WITH DR. HECTOR MUNRO'S FLYING AMBULANCE CORPS
_12 October._--Everyone has gone back to England except Sister Bailey
and me. She is waiting to hand over the wounded to the proper
department, and I am waiting to see if I can get on anywhere. It does
seem so hard that when men are most in need of us we should all run home
and leave them.
The noises and racket in Ostend are deafening, and there is panic
everywhere. The boats go to England packed every time. I called on the
Villiers yesterday, and heard that she is leaving on Tuesday. But they
say that the British Minister dare not leave or the whole place would go
wild with fear. Some ships lie close to us on the grey misty water, and
the troops are passing along all day.
_Later._--We heard to-night that the Germans are coming into Ostend
to-morrow, so once more we fly like dust before a broom. It is horrible
having to clear out for them.
I am trying to discover what courage really consists in. It isn't only a
lack of imagination. In some people it is transcendent, in others it is
only a sort of stupidity. If proper precautions were taken the need for
courage would be much reduced--the "tight place" is so often the result
of sheer muddle.
This evening Dr. Hector Munro came in from Ghent with his oddly-dressed
ladies, and at first one was inclined to call them masqueraders in their
knickerbockers and puttees and caps, but I believe they have done
excellent work. It is a queer side of war to see young, pretty English
girls in khaki and thick boots, coming in from the trenches, where they
have been picking up wounded men within a hundred yards of the enemy's
lines, and carrying them away on stretchers. Wonderful little Walküres
in knickerbockers, I lift my hat to you!
Dr. Munro asked me to come on to his convoy, and I gladly did so: he
sent home a lady whose nerves were gone, and I was put in her place.
[Page Heading: ON THE ROAD TO DUNKIRK]
_13 October._--We had an early muddly breakfast, at which everyone spoke
in a high voice and urged others to hurry, and then we collected luggage
and went round to see the General. Afterwards we all got into our motor
ambulances _en route_ for Dunkirk. The road was filled with flying
inhabitants, and down at the dock wounded and well struggled to get on
to the steamer. People were begging us for a seat in our ambulance, and
well-dressed women were setting out to walk twenty miles to Dunkirk. The
rain was falling heavily, and it was a dripping day when we and a lot of
English soldiers found ourselves in the square in Dunkirk, where the
few hotels are. We had an expensive lunch at a greasy restaurant, and
then tried to find rooms.
I began to make out of whom our party consists. There is Lady Dorothy
Fielding--probably 22, but capable of taking command of a ship, and
speaking French like a native; Mrs. Decker, an Australian, plucky and
efficient; Miss Chisholm, a blue-eyed Scottish girl, with a thick coat
strapped around her waist and a haversack slung from her shoulder; a
tall American, whose name I do not yet know, whose husband is a
journalist; three young surgeons, and Dr. Munro. It is all so quaint.
The girls rule the company, carry maps and find roads, see about
provisions and carry wounded.
We could not get rooms at Dunkirk and so came on to St. Malo les Bains,
a small bathing-place which had been shut up for the winter. The owner
of an hotel there opened up some rooms for us and got us some ham and
eggs, and the evening ended very cheerily. Our party seems, to me,
amazingly young and unprotected.
_St. Malo les Bains. 14 October._--To-day I took a car into Dunkirk and
bought some things, as I have lost nearly all I possess at Antwerp. In
the afternoon I went to the dock to get some letters posted, and tramped
about there for a long time. War is such a disorganizer. Nothing starts.
No one is able to move because of wounded arms and legs; it seems to
make the world helpless and painful. In minor matters one lives nearly
always with damp feet and rather dirty and hungry. Drains are all
choked, and one does not get much sleep. These are trifles, of course.
[Page Heading: WOMEN AT THE FRONT]
To-night, as we sat at dinner, a message was brought that a woman
outside had been run over and was going to have a baby immediately in a
tram-way shelter, so out we went and got one of our ambulances, and a
young doctor with his fiancée went off with her. There was a lot of
argument about where the woman lived, until one young man said, "Well,
get in somehow, or the baby will have arrived." There is a simplicity
about these tragic times, and nothing matters but to save people.
_15 October._--To-day we went down to the docks to get a passage for Dr.
Munro, who is going home for money. A German Taube flew overhead and men
were firing rifles at it. An Englishman hit it, and down it came like a
shot bird, so that was the end of a brave man, whoever he was, and it
was a long drop, too, through the still autumn air. Guns have begun to
fire again, so I suppose we shall have to move on once more. One does
not unpack, and it is dangerous to part with one's linen to be washed.
Yesterday I heard a man--a man in a responsible position--say to a girl,
"Tell me, please, how far we are from the firing-line." It was one of
the most remarkable speeches I ever heard. I go to these girls for all
my news. Lady Dorothy Fielding is our real commander, and everyone knows
it. One hears on all sides, "Lady Dorothy, can you get us tyres for the
ambulances? Where is the petrol?" "Do you know if the General will let
us through?" "Have you been able to get us any stores?" "Ought we to
have 'laissez-passer's' or not?" She goes to all the heads of
departments, is the only good speaker of French, and has the only
reliable information about anything. All the men acknowledge her
position, and they say to me, "It's very odd being run by a woman; but
she is the only person who can do anything." In the firing-line she is
quite cool, and so are the other women. They seem to be interested, not
dismayed, by shots and shrapnel.
_16 October._--To-day I have been reading of the "splendid retreat" of
the Marines from Antwerp and their "unprecedented reception" at Deal.
Everyone appears to have been in a state of wild enthusiasm about them,
and it seems almost like Mafeking over again.
