We've had our journey up to the firing line, to a dressing station just
over half a mile from the first line of German trenches! It is between
the two villages of Givenchy and Cuinchy, this side of La Bassée. The
journey there was through the village I walked to with Marie Thérèse
(which has been shelled twice since we came), and along the long, wide,
straight road the British Army now knows so well--paved in the middle
and a straight line of poplars on each side. As far as you could see it
was covered with two streams of khaki, with an occasional string of
French cavalry--one stream going up to the trenches after their so many
days' "rest," and the other coming from the trenches to their "rest." We
soon got up to some old German trenches from which we drove them months
ago; they run parallel with the road. On the other side we saw one of
our own Field Batteries, hidden in the scrub of a hedge--not talking at
the moment. There were also some French batteries hidden behind an
embankment. "The German guns are trained always on this road," said our
A.S.C. driver cheerfully, "but they don't generally begin not till about
4 o'clock," so, as it was then 2.30, we weren't alarmed. They know it is
used for transport and troops and often send a few shells on to it. We
sat next him and he did showman. Before long we got into the area of
ruined houses--and they are a sight! They spell War, and War
only--nothing else (but perhaps an earthquake?) could make such awful
desolation; in a few of the smaller cottages with a roof on, the
families had gone back to live in a sort of patched-up squalor, but all
the bigger houses and parts of streets were mere jagged shells. The two
villages converge just where we turned a corner from the La Bassée road
into a lane on our left where the dressing station is. A little farther
on is "Windy Corner," which is "a very hot place." We had before this
passed some of our own reserve unoccupied trenches, some with sandbags
for parapets, but now we suddenly found ourselves with a funny barricade
of different coloured and shaped doors, taken from the ruined houses,
about 8 feet high on our right. This was to prevent the German snipers
from seeing our transport or M.A.'s pass down that lane to the
communication trench, which has its beginning at the ruined house which
is used by the F.A. as one of its advanced dressing stations. It is
called No. 1 Harley Street. Here we got out, and the first person we saw
was Sergt. P., who was theatre orderly in No. 7 at Pretoria. He greeted
us warmly and took us to Capt. R., who was the officer in charge. He
also was most awfully kind and showed us all over his place. We went
first into his two cellars, where the wounded are taken to be dressed,
instead of above, where they might be shelled. They had a queer
collection of furniture--a table for dressings, and some oddments of
chairs, including two carved oak dining-room chairs. Round the front
steps is a barricade of sandbags against snipers' bullets. The officer's
room above the cellars was quite nice and tidy, furnished from the
ruined houses, and with a vase of daffodils! He had been told the day
before to allow no one up the staircase, because snipers were on the
look-out for the top windows, and if it were seen to be used as an
observing station it might draw the shells. However, just before we left
he changed his mind and took us up and showed us all the landmarks,
including the famous brick-stacks, where there must be many German
graves, but we all had to be very careful not to show ourselves. The
garden at the back has a row of graves with flowers growing on them,
and neat wooden crosses with little engraved tin plates on, with the
name and regiment. One was, "An unknown British Soldier." There were no
wounded in the D.S. this afternoon.
The orderlies showed us lots of interesting bits of German shells and
time fuses, &c. The house was full of big holes, with dirty smart
curtains, and hats and mirrors lying about the floors upstairs among the
brickwork and ruins.
