The Austrian kiddies arrived at the Maas station on Sunday morning, and
the Dutch folk gave them a kindly welcome. The Rotterdam committee was
in charge, and I stood back because it was not my job. The kiddies
came tumbling out of the train with great relief, for they had
travelled for two nights. All had heavy rucksacks, many of them the
packs of their dead fathers and brothers.
My eye lit on little Hansi. She stood on the platform crying, and I
went forward to comfort her. Alas! I knew less German than I did
Dutch, and I knew not what she said; but one of the Austrian escort
told me that she had been homesick all the way. There is, however, a
universal language that all children understand, and I took wee Hansi
in my arms and cuddled her. The flow of tears stopped and she took
from a small basket slung to her neck a tiny naked doll. I included
Puppe in the cuddle, and Hansi smiled. A dear wee mite she was, very
very thin, with great big eyes that were sunken. Her tears did not
affect me, but when she smiled I found myself weeping, and I had to
blow my nose hard.
The four hundred and fifty-eight children were bundled across the road
to a ship, which took them in two parts across the Maas to the large
building used by the Cunard Line for emigrants. Many of them thought
they were on the way to England, and ten minutes later I found a wee
chap gazing round in wonder on the land of England.
"This aint England, anywye," he said at last in evident disgust; "look
at them clogs! This is Holland."
The boy was a Londoner resident in Vienna. There were about a dozen
English children in the party. Later I found one standing in front of
a group of Austrian boys.
"Any one o' you," he was shouting, "I'll box the whole gang o' you!"
This Cockney, his little brother, and their sister were the thorn in
the flesh of the escort.
"Absolute terrors," declared everyone, but I liked them.
Many of the children were middle class, children of doctors, lawyers,
architects, and so on; nice kiddies they were. The bigger girls could
speak English, and I used them as interpreters.
On the Monday morning the English escort took charge. The first task
was medical inspection, and the two English doctors and four or five
Dutch doctors prepared for action. Our job was to marshal the kiddies,
help them to take their shirts off, and then bundle them into the
inspection room. It sounds easy, but it was a weary business. You
looked down the list for No. 258, and you found a name.
"Mitzi Dvoracek!" you called, and wondered whether a boy or a girl
would appear. There was no answer . . . and an hour later you found a
little girl who had lost her identity card, and you concluded that she
was Dvoracek, but she wasn't; her name was Leopoldine Czsthmkyghw, or
something resembling that.
I was greatly troubled by their questions. Following a method I had
used with indifferent effect while conversing with garrulous Dutchmen
in railway carriages, I answered "Ja" and "Nay" alternately. Many of
the children stared at me in wonder and I marvelled . . . until I
discovered that most of them had been asking me the way to the
lavatory. After that I just pointed to a door in the wall when a boy
asked me a question, and when one lad didn't seem to understand, I took
him by the back of the neck and shoved him through the door. Then I
found that he had been asking the time.