It was one straight street of small houses, and beyond the last house
about a quarter of a mile of flat road, a quiet, grey road between tall,
slender trees, then the turn. And behind the turn the Germans were
expected to come in from Lokeren every minute.
And we had to find the houses and the wounded men.
The Commandant went into the first house and came out again very
quickly.
The man in the room inside was dead.
We went on up the village.
Down that quiet road and through the village, swerving into the rough,
sandy track that fringed the paved street, a battery of Belgian
artillery came clattering in full retreat. The leader turned his horse
violently into a side alley and plunged down it. I was close behind the
battery when it turned; I could see the faces of the men. They had not
that terrible look that Mr. Davidson told me he saw on the faces of
Belgians in retreat from [?] Zele. There was no terror in them, only a
sort of sullen annoyance and disgust.
I was walking beside the Commandant, and how I managed to get mixed up
with this battery I don't know. First of all it held me up when it
turned, then when I got through, it still came on and cut me off from
the Commandant. (The rest of the Corps were with the Ambulance in the
middle of the village.)
Then, through the plunging train, I caught sight of the innocent
Commandant, all by himself, strolling serenely towards the open road,
where beyond the bend the Germans were presumably pursuing the battery.
It was terribly alarming to see the Commandant advancing to meet them,
all alone, without a word of German to protect him.
There were gaps in the retreat, and I dashed through one of them (as you
dash through the traffic in the Strand when you're in a hurry) and went
after the Commandant with the brilliant idea of defending him with a
volley of bad German hurled at the enemy's head.
And the Commandant went on, indifferent both to his danger and to his
salvation, and disappeared down a little lane and into a house where a
wounded man was. I stood at the end of the lane with the sublime
intention of guarding it.
The Commandant came out presently. He looked as if he were steeped in a
large, vague leisure, and he asked me to go and find Mr. Lambert and his
scouting-car. Mr. Lambert had got to go to Lokeren to fetch some
wounded.
So I ran back down the village and found Mr. Lambert and his car at the
other end of it. He accepted his destiny with a beautiful transatlantic
calm and dashed off to Lokeren. I do not think he took his wife with him
this time.[20]
I went back to see if the Germans had got any nearer to the Commandant.
They hadn't. What with dressings and bandages and looking for wounded,
the Ambulance must have worked for about half an hour, and not any
Germans had turned the corner yet.
It was still busy getting its load safely stowed away. Nothing for the
wretched Secretary to do but to stand there at the far end of the
village, looking up the road to Lokeren. There was a most singular
fascination about the turn of that road beyond the trees.
Suddenly, at what seemed the last minute of safety, two Belgian
stretcher-bearers, without a stretcher, rushed up to me. They said there
was a man badly wounded in some house somewhere up the road. I found a
stretcher and went off with them to look for him.
We went on and on up the road. It couldn't have been more than a few
hundred yards, really, if as much; but it felt like going on and on; it
seemed impossible to find that house.
* * * * *
There was something odd about that short stretch of grey road and the
tall trees at the end of it and the turn. These things appeared in a
queer, vivid stillness, as if they were not there on their own account,
but stood in witness to some superior reality. Through them you were
somehow assured of Reality with a most singular and overpowering
certainty. You were aware of the possibility of an ensuing agony and
horror as of something unreal and transitory that would break through
the peace of it in a merely episodical manner. Whatever happened to come
round the turn of the road would simply not matter.
And with your own quick movements up the road there came that steadily
mounting thrill which is not excitement, or anything in the least like
excitement, because of its extreme quietness. This thrill is apt to
cheat you by stopping short of the ecstasy it seems to promise. But this
time it didn't stop short; it became more and more steady and more and
more quiet in the swing of its vibration; it became ecstasy; it became
intense happiness.
It lasted till we reached the little plantation by the roadside.
While it lasted you had the sense of touching Reality at its highest
point in a secure and effortless consummation; so far were you from
being strung up to any pitch.
Then came the plantation.
Behind the plantation, on a railway siding, a train came up from Lokeren
with yet another load of wounded. And in the train there was confusion
and agitation and fear. Belgian Red Cross men hung out by the doors of
the train and clamoured excitedly for stretchers. There was only one
stretcher, the one we had brought from the village.
Somebody complained bitterly: "_C'est mal arrange. Avec les Allemands
sur nos dos!_"
Somebody tried to grab our one stretcher. The two bearers seemed
inclined to give it up. Nobody knew where our badly wounded man was.
