March, 1915
_March 5th._ March was inaugurated by an amusing incident. At about
midnight the alarm was given--a Taube or Zeppelin signalled from
Calais--bells rang, guns boomed, the whole of the French population
turned out, and the police raided a nurse's room because a light was
visible--and, after all, nothing happened.
That the Germans still have hopes of getting to Calais is obvious from
their Press comments on the range of their coast guns.
"The chief point of which lies in the suggestion that from Calais the
harbour defences of Dover can be bombarded over a front of five and a
half miles!" (See extract from _Daily Mail_.) Their preparations for
billeting a number of troops in Belgium are large: "At Liége 20,000 men
are expected." The order has been given for the Wimereux hospitals to
be cleared.
"It is our duty to keep the men here and feed the front," said one of
the C.O.s to-day. "And when we are told to clear it means a big move."
_March 10th._ In spite of the fact that a great battle is raging at
Neuve Chapelle, where the British have made a great push, the "all
star" concert party, sent over by the Y.M.C.A. in London, gave a
performance in the large gaming room of the Casino (once the haunt of
so much frivolity). The worst cases lay in beds in the centre, whilst
the blue-jacketed lesser cases clustered behind, and the sisters
flitted to and fro in their grey dresses and red capes attending to the
more serious.
"Messieurs, faites vos jeux, le jeu est fait!" Over and over again the
suave voice of the croupier seemed to ring in my ears--as it had so
often rung in this very room in peace time. "Faites vos jeux." What an
awful thing this new game of War is, only those who have seen can grasp.
"Le jeu est fait!"--and here in this gilded hall, that once witnessed
such a different game, we see the results.
Stretchers were brought in all through the performance. As I glanced up
during the cheerful chorus of "Here we are--here we are--here we are
again!" a man was borne in with his eyes blown out. He lay very still,
as if the unaccustomedness of it was yet upon him. The tears blinded
me. Then he too began to sing.
The spirits of the men are wonderful. "It's worth losing a limb to live
through a victory!" they say.
When our work was over we left the close, smoke-choked room (and it
is wonderful how soldiers who have had a sufficiency of open-air life
seem to revel in closed doors and windows!) for a short stroll. It was
a still, foreboding night. The barriers were well guarded, darkness
reigned over the town, and as we strolled along the rough road our path
was lighted only by the passing ambulances, whilst across the lowering
heavy heavens played the searchlights.
Ambulance after ambulance passed, a few going fast, most, alas! at the
slow, cautious speed that betokens the worst.
What untold misery these crushed bits of humanity mean, borne swiftly
to the silent city of suffering! How gladly we would suffer for them!
Yet not a moan, not a groan, in those great wards whilst mind and will
have power to cope with the agonies of the flesh.
_March 12th._ We heard interesting anecdotes of our fighters at
Christmas-time from an important man on the court martial. One private,
under cover of festivities, slipped down to the base, where for some
months he has lived in style on French bounty as an officer of the
Guards! Another man, an N.C.O. employed in office work, was told off
to write out notices forbidding the men overburdened with Christmas
gifts to return things home, as they have been doing. He handed in the
documents, and with them a big parcel to be censored, which when opened
was found to contain a quantity of socks, bearing the legend: "These
may come in useful."
_March 13th._ Soup is the latest addition to our bill of fare for the
men, who greatly appreciate it as being more nourishing than tea.
Our battle with Primus stoves is never-ending. The roar of these little
indispensable instruments of torture haunts us, and an effigy of one
will assuredly be engraven on some of our tombstones! Apropos of food,
we have grown almost into vegetarians, the meat we get being mostly
horse--which, dressed in the delightfully piquant French style, is
tasty but not nourishing--or the eternal pork that occurs and recurs
with clockwork regularity alternately disguised as veal, lamb or mutton.
There are days when we envy the men--whose rations of good bully beef
they affect to scorn--with all our hearts.
The spring push continues. The rapidity with which the Neuve Chapelle
men were brought down to the base, often finding themselves in hospital
twelve hours after they fell, is incredible.
Last night a Red Cross ambulance driver, who had passed through before,
came in for some coffee. As he counted his change I noted his eyes
were dim with unshed tears. When he confessed that the strain of many
sleepless nights is beginning to tell on him, I could find few words of
comfort.
The awful groans, the prayers for release as he drives along the
jolting roads, petrify him. And these last days have been pregnant with
work for the ambulances. The culminating point was reached to-night,
when, the car breaking down on a lonely road, he stepped round to find
out how his men were, and discovered that of four only one still lived.
_March 18th._ To-day the news came that the hostel is to be officially
opened. From the batch of War Office correspondence with which I am now
inundated I glean:
1. "Arrangements have now been made to send to France at the public
expense a limited number of relatives of soldiers reported to be in a
very serious condition in the Base Hospitals."
2. "The number will be limited to six persons at each of the Bases and
to one relative in the case of each soldier, the accommodation being
provided by the Y.M.C.A., and visits will only be allowed in cases in
which the Medical Officer considers that the patient would benefit by
the presence of a relation."
The rest of the documents relate to the laws that govern the free
passage, and the certificates to the effect that the relative is unable
to pay necessary expenses required before passage is granted, every
emergency being admirably prepared for.