They then took us a little way down the communication trench called
"Hertford Street," under the "Marble Arch" to "Oxford Circus!" It is
quite dry mud over bricks and very narrow, and goes higher than your
head on the enemy side, and has zigzags very often. You can only go
single file, and we had to wait in a zigzag to let a lot of men go
by--they stream past almost continually. One officer invited us to come
and see his dug-out, but it was farther along than we might go without
being awfully in the way. We had before this given one stream of ingoing
men all the cigarettes, chocolates, writing-paper, mouth-organs,
Keating's, pencils, and newspapers we could lay hands on before we
started, and we could have done with thousands of each. Every few
minutes one of our guns talked with a startlingly loud noise somewhere
near, but Captain R. said it was an exceptionally quiet day, and we
didn't hear a single German gun or see any bursting shells. It was a
particularly warm sunny day, and the men going into the trenches were so
cheerful and jolly that it didn't seem at all tragic or depressing, and
there was nothing but one's recollections of the Aisne and Ypres after
what they call "a show" to remind one what it all meant and what it
might at any moment turn into. One hasn't had before the opportunities
of seeing the men who are in it (and not at the Bases or on the Lines of
Communication) while they are fit, but only after they are wounded or
sick, and the contrast is very striking. All these after their "rest"
look fit and sunburnt and natural, and the one expression that never or
rarely fails, whether fit, wounded, or sick, is the expression of
acquiescence and going through with it that they all have. If it failed
at all it was with the men with frost-bite and trench feet, who stuck it
so long when winter first came on before they got the braziers, and in
the long rains when they stood in mud and water to their waists. Now,
thank Heaven, the ground is hard again.
I saw three small children playing about just behind the dressing
station, where some men unloading a lorry were killed a few days ago.
The women and children are all along the road, absolutely regardless of
danger as long as they are allowed to stay in their own homes. The
babies sit close up against the Tommies who are resting by the roadside.
We saw a great many wire entanglements, so thick that they look like a
field of lavender a little way off. From the top windows of the ruined
house we could see long lines of heads, picks and shovels, going single
file down "Hertford Street," but they couldn't be seen from the enemy
side because of the parapet.
_Friday, April 16th._--At about 7.30 this evening I was writing the day
report when the sergeant came in with three candles and said an order
had come for all lights to be put out and only candles used. So I had to
put out all the lights and give the astonished officers my three candles
between them, while the sergeant went out to get some more. The town
looks very weird with all the street lamps out and only glimmers from
the windows. It was kept pretty darkened before. It may be because of
the Zeppelin at Bailleul on Wednesday, or another may be reported
somewhere about.
This afternoon I saw a soldier's funeral, which I have never seen
before. He was shot in the head yesterday, and makes the four hundred
and eleventh British soldier buried in this cemetery. I happened to be
there looking at the graves, and the French gravedigger told me there
was to be another buried this afternoon. The gravedigger's wife and
children are with the Allemands, he told me, the other side of La
Bassée, and he has no news of them or they of him.
It was very impressive and moving, the Union Jack on the coffin (a thin
wooden box) on the waggon, and a firing party, and about a hundred men
and three officers and the Padre. It was a clear blue sky and sunny
afternoon, and the Padre read beautifully and the men listened intently.
The graves are dug trenchwise, very close together, practically all in
one continuous grave, each with a marked cross. There is a long row of
officers, and also seven Germans and five Indians.
The two Zeppelins reported last night must have gone to bed after
putting out all our lights, as nothing happened anywhere.
The birds and buds in the garden opposite make one long for one's lost
leave, but I suppose they will keep.
We have only nine officers in to-day; everything is very quiet
everywhere, but troop trains are very busy.
10.30 P.M.--It is getting noisy again. Some batteries on our right next
the French lines are doing some thundering, and there are more
star-shells than usual lighting up the sky on the left. They look like
fireworks. They are sent up _in_ the firing line to see if any groups of
enemy are crawling up to our trenches in the dark. When they stop
sending theirs up we have to get busy with ours to see what they're up
to. It's funny to see that every night from your bedroom windows. They
give a tremendous light as soon as they burst.
When I went into the big church for benediction this evening at 6.30,
every estaminet and café and tea-shop was packed with soldiers, and also
as usual every street and square. At seven o'clock they were all
emptying, as there is an order to-day to close all cafés, &c, at seven
instead of eight.
All lights are out again to-night.
Another aeroplane was being shelled here this evening.
_Sunday, April 18th_, 9.30 P.M.--It has been another dazzling day. A
major of one of the Indian regiments came in this evening. He said the
Boches are throwing stones across to our men wrapped in paper with
messages like this written on them, "Why don't you stop the War? We want
to get home to our wives these beautiful days, and so do you, so why do
you go on fighting?" The sudden beauty of the spring and the sun has
made it all glaringly incongruous, and every one feels it.