Nobody seemed very eager now to go and look for him. We three were
surrounded and ordered to give up our stretcher. No use wasting time in
hunting for one man, with the Germans on our backs.
None of the men we were helping out of the train were seriously hurt. I
had to choose between my one badly wounded man, whom we hadn't found,
and about a dozen who could stumble somehow into safety. But my two
stretcher-bearers were wavering badly, and it was all I could do to keep
them firmly to their job.
Then three women came out of a little house half hidden by the
plantation. They spoke low, for fear the Germans should overhear them.
"He is here," they said; "he is here."
The stretcher-bearers hurried off with their stretcher. The train
unloaded itself somehow.
The man, horribly hurt, with a wound like a red pit below his
shoulder-blades, was brought out and laid on the stretcher. He lay
there, quietly, on his side, in a posture of utter resignation to
anguish.
He was a Flamand, clumsily built; he had a broad, rather ugly face,
narrowing suddenly as the fringe of his whiskers became a little
straggling beard. But to me he was the most beautiful thing I have ever
seen. And I loved him. I do not think it is possible to love, to adore
any creature more than I loved and adored that clumsy, ugly Flamand.
He was my first wounded man.
For I tried, I still try, to persuade myself that if I hadn't bullied my
two bearers and repulsed the attack on my stretcher, he would have been
left behind in the little house in the plantation.
We got him out of the plantation all right and on to the paved road.
Ursula Dearmer at Termonde with her Belgian officer, and at Zele with
all her wounded, couldn't have been happier than I was with my one
Flamand.
We got him a few yards down the road all right.
Then, to my horror, the bearers dumped him down on the paving-stones.
They said he was much too heavy. They couldn't possibly carry him any
more unless they rested.
I didn't think it was exactly the moment for resting, and I told them
so. The Germans hadn't come round the turn, and probably never would
come; still, you never know; and the general impression seemed to be
that they were about due.
But the bearers stood stolidly in the middle of the road and mopped
their faces and puffed. The situation began to feel as absurd and as
terrible as a nightmare.
So I grabbed one end of the stretcher and said I'd carry it myself. I
said I wasn't very strong, and perhaps I couldn't carry it, but anyhow
I'd try.
They picked it up at once then, and went off at a good swinging trot
over the paving-stones that jolted my poor Flamand most horribly. I told
them to go on the smooth track at the side. They hailed this suggestion
as a most brilliant and original idea.
As the Flamand was brought into the village, the Ambulance had got its
wounded in, and was ready to go. But he had to have his wound dressed.
He lay there on his stretcher in the middle of the village street, my
beloved Flamand, stripped to the waist, with the great red pit of his
wound yawning in his white flesh. I had to look on while the Commandant
stuffed it with antiseptic gauze.
I had always supposed that the dressing of a wound was a cautious and
delicate process. But it isn't. There is a certain casual audacity about
it. The Commandant's hands worked rapidly as he rammed cyanide gauze
into the red pit. It looked as if he were stuffing an old crate with
straw. And it was all over in a moment. There seemed something indecent
in the haste with which my Flamand was disposed of.
When the Commandant observed that my Flamand's wound looked much worse
than it was, I felt hurt, as if this beloved person had been slighted;
also as if there was some subtle disparagement to my "find."
I rather hoped that we were going to wait till the men I had left behind
in the plantation had come up. But the car was fairly full, and Ursula
Dearmer and Janet and Mrs. Lambert were told off to take it in to Z----,
leave the wounded there and come back for the rest. I was to walk to
Z---- and wait there for the returning car.
Nothing would have pleased me better, but the distance was farther than
the Commandant realized, farther, perhaps, than was desirable in the
circumstances, so I was ordered to get on the car and come back with it.
(Tom the chauffeur is perfectly right. There are too many of us.)
We got away long before the Germans turned the corner, if they ever did
turn it. In Z----, which is half-way between Lokeren and Ghent, we came
upon six or seven fine military ambulances, all huddled together as if
they sought safety in companionship (why none of them had been sent up
to our village I can't imagine). Ursula Dearmer, with admirable
presence of mind, commandeered one of these and went back with it to the
village, so that we could take our load of wounded into Ghent. We did
this, and went back at once.
The return journey was a tame affair. Before we got to Z---- we met the
Commandant and the Chaplain and two refugees, in Mr. Lambert's
scouting-car, towed by a motor-wagon. It had broken down on the way from
Lokeren. We took them on board and turned back to Ghent.
