THE WOMEN AT THE FRONT
It was commencing to rain outside. The rain beat on the windows and
made even the reluctant fire seem cosy. Some one had had a box of
candy sent from home. It was brought out and presented with a
flourish.
"It is frightful, this life in the trenches!" said the young officer
who passed it about.
Shortly afterward the party was increased. An orderly came in and
announced that an Englishwoman, whose automobile had broken down, was
standing on the bridge over the canal and asked to be admitted. She
did not know the password and the sentry refused to let her pass by.
One of the officers went out and returned in a few moments with a
small lady much wrapped in veils and extremely wet. She stood blinking
in the doorway in the accustomed light. She was recognised at once as
a well-known English novelist who is conducting a soup kitchen at a
railroad station three miles behind the Belgian front.
"A car was to have picked me up," she said, "but I have walked and
walked and it has not come. And I am so cold. Is that tea? And may I
come to the fire?"
So they settled her comfortably, with her feet thrust out to the
blaze, and gave her hot tea and plenty of bread and butter.
"It is like the Mad Hatter's tea party in Alice in Wonderland," said
one of the officers gaily. "When any fresh person drops in we just
move up one place."
The novelist sipped her tea and told me about her soup kitchen.
"It is so very hard to get things to put into the soup," she said. "Of
course I have no car, and now with the new law that no women are to be
allowed in military cars I hardly know what to do."
"Will you tell me just what you do?" I asked. So she told me, and
later I saw her soup kitchen.
"Men come in from the front," she explained, "injured and without
food. Often they have had nothing to eat for a long time. We make soup
of whatever meat we can find and any vegetables, and as the hospital
trains come in we carry it out to the men. They are so very grateful
for it."
That was to be an exceptional afternoon at the naval air-station. For
hardly had the novelist been settled with her tea when two very
attractive but strangely attired young women came into the room. They
nodded to the officers, whom they knew, and went at once to the
business which had brought them.
"Can you lend us a car?" they asked. "Ours has gone off the road into
the mud, and it looks as though it would never move again."
That was the beginning of a very strange evening, almost an
extraordinary evening. For while the novelist was on her way back to
peace these young women were on their way home.
And home to them was one room of a shattered house directly on the
firing line.
Much has been said about women at the front. As far as I know at that
time there were only two women absolutely at the front. Nurses as a
rule are kept miles behind the line. Here and there a soup kitchen,
like that just spoken of, has held its courageous place three or four
miles back along the lines of communication.
I have said that they were extraordinarily dressed. Rather they were
most practically dressed. Under khaki-coloured leather coats these two
young women wore khaki riding breeches with puttees and flannel
shirts. They had worn nothing else for six months. They wore knitted
caps on their heads, for the weather was extremely cold, and mittens.
The fire was blazing high and we urged them to take off their outer
wraps. For a reason which we did not understand at the time they
refused. They sat with their leather coats buttoned to the throat, and
coloured violently when urged to remove them.
"But what are you doing here?" said one of the officers. "What brings
you so far from P----"
They said they had had an errand, and went on drinking tea.
"What sort of an errand?" a young lieutenant demanded.
They exchanged glances.
"Shopping," they said, and took more tea.
"Shopping, for what?" He was smilingly impertinent.
They hesitated. Then: "For mutton," one of them replied. Both looked
relieved. Evidently the mutton was an inspiration. "We have found some
mutton." They turned to me. "It is a real festival. You have no idea
how long it is since we've had anything of the sort."
"Mutton!" cried the novelist, with frankly greedy eyes. "It makes
wonderful soup! Where can I get it?"
They told her, and she stood up, tied on her seven veils and departed,
rejoicing, in a car that had come for her.
When she was gone Colonel M---- turned to one of the young women.
"Now," he said, "out with it. What brings you both so far from your
thriving and prosperous little community?"
The irony of that was lost on me until later, when I discovered that
the said community was a destroyed town with the advance line of
trenches running through it, and that they lived in the only two whole
rooms in the place.
"Out with it," said the colonel, and scowled ferociously.
Driven into a corner they were obliged to confess. For three hours
that afternoon they had stood in a freezing wind on a desolate field,
while King Albert of Belgium decorated for bravery various officers
and--themselves. The jealously fastened coats were thrown open.
