[_September 25th, 1914._]
After the painful births and deaths of I don't know how many committees,
after six weeks' struggling with something we imagined to be Red Tape,
which proved to be the combined egoism of several persons all
desperately anxious to "get to the Front," and desperately afraid of
somebody else getting there too, and getting there first, we are
actually off. Impossible to describe the mysterious processes by which
we managed it. I think the War Office kicked us out twice, and the
Admiralty once, though what we were doing with the Admiralty I don't to
this day understand. The British Red Cross kicked us steadily all the
time, on general principles; the American snubbed us rather badly; what
the French said to us I don't remember, and I can't think that we
carried persistency so far as to apply to the Russian and the Japanese.
Many of our scheme perished in their own vagueness. Others, vivid and
adventurous, were checked by the first encounter with the crass
reality. At one time, I remember, we were to have sent out a detachment
of stalwart Amazons in khaki breeches who were to dash out on to the
battle-field, reconnoitre, and pick up the wounded and carry them away
slung over their saddles. The only difficulty was to get the horses. But
the author of the scheme--who had bought her breeches--had allowed for
that. The horses were to be caught on the battle-field; as the wounded
and dead dropped from their saddles the Amazons were to leap into them
and ride off. On this system "remounts" were also to be supplied.
Whenever a horse was shot dead under its rider, an Amazon was to dash up
with another whose rider had been shot dead. It was all perfectly simple
and only needed a little "organization." For four weeks the lure of the
battle-field kept our volunteers dancing round the War Office and the
Red Cross Societies, and for four weeks their progress to the Front was
frustrated by Lord Kitchener. Some dropped off disheartened, but others
came on, and a regenerated committee dealt with them. Finally the thing
crystallized into a Motor Ambulance Corps. An awful sanity came over the
committee, chastened by its sufferings, and the volunteers, under
pressure, definitely renounced the battle-field. Then somebody said,
"Let's help the Belgian refugees." From that moment our course was
clear. Everybody was perfectly willing that we should help the refugees,
provided we relinquished all claim on the wounded. The Belgian Legation
was enchanted. It gave passports to a small private commission of
inquiry under our Commandant to go out to Belgium and send in a report.
At Ostend the commission of inquiry whittled itself down to the one
energetic person who had taken it out. And before we knew where we were
our Ambulance Corps was accepted by the Belgian Red Cross.
Only we had not got the ambulances.
And though we had got some money, we had not got enough. This was really
our good luck, for it saved us from buying the wrong kind of motor
ambulance car. But at first the blow staggered us. Then, by some abrupt,
incalculable turn of destiny, the British Red Cross, which had kicked us
so persistently, came to our help and gave us all the ambulances we
wanted.
And we are off.
There are thirteen of us: The Commandant, and Dr. Haynes and Dr. Bird
under him; and Mrs. Torrence, a trained nurse and midwife, who can drive
a motor car through anything, and take it to bits and put it together
again; Janet McNeil, also an expert motorist, and Ursula Dearmer and
Mrs. Lambert, Red Cross emergency nurses; Mr. Grierson, Mr. Foster and
Mr. Riley, stretcher-bearers, and two chauffeurs and me. I don't know
where I come in. But they've called me the Secretary and Reporter, which
sounds very fine, and I am to keep the accounts (Heaven help them!) and
write the Commandant's reports, and toss off articles for the daily
papers, to make a little money for the Corps. We've got some already,
raised by the Commandant's Report and Appeal that we published in the
_Daily Telegraph_ and _Daily Chronicle_. I shall never forget how I
sprinted down Fleet Street to get it in in time, four days before we
started.
And we have landed at Ostend.
I'll confess now that I dreaded Ostend more than anything. We had been
told that there were horrors upon horrors in Ostend. Children were being
born in the streets, and the state of the bathing-machines where the
refugees lived was unspeakable. I imagined the streets of Ostend crowded
with refugee women bearing children, and the Digue covered with the
horrific bathing-machines. On the other hand, Ostend was said to be the
safest spot in Europe. No Germans there. No Zeppelins. No bombs.
And we found the bathing-machines planted out several miles from the
town, almost invisible specks on a vanishing shore-line. The refugees we
met walking about the streets of Ostend were in fairly good case and
bore themselves bravely. But the town had been bombarded the night
before and our hotel had been the object of very special attentions. We
chose it (the "Terminus") because it lay close to the landing-stage and
saved us the trouble of going into the town to look for quarters. It was
under the same roof as the railway station, where we proposed to leave
our ambulance cars and heavy luggage. And we had no difficulty whatever
in getting rooms for the whole thirteen of us. There was no sort of
competition for rooms in that hotel. I said to myself, "If Ostend ever
is bombarded, this railway station will be the first to suffer. And the
hotel and the railway station are one." And when I was shown into a
bedroom with glass windows all along its inner wall and a fine glass
front looking out on to the platforms under the immense glass roof of
the station, I said, "If this hotel is ever bombarded, what fun it will
be for the person who sleeps in this bed between these glass windows."