The wounded came on in Ursula Dearmer's military car.
Twenty-three wounded in all were taken from Lokeren or near it to-day.
Hundreds had to be left behind in the German lines.
* * * * *
We have heard that Antwerp is burning; that the Government is removed to
Ostend; that all the English have left.
There are a great many British wounded, with nurses and Army doctors, in
Ghent. Three or four British have been brought into the "Flandria."
One of them is a young British officer, Mr. ----. He is said to be
mortally wounded.
Dr. Haynes and Dr. Bird have not gone. They and Dr. ---- have joined the
surgical staff of the Hospital, and are working in the operating
theatre all day. They have got enough to do now in all conscience.
All night there has been a sound of the firing of machine guns [?]. At
first it was like the barking, of all the dogs in Belgium. I thought it
_was_ the dogs of Belgium, till I discovered a deadly rhythm and
precision in the barking.[21]
[_Friday, 9th._]
The Hospital is so full that beds have been put in the entrance hall,
along the walls by the big ward and the secretarial bureau. In the
recess by the ward there are three British soldiers.
There are some men standing about there whose heads and faces are
covered with a thick white mask of cotton-wool like a diver's helmet.
There are three small holes in each white mask, for mouth and eyes. The
effect is appalling.
These are the men whose faces have been burned by shell-fire at Antwerp.
The Commandant asked me to come with him through the wards and find all
the British wounded who are well enough to be sent home. I am to take
their names and dress them and get them ready to go by the morning
train.
There are none in the upper wards. Mr. ---- cannot be moved. He is very
ill. They do not think he will live.
There are three downstairs in the hall. One is well enough to look after
himself (I have forgotten his name). One, Russell, is wounded in the
knee. The third, Cameron, a big Highlander, is wounded in the head. He
wears a high headdress of bandages wound round and round many times like
an Indian turban, and secured by more bandages round his jaw and chin.
It is glued tight to one side of his head with clotted blood. Between
the bandages his sharp, Highland face looks piteous.
I am to dress these two and have them ready by eleven. Dr. ---- of the
British Field Hospital, who is to take them over, comes round to enter
their names on his list.
They are to be dressed in civilian clothes supplied by the Hospital.
It all sounded very simple until you tried to get the clothes. First you
had to see the President, who referred you to the Matron, who referred
you to the clerk in charge of the clothing department. An _infirmier_
(one of the mysterious officials who hang about the hall wearing peaked
caps; the problem of their existence was now solved for the first
time)--an _infirmier_ was despatched to find the clerk. The clothing
department must have been hidden in the remotest recesses of the
Hospital, for it was ages before he came back to ask me all over again
what clothes would be wanted. He was a little fat man with bright, curly
hair, very eager, and very cheerful and very kind. He scuttled off again
like a rabbit, and I had to call him back to measure Russell. And when
he had measured Russell, with his gay and amiable alacrity, Russell and
I had to wait until he came back with the clothes.
I had made up my mind very soon that it would be no use measuring
Cameron for any clothes, or getting him ready for any train. He was
moving his head from side to side and making queer moaning sounds of
agitation and dismay. He had asked for a cigarette, which somebody had
brought him. It dropped from his fingers. Somebody picked it up and lit
it and stuck it in his mouth; it dropped again. Then I noticed something
odd about his left arm; he was holding it up with his right hand and
feeling it. It dropped, too, like a dead weight, on the counterpane.
Cameron watched its behaviour with anguish. He complained that his left
arm was all numb and too heavy to hold up. Also he said he was afraid
to be moved and taken away.
It struck me that Cameron's head must be smashed in on the right side
and that some pressure on his brain was causing paralysis. It was quite
clear that he couldn't be moved. So I sent for one of the Belgian
doctors to come and look at him, and keep him in the Hospital.
The Belgian doctor found that Cameron's head _was_ smashed in on the
right side, and that there was pressure on his brain, causing paralysis
in his left arm.
He is to be kept in the Hospital and operated on this morning. They may
save him if they can remove the pressure.
It seemed ages before the merry little _infirmier_ came back with
Russell's clothes. And when he did come he brought socks that were too
tight, and went back and brought socks that were too large, and a shirt
that was too tight and trousers that were too long. Then he went back,
eager as ever, and brought drawers that were too tight, and more
trousers that were too short. He brought boots that were too large and
boots that were too tight; and he had to be sent back again for
slippers. Last of all he brought a shirt which made Russell smile and
mutter something about being dressed in all the colours of the rainbow;
and a black cutaway morning coat, and a variety of hats, all too small
for Russell.