What struck me most about these men was the way in which they blew their
own trumpets in full retreat and while flying from the enemy. We
travelled all day in the train with them, and had long conversations
with them all. They were all saying, "We will bring you the Kaiser's
head, miss"; to which I replied, "Well, you had better turn round and go
the other way." Some people like this "English" spirit. I find the
conceit of it most trying. Belgium is in the hands of the enemy, and we
flee before him singing our own praises loudly as we do so. The Marines
lost their kit, spent one night in Antwerp, and went back to England,
where they had an amazing reception amid scenes of unprecedented
enthusiasm! The Government will give them a fresh kit, and the public
will cheer itself hoarse!
[Page Heading: MEN'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS WOMEN]
I could not help thinking, when I read the papers to-day, of our tired
little body of nurses and doctors and orderlies going back quietly and
unproclaimed to England to rest at Folkestone for three days and then to
come out here again. They had been for eighteen hours under heavy shell
fire without so much as a rifle to protect them, and with the immediate
chance of a burning building falling about them. The nurses sat in the
cellars tending wounded men, whom they refused to leave, and then hopped
on to the outside of an ammunition bus "to see the fun," and came home
to buy their little caps and aprons out of their own slender purses and
start work again.
I shall believe in Britishers to the day of my death, and I hope I shall
die before I cease to believe in them, but I do get some disillusions.
At Antwerp not a man remained with us, and the worst of it was they made
elaborate excuses for leaving. Even our sergeant, who helped during the
night, took a comrade off in the morning and disappeared. Both were
wounded, but not badly, and two young English Tommies, very slightly
wounded, left us as soon as the firing began. We saw them afterwards at
the bridge, and they looked pretty mean.
To-night at dinner some officers came in when the food was pretty well
finished, and only some drumsticks of chicken and bits of ham were left.
I am always slow at beginning to eat, and I had a large wing of chicken
still on my plate. I offered this to an officer, who accepted it and
ate it, although he asked me to have a little bit of it. I do hope I
shall meet some cases of chivalry soon.
Firing ceased about 5 o'clock this afternoon, but we are short of news.
The English papers rather annoy one with their continual victories, of
which we see nothing. Everyone talks of the German big guns as if they
were some happy chance. But the Germans were drilling and preparing
while we were making speeches at Hyde Park Corner. Everything had been
thought out by them. People talk of the difficulty they must have had in
preparing concrete floors for their guns. Not a bit of it. There were
innocent dwelling-houses, built long ago, with floors in just the right
position and of just the right stuff, and when they were wanted the top
stories were blown off and the concrete gun-floors were ready. There
were local exhibitions, too, to which firms sent exhibition guns, which
they "forgot" to remove! While we were going on strike they were making
an army, and as we have sown so must we reap.
One almost wonders whether it might not be possible to eliminate the
personal element in war, so constant is the talk about victorious guns.
If guns decide everything, then let them be trained on other guns. Let
the gun that drives farthest and goes surest win. If every siege is
decided by the German 16-inch howitzers, then let us put up brick and
mortar or steel against them, but not men. The day for the bleeding
human body seems to be over now that men are mown down by shells fired
eight miles away. War used to be splendid because it made men strong and
brave, but now a little German in spectacles can stand behind a Krupp
gun and wipe out a regiment.
[Page Heading: PROTECTION OF LIFE OR PROPERTY]
I suppose women will always try to protect life because they know what
it costs to produce it, and men will always try to protect property
because that is what they themselves produce. At Antwerp our wounded men
were begging us to go up to the hospital to fetch their purses from
under their pillows! At present women are only repairers, darning socks,
cleaning, washing up after men, bringing up reinforcements in the way of
fresh life, and patching up wounded men, but some day they must and will
have to say, "The life I produce has as much right to protection as the
property you produce, and I claim my right to protect it."
There seems to me a lack of connection between one man's desire to
extend the area he occupies and young men in their teens lying with
their lungs shot through or backs blown off.
_19 October._--Our time is now spent in waiting and preparing for work
which will probably come soon, as there has been fighting near us again.
One hears the boom of guns a long way off, and always there is the sound
of death in it. One has been too near it not to know now what it means.
Yesterday I went to church in an empty little building, but a few of our
hospital men turned up and made a small congregation. In the afternoon
one or two people came to tea in my bedroom as we could not make our
usual expedition to de Poorter's bunshop. The pastry habit is growing
on us all.
We went to the arsenal to-day to see about some repairs to our
ambulances. I saw a German omnibus which had been captured, and the
eagles on it had been painted out with stripes of red paint and the
French colours put in their place. The omnibus was one mass of
bullet-holes. I have seen waggons at Paardeberg, but I never saw
anything so knocked about as that grey motor-bus. The engines and sides
were shattered and the chauffeur, of course, had been killed. We went on
by motor to the "Champs des Aviateurs." We saw one naval aeroplane man,
who told us that he had been hit in his machine when it was 4,000 feet
up in the air. His jacket was torn by a bullet and his machine dropped,
but he was uninjured, and got away on a bicycle.
The more I see of war the more I am amazed at the courage and nerve
which are shown. Death or the chance of death is everywhere, and we meet
it not as fatalists do or those who believe they can earn eternal glory
with a sacrifice, but lightly and with a song. An English girl at
Antwerp was horribly ashamed of some Belgians who skulked behind a wall
when the firing was hottest. She herself remained in the open.
It has been a great comfort to me that I have had a room to myself so
far on this campaign. I find the communal spirit is not in me. The noisy
meals, the heavy bowls of soup, the piles of labelled dinner-napkins,
give me an unexpected feeling of oppressive seclusion and solitude, and
only when I get away by myself do I feel that my soul is restored.
Mr. Gleeson, an American, joined his wife here a couple of days ago: it
was odd to have a book talk again.
