[Footnote 1: It would be truer to say she was in love with duty which
was often dangerous.]
[Footnote 2: She very soon let us know why. "Followed" is the wrong
word.]
[Footnote 3: He didn't. People never do mean these things.]
[Footnote 4: This only means that, whether you attended to it or not
(you generally didn't), as long as you were in Belgium, your
sub-consciousness was never entirely free from the fear of Uhlans--of
Uhlans in the flesh. The illusion of valour is the natural, healthy
reaction of your psyche against its fear and your indifference to its
fear.]
[Footnote 5: Nobody need have been surprised. She had distinguished
herself in other wars.]
[Footnote 6: One is a church and not a cathedral.]
[Footnote 7: I am puzzled about this date. It stands in my ambulance
Day-Book as Saturday, 3rd, with a note that the British came into Ghent
on their way to Antwerp on the evening of that day. Now I believe there
were no British in Antwerp before the evening of Sunday, the 4th, yet
"Dr. Wilson" and Mr. Davidson, going into Saint Nicolas before us, saw
the British there, and "Mrs. Torrence" and "Janet McNeil" saw more
British come into Ghent in the evening. I was ill with fever the day
after the run into Antwerp, and got behindhand with my Day-Book. So it
seems safest to assume that I made a wrong entry and that we went into
Antwerp on Sunday, and to record Saturday's events as spreading over the
whole day. Similarly the events that the Day-Book attributes to Monday
must have belonged to Tuesday. And if Tuesday's events were really
Wednesday's, that clears up a painful doubt I had as to Wednesday, which
came into my Day-Book as an empty extra which I couldn't account for in
any way. There I was with a day left over and nothing to put into it.
And yet Wednesday, the 7th, was the first day of the real siege of
Antwerp. On Thursday, the 8th, I started clear.]
[Footnote 8: It wasn't. This was only the first slender trickling. The
flood came three days later with the bombardment of the city.]
[Footnote 9: Of all the thousands and thousands of refugees whom I have
seen I have only seen three weep, and they were three out of six hundred
who had just disembarked at the Prince of Wales's Pier at Dover. But in
Belgium not one tear.]
[Footnote 10: This is all wrong. The main stream went as straight as it
could for the sea-coast--Holland or Ostend.]
[Footnote 11: The outer forts were twelve miles away.]
[Footnote 12: At the time of writing--February 19th, 1915. My Day-Book
gives no record of anything but the hospitals we visited.]
[Footnote 13: There must be something wrong here, for the place was, I
believe, a convent.]
[Footnote 14: Every woman did.]
[Footnote 15: This was made up to her afterwards! Her cup fairly ran
over.]
[Footnote 16: I have heard a distinguished alienist say that this
reminiscent sensation is a symptom of approaching insanity. As it is not
at all uncommon, there must be a great many lunatics going about.]
[Footnote 17: Except that nobody had any time to attend to us, I can't
think why we weren't all four of us arrested for spies. We hadn't any
business to be looking for the position of the Belgian batteries.]
[Footnote 18: More than likely our appearance there stopped the firing.]
[Footnote 19: I have since been told that he was not. And I think in any
case I am wrong about his "matchboard" car. It must have been somebody
else's. In fact, I'm very much afraid that "he" was somebody else--that
I hadn't the luck really to meet him.]
[Footnote 20: He did. She was not a lady whom it was possible to leave
behind on such an expedition.]
[Footnote 21: I'm inclined to think it may have been the dogs of
Belgium, after all. I can't think where the guns could have been.
Antwerp had fallen. It might have been the bombardment of Melle,
though.]
[Footnote 22: The fate of "Mr. Lambert" and the scouting-car was one of
those things that ought never to have happened. It turned out that the
car was not the property of his paper, but his own car, hired and
maintained by him at great expense; that this brave and devoted young
American had joined our Corps before it left England and gone out to the
front to wait for us. And he was kept waiting long after we got there.
But if he didn't see as much service at Ghent as he undertook to see
(though he did some fine things on his own even there), it was made up
to him in Flanders afterwards, when, with the Commandant and other
members of the Corps, he distinguished himself by his gallantry at
Furnes and in the Battle of Dixmude.
(For an account of his wife's services see Postscript.)]
[Footnote 23: I record these details (March 11th, 1915) because the
Commandant accused me subsequently of a total lack of "balance" upon
this occasion.]
[Footnote 24: This is no reflection on Tom's courage. His chief
objection was to driving three women so near the German lines. The same
consideration probably weighed with the Commandant and M. ----.]
[Footnote 25: The whole thing was a piece of rank insubordination. The
Commandant was entirely right to forbid the expedition, and we were
entirely wrong in disobeying him. But it was one of those wrong things
that I would do again to-morrow.]
[Footnote 26: Antwerp had surrendered on Friday, the 9th.]
[Footnote 27: All the same it was splendidly equipped and managed.]
[Footnote 28: Even now, when I am asked if I did any nursing when I was
in Belgium I have to think before I answer: "Only for one morning and
one night"--it would still be much truer to say, "I was nursing all the
time."]
[Footnote 29: My Day-Book ends abruptly here; and I have no note of the
events that followed.]
[Footnote 30: Incorrect. It was, I believe, the uniform of the First Aid
Nursing Yeomanry Corps.]
[Footnote 31: It was so bad that it made me forget to pack the
Commandant's Burberry and his Gillette razors and his pipe.]
[Footnote 32: The Commandant had had an adventure. The Belgian guide
mistook the road and brought the car straight into the German lines
instead of the British lines where it had been sent. If the Germans
hadn't been preoccupied with firing at that moment, the Commandant and
Ascot and the Belgian would all have been taken prisoner.]
[Footnote 33: Even now, five months after, I cannot tell whether it was
or was not insanity.]
[Footnote 34: It is really dreadful to think of the nuisance we must
have been to these dear people on the eve of their own flight.]
[Footnote 35: The Commandant had his own scheme for going back to Ghent,
which fortunately he did not carry out.]
[Footnote 36: This girl's courage and self-devotion were enough to
establish our innocence--they needed no persuasion. But I still hold
myself responsible for her going, since it was my failure to control my
obsession that first of all put the idea in her head.]
[Footnote 37: I saw nothing sinister about this arrangement at the time.
It seemed incredible to me that I should not return.]
[Footnote 38: Having saved the suit-case, I guarded it as a sacred
thing. But Dr. Hanson's best clothes and her surgical instruments were
in the tin box after all.]
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