We were all rather tired and hungry as we met for dinner at seven
o'clock. And when we were told that all lights would be put out in the
town at eight-thirty we only thought that a municipality which was
receiving all the refugees in Belgium must practise _some_ economy, and
that, anyway, an hour and a half was enough for anybody to dine in; and
we hoped that the Commandant, who had gone to call on the English
chaplain at the Grand Hotel Littoral, would find his way back again to
the peaceful and commodious shelter of the "Terminus."
He did find his way back, at seven-thirty, just in time to give us a
chance of clearing out, if we chose to take it. The English chaplain, it
seemed, was surprised and dismayed at our idea of a suitable hotel, and
he implored us to fly, instantly, before a bomb burst in among us (this
was the first we had heard of the bombardment of the night before). The
Commandant put it to us as we sat there: Whether would we leave that
dining-room at once and pack our baggage all over again, and bundle out,
and go hunting for rooms all through Ostend with the lights out, and
perhaps fall into the harbour; or stay where we were and risk the
off-chance of a bomb? And we were all very tired and hungry, and we had
only got to the soup, and we had seen (and smelt) the harbour, so we
said we'd stay where we were and risk it.
And we stayed. A Taube hovered over us and never dropped its bomb.
[_Saturday, 26th._]
When we compared notes the next morning we found that we had all gone
soundly to sleep, too tired to take the Taube seriously, all except our
two chauffeurs, who were downright annoyed because no bomb had entered
their bedroom. Then we all went out and looked at the little hole in the
roof of the fish market, and the big hole in the hotel garden, and
thought of bombs as curious natural phenomena that never had and never
would have any intimate connection with _us_.
And for five weeks, ever since I knew that I must certainly go out with
this expedition, I had been living in black funk; in shameful and
appalling terror. Every night before I went to sleep I saw an
interminable spectacle of horrors: trunks without heads, heads without
trunks, limbs tangled in intestines, corpses by every roadside, murders,
mutilations, my friends shot dead before my eyes. Nothing I shall ever
see will be more ghastly than the things I have seen. And yet, before a
possibly-to-be-bombarded Ostend this strange visualizing process
ceases, and I see nothing and feel nothing. Absolutely nothing; until
suddenly the Commandant announces that he is going into the town, by
himself, to _buy a hat_, and I get my first experience of real terror.
For the hats that the Commandant buys when he is by himself--there are
no words for them.
This morning the Corps begins to realize its need of discipline. First
of all, our chauffeurs have disappeared and can nowhere be found. The
motor ambulances languish in inactivity on Cockerill's Wharf. We find
one chauffeur and set him to keep guard over a tin of petrol. We _know_
the ambulances can't start till heaven knows when, and so, first Mrs.
Lambert, our emergency nurse, then, I regret to say, our Secretary and
Reporter make off and sneak into the Cathedral. We are only ten minutes,
but still we are away, and Mrs. Torrence, our trained nurse, is ready
for us when we come back. We are accused bitterly of sight-seeing. (We
had betrayed the inherent levity of our nature the day before, on the
boat, when we looked at the sunset.) Then the Secretary and Reporter,
utterly intractable, wanders forth ostensibly to look for the
Commandant, who has disappeared, but really to get a sight of the motor
ambulances on Cockerill's Wharf. And Mrs. Torrence is ready again for
the Secretary, convicted now of sight-seeing. And I have seen no
Commandant, and no motor ambulances and no wharf. (Unbearable thought,
that I may never, absolutely never, see Cockerill's Wharf!) It is really
awful this time, because the President of the Belgian Red Cross is
waiting to get the thirteen of us to the Town Hall to have our passports
_vises_. And the Commandant is rounding up his Corps, and Ursula Dearmer
is heaven knows where, and Mrs. Lambert only somewhere in the middle
distance, and Mrs. Torrence's beautiful eyes are blazing at the
slip-sloppiness of it all. Things were very different at the ----
Hospital, where she was trained.
Only the President remains imperturbable.
For, after all this fuming and fretting, the President isn't quite ready
himself, or perhaps the Town Hall isn't ready, and we all stroll about
the streets of Ostend for half an hour. And the Commandant goes off by
himself, to buy that hat.
It is a terrible half-hour. But after all, he comes back without it,
judging it better to bear the ills he has.
Very leisurely, and with an immense consumption of time, we stroll and
get photographed for our passports. Then on to the Town Hall, and then
to the Military Depot for our _Laissez-passer_, and then to the Hotel
Terminus for lunch. And at one-thirty we are off.
Whatever happens, whatever we see and suffer, nothing can take from us
that run from Ostend to Ghent.