_21 October._--A still grey day with a level sea and a few fishing-boats
going out with the tide. On the long grey shore shrimpers are wading
with their nets. The only colour in the soft grey dawn is the little
wink of white that the breaking waves make on the sand. This small empty
seaside place, with its row of bathing-machines drawn up on the beach,
has a look about it as of a theatre seen by daylight. All the seats are
empty and the players have gone away, and the theatre begins to whisper
as empty buildings do. I think I know quite well some of the people who
come to St. Malo les Bains, just by listening to what the empty little
place is saying.
Firing has begun again. We hear that our ships are shelling Ostend from
the sea. The news that reaches us is meagre, but I prefer that to the
false reports that are circulated at home.
[Page Heading: WE GO TO FURNES]
This afternoon we came out in motors and ambulances to establish
ourselves at Furnes in an empty Ecclesiastical College. Nothing was
ready, and everything was in confusion. The wounded from the fighting
near by had not begun to come in, but the infernal sound of the guns was
quite close to us, and gave one the sensation of a blow on the ear.
Night was falling as we came back to Dunkirk to sleep (for no beds were
ready at Furnes), and we passed many motor vehicles of every
description going out to Furnes. Some of them were filled with bread,
and one saw stacks of loaves filling to the roof some once beautifully
appointed motor. Now all was dust and dirt.
All my previous ideas of men marching to war have had a touch of
heroism, crudely expressed by quick-step and smart uniforms. To-day I
see tired dusty men, very hungry looking and unshaved, slogging along,
silent and tired, and ready to lie down whenever chance offers. They
keep as near their convoy as they can, and are keen to stop and cook
something. God! what is heroism? It baffles me.
_22 October. Furnes._--The bulk of our party did not return from Furnes
yesterday, so we gathered that the wounded must be coming in, and we
left Dunkirk early and came here. As I packed my things and rolled my
rugs at 5 a.m. I thought of Mary, and "Charles to fetch down the
luggage," and the fuss at home over my delicate health!
A French officer called Gilbert took us out to Furnes in his Brooklands
racing-car, so that was a bit of an experience too, for we sat curled up
on some luggage, and were told to hang on by something. The roads were
empty and level, the little seats of the car were merely an appendage to
its long big engines. When we got our breath back we asked Gilbert what
his speed had been, and he told us 75 miles an hour.
There was a crowd of motors in the yard of the Ecclesiastical College at
Furnes, engines throbbing and clutches being jerked, and we were told
that all last night the fighting had gone on and the wounded had been
coming in. There are three wards already fairly full, nothing quite
ready, and the inevitable and reiterated "where" heard on every side.
"Where are the stretchers?" "Where are my forceps?" "Where are we to
dine?" "Where are the dead to be put?" "Where are the Germans?"
No one stops to answer. People ask everybody ten times over to do the
same thing, and use anything that is lying about.
[Page Heading: THE FIGHTING AT DIXMUDE]
There are two war correspondents here--Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Ashmead
Bartlett--and they told me about the fighting at Dixmude last night. I
must try to get Mr. Gibbs's newspaper account of it, but nothing will
ever be so simple and so dramatic as his own description. He and Mr.
Bartlett, Mr. Gleeson and Dr. Munro, with young Mr. Brockville, the War
Minister's son, went to the town, which was being heavily shelled.
Dixmude was full of wounded, and the church and the houses were falling.
The roar of things was awful, and the bursting shells overhead sent
shrapnel pattering on the buildings, the pavements, and the cars.
Young Brockville went into a house, where he heard wounded were lying,
and found a pile of dead Frenchmen stacked against a wall. A bursting
shell scattered them. He went on to a cellar and found some living men,
got the stretchers, loaded the cars and bade them drive on. In the
darkness, and with the deafening noises, no one heard his orders
aright, the two motor ambulances moved on and left him behind amongst
the burning houses and flying shells. It was only after going a few
miles that the rest of the party found that he was not with them.
Mr. Gleeson and Mr. Bartlett went back for him. Nothing need be said
except that. They went back to hell for him, and the other two waited in
the road with the wounded men. After an hour of waiting these two also
went back.
I asked Mr. Gibbs if he shared the contempt that some people expressed
for bullets. He and Mr. Gleeson both said, "Anyone who talks of contempt
for bullets is talking nonsense. Bullets mean death at every corner of
the street, and death overhead and flying limbs and unspeakable sights."
All these men went back. All of them behaved quietly and like gentlemen,
but one man asked a friend of his over and over again if he was a
Belgian refugee, and another said that a town steeple falling looked so
strange that they could only stand about and light cigarettes. In the
end they gave up Mr. Brockville for lost and came home with the
ambulances. But he turned up in the middle of the night, to everyone's
huge delight.
_23 October._--A crisp autumn morning, a courtyard filled with motors
and brancardiers and men in uniform, and women in knickerbockers and
puttees, all lighting cigarettes and talking about repairs and gears and
a box of bandages. The mornings always start happily enough. The guns
are nearer to-day or more distant, the battle sways backwards and
forwards, and there is no such thing as a real "base" for a hospital.
We must just stay as long as we can and fly when we must.
About 10 a.m. the ambulances that have been out all night begin to come
in, the wounded on their pitiful shelves.
"Take care. There are two awful cases. Step this way. The man on the top
shelf is dead. Lift them down. Steady. Lift the others out first. Now
carry them across the yard to the overcrowded ward, and lay them on the
floor if there are no beds, but lay them down and go for others. Take
the worst to the theatre: get the shattered limbs amputated and then
bring them back, for there is a man just dead whose place can be filled;
and these two must be shipped off to Calais; and this one can sit up."
[Page Heading: A WOUNDED GERMAN]
I found one young German with both hands smashed. He was not ill enough
to have a bed, of course, but sat with his head fallen forward trying to
sleep on a chair. I fed him with porridge and milk out of a little bowl,
and when he had finished half of it he said, "I won't have any more. I
am afraid there will be none for the others." I got a few cushions for
him and laid him in a corner of the room. Nothing disturbs the deep
sleep of these men. They seem not so much exhausted as dead with
fatigue.
