There fell a day when the call came from Ypres to aid the English. A
bitter hot engagement had been fought for seven days, with a hundred and
twenty thousand men in action, and the woods and fields on the Hoogar
road were strewn with the wounded. Dr. McDonnell, the head of the
Ambulance Corps, rode over from Furnes to the shell-blackened house of
the nurses in Pervyse. With him he brought Woffington, a young
Englishman, to drive the ambulance. He asked Hilda to go with them to
Ypres.
"Scotch, English and American, all on one seat," said Hilda with a
smile.
They covered the thirty miles in one hour, and went racing through the
city of Ypres, eastward toward the action. Half way out to the noise of
artillery, their car was stopped by an English officer, handsome,
courteous, but very firm.
"You cannot go out on this road," he said.
"We will be back before you know it," pleaded Hilda. "We will bring back
your wounded. Let me show you."
"Report to me on your way back," he ordered. "My name is Fitzgerald,
Captain Fitzgerald."
They rode on. All down the road, straggled wounded men, three miles of
them limped, they held up a red hand, they carried a shattered arm in a
sling. There was blood on their faces. They walked with bowed head,
tired.
"These are the lucky ones," said Woffington, "they only got scotched."
That was the famous battle of Ypres. Of the dead there were more than
the mothers of a countryside could replace in two generations. But death
is war's best gift. War's other gifts are malicious--fever and plague,
and the maiming of strength, and the fouling of beauty--shapely bodies
tortured to strange forms, eager young faces torn away. Death is choicer
than that, a release from the horror of life trampled like a filthy
weed.
"Mons was a birthday party to this," said a Tommy to Hilda. "They're
expecting too much of us. The whole thing is put on us to do, and it
takes a lot of doing."
Dr. McDonnell and Woffington loaded the car with the severest of the
cases, and returned to the white house of the Officer. He was waiting
for them, grim, attentive.
Hilda flung up the hood:--two Tommies at length on the stretchers on one
side of the car; opposite them, seven Tommies in a row with hand, arm,
foot, leg, shoulder, neck and breast wounds. It was too good a piece of
rescue work to be strangled with Red Tape. The Officer could not
refrain from a smile of approval.
"You may work along this road," he said, "but look out for the other
officers. They will probably stop you. But, remember, my permission
holds good only for to-day. Then you must go back. This isn't according
to regulations. Now, go on to the hospital."
Ten minutes more, and they swung inside the great iron gates of the
Sisters of Mercy. Never had Hilda felt the war so keenly as now. She had
been dealing with it bit by bit. But here it was spread out beyond all
dealing with. She had to face it without solutions.
There, in the Convent, known now as Military Hospital Number One, was
row after row of Khaki men in bed. They had overflowed to the stone
floor down the long corridors, hundreds of yards of length, and every
foot close packed, like fish in a tin, with helpless outstretched men.
The grey stones and the drab suits on the bundles of straw,--what a
backwash from the tides of slaughter. If a man stood on his feet, he had
to reach for a cane. There were no whole men there, except the busy
stretcher-bearers bringing in new tenants for the crowded smelly place.
As quickly as they could unload their men, and stuff them into the
corridor, Hilda and the doctor and Woffington sped back down the line,
and up to the thronged dressing-stations. Wounded men were not their
only charge, nor their gravest. They took in a soldier sobbing from the
shock of the ceaseless shell fire. The moaning and wasp-like buzz of the
flying metal, then the earth-shaking thud of its impact, and the roar of
its high explosive, had played upon nerves not elastic enough to absorb
the strain, till the man became a whimpering child. And they carried in
a man shaking from ague, a big, fine fellow, trembling in every part,
who could not lift a limb to walk. That which had been rugged enough
for a lifetime of work became palsied after a few weeks of this king's
sport. This undramatic slaughter was slower than the work of the guns,
but it was as thorough. A man with colic was put into the car.
"I'm bad," he said. The pain kept griping him, so that he rode leaning
down with his face pointed at the footboard.
Working as Hilda worked, with her two efficient friends and a
well-equipped dressing-station, their own hospital only seven miles to
the rear of them, she had been able to measure up to any situation that
had been thrust at her. It was buckle to it, and work furiously, and
clean up the mess, and then on to the next. But here was a wide-spread
misery that overwhelmed her. Dr. McDonnell was as silent as the girl. He
had a sensitiveness to suffering which twenty years of London practice
had not dulled.