We go along a straight, flat highway of grey stones, through flat, green
fields and between thin lines of trees--tall and slender and delicate
trees. There are no hedges. Only here and there a row of poplars or
pollard willows is flung out as a screen against the open sky. This
country is formed for the very expression of peace. The straight flat
roads, the straight flat fields and straight tall trees stand still in
an immense quiet and serenity. We pass low Flemish houses with white
walls and red roofs. Their green doors and shutters are tall and slender
like the trees, the colours vivid as if the paint had been laid on
yesterday. It is all unspeakably beautiful and it comes to me with the
natural, inevitable shock and ecstasy of beauty. I am going straight
into the horror of war. For all I know it may be anywhere, here, behind
this sentry; or there, beyond that line of willows. I don't know. I
don't care. I cannot realize it. All that I can see or feel at the
moment is this beauty. I look and look, so that I may remember it.
Is it possible that I am enjoying myself?
I dare not tell Mrs. Torrence. I dare not tell any of the others. They
seem to me inspired with an austere sense of duty, a terrible integrity.
They know what they are here for. To me it is incredible that I should
be here.
I am in Car 1., sitting beside Tom, the chauffeur; Mrs. Torrence is on
the other side of me. Tom disapproves of these Flemish roads. He cannot
see that they are beautiful. They will play the devil with his tyres.
I am reminded unpleasantly that our Daimler is not a touring car but a
motor ambulance and that these roads will jolt the wounded most
abominably.
There are straggling troops on the road now. At the nearest village all
the inhabitants turn out to cheer us. They cry out "_Les Anglais!_" and
laugh for joy. Perhaps they think that if the British Red Cross has come
the British Army can't be far behind. But when they hear that we are
Belgian Red Cross they are gladder than ever. They press round us. It is
wonderful to them that we should have come all the way from England
"_pour les Belges!_" Somehow the beauty of the landscape dies before
these crowding, pressing faces.
We pass through Bruges without seeing it. I have no recollection
whatever of having seen the Belfry. We see nothing but the Canal (where
we halt to take in petrol) and more villages, more faces. And more
troops.
Half-way between Bruges and Ghent an embankment thrown up on each side
of the road tells of possible patrols and casual shooting. It is the
first visible intimation that the enemy may be anywhere.
A curious excitement comes to you. I suppose it is excitement, though it
doesn't feel like it. You have been drunk, very slightly drunk with the
speed of the car. But now you are sober. Your heart beats quietly,
steadily, but with a little creeping, mounting thrill in the beat. The
sensation is distinctly pleasurable. You say to yourself, "It is coming.
Now--or the next minute--perhaps at the end of the road." You have one
moment of regret. "After all, it would be a pity if it came too soon,
before we'd even begun our job." But the thrill, mounting steadily,
overtakes the regret. It is only a little thrill, so far (for you don't
really believe that there is any danger), but you can imagine the thing
growing, growing steadily, till it becomes ecstasy. Not that you imagine
anything at the moment. At the moment you are no longer an observing,
reflecting being; you have ceased to be aware of yourself; you exist
only in that quiet, steady thrill that is so unlike any excitement that
you have ever known. Presently you get used to it. "What a fool I should
have been if I hadn't come. I wouldn't have missed this run for the
world."
I forget myself so far as to say this to Mrs. Torrence. My voice doesn't
sound at all like the stern voice of duty. It is the voice of somebody
enjoying herself. I am behaving exactly as I behaved this morning at
Ostend; and cannot possibly hope for any sympathy from Mrs. Torrence.
But Mrs. Torrence has unbent a little. She has in fact been unbending
gradually ever since we left Ostend. There is a softer light in her
beautiful eyes. For she is not only a trained nurse but an expert
motorist; and a Daimler is a Daimler even when it's an ambulance car.
From time to time remarks of a severely technical nature are exchanged
between her and Tom. Still, up till now, nothing has passed to indicate
any flagging in the relentless spirit of the ---- Hospital.
The next minute I hear that the desire of Mrs. Torrence's heart is to
get into the greatest possible danger--and to get out of it.
The greatest possible danger is to fall into the hands of the Uhlans. I
feel that I should be very glad indeed to get out of it, but that I'm
not by any means so keen on getting in. I say so. I confess frankly
that I'm afraid of Uhlans, particularly when they're drunk.
But Mrs. Torrence is not afraid of anything. There is no German living,
drunk or sober, who could break her spirit. Nothing dims for her that
shining vision of the greatest possible danger. She does not know what
fear is.
I conceive an adoration for Mrs. Torrence, and a corresponding distaste
for myself. For I do know what fear is. And in spite of the little
steadily-mounting thrill, I remember distinctly those five weeks of
frightful anticipation when I knew that I must go out to the War; the
going to bed, night after night, drugged with horror, black horror that
creeps like poison through your nerves; the falling asleep and
forgetting it; the waking, morning after morning, with an energetic and
lucid brain that throws out a dozen war pictures to the minute like a
ghastly cinema show, till horror becomes terror; the hunger for
breakfast; the queer, almost uncanny revival of courage that follows its
satisfaction; the driving will that strengthens as the day goes on and
slackens its hold at evening. I remember one evening very near the end;
the Sunday evening when the Commandant dropped in, after he had come
back from Belgium. We were stirring soup over the gas stove in the
scullery--you couldn't imagine a more peaceful scene--when he said,
"They are bringing up the heavy siege guns from Namur, and there is
going to be a terrific bombardment of Antwerp, and I think it will be
very interesting for you to see it." I remember replying with passionate
sincerity that I would rather die than see it; that if I could nurse the
wounded I would face any bombardment you please to name; but to go and
look on and make copy out of the sufferings I cannot help--I couldn't
and I wouldn't, and that was flat. And I wasn't a journalist any more
than I was a trained nurse.
