[_3.30._]
No Germans have appeared yet.
* * * * *
I was sitting up in the mess-room, making entries in the Day-Book, when
I was sent for. Somebody or something had arrived, and was waiting
below.
On the steps of the Hospital I found two brand-new British chauffeurs in
brand-new suits of khaki. Behind them, drawn up in the entry, were two
brand-new Daimler motor-ambulance cars.
I thought it was a Field Ambulance that had lost itself on the way to
France. The chauffeurs (they had beautiful manners, and were very spick
and span, and one pleased me by his remarkable resemblance to the
editor of the _English Review_)--the chauffeurs wanted to know whether
they had come to the right place. And of course they hardly had, if all
the British Red Cross ambulance cars were going into France.
Then they explained.
They were certainly making for Ghent. The British Red Cross Society had
sent them there. They were only anxious to know whether they had come to
the right Hospital, the Hospital where the English Field Ambulance was
quartered.
Yes: that was right. They had been sent for us.
They had just come up from Ostend, and they had not been ten minutes in
Ghent before orders came through for an ambulance to be sent at once to
Melle.
The only available member of the Corps was its Secretary and Reporter.
To that utterly untrained and supremely inappropriate person Heaven sent
this incredible luck.
When I think how easily I might have missed it! If I'd gone for a stroll
in the town. If I'd sat five minutes longer with Mr. Foster. If the
landlord of the Hotel Cecil had kept his word and given me a table, when
I should, to a dead certainty, have been writing this wretched Journal
at the ineffable moment when the chauffeurs arrived.
I am glad to think that I had just enough morality left to play fair
with Mrs. Lambert. I did try to find her, so that she shouldn't miss it.
Somebody said she was in one of the restaurants on the _Place_ with her
husband. I looked in all the restaurants and she wasn't in one of them.
The finger of Heaven pointed unmistakably to the Secretary and Reporter.
There was a delay of ten minutes, no more, while I got some cake and
sandwiches for the hungry chauffeurs and took them to the bureau to have
their brassards stamped. And in every minute of the ten I suffered
tortures while we waited. I thought something _must_ happen to prevent
my taking that ambulance car out. I thought my heart would leave off
beating and I should die before we started (I believe people feel like
this sometimes before their wedding night). I thought the Commandant
would come back and send out Ursula Dearmer instead. I thought the
Military Power would come down from its secret hiding-place and stop me.
But none of these things happened. At the last moment, I thought that M.
C----
M. C---- was the Belgian Red Cross guide who took us into Antwerp. To M.
C---- I said simply and firmly that I was going. The functions of the
Secretary and Reporter had never been very clearly defined, and this
was certainly not the moment to define them. M. C----, in his innocence,
accepted me with confidence and a chivalrous gravity that left nothing
to be desired.
The chauffeur Newlands (the leaner and darker one) declared himself
ready for anything. All he wanted was to get to work. Poor Ascot, who
was so like my friend the editor, had to be content with his vigil in
the back yard.
At last we got off. I might have trusted Heaven. The getting off was a
foregone conclusion, for we went along the south-east road, which had
not worked its mysterious fascination for nothing.
At a fork where two roads go into Ghent we saw one of our old ambulance
cars dashing into Ghent down the other road on our left. It was beyond
hail. Heaven _meant_ us to go on uninterrupted and unchallenged.
I had not allowed for trouble at the barrier. There always is a barrier,
which may be anything from a mile to four miles from the field or
village where the wounded are. Yesterday on the way to Lokeren the
barrier was at Z----. To-day it was somewhere half-way between Ghent and
Melle.
None of us had ever quite got to the bottom of the trouble at the
barrier. We know that the Belgian authorities wisely refused all
responsibility. Properly speaking, our ambulances were not supposed to
go nearer than a certain safe distance from the enemy's firing-line. For
two reasons. First, it stood the chance of being shelled or taken
prisoner. Second, there was a very natural fear that it might draw down
the enemy's fire on the Belgians. Our huge, lumbering cars, with their
brand-new khaki hoods and flaming red crosses on a white ground, were an
admirable mark for German guns. But as the Corps in this case went into
the firing-line on foot, I do not think that the risk was to the
Belgians. So, though in theory we stopped outside the barriers, in
practice we invariably got through.
The new car was stopped at the barrier now by the usual Belgian Army
Medical Officer. We were not to go on to Melle.
I said that we had orders to go on to Melle; and I meant to go on to
Melle. The Medical Officer said again that we were not to go, and I said
again that we were going.
Then that Belgian Army Medical Officer began to tell us what I imagine
is the usual barrier tale.
There were any amount of ambulances at Melle.
There were no wounded at Melle.
And in any case this ambulance wouldn't be allowed to go there. And then
the usual battle of the barrier had place.
It was one against three. For M. C---- went over to the enemy, and the
chauffeur Newlands, confronted by two official adversaries in uniform,
became deafer and deafer to my voice in his right ear.
First, the noble and chivalrous Belgian Red Cross guide, with an
appalling treachery, gave the order to turn the car round to Ghent. I
gave the counter order. Newlands wavered for one heroic moment; then he
turned the car round.
I jumped out and went up to the Army Medical Officer and delivered a
frontal attack, discharging execrable French.
"No wounded? You tell us that tale every day, and there are always
wounded. Do you want any more of them to die? I mean to go on and I
shall go on."
I didn't ask him how he thought he could stop one whom Heaven had
predestined to go on to Melle.