One badly wounded officer got it going out of his dug-out to attend to a
man of his company who was hit by a sniper in an exposed place, one of
his subalterns told me. His own account, of course, was a rambling story
leaving that part entirely out.
This next shows how the Germans had left nothing to chance. They have
about twelve machine-guns to every battalion, and are said to have had
12,000 when the War began. Passing through villages they pack ten of
them into an innocent-looking cart with a false bottom. We captured some
of these empty carts, and some time afterwards found them full of
machine-guns!
Gold hats and red hats have been dropping in all day. They do on Sundays
especially after Church Parade.
_Saturday, April 24th._--We were watching hundreds of men pass by
to-day, whistling and singing, on their way to the trenches.
News came to us this morning of the Germans having broken through the
trench lines north of Ypres and shelled Poperinghe, which was out of
range up to now, but it is not official.
The guns are very loud to-night; I hope they're keeping the Germans
busy; something is sure to be done to draw them off the Ypres line.
_Sunday, April 25th._--The plum-pudding was "something to write home
about!" and the Quartermaster sent us a tin of honey to-day, the first
I've seen for nine months.
A General came round this morning. He said the Canadians and another
regiment had given the Germans what for for this gas-fumes business
north of Ypres, got the ground back and recovered the four guns. The
beasts of Germans laid out a whole trench full of Zouaves with chlorine
gas (which besides being poisonous is one of the most loathsome smells).
Of course every one is busy finding out how we can go one better now.
But this afternoon the medical staffs of both these divisions have been
trying experiments in a barn with chlorine gas, with and without
different kinds of masks soaked with some antidote, such as lime. All
were busy coughing and choking when they found the A.D.M.S. of the
---- Division getting blue and suffocated; he'd had too much chlorine,
and was brought here, looking very bad, and for an hour we had to give
him fumes of ammonia till he could breathe properly. He will probably
have bronchitis. But they've found out what they wanted to know--that
you can go to the assistance of men overpowered by the gas, if you put
on this mask, with less chance of finding yourself dead too when you got
there. They don't lose much time finding these things out, do they?
On Saturday I shall be going on night duty for a month.
_Monday, April 26th,_ 11 P.M.--We have been admitting, cutting the
clothes off, dressing, and evacuating a good many to-day, and I think
they are still coming in.
There is a great noise going on to-night, snapping and popping, and
crackling of rifle firing and machine-guns, with the sudden roar of our
9.2's every few minutes. The thundery roll after them is made by the big
shell bounding along on its way.
Two officers were brought in last night from a sap where they were
overpowered by carbon monoxide. Three of them and a sergeant crawled
along it to get out the bodies of another officer and a sergeant who'd
been killed there by an explosion the day before; it leads into a crater
in the German lines, and reaches under the German trenches, which we
intended to blow up. But they were greeted by this poisonous gas last
night, and the officer in front of these two suddenly became inanimate;
each tried to pull the one in front out by the legs, but all became
unconscious in turn, and only these two survived and were hauled out up
twenty feet of rope-ladder. They will get all right.
The wounded ones are generally in "the excited stage" when they
arrive--some surprised and resentful, some relieved that it is no worse,
and some very quiet and collapsed.
Captain ---- showed me his periscope to-day; you bob down and look into
it about level with his mattress, and then you see a picture of the
garden across the road. He has seen one made by Ross with a magnifying
lens in it so good that you can see the moustaches of the Boches in it
from the bottom of your trench. The noise is getting so beastly I must
knock off and read 'Punch.'
_Tuesday, April 27th._--Have been busy all day, and so have the guns.