I can still see the form of the Commandant rising up on the other side
of the scullery stove, and in his pained, uncomprehending gaze and in
the words he utters I imagine a challenge. It is as if he said, "Of
course, if you're _afraid_"--(haven't I told him that I _am_ afraid?).
The gage is thrown down on the scullery floor. I pick it up. And that is
why I am here on this singular adventure.
Thus, for the next three kilometres, I meditate on my cowardice. It is
all over as if it had never been, but how can I tell that it won't come
back again? I can only hope that when the Uhlans appear I shall behave
decently. And this place that we have come to is Ecloo. We are not very
far from Ghent.
A church spire, a few roofs rising above trees. Then many roofs all
together. Then the beautiful grey-white foreign city.
As we run through the streets we are followed by cyclists; cyclists
issue from every side-street and pour into our road; cyclists rise up
out of the ground to follow us. We don't realize all at once that it is
the ambulance they are following. Bowing low like racers over their
handle-bars, they shoot past us; they slacken pace and keep alongside,
they shoot ahead; the cyclists are most fearfully excited. It dawns on
us that they are escorting us; that they are racing each other; that
they are bringing the news of our arrival to the town. They behave as if
we were the vanguard of the British Army.
We pass the old Military Hospital--_Hopital Militaire_ No. I.--and
presently arrive at the Flandria Palace Hotel, which is _Hopital
Militaire_ No. II. The cyclists wheel off, scatter and disappear. The
crowd in the Place gathers round the porch of the hotel to look at the
English Ambulance.
We enter. We are received by various officials and presented to Madame
F., the head of the Red Cross nursing staff. There is some confusion,
and Mrs. Torrence finds herself introduced as the Secretary of the
English Committee. Successfully concealed behind the broadest back in
the Corps, which belongs to Mr. Grierson, I have time to realize how
funny we all are. Everybody in the hospital is in uniform, of course.
The nurses of the Belgian Red Cross wear white linen overalls with the
brassard on one sleeve, and the Red Cross on the breasts of their
overalls, and over their foreheads on the front of their white linen
veils. The men wear military or semi-military uniforms. We had never
agreed as to our uniform, and some of us had had no time to get it, if
we had agreed. Assembled in the vestibule, we look more like a party of
refugees, or the cast of a Barrie play, than a field ambulance corps.
Mr. Grierson, the Chaplain, alone wears complete khaki, in which he is
indistinguishable from any Tommy. The Commandant, obeying some
mysterious inspiration, has left his khaki suit behind. He wears a
Norfolk jacket and one of his hats. Mr. Foster in plain clothes, with a
satchel slung over his shoulders, has the air of an inquiring tourist.
Mrs. Torrence and Janet McNeil in short khaki tunics, khaki putties, and
round Jaeger caps, and very thick coats over all, strapped in with
leather belts, look as if they were about to sail on an Arctic
expedition; I was told to wear dark blue serge, and I wear it
accordingly; Ursula Dearmer and Mrs. Lambert are in normal clothes. But
the amiable officials and the angelic Belgian ladies behave as if there
was nothing in the least odd about our appearance. They remember only
that we are English and that it is now six o'clock and that we have had
no tea. They conceive this to be the most deplorable fate that can
overtake the English, and they hurry us into the great kitchen to a
round table, loaded with cake and bread-and-butter and enormous bowls of
tea. The angelic beings in white veils wait on us. We are hungry and we
think (a pardonable error) that this meal is hospital supper; after
which some work will surely be found for us to do.
We are shown to our quarters on the third floor. We expect two bare
dormitories with rows of hard beds, which we are prepared to make
ourselves, besides sweeping the dormitories, and we find a fine suite of
rooms--a mess-room, bedrooms, dressing-rooms, bathrooms--and hospital
orderlies for our _valets de chambre_.
We unpack, sit round the mess-room and wait for orders. Perhaps we may
all be sent down into the kitchen to wash up. Personally, I hope we
shall be, for washing up is a thing I can do both quickly and well. It
is now seven o'clock.
At half-past we are sent down into the kitchen, not to wash up, but, if
you will believe it, to dine. And more hospital orderlies wait on us at
dinner.
The desire of our hearts is to do _something_, if it is only to black
the boots of the angelic beings. But no, there is nothing for us to do.