A French boy of sixteen is a favourite of mine. He is such a beautiful
child, and there is no hope for him; shot through the abdomen; he can
retain nothing, and is sick all day, and every day he is weaker.
I do not find that the men want to send letters or write messages.
Their pain is too awful even for that, and I believe they can think of
nothing else.
All day the stretchers are brought in and the work goes on. It is about
5 o'clock that the weird tired hour begins when the dim lamps are
lighted, and people fall over things, and nearly everything is mislaid,
and the wounded cry out, and one steps over forms on the floor. From
then till one goes to bed it is difficult to be just what one ought to
be, the tragedy of it is too pitiful. There is a boy with his eyes shot
out, and there is a row of men all with head wounds from the cruel
shrapnel overhead. Blood-stained mattresses and pillows are carried out
into the courtyard. Two ladies help to move the corpses. There is always
a pile of bandages and rags being burnt, and a youth stirs the horrible
pile with a stick. A queer smell permeates everything, and the guns
never cease. The wounded are coming in at the rate of a hundred a day.
The Queen of the Belgians called to see the hospital to-day. Poor little
Queen, coming to see the remnants of an army and the remnants of a
kingdom! She was kind to each wounded man, and we were glad of her
visit, if for no other reason than that some sort of cleaning and
tidying was done in her honour. To-night Mr. Nevinson arrived, and we
went round the wards together after supper. The beds were all full--so
was the floor. I was glad that so many of the wounded were dying.
The doctors said, "These men are not wounded, they are mashed."
I am rather surprised to find how little the quite young girls seem to
mind the sight of wounds and suffering. They are bright and witty about
amputations, and do not shudder at anything. I am feeling rather
out-of-date amongst them.
* * * * *
[Page Heading: THE TRAGEDY OF PAIN]
_Letter to Miss Macnaughtan's Sisters._
DR. HECTOR MUNRO'S AMBULANCE,
FURNES, BELGIUM,
_23 October._
MY DEAR PEOPLE,
I think I may get this posted by a war correspondent who is going home,
but I never know whether my letters reach you or not, for yours, if you
write them, never reach me. I can't begin to tell you all that is
happening, and it is really beyond what one is able to describe. The
tragedy of pain is the thing that is most evident, and there is the roar
and the racket of it and the everlasting sound of guns. The war seems to
me now to mean nothing but torn limbs and stretchers. All the doctors
say that never have they seen men so wounded.
The day that we got here was the day that Dixmude was bombarded, and our
ten ambulances (motor) went out to fetch in wounded. These were shoved
in anywhere, dying and dead, and our men went among the shells with
buildings falling about them and took out all they could. Except where
the fire is hottest one women goes with each car. So far I have been
doing ward work, but one of the doctors is taking me on an ambulance
this afternoon. Most of the women who go are very good chauffeurs
themselves, so they are chosen before a person who can't drive. They
are splendid creatures, and funk nothing, and they are there to do a
little dressing if it is needed.
The firing is awfully heavy to-day. They say it is the big French guns
that have got up. Two of our ambulances have had miraculous escapes
after being hit. Things happen too quickly to know how to describe them.
To-day when I went out to breakfast an old village woman aged about 70
was brought in wounded in two places. I am not fond of horrors.
We have been given an empty house for the staff, the owners having
quitted it in a panic and left everything, children's toys on the
carpet, and beds unmade. The hospital is a college for priests, all of
whom have fled. Into this building the wounded are carried day and
night, and the surgeons are working in shifts and can't get the work
done. We are losing, alas! so many patients. Nothing can be done for
them, and I always feel so glad when they are gone. I don't think anyone
can realise what it is to be just behind the line of battle, and I fear
there would not be much recruiting if people at home could see our
wards. One can only be thankful for a hospital like this in the thick of
things, for we are saving lives, and not only so, but saving the lives
of men who perhaps have lain three days in a trench or a turnip-field
undiscovered and forgotten.
As soon as a wounded man has been attended to and is able to be put on a
stretcher again he is sent to Calais. We have to keep emptying the wards
for other patients to come in, and besides, if the fighting comes this
way, we shall have to fall back a little further.
We have a river between us and the Germans, so we shall always know when
they are coming and get a start and be all right.
Your loving
S. MACNAUGHTAN.
* * * * *
_25 October._--A glorious day. Up in the blue even Taubes--those birds
of prey--look beautiful, like eagles wheeling in their flight. It is all
far too lovely to leave, yet men are killing each other painfully with
every day that dawns.
I had a tiresome day in spite of the weather, because the hospital was
evacuated suddenly owing to the nearness of the Germans, and I missed
going with the ambulance, so I hung about all day.
_26 October. My birthday._--This morning several women were brought in
horribly wounded. One girl of sixteen had both legs smashed. I was
taking one old woman to the civil hospital and I had to pass eighteen
dead men; they were laid out beside some women who were washing clothes,
and I noticed how tired even in death their poor dirty feet looked.
[Page Heading: TO THE EDGE OF THE FIGHTING LINE]
We started early in the ambulance to-day, and went to pick up the
wounded. It was a wild gusty morning, one of those days when the sky
takes up nearly all the picture and the world looks small. The mud was
deep on the road, and a cyclist corps plunged heavily along through it.
The car steered badly and we drove to the edge of the fighting-line.
First one comes to a row of ammunition vans, with men cooking breakfast
behind them. Then come the long grey guns, tilted at various angles, and
beyond are the shells bursting and leaving little clouds of black or
white in the sky. We signalled to a gun not to fire down the road in
much the same way as a bobby signals to a hansom. When we got beyond the
guns they fired over us with a long streaky sort of sound. We came back
to the road and picked up the wounded wherever we could find them.
