal, where the British stores and transport were
collected. Here was a long row of motor-buses, about sixty of them,
all drawn up in line along the river. Beside them was a long row of
heavily loaded ammunition lorries, and on the other side of the road
was the Arsenal, on our left, blazing away, with a vast column of
smoke towering up to the sky. "It may blow up any minute," said
Colonel Farquharson cheerily, "I had better move that ammunition." I
have never seen an arsenal blow up, and I imagine it is a
phenomenon requiring distance to get it into proper perspective; but I
have some recollection of an arsenal blowing up in Antwerp a few
years ago and taking a considerable part of the town with it. However,
it was not our arsenal, so we waited and enjoyed the view till the
ammunition had been moved, and the Colonel had done his best to
get us the motor-buses. He could only get us four, so we had to make
the best of a bad job. But. meanwhile the Germans had evidently
determined to give us a really good show while they were about it, for
while we waited a Taube came overhead and hovered for a moment,
apparently uncertain as to whether a bomb or a shell would look
better just there. A flash of tinsel falling in the sunlight showed us that
she had made up her mind and was giving the range. But we could
not stay, and were a quarter of a mile away when we looked back and
saw the first shells falling close to where we had been two minutes
before. They had come six miles.
The bombardment was increasing in violence, and large numbers of
incendiary shells were being used, whilst in addition the houses set
on fire during the night were now beginning to blaze. As we drove
back we passed several houses in flames, and the passage of the
narrow streets we traversed was by no means free from risk. At last
we turned into our own street, the Boulevard Leopold, and there we
met a sight which our eyes could scarcely credit. Three motor-buses
stood before our door and patients were being crowded into them.
Those buses and our own lives we owe to the kindness of Major
Gordon. Without them some at least must have remained behind. The
three were already well filled, for our friends thought that we had
certainly been killed and that they must act for themselves. We sent
them off under the escort of one of our cars, as it seemed foolish to
keep them waiting in a position of danger. On our own four we packed
all our remaining patients and all the hospital equipment we could
remove. One does not waste time when one packs under shell fire,
and at the end of three-quarters of an hour there was not a patient
and very little of value in the hospital. I took charge of the theatre as I
knew where the things went, and I think the British working man
would have been rather astonished to see how fast the big sterilizers
fell apart and the operating-tables slid into their cases. The windows
faced shellwards, and I must confess that once or twice when one of
them seemed to be coming unpleasantly near I took the opportunity to
remove my parcels outside. How the patients were got ready and
carried out and into the buses in that time is beyond my
comprehension. But somehow it was managed. I took a last look
round and drove out the last nurse who was trying to rescue some
last "hospital comfort" for a patient, and in the end I was myself driven
out by two indignant dressers who caught me trying to save the
instrument sterilizer. The buses were a wonderful sight. Inside were
some sixty patients, our share of the whole hundred and thirteen, and
on top about thirty of our staff, and the strangest collection of
equipment imaginable. The largest steam sterilizer mounted guard in
front, hoisted there by two sailormen of huge strength, who turned up
from somewhere. Great bundles of blankets, crockery, and
instruments were wedged in everywhere, with the luggage of the staff.
At the door of each bus was seated a nurse, like a conductor, to give
what little attention was possible to the patients. It was a marvellous
sight, but no cheerier crowd of medical students ever left the doors of
a hospital for a Cup-tie.