To-morrow, perhaps, the doctors and stretcher-bearers will be busy. We
hear that only five wounded have been brought into the hospital to-day.
They have no ambulance cars, and ours will be badly needed--to-morrow.
But to-night, no.
We go out into the town, to the Hotel de la Poste, and sit outside the
cafe and drink black coffee in despair. We find our chauffeurs doing the
same thing. Then we go back to our sumptuous hotel and so, dejectedly,
to bed. Aeroplanes hover above us all night.
[_Sunday, 27th._]
We hang about waiting for orders. They may come at any moment. Meanwhile
this place grows incredible and fantastic. Now it is an hotel and now it
is a military hospital; its two aspects shift and merge into each other
with a dream-like effect. It is a huge building of extravagant design,
wearing its turrets, its balconies, its very roofs, like so much
decoration. The gilded legend, "Flandria Palace Hotel," glitters across
the immense white facade. But the Red Cross flag flies from the front
and from the corners of the turrets and from the balconies of the long
flank facing south. You arrive under a fan-like porch that covers the
smooth slope of the approach. You enter your hotel through mahogany
revolving doors. A colossal Flora stands by the lift at the foot of the
big staircase. Unaware that this is no festival of flowers, the poor
stupid thing leans forward, smiling, and holds out her garland to the
wounded as they are carried past. Nobody takes any notice of her. The
great hall of the hotel has been stripped bare. All draperies and
ornaments have disappeared. The proprietor has disappeared, or goes
about disguised as a Red Cross officer. The grey mosaic of floors and
stairs is cleared of rugs and carpeting; the reading-room is now a
secretarial bureau; the billiard-room is an operating theatre; the great
dining-hall and the reception-rooms and the bedrooms are wards. The army
of waiters and valets and chambermaids has gone, and everywhere there
are surgeons, ambulance men, hospital orderlies and the Belgian nurses
with their white overalls and red crosses. And in every corridor and on
every staircase and in every room there is a mixed odour, bitter and
sweet and penetrating, of antiseptics and of ether. When the ambulance
cars come up from the railway stations and the battle-fields, the last
inappropriate detail, the mahogany revolving doors, will disappear, so
that the wounded may be carried through on their stretchers.
I confess to a slight, persistent fear of _seeing_ these wounded whom I
cannot help. It is not very active, it has left off visualizing the
horror of bloody bandages and mangled bodies. But it's there; it waits
for me in every corridor and at the turn of every stair, and it makes me
loathe myself.
We have news this morning of a battle at Alost, a town about fifteen
kilometres south-east of Ghent. The Belgians are moving forty thousand
men from Antwerp towards Ghent, and heavy fighting is expected near the
town. If we are not in the thick of it, we are on the edge of the thick.
They have just told us an awful thing. Two wounded men were left lying
out on the battle-field all night after yesterday's fighting. The
military ambulances did not fetch them. Our ambulance was not sent out.
There are all sorts of formalities to be observed before it can go. We
haven't got our military passes yet. And our English Red Cross brassards
are no use. We must have Belgian ones stamped with the Government stamp.
And these things take time.
Meanwhile we, who have still the appearance of a disorganized Cook's
tourist party, are beginning to realize each other, the first step to
realizing ourselves. We have come from heaven knows where to live
together here heaven knows for how long. The Commandant and I are
friends; Mrs. Torrence and Janet McNeil are friends; Dr. Haynes and Dr.
Bird are evidently friends; our chauffeurs, Bert and Tom, are bound to
fraternize professionally; we and they are all right; but these pairs
were only known to each other a week or two ago, and some of the
thirteen never met at all till yesterday. An unknown fourteenth is
coming to-day. We are five women and nine men. You might wonder how, for
all social purposes, we are to sort ourselves? But the idea, sternly
emphasized by Mrs. Torrence, is that we have no social purposes. We are
neither more nor less than a strictly official and absolutely impersonal
body, held together, not by the ordinary affinities of men and women,
but by a common devotion and a common aim. Differences, if any should
exist, will be sunk in the interest of the community. Probabilities that
rule all human intercourse, as we have hitherto known it, will be
temporarily suspended in our case. But we shall gain more than we lose.
Insignificant as individuals, as a corps we share the honour and
prestige of the Military Authority under which we work. We have visions
of a relentless discipline commanding and controlling us. A cold glory
hovers over the Commandant as the vehicle of this transcendent power.
When the Power has its way with us it will take no count of friendships
or affinities. It will set precedence at naught. It will say to itself,
"Here are two field ambulance cars and fourteen people. Five out of
these fourteen are women, and what the devil are they doing in a field
ambulance?" And it will appoint two surgeons, who will also serve as
stretcher-bearers, to each car; it will set our trained nurse, Mrs.
Torrence, in command of the untrained nurses in one of the wards of the
Military Hospital No. II.; the Hospital itself will find suitable
feminine tasks for Ursula Dearmer and Mrs. Lambert; while Janet McNeil
and the Secretary will be told off to work among the refugees. And until
more stretcher-bearers are wanted the rest of us will be nowhere. If
nothing can be found for our women in the Hospital they will be sent
home.
