A week after we had reached London, we were off again to the
front. This time our objective was Furnes, a little town fifteen
miles east of Dunkirk, and about five miles from the fighting-line.
The line of the Belgian trenches ran in a circle, following the
course of the River Yser, the little stream which has proved
such an insuperable barrier to the German advance. Furnes
lies at the centre of the circle, and is thus an ideal position for
an advanced base, such as we intended to establish. It is easy
of access from Dunkirk by a fine main road which runs alongside
an important canal, and as Dunkirk was our port, and the only
source of our supplies, this was a great consideration. From
Furnes a number of roads lead in various directions to Ypres,
Dixmude, Nieuport, and the coast, making it a convenient
centre for an organization such as ours, requiring, as we
did, ready means of reaching the front in any direction, and
open communication with our base of supplies.
We crossed from Dover in the Government transport, and
arrived at Dunkirk about ten o'clock on Tuesday morning. There
we met Dr. Munro's party, the famous Flying Ambulance Corps,
with whom we were to enter on our new venture. They had not
come over to England at all, but had come down the coast in
their cars, and had spent the last few days in Malo, the seaside
suburb of Dunkirk. The Belgian Government very kindly lent us
a couple of big motor-lorries in which to take out our stores, and
with our own motors we made quite a procession as we started
off from the wharf of Dunkirk on our fifteen-mile drive to Furnes.
It was late in the afternoon when we reached our new home. It
was a large school, partly occupied by the priests connected
with it, partly by officers quartered there, and one of the larger
classrooms had been used as a dressing-station by some Belgian
doctors in Furnes. For ourselves, the only accommodation
consisted of a few empty classrooms and a huge dormitory
divided into cubicles, but otherwise destitute of the necessaries
for sleep. Several hours' hard work made some change in the
scene, mattresses and blankets being hauled up to the dormitory,
where the nursing staff was accommodated, while straw laid
down in one of the classrooms made comfortable if somewhat
primitive beds for the male members. Meanwhile, in the kitchen
department miracles had been accomplished, and we all sat down
to dinner with an appetite such as one rarely feels at home, and for
which many of our patients over in England would be willing to pay
quite large sums. The large room was lit by two candles and a
melancholy lamp, there was no tablecloth, the spoons were of
pewter, with the bowls half gone, and the knives were in their
dotage. But the scales had fallen from our eyes, and we realized
what trifles these things are. Madame, the genius who presided
over our domestic affairs, and many other affairs as well, and
her assistants, had produced from somewhere food, good food,
and plenty of it; and what in the world can a hungry man want more?
Truly there are many people who require a moral operation
for cataract, that they might see how good is the world in which they live.
Next day we proceeded to unpack our stores, and to try to
make a hospital out of these empty rooms, and then only did
we discover that an overwhelming misfortune had overtaken
us. By some extraordinary circumstance which has never been
explained, we had lost practically the whole of the surgical
instruments which we had brought out of Antwerp with such
trouble and risk. They were tied up in sheets, and my own
impression is that they were stolen. However that may be, here
we were in as ludicrous a position as it is possible for even a
hospital to occupy, for not only had we none of the ordinary
instruments, but, as if Fate meant to have a good laugh at us,
we had a whole series of rare and expensive tools. We had no
knives, and no artery forceps, and not a stitch of catgut; but we
had an oesophagoscope, and the very latest possible pattern of
cystoscope, and a marvellous set of tools for plating fractures. It
reminded one of the costume of an African savage--a silk hat,
and nothing else. Some Belgian doctors who had been working
there lent us a little case of elementary instruments, and that
was absolutely all we had.
Scarcely had we made this terrible discovery, when an
ambulance arrived with two wounded officers, and asked if we
were ready to admit patients. We said, "No," and I almost think
that we were justified. The men in charge of the ambulance
seemed very disappointed, and said that in that case there was
nothing for it but to leave the wounded men on their stretchers
till an ambulance train should come to take them to Calais,
which they might ultimately reach in two or three days' time.
They were badly wounded, and we thought that at least we
could do better than that; so we made up a couple of beds in
one of the empty rooms, and took them in. Little did we dream
of what we were in for. An hour later another ambulance
arrived, and as we had started, we thought that we might as
well fill up the ward we had begun. That did it. The sluice-gates
were opened, and the wounded poured in. In four days we
admitted three hundred and fifty patients, all of them with
injuries of the most terrible nature. The cases we had seen at
Antwerp were nothing to these. Arms and legs were torn right
off or hanging by the merest shreds, ghastly wounds of the
head left the brain exposed. Many of the poor fellows were
taken from the ambulances dead, and of the others at least half
must have died.