The churches are nearly all filled with straw, the chairs piled
anywhere, and the sacrament removed from the altar. In cottages and
little inns it is the same thing--a litter of straw, and men lying on it
in the chilly weather. Here and there through some little window one
sees surgeons in their white coats dressing wounds. Half the world seems
to be wounded and inefficient. We filled our ambulance, and stood about
in curious groups of English men and women who looked as if they were on
some shooting-party. When our load was complete we drove home.
Dr. Munro told me that last night he met a German prisoner quite naked
being marched in, proudly holding his head up. Lots of the men fight
naked in the trenches. In hospital we meet delightful German youths.
Amongst others who were brought in to-day was Mr. "Dick" Reading, the
editor of a sporting paper. He was serving in the Belgian army, and was
behind a gun-carriage when it was fired upon and started. Reading clung
on behind with both his legs broken, and he stuck to it till the
gun-carriage was pulled up! He came in on a stretcher as bright as a
button, smoking a cigar and laughing.
[Page Heading: POPERINGHE]
Late this afternoon we had to turn out of Furnes and fly to Poperinghe.
The drive was intensely interesting, through crowds of troops of every
nationality, and the town seemed large and well lighted. It was crowded
with people to see all our ambulances arrive. We went to a café, where
there was a fire but nothing to eat, so some of the party went out and
bought chops, and I cooked them in a stuffy little room which smelt of
burnt fat.
After supper we went to a convent where the Queen of the Belgians had
made arrangements for us to sleep. It was delightful. Each of us had a
snowy white bed with white curtains in a long corridor, and there was a
basin of water, cold but clean, and a towel for each of us. We
thoroughly enjoyed our luxuries.
_28 October._--The tide of battle seems to have swung away from us again
and we were recalled to Furnes to-day. The hospital looked very bare and
empty as all the patients had been evacuated, and there was nothing to
do till fresh ones should come in. Three shells came over to-day and
landed in a field near us. Some people say they were sent by our own
naval guns firing wide. The souvenir grafters went out and got pieces of
them.
[Page Heading: DUNKIRK]
_2 November._--I have been spending a couple of nights in Dunkirk, where
I went to meet Miss Fyfe. The _Invicta_ got in late because the _Hermes_
had been torpedoed and they had gone to her assistance. No doubt the
torpedo was intended for the _Invicta_, which carries ammunition, and is
becoming an unpopular boat in consequence. Forty of the _Hermes_ men
were lost.
Dunkirk is full of people, and one meets friends at every turn. I had
tea at the Consulate one afternoon, and was rather glad to get away from
the talk of shells and wounds, which is what one hears most of at
Furnes.
I saw Lord Kitchener in the town one day; he had come to confer with
Joffre, Sir John French, Monsieur Poincaré, and Mr. Churchill, at a
meeting held at the Chapeau Rouge Hotel. Rather too many valuable men in
one room, I thought--especially with so many spies about! Three men in
English officers' uniforms were found to be Germans the other day and
taken out and shot.
The Duchess of Sutherland has a hospital at our old Casino at Malo les
Bains, and has made it very nice. I had a long chat with a Coldstream
man who was there. He told me he was carried to a barn after being shot
in the leg and the bone shattered. He lay there for six days before he
was found, with nothing to eat but a few biscuits. He dressed his own
wound.
"But," he said, "the string of my puttee had been driven in so far by
the shot I couldn't find it to get the thing off, so I had to bandage
over it."
I went down to the station one day to see if anything could be done for
the wounded there. They are coming in at the rate of seven hundred a
day, and are laid on straw in an immense goods-shed. They get nothing to
eat, and the atmosphere is so bad that their wounds can't be dressed.
They are all patient, as usual, only the groans are heartbreaking
sometimes. We are arranging to have soup given to them, and a number of
ambulance men arrived who will remove them to hospital ships and trains.
But the goods-shed is a shambles, and let us leave it at that.[1]
[1] It must not be thought that in this and in subsequent
passages referring to the sufferings of the wounded Miss Macnaughtan
alludes to any hardships endured by British troops. Her time in
Flanders was all spent behind the French and Belgian lines.--ED.
Mrs. Knocker came into Dunkirk for a night's rest while I was staying
there. She had been out all the previous day in a storm of wind and rain
driving an ambulance. It was heavy with wounded, and shells were
dropping very near. She--the most courageous woman that ever lived--was
quite unnerved at last. The glass of the car she was driving was dim
with rain and she could carry no lights, and with this swaying load of
injured men behind her on the rutty road she had to stick to her wheel
and go on.
Some one said to her, "There is a doctor in such-and-such a farmhouse,
and he has no dressings. You must take him these."
She demurred (a most unusual thing for her), but men do not protect
women in this war, and they said she had to take them. She asked one of
the least wounded of the men to get down and see what was in front of
her, and he disappeared altogether. The dark mass she had seen in the
road was a huge hole made by a shell! After steering into dead horses
and going over awful roads Mrs. Knocker came bumping into the yard,
steering so badly that they ran to see what was wrong, and they found
her fainting, and she was carried into the house. At Dunkirk she got a
good dinner and a night's rest.
_Furnes. 5 November._--The hospital is beginning to fill up again, and
the nurses are depressed because only those cases which are nearly
hopeless are allowed to stay, so it is death on all sides and just a
hell of suffering. One man yelled to me to-night to kill him. I wish I
might have done so. The tragedy of war presses with a fearful weight
after being in a hospital, and wherever one is one hears the infernal
sound of the guns. On Sunday about forty shells came into Furnes, but I
was at Dunkirk. This morning about five dropped on to the station.