It seems inconceivable that the Power, if it is anything like Lord
Kitchener, can decide otherwise.
Odd how the War changes us. I, who abhor and resist authority, who
hardly know how I am to bring myself to obey my friend the Commandant,
am enamoured of this Power and utterly submissive. I realize with
something like a thrill that we are in a military hospital under
military orders; and that my irrelevant former self, with all that it
has desired or done, must henceforth cease (perhaps irrevocably) to
exist. I contemplate its extinction with equanimity. I remember that one
of my brothers was a Captain in the Gunners, that another of them fought
as a volunteer in the first Boer War; that my uncle, Captain Hind, of
the Bengal Fusiliers, fought in the Mutiny and in the Crimean War, and
his son at Chitral, and that I have one nephew in Kitchener's Army and
one in the West Lancashire Hussars; and that three generations of solid
sugar-planters and ship-owners cannot separate me from my forefathers,
who seem to have been fighting all the time. (At the moment I have
forgotten my five weeks' blue funk.)
Mrs. Torrence's desire for discipline is not more sincere than mine.
Meanwhile the hand that is to lick us into shape hovers over us and does
not fall. We wait expectantly in the mess-room which is to contain us.
It was once the sitting-room of a fine suite. A diminutive vestibule
divides it from the corridor. You enter through double doors with muffed
glass panes in a wooden partition opposite the wide French windows
opening on the balcony. A pale blond light from the south fills the
room. Its walls are bare except for a map of Belgium, faced by a print
from one of the illustrated papers representing the King and Queen of
the Belgians. Of its original furnishings only a few cane chairs and a
settee remain. These are set back round the walls and in the window.
Long tables with marble tops, brought up from what was once the hotel
restaurant, enclose three sides of a hollow square, like this:
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Round these we group ourselves thus: the Commandant in the middle of the
top table in the window, between Mrs. Torrence and Ursula Dearmer; Dr.
Haynes and Dr. Bird, on the other side of Ursula Dearmer; the
chauffeurs, Tom and Bert, round the corner at the right-hand side table;
I am round the other corner at the left-hand side table, by Mrs.
Torrence, and Janet McNeil is on my right, and on hers are Mrs. Lambert
and Mr. Foster and the Chaplain. Mr. Riley sits alone on the inside
opposite Mrs. Torrence.
This rather quiet and very serious person interests me. He doesn't say
anything, and you wonder what sort of consciousness goes on under the
close-cropped, boyish, black velvet hair. Nature has left his features a
bit unfinished, the further to baffle you.
All these people are interesting, intensely interesting and baffling, as
men and women are bound to be who have come from heaven knows where to
face heaven knows what. Most of them are quite innocently unaware. They
do not know that they are interesting, or baffling either. They do not
know, and it has not occurred to them to wonder, how they are going to
affect each other or how they are going to behave. Nobody, you would
say, is going to affect the Commandant. When he is not dashing up and
down, driven by his mysterious energy, he stands apart in remote and
dreamy isolation. His eyes, when they are not darting brilliantly in
pursuit of the person or the thing he needs, stand apart too in a blank,
blue purity, undarkened by any perception of the details that may
accumulate under his innocent nose. He has called this corps into being,
gathered these strange men and women up with a sweep of his wing and
swept them almost violently together. He doesn't know how any of us are
going to behave. He has taken for granted, with his naive and
heart-rending trust in the beauty of human nature, that we are all going
to behave beautifully. He is absorbed in his scheme. Each one of us
fits into it at some point, and if there is anything in us left over it
is not, at the moment, his concern.
Yet he himself has margins about him and a mysterious hinterland not to
be confined or accounted for by any scheme. He alone of us has the air,
buoyant, restless, and a little vague, of being in for some tremendous
but wholly visionary adventure.
When I look at him I wonder again what this particular adventure is
going to do to him, and whether he has, even now, any vivid sense of the
things that are about to happen. I remember that evening in my scullery,
and how he talked about the German siege-guns as if they were details in
some unreal scene, the most interesting part, say, of a successful
cinematograph show.
But they are really bringing up those siege-guns from Namur.
And the Commandant has brought four women with him besides me. I confess
I was appalled when I first knew that they would be brought.
Mrs. Torrence, perhaps--for she is in love with danger,[1] and she is of
the kind whom no power, military or otherwise, can keep back from their
desired destiny.
But why little Janet McNeil?[2] She is the youngest of us, an
eighteen-year-old child who has followed Mrs. Torrence, and will follow
her if she walks straight into the German trenches. She sits beside me
on my right, ready for anything, all her delicate Highland beauty
bundled up in the kit of a little Arctic explorer, utterly determined,
utterly impassive. Her small face, under the woolly cap that defies the
North Pole, is nearly always grave; but it has a sudden smile that is
adorable.