For four days and four nights the operating theatre was at work
continuously, till one sickened at the sight of blood and at the
thought of an operation. Three operating tables were in almost
continuous use, and often three major operations were going
on at the same time; and all the instruments we had were two
scalpels, six artery forceps, two dissecting forceps, and a finger-
saw. Think of doing amputations through the thigh with that
equipment! There was nothing else for it. Either the work had to
be done or the patients had to die. And there was certainly no
one else to do it. The rapid advance of the Germans had swept
away all the admirable arrangements which the Belgian Army
had made for dealing with its wounded. The splendid hospitals
of Ghent and Ostend were now in German hands, and there
had not yet been time to get new ones established. The cases
could be sent to Calais, it was true, but there the accommodation
was so far totally inadequate, and skilled surgical assistance
was not to be obtained. For the moment our hospital, with its
ludicrous equipment, was the only hope of the badly wounded.
By the mercy of Heaven, we had plenty of chloroform and
morphia, and a fair supply of dressings, and we knew by
experience that at this stage it is safer to be content with the
minimum of actual operative work, so that I think it was we,
rather than our patients, who suffered from the want of the
ordinary aids of surgery. In the wards there was a shortage,
almost as serious, of all the ordinary equipment of nursing, for
much of this had been too cumbrous to bring from Antwerp;
and though we had brought out a fair supply of ordinary
requirements, we had never dreamt of having to deal with such
a rush as this. Ward equipment cannot be got at a moment's
notice, and the bulk of it had not yet arrived. We only
possessed a dozen folding beds, in which some of the worst
cases were placed. The others had to lie on straw on the floor,
and so closely were they packed that it was only with the
greatest care that one could thread one's way across the ward.
How the nurses ever managed to look after their patients is
beyond my comprehension, but they were magnificent. They
rose to the emergency as only Englishwomen can, and there is
not one of those unfortunate men who will not remember with
gratitude their sympathy and their skill.
During these first days a terrific fight was going on around
Dixmude and Nieuport, and it was a very doubtful question how
long it would be possible for the Belgian and French troops to
withstand the tremendous attacks to which they were being
subjected. The matter was so doubtful that we had to hold
ourselves in readiness to clear out from the hospital at two
hours' notice, whilst our wounded were taken away as fast as
we could get them into what one can only describe as a portable
condition. It was a physical impossibility for our wards to hold
more than a hundred and fifty patients, even when packed
close together side by side on the floor, and as I have said,
three hundred and fifty were dealt with in the first four days.
This meant that most of them spent only twenty-four hours
in the hospital, and as we were only sent cases which could
not, as they stood, survive the long train journey to Calais,
this meant that they were often taken on almost immediately
after serious operations. Several amputations of the thigh,
for example, were taken away next day, and many of them
must have spent the next twenty-four hours in the train, for
the trains were very tardy in reaching their destination. It is not
good treatment, but good surgery is not the primary object of
war. The fighting troops are the first consideration, and the
surgeon has to manage the best way he can.
One of the most extraordinary cases we took in was that of the
editor of a well-known sporting journal in England. He had
shown his appreciation of the true sporting instinct by going out
to Belgium and joining the army as a mitrailleuse man. If there
is one place where one may hope for excitement, it is in an
armoured car with a mitrailleuse. The mitrailleuse men are
picked dare-devils, and their work takes them constantly into
situations which require a trained taste for their enjoyment. Our
friend the editor was out with his car, and had got out to
reconnoitre, when suddenly some Germans in hiding opened
fire. Their first shot went through both his legs, fracturing both
tibiae, and he fell down, of course absolutely incapable of
standing, just behind the armoured car. Owing to some mistake,
an officer in the car gave the order to start, and away went the
car. He would have been left to his fate, but suddenly realizing
how desperate his position was, he threw up his hand and caught
hold of one of the rear springs. Lying on his back and holding
on to the spring, he was dragged along the ground, with both
his legs broken, for a distance of about half a mile.
The car was going at about twenty-five miles an hour, and how
he ever maintained his hold Heaven only knows. At last they
pulled up, and there they found him, practically unconscious,
his clothes torn to ribbons, his back a mass of bruises, but still
holding on. It was one of the most splendid examples of real
British grit of which I have ever heard. They brought him to the
hospital, and we fixed him up as well as we could. One would
have thought that he might have been a little downhearted, but
not a bit of it. He arrived in the operating theatre smiling and
smoking a cigar, and gave us a vivid account of his experiences.
We sent him over to England, and I heard that he was doing well.
There is one sporting paper in England which is edited by a
real sportsman. May he long live to inspire in others the courage
of which he has given such a splendid example!