[Page Heading: NIEUPORT]
To-day I went out to Nieuport. It is like some town one sees in a
horrible nightmare. Hardly a house is left standing, but that does not
describe the scene. Nothing can fitly describe it except perhaps such a
pen as Victor Hugo's. The cathedral at Nieuport has two outer walls left
standing. The front leans forward helplessly, the aisles are gone. The
trees round about are burnt up and shot away. In the roadway are great
holes which shells have made. The very cobbles of the street are
scattered by them. Not a window remains in the place; all are shattered
and many hang from their frames. The fronts of the houses have fallen
out, and one sees glimpses of wretched domestic life: a baby's cradle
hangs in mid-air, some tin boxes have fallen through from the box-room
in the attic to the ground floor. Shops are shivered and their contents
strewn on all sides; the interiors of other houses have been hollowed
out by fire. There is a toy-shop with dolls grinning vacantly at the
ruins or bobbing brightly on elastic strings.
In a wretched cottage some soldiers are having breakfast at a
fine-carved table. In one house, surrounded by a very devastation of
wreckage, some cheap ornaments stand intact on a mantelpiece. From
another a little ginger-coloured cat strolls out unconcernedly! The
bedsteads hanging midway between floors look twisted and thrawn--nothing
stands up straight. Like the wounded, the town has been rendered
inefficient by war.
_6 November._--Furnes always seems to me a weird tragic place. I cannot
think why this is so, but its influence is to me rather curious. I feel
as if all the time I was living in some blood-curdling ghost story or a
horrid dream. Every day I try to overcome the feeling, but I can't
succeed. This afternoon I made up my mind to return to our villa and
write my diary. The day was lovely, and I meant to enjoy a rest and a
scribble, but so strong was the horrid influence of the place that I
couldn't settle to anything. I can't describe it, but it seemed to
stifle me, and I can only compare it to some second sight in which one
sees death. I sat as long as I could doing my writing, but I had to give
in at last, and I tucked my book under my arm and walked back to the
hospital, where at least I was with human beings and not ghosts.
Our life here is made up of many elements and many people, all rather
incongruous, but the average of human nature is good. A villa belonging
to a Dr. Joos was given to our staff. It is a pretty little house, with
three beds in it, and we are eighteen people, so most of us sleep on the
floor. It wouldn't be a bad little place (except for the drains) if only
there wasn't this horrid influence about it all. I always particularly
dislike toddling after people like a little lost dog, but here I find
that unless I am with somebody the ghosts get the better of me.
The villa is being ruined by us I fear, but I have a woman to clean it,
and I am trying to keep it in order. It is a cold little place for we
have no fires. We can, by pumping, get a little very cold water, and
there is a tap in the bath-room and one basin at which everyone tries to
wash and shave at the same time. We get our meals at a butcher's shop,
where there is a large room which we more than fill. The lights of the
town are all out by 6 o'clock, so we grope about, but there is a lamp in
our dining-room. When we come out we have to pass through the butcher's
shop, and one may find oneself running into the interior of a sheep.
We get up about 7 o'clock and fight for the basin. Then we walk round to
the butcher's shop and have breakfast at 7.30. Most people think they
start off for the day's work at 8, but it is generally quite 10 o'clock
before all the brown-hooded ambulances with their red crosses have moved
out of the yard. We do not as a rule meet again till dinner-time, and
even then many of the party are absent. They come in at all times, very
dirty and hungry, and the greeting is always the same, "Did you get
many?"--_i.e._, "Have you picked up many wounded?"
One night Dr. Munro got bowled over by the actual air force created by a
shell, which however did not hit him. Yesterday Mr. Secher was shot in
the leg. I am amazed that not more get hit. They are all very cheery
about it.
To-day we heard that a jolly French boy with white teeth, who has been
very good at making coffee at our picnic lunches, was put up against a
tree and shot at daybreak. Someone had made him drunk the night before,
and he had threatened an officer with a revolver.
[Page Heading: A DRAMATIC INCIDENT]
_7 November. St. Malo les Bains._--Lady Bagot turned up here to-day, and
I lunched with her at the Hôtel des Arcades. Just before lunch a bomb
was dropped from a Taube overhead, and hardly had we sat down to lunch
when a revolver shot rang through the room. A French officer had
discharged his pistol by mistake, and he lay on the floor in his scarlet
trews. The scene was really the Adelphi, and as the man had only
slightly hurt himself one was able to appreciate the scenic effect and
to notice how well staged it was. A waiter ran for me. I ran for
dressings to one of our ambulances, and we knelt in the right attitude
beside the hero in his scarlet clothes, while the "lady of the bureau"
begged for the bullet!
In the evening Lady Bagot and I worked at the railway-sheds till 3 a.m.
One immense shed had 700 wounded in it. The night scene, with its
inevitable accompaniment of low-turned lamps and gloom, was one I shall
not forget. The railway-lines on each side of the covered platform were
spread with straw, and on this wounded men, bedded down like cattle,
slept. There were rows of them sleeping feet to feet, with straw over
them to make a covering. I didn't hear a grumble, and hardly a groan.
Most of them slept heavily.
Near the door was a row of Senegalese, their black faces and gleaming
eyes looking strange above the straw; and further on were some Germans,
whom the French authorities would not allow our men to touch; then rows
of men of every colour and blood; Zouaves, with their picturesque dress
all grimed and colourless; Turcos, French, and Belgians. Nearly all had
their heads and hands bound up in filthy dressings. We went into the
dressing-station at the far end of the great shed and dressed wounds
till about 3 o'clock, then we passed through the long long lines of
sleeping wounded men again and went home.
* * * * *
_To Lady Clémentine Waring._
_8 November._
MY DEAREST CLEMMIE,
I have a big job for you. Will you do it? I know you are the person for
it, and you will be prompt and interested.
The wounded are suffering from hunger as much as from their wounds. In
most places, such as dressing-stations and railway-stations, nothing is
provided for them at all, and many men are left for two or three days
without food.
