The Commandant is going to take me in Tom's Daimler (Car 1) to the
British lines to look for a base for that temporary hospital which is
still running in his head like a splendid dream. I do not see how, with
the Germans at Melle, only four and a half miles off, any sort of
hospital is to be established on this side of Ghent.
Tom, the chauffeur, does not look with favour on the expedition. I have
had to point out to him that a Field Ambulance is _not_, as he would
say, the House of Commons, and that there is a certain propriety
binding even on a chauffeur and a limit to the freedom of the speech you
may apply to your Commandant. This afternoon Tom has exceeded all the
limits. The worst of Tom is that while his tongue rages on the confines
of revolt, he himself is punctilious to excess on the point of orders.
Either he has orders or he hasn't them. If he has them he obeys them
with a punctuality that puts everybody else in the wrong. If he hasn't
them, an earthquake wouldn't make him move. Such is his devotion to
orders that he will insist on any one order holding good for an
unlimited time after it has been given.
So now, in defence of his manners, he urges that what with orders and
counter-orders, the provocation is more than flesh and blood can stand.
Tom himself is protest clothed in flesh and blood.
To-day at two o'clock Tom's orders are that his car is to be ready at
two-thirty. My orders are to be ready in twenty minutes. I _am_ ready in
twenty minutes. The Commandant thinks that he has transacted all his
business and is ready in twenty minutes too. Tom and his car are nowhere
to be seen. I go to look for Tom. Tom is reported as being last seen
riding on a motor-lorry towards the British lines in the company of a
detachment of British infantry.
The chauffeur Tom is considered to have disgraced himself everlastingly.
Punctually at two-thirty he appears with his car at the door of the
"Flandria."
The Commandant is nowhere to be seen. He has gone to look for Tom.