Walking out after some necessary shopping, I noticed how the Wimereux
road has changed--is changing. Often during the winter months we
tramped along in the blinding rain wondering at the loneliness of it
all, meeting none but pickets at the barricades, the storm-swept roads
lighted every twenty minutes by a passing tram!
And now? Spring is beginning to show in every cranny. The few trees
are bursting with buds. The road is one incessant rush of cars. The
once sleepy-looking fort, with its visible guns facing the sea, booms
an occasional shot across the bows of a defaulting vessel, and French
soldiers manoeuvre on the cliffs.
It seems as if spring had put life into everything. To the left a camp
hospital is springing up, and khaki figures toil away with ropes and
canvas. To the right, by the sea, walls of earth are being thrown up
that look like trenches, but are in reality drains.
Even the men from the trenches are full of the dramatic contrasts of
warfare in spring--the song of the lark or nightingale interrupted by
the bursting of the "Jack Johnsons"; the burned trees and sprouting
buds. They tell us, too, most extraordinary tales of women being found
in the German trenches we have recently gained: some maintain they
were French civilian prisoners; others that they were the wives of
some of the front-trench Huns. At any rate, the extraordinary fact
remains that they really _were_ there.
_March 19th._ With the aid of a fatigue party of R.A.M.C. men I
succeeded in getting the upstairs rooms of our place into a semblance
of order. The French staff, too, were invaluable, nothing being too
much trouble for the _pauvres blessés_. Anxieties never come singly,
and to-day proved our heaviest day owing to an influx of Canadians and
an army of navvies in Government employment. No sooner were things
straight than in came our first two "wounded relatives"--as we have
decided to dub our guests. Weary, dazed, helpless as children, there
was nothing to do but find them some hot supper and get them to bed,
with promises of conducting them to the hospital the first thing in the
morning.
There being no cupboards in the hostel, we have set to work to make
them out of old packing-cases, and with the remnants of our curtains
and old tablecloths we find them to be, if not beautiful, quite as
serviceable as could be expected.
One difficulty we cannot overcome is the odour from the cesspool that
forms our drainage system, and makes one of the valuable rooms quite
untenantable and another hardly aromatic!
_March 21st._ On our way home last night we paused a moment to look at
the sky.
Gazing from the bridge into the water, it seemed a very Paradise. Every
little star was reflected in the river, and a yellow crescent moon rode
low in the heavens. No sound save the murmur of the sea. Suddenly there
fell upon our ears the strains of a mandoline in the distance that
transported us of a sudden to the sunny shores of the Adriatic.
Our delay might have cost us dear, for on our arrival home my attic was
on fire, some clothing that my companion had put on the stove pipes to
air having caught, smouldered, and set light to linoleum and woodwork.
Another ten minutes and nothing could have saved this jerry-built
wooden villa. It was dawn before we slept, and, needless to remark, I
feel like a kipper to-day, the smell of the smoke is so strong; or some
amphibious animal, for the floor is inundated with water.
_March 23rd._ The news of victories and losses in the outside world
affects us greatly, and the fall of Przemysl to the Russians has had a
very good effect on our spirits.
For ourselves, we are growing accustomed to alarms. We have so many
Zeppelin scares that they begin to be of no interest. A horn is
sounded. The French sentries on the bridge grow seemingly agitated; the
French guard turn out. Groups of people stand gazing Calais-wards into
the sky. An aeroplane comes over--scouting--and that is all.
Apparently, however, the biplane that passed so close that it seemed
almost on top of our balcony yesterday, was one of those which dropped
bombs on Dover! Our first conscious sight of hostile craft, this,
though we saw something strangely resembling a periscope on the glassy
waters.
_March 26th._ A strange little tragedy is being enacted in our kitchen.
Our landlady's husband was reported "missing," and whilst she was gone
in search of further information a neighbour, who had been fighting
by his side, came in to confirm the worst fears. He was killed by a
sniper, we were told, after only one month in the trenches; and but
yesterday the poor little woman was spending one franc fifty to send
him a fourpenny piece of sausage.
She came in happily content, having learned no particulars, talking
cheerfully of the now fashionable khaki uniforms the women are
adopting, and the weeping figures in the kitchen pulled themselves
together and pretended nothing had occurred.
_March 29th._ When the news was broken they feared for her reason. For
the last three days she has lain foodless and sleepless, hugging the
portrait of her husband to her heart, sorting out his old letters,
whilst groups of weeping, crêpe-swathed friends throng the stuffy,
unventilated room.
The Boulogne regiment, it seems, has had a bad cutting-up. Hardly
a woman who is not a widow now. "Mort pour la patrie!" they cry
sadly--"et après la guerre?"
To us any condition of "après la guerre" has become unthinkable.
Sometimes it seems it must be the end of the world.
_March 30th._ According to the local customs, Madame will not leave
the house until the news of her husband's death has been officially
announced by the Mayor. Thus any shopping expeditions in quest of
the mourning which engrosses her whole attention have to be made
surreptitiously.
The official news may be a long time in coming--weeks, perhaps
months--nevertheless, until she has, with the calm resignation demanded
by the occasion, received the official confirmation of the news, she
will not show her face out of doors. We all pray the ceremony may be
soon over, for surely nothing could be worse for a mourner than an
uninterrupted brooding over pots and pans in a hot or crowded kitchen.