When the 15-inch howitzers began to talk the old concierge lady at the
O.D.S. trotted out to see _l'orage_, and found a cloudless sky, and,
_mon Dieu_, it was _les canons_. It is a stupendous noise, like some
gigantic angry lion. The official accounts of the second dash for Calais
reach us through 'The Times' two days after the things have happened,
but the actual happenings filter along the line from St Omer (G.H.Q.) as
soon as they happen, so we know there's been no real "breaking through"
that hasn't been made good, or partially made good, because if there
had, the dispositions all along the line would have had to be altered,
and that has not happened.
The ambulance trains are collecting the Ypres casualties straight from
the convoys at Poperinghe, as we did at Ypres in October and November,
and not through the Clearing Hospitals, which I believe have had to move
farther back.
_Wednesday, April 28th._--Here everything is as it has been for the last
few days (except the weather, which is suddenly hot as summer), rather
more casualties, but no rush, and the same crescendo of heavy guns. Some
shells were dropped in a field just outside the town at 8.30 yesterday
evening but did no damage.
_Thursday, April 29th,_ 4 P.M.--The weather and the evenings are
indescribably incongruous. Tea in the garden at home, deck-chairs, and
Sweep under the walnut-tree come into one's mind, and before one's eyes
and ears are motor ambulances and stretchers and dressings, and the
everlasting noise of marching feet, clattering hoofs, lorries, and guns,
and sometimes the skirl of the pipes. One day there was a real band, and
every one glowed and thrilled with the sound of it.
I strayed into a concert at 5.30 this evening, given by the Glasgow
Highlanders to a packed houseful of men and officers. I took good care
to be shown into a solitary box next the stage, as I was alone and
guessed that some of the items would not be intended for polite female
ears. The level of the talent was a high one, some good part songs, and
two real singers, and some quite funny and clever comic; but one or two
things made me glad of the shelter of my box. The choruses were fine.
The last thing was a brilliant effort of the four part singers dressed
as comic sailors, which simply made the house rock. Then suddenly, while
they were still yelling, the first chords of the "King" were played, and
all the hundreds stood to attention in a pin-drop silence while it was
played--not sung--much more impressive than the singing of it, I
thought.
We have had some bad cases in to-day, and the boy with the lung is not
doing so well.
My second inoculation passed off very quickly, and I have not been off
duty for it.
X.
With No.-- Field Ambulance (2)
FESTUBERT, MAY 9 AND MAY 16
_May 6, 1915, to May 26, 1915_
"We have built a house that is not for Time's throwing;
We have gained a peace unshaken by pain for ever.
War knows no power. Safe shall be my going,
Secretly armed against all death's endeavour.
Safe though all safety's lost; safe where men fall;
And if these poor limbs die, safest of all."
--RUPERT BROOKE.
X.
With No.-- Field Ambulance (2).
FESTUBERT, MAY 9 AND MAY 16.
_May_ 6, 1915, _to May_ 26, 1915.
The noise of war--Preparation--Sunday, May 9--The barge--The officers'
dressing station--Charge of the Black Watch, May 9--Festubert, May
16--The French Hospital--A bad night--Shelled out--Back at a Clearing
Hospital--"For duty at a Base Hospital."
_Thursday, May 6th_, 3 A.M.--It was a very noisy day, and I didn't sleep
after 2 P.M. There is a good lot of firing going on to-night.
A very muddy officer of 6 ft. 4 was brought in early yesterday morning
with a broken leg, and it is a hard job to get him comfortable in these
short beds.
Yesterday at 4 A.M. I couldn't resist invading the garden opposite which
is the R.A. Headquarters. It is full of lovely trees and flowers and
birds. I found a blackbird's nest with one egg in. From the upper
windows of this place it makes a perfect picture, with the peculiarly
beautiful tower of the Cathedral as a background.
_Friday, May 7th_, 1 A.M.--The noise is worse than anywhere in London,
even the King's Road. The din that a column of horse-drawn,
bolt-rattling waggons make over cobbles is literally deafening; you
can't hear each other speak. And the big motor-lorries taking the
"munitions of war" up are almost as bad. These processions alternate
with marching troops, clattering horses, and French engines all day, and
very often all night, and in the middle of it all there are the guns.