Then when you had made a selection, you began to try to get Russell into
all these things that were too tight or too loose for him. The socks
were the worst. The right-hand one had to be put on very carefully, by
quarter inches at a time; the least tug on the sock would give Russell
an excruciating pain in his wounded knee; and Russell was all for
violence and haste; he was so afraid of being left behind.
Though he called me "Sister," I felt certain that Russell must know that
I wasn't a trained nurse and that he was the first wounded man I had
ever dressed in my life. However, I did get him dressed, somehow, with
the help of the little _infirmier_, and a wonderful sight he was, in the
costume of a Belgian civilian.
What tried him most were the hats. He refused a peaked cap which the
_infirmier_ pressed on him, and compromised finally on a sort of checked
cricket cap that just covered the extreme top of his head. We got him
off in time, after all.
Then two _infirmiers_ came with a stretcher and carried Cameron
upstairs to the operating theatre, and I went up and waited with him in
the corridor till the surgeons were ready for him. He had grown drowsy
and indifferent by now.
I have missed the Ambulance going out to Lokeren, and have had to stay
behind.
Two ladies called to see Mr. ----. One of them was Miss Ashley-Smith,
who had him in her ward at Antwerp. I took them over the Hospital to
find his room, which is on the second story. His name--his names--in
thick Gothic letters, were on a white card by the door.
He was asleep and the nurse could not let them see him.
Miss Ashley-Smith and her friend are staying in the Couvent de Saint
Pierre, where the British Field Hospital has taken some of its wounded.
Towards one o'clock news came of heavy fighting. The battle is creeping
nearer to us; it has stretched from Zele and Quatrecht to Melle, four
and a half miles from Ghent. They are saying that the Germans may enter
Ghent to-day, in an hour--half an hour! It will be very awkward for us
and for our wounded if they do, as both our ambulance cars are out.
Later news of more fighting at Quatrecht.
[_Afternoon._]
The Commandant has come back. They were at Quatrecht, not Lokeren.
Mr. ---- is awake now. The Commandant has taken me to see him.
He is lying in one of the officers' wards, a small room, with bare walls
and a blond light, looking south. There are two beds in this room, set
side by side. In the one next the door there is a young French officer.
He is very young: a boy with sleek black hair and smooth rose-leaf skin,
shining and fresh as if he had never been near the smoke and dirt of
battle. He is sitting up reading a French magazine. He is wounded in the
leg. His crutches are propped up against the wall.
Stretched on his back in the further bed there is a very tall young
Englishman. The sheet is drawn very tight over his chest; his face is
flushed and he is breathing rapidly, in short jerks. At first you do not
see that he, too, is not more than a boy, for he is so big and tall, and
a little brown feathery beard has begun to curl about his jaw and chin.
When I came to him and the Commandant told him my name, he opened his
eyes wide with a look of startled recognition. He said he knew me; he
had seen me somewhere in England. He was so certain about it that he
persuaded me that I had seen him somewhere. But we can neither of us
remember where or when. They say he is not perfectly conscious all the
time.
We stayed with him for a few minutes till he went off to sleep again.
None of the doctors think that he can live. He was wounded in front with
mitrailleuse; eight bullets in his body. He has been operated on. How he
survived the operation and the journey on the top of it I can't imagine.
And now general peritonitis has set in. It doesn't look as if he had a
chance.
* * * * *
We have heard that all the War Correspondents have been sent out of
Ghent.
Numbers of British troops came in to-day.
Went up to see Mr. Foster, who is in his room, ill. It is hard lines
that he should have had this accident when he has been working so
splendidly. And it wasn't his fault, either. One of the Belgian bearers
slipped with his end of a stretcher when they were carrying a heavy man,
and Mr. Foster got hurt in trying to right the balance and save his
wounded man. He is very much distressed at having to lie up and be
waited on.
* * * * *
Impossible to write a Journal or any articles while I am in the
Hospital, and there is no table yet in my room at the Hotel Cecil.
The first ambulance car, with the chauffeur Bert and Mr. Riley, has come
back from Melle, where they left Mrs. Torrence and Janet and Dr. Wilson.
They went back again in the afternoon.
They are all out now except poor Mr. Foster and Mrs. Lambert, who is
somewhere with her husband.