The day wore along, with spurt after spurt to the front, and then the
slower drive back, when Woffington guided the car patiently and
skilfully, so that the wounded men inside should not be shaken by the
motion. They had a snack of luncheon with them, and ate it while they
rode. Their little barrel of water, swinging between the wheels, had
long ago gone to fevered men.
"First ambulance I've seen in twenty-four hours," said Captain Davies,
as he came on them out of the dusk of Hoogar wood. The stern and
unbending organization of the military had found it necessary to hold a
hundred or more ambulances of the Royal Army Medical Corps in readiness
all day in the market place of Ypres against a sudden evacuation. So
there were simply no cars, but their one car, to speed out to the front
and gather the wounded.
It was strange, in the evening light, to work out along the road between
lines of poplar trees. Dim forms kept passing them--two by two, each
couple with a stretcher and its burden. An old farm cart came jogging
by, wrenching its body from side to side as it struck invisible hummocks
and dipped into shell holes. It was loaded with outstretched forms of
men, whose wounds were torn at by the jerking of the cart. In companies,
fresh men, talking in whispers, were softly padding along the road on
their way to the trenches, to relieve the staled fighters. The wide
silence was only broken by the occasional sharp clatter and ping of some
lonely sniper's rifle.
It was ten o'clock of the evening, and the ambulance had gone out one
mile beyond the hamlet of Hoogar. The Doctor and Hilda alighted at the
thick wood, which had been hotly contended for, through the seven days.
It had been covered with shell fire as thoroughly as a fishing-net rakes
a stream. They waited for Woffington to turn the car around. It is wise
to leave a car headed in the direction of safety, when one is treading
on disputed ground.
A man stepped out of the wood.
"Are you Red Cross?" he asked.
"Yes," said Dr. McDonnell, "and we have our motor ambulance here."
"Good!" answered the stranger. "We have some wounded men in the Château
at the other side of the wood. Come with me."
"How far?" asked Hilda.
"Oh, not more than half a mile."
They seeped along over the wet wood road, speaking not at all, as
snipers were scattered by night here and there in the trees. They came
to the old white building, a country house of size and beauty. In the
cellar, three soldiers were lying on straw. Two of them told Hilda they
had been lying wounded and uncared for in the trenches since evening of
the night before. They had just been brought to the house. She went
over to the third, a boy of about eighteen years. He was shot through
the biceps muscle of his left arm. He was pale and weak.
"How long have you been like this?" asked the girl.
"Since four o'clock, yesterday," he whispered.
"Thirty hours," said Hilda.
Dr. McDonnell made a request to the officer for help. He gave four men
and two stretchers. They put the boy and one of the men on the
stretchers, and hoisted them through the cellar window. Woffington and
McDonnell took the lantern and searched till they found a wheelbarrow.
The third man, wounded in the shoulder, threw an arm over Dr. McDonnell,
and Woffington steadied him at the waist. He stumbled up the steps, and
collapsed into the barrow.
Woffington and the Doctor took turns in wheeling him through the mud.
Hilda walked at their side. The wheel bit deeply into the road under
the weight. They had to spell each other, frequently. After a few
hundred yards, they met a small detachment of cavalry, advancing toward
the house. The horses seemed to feel the tension, and shared in the
silence of their drivers, stepping noiselessly through the murk.
Woffington was forced to turn the barrow into the ditch. It required the
strength of the two men, one at each handle, to shove it out on the road
again.
The stretchers had reached the ambulance ahead of the wheelbarrow. They
loaded the car hastily--there was no time to swing stretchers. They put
the three wounded in on the long wooden seat. The boy with the torn
biceps fainted on Hilda's shoulder. She rode in with him. At Hoogar
dressing-station, she asked the military doctor for water for the boy.
He had come to, and kept whispering--"Water, water."
"I have no water for you," said the Doctor.
A soldier followed her back to the car and gave the lad to drink from
his bottle. There was only a swallow in it.
When they reached the Convent, the officer in charge came running out.
"I'll take this load, but that's all," he said. "Can't take any more,
full up. Next trip, go on into the town, to Military Hospital Number
Three."
They started back toward the wood.
"I've only got petrol enough for one trip, and then home again," said
Woffington.
"All the way, then," said the Doctor, "out to the farthest trenches.
We'll make a clean sweep."
They shot past Hoogar, and out through the wood, and on to the trenches
of the Cheshires. Just back of the mounded earth, the reserves were
sleeping in the mud of the road, and on the wet bank of the ditch. The
night was dark and silent. A few rods to the right, a shelled barn was
blazing.
"Have you any wounded?" asked Dr. McDonnell.