Tonight the rifle firing is crackling.
Sir John French and Sir Douglas Haig have been up here to-day, and every
one is telling every one else when the great Attack is going to begin.
There are three field ambulances up here, and only work for two ( --th
and --th), so the --th is established in a huge school for 500 boys,
where it runs a great laundry and bathing establishment. A thousand men
a day come in for bath, disinfection, and clean clothes; 100 French
women do the laundry work in huge tubs, and there are big disinfectors
and drying and ironing rooms. The men of the F.A. do the sorting and all
the work except the washing and ironing. And the beautifully-cared-for
English cart-horses that belong to the F.A., and the waggons and the
motor ambulances and the equipment, are all kept ready to move at a
moment's notice.
Colonel ---- showed me all over it this evening. It is done at a cost to
the Government of 7d. per man, washed and clothed.
My blackbird has laid another egg.
_Friday, May 7th_, 10 P.M.--A pitch-dark night, raining a little, and
only one topic--the Attack to-morrow morning.
The first R.A.M.C. barge has come up, and is lying in the canal ready to
take on the cases of wounds of lung and abdomen, to save the jolting of
road and railway; it is to have two Sisters, but I haven't seen them
yet: shall go in the morning: went round this morning to see, but the
barge hadn't arrived.
There are a few sick officers downstairs who are finding it hard to
stick in their beds, with their regiments in this job close by. There is
a house close by which I saw this morning with a dirty little red flag
with a black cross on it, where the C.-in-C. and thirty commanders of
the 1st Army met yesterday.
The news to-day of Hill 60 and the gases is another spur to the grim
resolve to break through here, that can be felt and seen and heard in
every detail of every arm. "Grandmother" is lovingly talked about.
The town, the roads, and the canal banks this morning were so packed
with men, waggons, horses, bales, and lorries, that you could barely
pick your way between them.
Since writing this an aeroplane has been circling over us with a loud
buzz. The sergeant called up to me to put the lights out. We saw her
light. There is much speculation as to who and what she was; she was not
big enough for our big "'Bus," as she is called, who belongs to this
place. No one seems ever to have seen one here at night before.
We are making flannel masks for the C.O. for our men.
Our fat little Gabrielle makes the most priceless soup out of the ration
beef (which none of us are any good at) and carrots. She mothers us each
individually, and cleans the house and keeps her wee kitchen spotless.
4 A.M.--The 9.2's are just beginning to talk.
Here is a true story. One of our trenches at Givenchy was being pounded
by German shells at the time of N. Ch. A man saw his brother killed on
one side of him and another man on the other. He went on shooting over
the parapet; then the parapet got knocked about, and still he wasn't
hit. He seized his brother's body and the other man's and built them up
into the parapet with sandbags, and went on shooting.
When the stress was over and he could leave off, he looked round and saw
what he was leaning against. "Who did that?" he said. And they told him.
They get awfully sick at the big-print headlines in some of the
papers--"The Hill 60 Thrill"!
"Thrill, indeed! There's nothing thrilling about ploughing over parapets
into a machine-gun, with high explosives bursting round you,--it's
merely beastly," said a boy this evening, who is all over shrapnel
splinters.
_Saturday, May 8th,_ 9 A.M.--This is Der Tag. Could anybody go to bed
and undress?
I have been cutting dressings all night. One of the most stabbing things
in this war is seeing the lines of empty motor ambulances going up to
bring down the wrecks who at this moment are sound and fit, and all
absolutely ready to be turned into wrecks.
10.30 P.M.--Der Tag was a wash-out, but it is to begin at 1.15 to-night.
(It didn't!)
The tension is more up than ever. A boy who has just come in with a
poisoned heel (broken-hearted because he is out of it, while his
battalion moves up) says, "You'll be having them in in cartloads over
this."
_Sunday, May 9th_, 1.30 A.M.--The Lions are roaring in full blast and
lighting up the sky.