I wish I could describe it all to you! These wounded men are picked up
after a fight and taken anywhere--very often to some farmhouse or inn,
where a Belgian surgeon claps something on to the wounds or ties on a
splint, and then our (Dr. Munro's) ambulances come along and bring the
men into the Field Hospital if they are very bad, or if not they are
taken direct to a station and left there. They may, and often do, have
to wait for hours till a train loads up and starts. Even those who are
brought to the Field Hospital have to turn out long before they can walk
or sit, and they are carried to the local station and put into covered
horse-boxes on straw, and have to wait till the train loads up and
starts. You see everything has to be done with a view to sudden
evacuation. We are so near to the firing-line that the Germans may sweep
on our way at any time, and then every man has to be cleared out somehow
(we have a heap of ambulances), and the staff is moved off to some safer
place. We did a bolt of this sort to Poperinghe one day, but after being
there two days the fighting swayed the other way and we were able to
come back.
[Page Heading: HUNGER OF THE WOUNDED]
Well, during all these shiftings and waitings the wounded get nothing to
eat. I want some travelling-kitchens, and I want you to see about the
whole thing. You may have to come from Scotland, because I have opened
the subject with Mr. Burbidge, of Harrods' Stores. A Harrods' man is
over here. He takes back this letter. I particularly want you to see
him. Mr. Burbidge has, or can obtain, old horse-vans which can be fitted
up as travelling-kitchens. He is doing one now for Millicent, Duchess of
Sutherland; it is to cost £15, which I call very cheap. I wish you
could see it, for I know you could improve upon it. It is fitted, I
understand, with a copper for boiling soup, and a chimney. There is also
a place for fuel, and I should like a strong box that would hold
vegetables, dried peas, etc., whose top would serve as a table. Then
there must be plenty of hooks and shelves where possible, and I believe
Burbidge makes some sort of protection against fire in the way of lining
to the van. Harrods' man says that he doesn't know if they have any more
vans or not.
I want someone with push and energy to see the thing right through and
get the vans off. The _Invicta_, from the Admiralty Pier, Dover, sailing
daily, brings Red Cross things free.
[Page Heading: PROPOSED TRAVELLING-KITCHENS]
The vans would have to have the Red Cross painted on them, and in
_small_ letters, somewhere inconspicuous, "Miss Macnaughtan's
Travelling-Kitchens." This is only for identification. I thought we
might begin with _three_, and get them sent out _at once_, and go on as
they are required. I must have a capable person and a helper in charge
of each, so that limits my number. The Germans have beautiful little
kitchens at each station, but I can't be sure what money I can raise, so
must go slow.
I want also two little trollies, just to hold a tin jug and some tin
cups hung round, with one oil-lamp to keep the jug hot. The weather will
be bitter soon, and only "special" cases have blankets.
Clemmie, if only we could see this thing through without too much red
tape!... No permission need be given for the work of these kitchens, as
we are under the Belgian Minister of War and act for Belgium.
I thought of coming over to London for a day or two, and I can still do
so, only I know you will be able to do this thing better than anyone,
and will think of things that no one else thinks of. I can get voluntary
workers, but meat and vegetables are dreadfully dear, so I shan't be
able to spend a great deal on the vans. However, any day they may be
taken by the Germans, so the only thing that really matters is to get
the wounded _a_ mug of hot soup.
Last night I was dressing wounds and bandaging at Dunkirk station till 3
a.m. The men are brought there in _heaps_, all helpless, all suffering.
Sometimes there are fifteen hundred in one day. Last night seven hundred
lay on straw in a huge railway-shed, with straw to cover them--bedded
down like cattle, and all in pain. Still, it is better than the trenches
and shrapnel overhead!
At the Field Hospital the wounds are ghastly, and we are losing so many
patients! Mere boys of sixteen come in sometimes mortally wounded, and
there are a good many cases of wounded women. You see, no one is safe;
and, oh, my dear, have you ever seen a town that has been thoroughly
shelled? At Furnes we have a good many shells dropping in, but no real
bombardment yet. After Antwerp I don't seem to care about these
visitors. We were under fire there for eighteen hours, and it was a bit
of a strain as our hospital was in a line with the Arsenal, which they
were trying to destroy, so we got more than our share of attention. The
noise was horrible, and the shells came in at the rate of four a minute.
There was something quite hellish about it.
Do you remember that great bit of writing in Job, when Wisdom speaks and
says: "Destruction and Death say, it is not in me"?
The wantonness and sort of rage of it all appalled one. Our women
behaved splendidly.
I'll come over to England if you think I had better, but I am sure you
are the person I want.... If anything should prevent your helping,
please wire to me: otherwise I shall know things are going forward.
Your loving,
S. MACNAUGHTAN.
The vans should be strong as they may have rough usage; also, to take
them to their destination they may have to be hitched on to a
motor-ambulance.
One or two strong trays in each kitchen would be useful. The little
trollies would be for railway-station work. As we go on I hope to have
one kitchen for each dressing-station as well.
SALLY.
* * * * *
_8 November._--This afternoon I went down to the Hôtel des Arcades,
which is the general meeting ground for everyone. The drawing-room was
full and so was the Place Jean Bart, on which it looks. Suddenly we saw
people beginning to fly! Soldiers, old men, children in their Sunday
clothes, all running to cover. I asked what was up, and heard that a
Taube was at that moment flying over our hotel. These are the sort of
pleasant things one hears out here! Then Lady Decies came running in to
say that two bombs had fallen and twenty people were wounded.
Once more we got bandages and lint and hurried off in a motor-car, but
the civilian doctors were looking after everyone. The bomb by good luck
had fallen in a little garden, and had done the least damage imaginable,
but every window in the neighbourhood was smashed.
[Page Heading: NIGHT WORK AT RAILWAY SHEDS]
At night we went to the railway-sheds and dressed wounds. I made them do
the Germans; but it was too late for one of them--a handsome young
fellow with both his feet deep blue with frost-bite, his leg broken, and
a great wound in his thigh. He had not been touched for eight days.