And the youngest but one, Ursula Dearmer, who can't be so much
older--Mr. Riley's gloom and the Commandant's hinterland are nothing to
the mystery of this young girl. She looks as if she were not yet
perfectly awake, as if it would take considerably more than the
siege-guns of Namur to rouse her. She moves about slowly, as if she were
in no sort of hurry for the adventure. She has slow-moving eyes, with
sleepy, drooping eyelids that blink at you. She has a rather sleepy,
rather drooping nose. Her shoulders droop; her small head droops,
slightly, half the time. If she were not so slender she would be rather
like a pretty dormouse half-recovering from its torpor. You insist on
the determination of her little thrust-out underlip, only to be
contradicted by her gentle and delicately-retreating chin.
In our committee-room, among a band of turbulent female volunteers, all
clamouring for the firing-line, Ursula Dearmer, dressed very simply,
rather like a senior school-girl, and accompanied by her mother, had a
most engaging air of submission and docility. If anybody breaks out into
bravura it will not be Ursula Dearmer.
This thought consoles me when I think of the last solemn scenes in that
committee-room and of the pledges, the frightfully sacred pledges, I
gave to Ursula Dearmer's mother. As a result of this responsibility I
see myself told off to the dreary duty of conducting Ursula Dearmer back
to Dover at the moment when things begin to be really thick and
thrilling. And I deplore the Commandant's indiscriminate hospitality to
volunteers.
Mrs. Lambert (she must surely be the next youngest) you can think of
with less agitation, in spite of her youth, her charming eyes and the
recklessly extravagant quantity of her golden hair. For she is an
American citizen, and she has a husband (also an American citizen) in
Ghent, and her husband has a high-speed motor-car, and if the Germans
should ever advance upon this city he can be relied upon to take her
out of it before they can possibly get in. Besides, even in the German
lines American citizens are safe.
We are all suffering a slight tension. The men, who can see no reason
why the ambulance should not have been sent out last night, are restless
and abstracted and impatient for the order to get up and go. No wonder.
They have been waiting five weeks for their chance.
There is Dr. Haynes, whose large dark head and heavy shoulders look as
if they sustained the whole weight of an intolerable world. His
features, designed for sensuous composure, brood in a sad and sulky
resignation to the boredom of delay.
His friend, Dr. Bird, the young man with the head of an enormous cherub
and the hair of a blond baby, hair that _will_ fall in a shining lock on
his pink forehead, Dr. Bird has an air of boisterous preparation, as if
the ambulance were a picnic party and he was responsible for the
champagne.
Mr. Foster, the inquiring tourist, looks a little anxious, as if he were
preoccupied with the train he's got to catch.
Bert, the chauffeur, sits tight with the grim assurance of a man who
knows that the expedition cannot start without him. The chauffeur Tom
has an expressive face. Every minute it becomes more vivid with
humorous, contemptuous, indignant protest. It says plainly: "Well, this
is about the rottenest show I ever was let in for. Bar none. Call
yourself a field ambulance? Garn! And if you _are_ a field ambulance,
who but a blanky fool would have hit upon this old blankety haunt of
peace. It'll be the 'Ague Conference next!"
But it is on the Chaplain, Mr. Grierson, that the strain is telling
most. It shows in his pale and prominent blue eyes, and in a slight
whiteness about his high cheek-bones. In his valiant khaki he has more
than any of us the air of being on the eve. He is visibly bracing
himself to a stupendous effort. He smokes a cigarette with ostentatious
nonchalance. We all think we know these symptoms. We turn our eyes away,
considerately, from Mr. Grierson. Which of us can say that when our turn
comes the thought of danger will not spoil our breakfast?
The poor boy squares his shoulders. He is white now round the edges of
his lips. But he is going through with it.
Suddenly he speaks.
"I shall hold Matins in this room at ten o'clock every Sunday morning.
If any of you like to attend you may."
There is a terrible silence. None of us look at each other. None of us
look at Mr. Grierson.
Presently Mrs. Torrence is heard protesting that we haven't come here
for Matins; that this is a mess-room and not a private chapel; and that
Matins are against all military discipline.
"I shall hold Matins all the same," says Mr. Grierson. His voice is
thick and jerky. "And if anybody likes to attend, they can. That's all
I've got to say."
He gets up. He faces the batteries of unholy and unsympathetic eyes. He
throws away the end of his cigarette with a gesture of superb defiance.
He has gone through with it. He has faced the fire. He has come out, not
quite victorious, but with his hero's honour unstained.
It seemed to me awful that none of us should want his Matins. I should
like, personally, to see him through with them. I could face the hostile
eyes. But what I cannot face is the ceremony itself. My _moral_ was
spoiled with too many ceremonies in my youth; ceremonies that lacked all
beauty and sincerity and dignity. And though I am convinced of the
beauty and sincerity and dignity of Mr. Grierson's soul I cannot kneel
down with him and take part in the performance of his prayer. Prayer is
either the Supreme Illusion, or the Supreme Act, the pure and naked
surrender to Reality, and attended by such sacredness and shyness that
you can accomplish it only when alone or lost in a multitude that prays.