Have been busy to-night with an operation case who is needing a lot of
special nursing, and some admissions--one in at 11 P.M., who was only
wounded at 9 o'clock. I hope these magnificent roars and rumblings are
making a mess of the barbed wire and German trenches. There seems to be
a pretty general opinion that they will retaliate by dropping them into
this place if they have time, and pulverising it like Ypres.
5.25 A.M.--It has begun. It is awful--continuous and earthquaking.
9.30 A.M.--In bed. The last ten minutes of "Rapid" did its damnedest and
then began again, and we are still thundering hell into the German
lines.
It began before 5 with a fearful pounding from the French on our right,
and hasn't left off since.
Had a busy night with my operation case and the others (he is doing
fine), and in every spare second getting ready for the rush. The M.O.'s
were astir very early; the A.D.M.S. came to count empty beds. It is
to-night they'll be coming in.
Must try and sleep. But who could yesterday and to-day?
_Monday, May 10th_, 9.30 A.M.--We have had a night of it. Every Field
Ambulance, barge, Clearing Hospital, and train are blocked with them.
The M.O.'s neither eat nor sleep. I got up early yesterday and went down
to the barge to see if they wanted any extra help (as the other two were
coping with the wounded officers), and had a grim afternoon and evening
there. One M.O., no Sisters, four trained orderlies, and some other men
were there. It was packed with all the worst cases--dying and bleeding
and groaning. After five hours we had three-fourths of them out of their
blood-soaked clothes, dressed, fed, hæmorrhage stopped, hands and faces
washed, and some asleep. Two died, and more were dying. They all worked
like bricks. The M.O., and another from the other barge which hadn't
filled up, sent up to the O.D.S., when my hour for night duty there
came, to ask if I could stay, and got leave. At 11 P.M. four Sisters
arrived (I don't know how--they'd been wired for), two for each barge;
so I handed over to them and went to the O.D.S. to relieve the other two
there for night duty. The place was unrecognisable: every corner of
every floor filled with wounded officers--some sitting up and some all
over wounds, and three dying and others critical; and they still kept
coming in. They were all awfully good strewing about the floor--some
soaked to the skin from wet shell holes--on their stretchers, waiting to
be put to bed.
One had had "such a jolly Sunday afternoon" lying in a shell hole with
six inches of water in it and a dead man, digging himself in deeper with
his trench tool whenever the shells burst near him. He was hit in the
stomach.
One officer saw the enemy through a periscope sniping at our wounded.
4 P.M.--In bed. It seems quiet to-day; there are so few guns to be
heard, and not so many ambulances coming. All except the hopeless cases
will have been evacuated by now from all the Field Hospitals. There was
a block last night, and none could be sent on. The Clearing Hospitals
were full, and no trains in.
Those four Sisters from the base had a weird arrival at the barge last
night in a car at 11 P.M. It was a black dark night, big guns going, and
a sudden descent down a ladder into that Nelson's cockpit. They were
awfully bucked when we said, "Oh, I am glad you have come." They buckled
to and set to work right off. The cook, who had been helping
magnificently in the ward, was running after me with hot cocoa
(breakfast was my last meal, except a cup of tea), and promised to give
them some. One wounded of the Munsters there said he didn't mind nothink
now,--he'd seen so many dead Germans as he never thought on. As always,
they have lost thousands, but they come on like ants.
They have only had about seven new cases to-day at the O.D.S., but two
of last night's have died. A Padre was with them.
They had no market this morning, for fear of bombs from aeroplanes.
There's been no shelling into the town.
_Tuesday, May 11th_, 6.30 P.M.--In bed. I went to bed pretty tired this
morning after an awful night (only a few of the less seriously wounded
had been evacuated yesterday, and all the worst ones, of course, left),
and slept like a top from 10.30 to 5, and feel as fit as anything after
it.
The fighting seems to have stopped now, and no more have come in to-day.
Last night a stiff muddy figure, all bandages and straw, on the
stretcher was brought in. I asked the boy how many wounds? "Oh, only
five," he said cheerfully. "Nice clean wounds,--machine-gun,--all in and
out again!"