Gleaming on the breast of each young woman was the star of the Order
of Leopold!
"But why did you not tell us?" the officers demanded.
"Because," was the retort, "you have never approved of us; you have
always wanted us sent back to England. The whole British Army has
objected to our being where we are."
"Much good the objecting has done!" grumbled the officers. But in
their hearts they were very proud.
Originally there had been three in this valiant little group of young
aristocrats who have proved as true as their brothers to the
traditions of their race. The third one was the daughter of an earl.
She, too, had been decorated. But she had gone to a little town near
by a day or two before.
"But what do you do?" I asked one of these young women. She was
drawing on her mittens ready to start for their car.
"Sick and sorry work," she said briefly. "You know the sort of thing.
I wish you would come out and have dinner with us. There is to be
mutton."
I accepted promptly, but it was the situation and not the mutton that
appealed to me. It was arranged that they should go ahead and set
things in motion for the meal, and that I should follow later.
At the door one of them turned and smiled at me.
"They are shelling the village," she said. "You don't mind, do you?"
"Not at all," I replied. And I meant it. For I was no longer so
gun-shy as I had been earlier in the winter. I had got over turning
pale at the slamming of a door. I was as terrified, perhaps, but my
pride had come to my aid.
It was the English officers who disapproved so thoroughly who told me
about them when they had gone.
"Of course they have no business there," they said. "It's a frightful
responsibility to place on the men at that part of the line. But
there's no question about the value of what they are doing, and if
they want to stay they deserve to be allowed to. They go right into
the trenches, and they take care of the wounded until the ambulances
can come up at night. Wait until you see their house and you will
understand why they got those medals."
And when I had seen their house and spent an evening with them I
understood very well indeed.
We gathered round the fire; conversation was desultory. Muddy and
weary young officers, who had been at the front all day, came in and
warmed themselves for a moment before going up to their cold rooms.
The owner of the broken wind shield arrived and was placated.
Continuous relays of tea were coming and going. Colonel ----, who had
been in an observation balloon most of the day, spoke of balloon
sickness.
"I have been in balloons of one sort and another for twenty years," he
said. "I never overcome the nausea. Very few airmen do."
I spoke to him about a recent night attack by German aviators.
"It is remarkable work," he commented warmly, "hazardous in the
extreme; and if anything goes wrong they cannot see where they are
coming down. Even when they alight in their own lines, landing safely
is difficult. They are apt to wreck their machines."
The mention of German aëroplanes reminded one of the officers of an
experience he had had just behind the firing line.
"I had been to the front," he said, "and a mile or so behind the line
a German aëroplane overtook the automobile. He flew low, with the
evident intention of dropping a bomb on us. The chauffeur, becoming
excited, stalled the engine. At that moment the aviator dropped the
first bomb, killing a sow and a litter of young pigs beside the car
and breaking all the glass. Cranking failed to start the car. It was
necessary, while the machine manoeuvred to get overhead again, to lift
the hood of the engine, examine a spark-plug and then crank the car.
He dropped a second bomb which fell behind the car and made a hole in
the road. Then at last the engine started, and it took us a very short
time to get out of that neighbourhood."
The car he spoke of was the car in which I had come out to the
station. I could testify that something had broken the glass!
One of the officers had just received what he said were official
percentages of casualties in killed, wounded and missing among the
Allies, to the first of February.
The Belgian percentage was 66 2-3, the English 33 1-3 and the French
7. I have no idea how accurate the figures were, or his authority for
them. He spoke of them as official. From casualties to hospitals and
nurses was but a step. I spoke warmly of the work the nurses near the
front were doing. But one officer disagreed with me, although in the
main his views were not held by the others.
"The nurses at the base hospitals should be changed every three
months," he said. "They get the worst cases there, in incredible
conditions. After a time it tells on them. I've seen it in a number of
cases. They grow calloused to suffering. That's the time to bring up a
new lot."
I think he is wrong. I have seen many hospitals, many nurses. If there
is a change in the nurses after a time, it is that, like the soldiers
in the field, they develop a philosophy which carries them through
their terrible days. "What must be, must be," say the men in the
trenches. "What must be, must be," say the nurses in the hospital. And
both save themselves from madness.