Another man had a great hole right through his arm and shoulder. The
dressing was rough and ready. The surgeons clapped a great wad of lint
into the hole and we bound it up. There is no hot water, no sterilising,
no cyanide gauze even, but iodine saves many lives, and we have plenty
of it. The German boy was dying when we left. His eyes above the straw
began to look glazed and dim. Death, at least, is merciful.
We work so late at the railway-sheds that I lie in bed till lunch time.
Lady Bagot and I go to the sheds in the evening and stay there till 1
a.m.
_11 November. Boulogne._--I got a letter from Julia yesterday, telling
me that Alan is wounded and in hospital at Boulogne, and asking me to
go and see him.
I came here this morning and had to run about for a long time before I
started getting a "laissez-passer" for the road, as spies are being shot
almost at sight now. By good chance I got a motor-car which brought me
all the way; trains are uncertain, and filled with troops, and one never
knows when they will arrive.
[Page Heading: STORIES OF THE BRITISH FRONT]
I found poor old Alan at the Base Hospital, in terrible pain, poor boy,
but not dangerously wounded. He has been through an awful time, and
nearly all the officers of his regiment have been killed or wounded. For
my part, in spite of his pain, I can thank God that he is out of the
firing-line for a bit. The horror of the war has got right into him, and
he has seen things which few boys of eighteen can have witnessed. Eight
days in the trenches at Ypres under heavy fire day and night is a pretty
severe test, and Alan has behaved splendidly. He told me the most awful
tales of what he had seen, but I believe it did him good to get things
off his chest, so I listened. The thing he found the most ghastly was
the fact that when a trench has been taken or lost the wounded and dying
and dead are left out in the open. He says that firing never ceases, and
it is impossible to reach these men, who die of starvation within sight
of their comrades.
"Sometimes," Alan said, "we see them raise themselves on an arm for an
instant, and they yell to us to come to them, but we can't."
His own wound was received when the Germans "got their range to an
inch" and began shelling their trenches. A whole company next to Alan
was wiped out, and he started to go back to tell his Colonel the trench
could not be held. The communication trench by which he went was not
quite finished, and he had to get out into the open and race across to
where the unfinished trench began again. Poor child, running for his
life! He was badly hit in the groin, but managed just to tumble into the
next bit of the trench, where he found two men who carried him, pouring
with blood, to his Colonel. He was hastily bound up and carried four
miles on crossed rifles to the hospital at Ypres, where his wound was
properly dressed, and after an hour he was put on the train for
Boulogne.
Alan had one story of how he was told to wait at a certain spot with 130
men. "So I waited," he said, "but the fire was awful." His regiment had,
it seems, gone round another way. "I got thirty of the men away," Alan
said, "the rest were killed." It means something to be an officer and a
gentleman.
Every day the list of casualties grows longer, and I wonder who will be
left.
_19 November. Furnes._--Early on Monday, the 16th, I left Boulogne in
Lady Bagot's car and came to Dunkirk, where I was laid up with a cold
for two or three days. It was singularly uncomfortable, as no one ever
answered my bell, etc.; but I had a bed, which is always such a comfort,
and the room was heated, so I got my things dry. Very often I find the
only way to do this or to get dry clothing is to take things to bed with
one--it is rather chilly, but better than putting on wet things in the
morning.
The usual number of unexpected people keep coming and going. At Boulogne
I met Lady Eileen Elliot, Ian Malcolm, Lord Francis Scott, and various
others--all very English and clean and well fed. It was quite different
from Furnes, to which I returned on Wednesday. Most of us sleep on
mattresses on the floor at Furnes, but even these were all occupied, so
I hopped about getting in where I could. The cold weather "set in in
earnest" as newspapers say, and when it does that in Furnes it seems to
be particularly in earnest.
* * * * *
_To Lady Clémentine Waring._
HÔTEL DES ARCADES,
DUNKERQUE,
_18 November, 1914._
DEAREST CLEMMIE,
Forgive the delay in writing again. I was too sick about it all at
first, then I was sent for to go to Boulogne to see my nephew, who is
badly wounded. I can't explain the present situation to you because it
would only be censored, but I hope to write about it later.
I shall manage the soup-kitchens soon, I hope, but next week will decide
that and many things. The objection to the _pattern_ is that those vans
would overturn going round corners when hitched on behind ambulances.
Some wealthy people are giving a regular motor kitchen to run about to
various "dressing"-stations--this will be most useful, but it doesn't do
away with the need of something to eat during those interminable waits
at the _railway_-stations.
[Page Heading: CHANGES IN THE SITUATION]
To-morrow I begin my own little soup-kitchen at Furnes. I have a room
but no van, and this is most unsatisfactory, as any day the room (so
near the station) may be commandeered. A van would make me quite
independent, but I must feel my way. The situation changes very often,
as you will of course see, and when one is quite close to the Front one
has to be always changing with it.
I want helpers and I want vans, but rules are becoming stricter than
ever. Even Adeline, Duchess of Bedford, whose good work everyone knows,
has waited for a permit for a week at Boulogne, and has now gone home.
When all the useful women have been expelled there will follow the usual
tale of soldiers' suffering and privations: when women are about they
don't let them suffer.
The only plan (if you know of any man who wants to come out) is to know
how to drive a motor-car and then to offer it and his services to the
Red Cross Society. I have set my heart on station soup-kitchens because
I see the men put into horse-boxes on straw straight off the field, and
there they lie without water or light or food while the train jolts on
for hours. I wish I had you here to back me up! We could do anything
together.
As ever, yours gratefully,
SALLY.
The motor kitchens cost £600 fitted, but the maker is giving the one I
speak of for £300. Everyone has given so much to the war I don't feel
sure I could collect this amount. I might try America, but it takes a
long time.