"So many we haven't gathered them in," answered the officer. "What is
the use? No one to carry them away."
"I'll carry as many as I can," said the Doctor.
"I'll send for them," replied the captain. He spread his men out in the
search. Three wounded were placed in the car, all of them stretcher
cases.
"Room for one more stretcher case," said Dr. McDonnell; "the car only
holds four."
"Bring the woman," ordered the officer.
His men came carrying an aged peasant woman, grey-haired, heavy, her
black dress soggy with dew and blood.
"Here's a poor old woman," explained the captain; "seems to be a Belgian
peasant. She was working out in the fields here, while the firing was
going on. She was shot in the leg and fell down in the field. She's been
lying on her face there all day. Can't you take her out of the way?"
"Surely," said Hilda.
The old woman was heavier than a soldier, heavier and more helpless.
"The car is full," said Hilda; "you have more wounded?"
The officer smiled.
"Of course," he answered; "here come a few of them, now."
The girl counted them. She had to leave twelve men at that farthest
trench, because the car was full. On the trip back, she jumped down at
the Hoogar dressing-station, and there she found sixteen more men
strewed around in the straw, waiting to be removed. Twenty-eight men she
had to ride away from.
For the first time in that long day, they went past the
Convent-hospital, and on into the city of Ypres itself, down through
the Grand Place, and then abruptly through a narrow street to the south.
Here they found Military Hospital Number Three. The wounded men were
lifted down and into the courtyard. Lastly, the woman.
"Yes, we'll take her," said the good-hearted Tommies, who lent a hand in
unloading the car. But their officer was firm.
"We have no room," he said; "we must keep this hospital for the
soldiers. I wish I could help you."
"But what am I to do with her?" asked Hilda in dismay.
"I am sorry," said the officer. He walked away.
"The same old story," said Hilda; "no place for the old in war-time.
They'll turn us away from all the hospitals. Anyone who isn't a soldier
might as well be dead as in trouble."
The old woman lay on the stretcher in the street. Her mouth had fallen
open, as if she had weakened her hold on things. There was something
beyond repair about her appearance, and something unrebuking, too. "Do
with me what you please," she seemed to say, "I shall make no complaint.
I am too old and feeble to make you any trouble. Leave me here in the
gutter if you like. No one will ever blame you for it, surely not I."
"Lift her back," ordered the Doctor; "we'll go hunting."
He had seen a convent near the market square when they had gone through
in the morning. They rode to the door, and pulled the hanging wire. The
bell resounded down long corridors. Five minutes passed. Then the bolt
was shot, and a sleepy-eyed Sister opened the door, candle in hand.
"Sister, I beg you to take this poor old peasant woman in my car,"
pleaded Hilda, "she is wounded in the leg."
The Sister made no reply but threw the door wide open, then turned and
shuffled off down the stone corridor.
"Come," said Hilda; "we have found a home."
The men lifted the stretcher out, and followed the dim twinkling light
down the passage. It turned into a great room. They followed in. Every
bed was occupied--perhaps fifty old women sleeping there, grey hair and
white hair on the pillows, red coverlets over the beds. To the end of
the room they went, where one wee little girl was sleeping. The Sister
spread bedding on the floor, and lifted the child from the cot. She
stretched herself a moment in the chilly sheets, then settled into
sleep, with her face, shut-eyed, upturned toward the light. Hilda sighed
with relief. Their work was ended.
"Now for home," she said. "Fifteen and a half hours of work."
It was half an hour after midnight, when they drew up in Ypres market
square and glanced down the beautiful length of the Cloth Hall, that
building of massive and light-winged proportion. It was the last time
they were ever to see it. It has fallen under the shelling, and cannot
be rebuilt. They paused to pick their road back to Furnes, for in the
darkness it was hard to find the street that led out of the town. They
thought they had found it, and went swiftly down to the railway station
before they knew their mistake. As they started to turn back and try
again, a great shell fell into the little artificial lake just beyond
them. It roared under the surface, and then shot up a fountain of water
twenty feet high, with edges of white foam.
"It is time to go," said Hilda; "they will send another shell. They
always do. They are going to bombard the town."
They spurted back to the square, and as they circled it, still puzzled
for the way of escape, two shells went sailing high over them and fell
into the town beyond.
"Jack Johnsons," said Woffington. This time, he made the right turn,
back of the Cloth Hall into the safe country.
Never had it felt so good to Hilda to leave a place.
"I am afraid," she said to herself. Now she knew why brave men sometimes
ran like rabbits.