But why is there no Victoria Cross for moral courage?
(Dr. Wilson has come. He looks clever and nice.)
Our restlessness increases.
[_11 a.m._]
I have seen one of them. As I went downstairs this morning, two men
carrying a stretcher crossed the landing below. I saw the outline of the
wounded body under the blanket, and the head laid back on the pillow.
It is impossible, it is inconceivable, that I should have been afraid of
seeing this. It is as if the wounded man himself absolved me from the
memory and the reproach of fear.
I stood by the stair-rail to let them pass. There was some difficulty
about turning at the stair-head. Mr. Riley was there. He came forward
and took one end of the stretcher and turned it. He was very quiet and
very gentle. You could see that he did the right thing by instinct. And
I saw his face, and knew what had brought him here.
And here on the first landing is another wounded. His face is deformed
by an abscess from a bullet in his mouth. It gives him a terrible look,
half savage, wholly suffering. He sits there and cannot speak.
Mr. Riley is the only one of us who has found anything to do. So
presently we go out to get our military passes. We stroll miserably
about the town, oppressed with a sense of our futility. We buy
cigarettes for the convalescents.
And at noon no orders have come for us.
They come just as we are sitting down to lunch. Our ambulance car is to
go to Alost at once. The Commandant is arrested in the act of cutting
bread. Dr. Bird is arrested in the act of eating it. We are all arrested
in our several acts. As if they had been criminal acts, we desist
suddenly. The men get up and look at each other. It is clear that they
cannot all go. Mr. Grierson looks at the Commandant. His face is a
little white and strained, as it was this morning when he announced
Matins for ten o'clock.
The Commandant looks at Dr. Bird and tells him that he may go if he
likes. His tone is admirably casual; it conveys no sense of the
magnificence of his renunciation. He looks also at Mr. Grierson and Mr.
Foster. The lot of honour falls upon these three.
They set out, still with their air of a youthful picnic party. Dr. Bird
is more than ever the boisterous young man in charge of the champagne.
I am contented so long as Ursula Dearmer and Mrs. Lambert and Mrs.
Torrence and Janet McNeil and the Commandant do not go yet. To anybody
who knows the Commandant he is bound to be a prominent figure in the
terrible moving pictures made by fear. Smitten by some great idea, he
dashes out of cover as the shrapnel is falling. He wanders, wrapped in a
happy dream, into the enemies' trenches. He mingles with their lines of
communication as I have seen him mingle with the traffic at the junction
of Chandos Street and the Strand. If you were to inform him of a patrol
of Uhlans coming down the road, he would only say, "I see no Uhlans,"
and continue in their direction. It is inconceivable to his optimism
that he should encounter Uhlans in a world so obviously made for peace
and righteousness.
So that it is a relief to see somebody else (whom I do not know quite so
well) going first. Time enough to be jumpy when the Commandant and the
women go forth on the perilous adventure.
That is all very well. But I am jumpy all the same. By the mere fact
that they are going out first Mr. Grierson and Mr. Foster have suddenly
become dear and sacred. Their lives, their persons, their very
clothes--Dr. Bird's cheerful face, which is so like an overgrown
cherub's, his blond, gold lock of infantile hair, Mr. Grierson's pale
eyes that foresee danger, his not too well fitting khaki coat--have
acquired suddenly a priceless value, the value of things long seen and
long admired. It is as if I had known them all my life; as if life will
be unendurable if they do not come back safe.
It is not very endurable now. Of all the things that can happen to a
woman on a field ambulance, the worst is to stay behind. To stay behind
with nothing in the world to do but to devise a variety of dreadful
deaths for Tom, the chauffeur, and Dr. Bird and Mr. Grierson and Mr.
Foster. To know nothing except that Alost is being bombarded and that it
is to Alost that they are going.
And the others who have been left behind are hanging about in gloom,
disgusted with their fate. Mrs. Torrence and Janet McNeil are beginning
to ask themselves what they are here for. To go through the wards is
only to be in the way of the angelic beings with red crosses on their
breasts and foreheads who are already somewhat in each other's way.
Mrs. Torrence and the others do, however, go into the wards and talk to
the wounded and cheer them up. I sit in the deserted mess-room, and look
at the lunch that Tom and Dr. Bird and Mr. Grierson should have eaten
and were obliged to leave behind. I would give anything to be able to go
round the wards and cheer the wounded up. I wonder whether there is
anything I could conceivably do for the wounded that would not bore them
inexpressibly if I were to do it. I frame sentence after sentence in
strange and abominable French, and each, apart from its own inherent
absurdity, seems a mockery of the wounded. You cannot go to an immortal
hero and grin at him and say _Comment allez-vous?_ and expect him to be
cheered up, especially when you know yourself to be one of a long
procession of women who have done the same.