* * * * *
"Go back to London, and report what we have seen," urged Dr. McDonnell.
"We can set England aflame with it. The English people will rise to it,
if they know their wounded are being neglected."
"It takes a lot to rouse the English," said Hilda; "that is their
greatest quality, their steadiness. In our country we'd have a crusade
over the situation, and then we'd forget all about it. But you people
won't believe it for another year or so. When you do believe it, you'll
cure it."
"You will see," replied the Doctor.
"I'll try," said Hilda.
* * * * *
It was one of those delightful mixed grills in Dover Street, London,
where men and women are equally welcome. Dover Street is lined with
them, pleasant refuges for the wives of army officers, literary women of
distinction, and the host of well-to-do uncelebrated persons, who make
the rich background of modern life. Dr. McDonnell's warm friend, the
Earl of Tottenham, and his wife, were entertaining Hilda at dinner, and,
knowing she had something to tell of conditions at Ypres, they had made
Colonel Albert Bevan one of the party.
Hilda thought Colonel Bevan one of the cleverest men she had ever met.
He had a quick nervous habit of speech, a clean-shaven alert face, with
a smile that threw her off guard and opened the way for the Colonel to
make his will prevail. He was enjoying a brilliant Parliamentary career.
He had early thrown his lot with the Liberals, and had never found cause
to regret it. He had been an under-secretary, and, when the war broke
out, Kitchener had chosen him for his private emissary to the fighting
line to report back to the Chief the exact situation. He was under no
one else than K.; came directly to him with his findings, went from him
to the front.
"My dear young lady," the Colonel was saying, "you've forgotten that
Ypres was the biggest fight of the war, one of the severest in all
history. In a day or two, we got things in hand. You came down on a day
when the result was just balanced. It was a toss-up whether the other
fellows would come through or not. You see, you took us at a bad time."
"How about the ambulances that weren't working?" asked Hilda. "The
square was lined with them."
"I know," responded the Colonel, "but the city was likely to be
evacuated at any hour. As a matter of fact, those ambulances were used
all night long after the bombardment began, emptying the three military
hospitals, and taking the men to the train. We sent them down to Calais.
You were most fortunate in getting through the lines at all. I shouldn't
have blamed Captain Fitzgerald if he had ordered you back to Furnes."
"Captain Fitzgerald!" exclaimed Hilda. "How did you know I was talking
with him?"
"I was there that day in Ypres," said the Colonel.
"You were in Ypres," repeated Hilda, in astonishment.
"I was there," he said; "I saw the whole thing. You came down upon our
lines as if you had fallen out of a blue moon. What were we to do? A
very charming young American lady, with a very good motor ambulance. It
was a visitation, wasn't it? If we allowed it regularly, what would
become of the fighting? Why, there are fifty volunteer organizations,
with cars and nurses, cooling their heels in Boulogne. If we let one in,
we should have to let them all come. There wouldn't be any room for
troops."
"But how about the wounded?" queried Hilda. "Where do they come in?"
"In many cases, it doesn't hurt them to lie out in the open air,"
responded the Colonel; "that was proved in the South African War. The
wounds often heal if you leave them alone in the open air. But you
people come along and stir up and joggle them. In army slang, we call
you the body snatchers."
"What you say about the wounded is absurd," replied Hilda.
"Tut, tut," chided the Colonel.
"I mean just that," returned the girl, with heat. "It is terrible to
leave men lying out who have got wounded. It is all rot to say the open
air does them good. If the wound was clean from a bullet, and the air
pure, and the soil fresh as in a new country, that would be true in some
of the cases. The wound would heal itself. But a lot of the wounds are
from jagged bits of shell, driving pieces of clothing and mud from the
trenches into the flesh. The air is septic, full of disease from the
dead men. They lie so close to the surface that a shell, anywhere near,
brings them up. Three quarters of your casualties are from disease. The
wound doesn't heal; it gets gangrene and tetanus from the stale old
soil. And instead of having a good fighting man back in trim in a
fortnight, you have a sick man in a London hospital for a couple of
months, and a cripple for a lifetime."
"You would make a good special pleader," responded the Colonel with a
bow. "I applaud your spirit, but the wounded are not so important, you
know. There are other considerations that come ahead of the wounded."
"But don't the wounded come first?" asked Hilda, in a hurt tone.
"Certainly not," answered the Colonel. "We have to keep the roads clear
for military necessity. This is the order in which we have to regard the
use of roads in war-time." He checked off his list on his fingers--
"First comes ammunition, then food, then reinforcements, and fourth, the
wounded."