Chapter 11

You couldn't take any interest in the firing or the German trenches, or the eager little Englishman, or anything. You couldn't see anything but those five wounded men, or think of anything but how to get them into the ambulance as painlessly and in as short a time as possible.

The man on the dripping stretcher was mortally wounded. He was lifted in first, very slowly and gently.

The Cure climbed in after him, carrying the Host.

He kneeled there while the blood from the wounded head oozed through the bandages and through the canvas of the stretcher to the floor and to the skirts of his cassock.

We waited.

There was no ugly haste in the Supreme Act; the three mortal moments that it lasted (it could not have lasted more) were charged with immortality, while the Cure remained kneeling in the pool of blood.

I shall never become a Catholic. But if I do, it will be because of the Cure of Melle, who turned our new motor ambulance into a sanctuary after the French soldier had baptized it with his blood. I have never seen, I never shall see, anything more beautiful, more gracious than the Soul that appeared in his lean, dark face and in the straight, slender body under the black _soutane_. In his simple, inevitable gestures you saw adoration of God, contempt for death, and uttermost compassion.

It was all over. I received his missal and his bag of purple silk as he gathered his cassock about him and came down.

I asked him if anything could be done. His eyes smiled as he answered. But his lips quivered as he took again his missal and his purple bag.

M. C---- is now glad that we went on to Melle.

We helped the four other wounded men in. They sat in a row alongside the stretcher.

I sat on the edge of the ambulance, at the feet of the dying man, by the handles of the stretcher.

At the last minute the Chaplain jumped on to the step. So did the little eager Englishman. Hanging on to the hood and swaying with the rush of the car, he talked continually. He talked from the moment we left Melle to the moment when we landed him at his street in Ghent; explaining over and over again the qualifications that justified him in attaching himself to ambulances. He had lived fourteen years in Ghent. He could speak French and Flemish.

I longed for the eager little Englishman to stop. I longed for his street to come and swallow him up. He had lived in Ghent fourteen years. He could speak Flemish and French. I felt that I couldn't bear it if he went on a minute longer. I wanted to think. The dying man lay close behind me, very straight and stiff; his poor feet stuck out close under my hand.

But I couldn't think. The little eager Englishman went on swaying and talking.

He had lived fourteen years in Ghent.

He could speak French and Flemish.

* * * * *

The dying man was still alive when he was lifted out of the ambulance.

He died that evening.

* * * * *

The Commandant is pleased with his new ambulances. He is not altogether displeased with me.

We must have been very quick. For it was the Commandant's car that we passed at the fork of the road. And either he arrived a few minutes after we got back or we arrived just as he had got in. Anyhow, we met in the porch.

He and Ursula Dearmer and I went back to Melle again at once, in the new car. It was nearly dark when we got there.

We found Mrs. Torrence and little Janet in the village. They and Dr. Wilson had been working all day long picking up wounded off the field outside it. The German lines are not far off--at the bottom of the field. I think only a small number of their guns could rake the main street of the village where we were. Their shell went over our heads and over the roofs of the houses towards the French batteries on this side of the village. There must have been a rush from the German lines across this field, and the French batteries have done their work well, for Mrs. Torrence said the German dead are lying thick there among the turnips. She and Janet and Dr. Wilson had been under fire for eight hours on end, lifting men and carrying stretchers. I don't know whether their figures (the two girls in khaki tunics and breeches) could be seen from the German lines, but they just trudged on between the furrows, and over the turnip-tops, serenely regardless of the enemy, carefully sorting the wounded from the dead, with the bullets whizzing past their noses.

Of bullets Mrs. Torrence said, indeed, that eight hours of them were rather more than she cared for; and of carrying stretchers over a turnip-field, that it was as much as she and Janet could do. But they came back from it without turning a hair. I have seen women more dishevelled after tramping a turnip-field in a day's partridge-shooting.

They went off somewhere to find Dr. Wilson; and we--Ursula Dearmer, the Commandant and I--hung about the village waiting for the wounded to be brought in. The village was crowded with French and Belgian troops when we came into it. Then they gathered together and went on towards the field, and we followed them up the street. They called to us to stay under cover, or, if we _must_ walk up the street, to keep close under the houses, as the bullets might come flying at us any minute.

No bullets came, however. It was like Baerlaere--it was like Lokeren--it was like every place I've been in, so far. Nothing came as long as there was a chance of its getting me.

After that we drove down to the station. While we were hanging about there, a shell was hurled over this side of the village from the German batteries. It careered over the roofs, with a track that was luminous in the dusk, like a curved sheet of lightning. I don't know where it fell and burst.

We were told to stand out from under the station building for fear it should be struck.

When we got back into the village we went into the inn and waited there in a long, narrow room, lit by a few small oil-lamps and crammed with soldiers. They were eating and drinking in vehement haste. Wherever the light from the lamps fell on them, you saw faces flushed and scarred under a blur of smoke and grime. Here and there a bandage showed up, violently white. On the tables enormous quantities of bread appeared and disappeared.

These soldiers, with all their vehemence and violence, were exceedingly lovable. One man brought me a chair; another brought bread and offered it. Charming smiles flashed through the grime.

At last, when we had found one man with a wounded hand, we got into the ambulance and went back to Ghent.

[_Saturday, 10th._]

I have got something to do again--at last!

I am to help to look after Mr. ----. He has the pick of the Belgian Red Cross women to nurse him, and they are angelically kind and very skilful, but he is not very happy with them. He says: "These dear people are so good to me, but I can't make out what they say. I can't tell them what I want." He is pathetically glad to have any English people with him. (Even I am a little better than a Belgian whom he cannot understand.)

I sat with him all morning. The French boy has gone and he is alone in his room now. It seems that the kind Chaplain sat up with him all last night after his hard day at Melle. (I wish now I had stood by the Chaplain with his Matins. He has never tried to have them again--given us up as an unholy crew, all except Mr. Foster, whom he clings to.)

The morning went like half an hour, while it was going; but when it was over I felt as if I had been nursing for weeks on end. There were so many little things to be done, and so much that you mustn't do, and the anxiety was appalling. I don't suppose there is a worse case in the Hospital. He is perhaps a shade better to-day, but none of the medical staff think that he can live.

Madame E---- and Dr. Bird have shown me what to do, and what not to do. I must keep him all the time in the same position. I must give him sips of iced broth, and little pieces of ice to suck every now and then. I must not let him try to raise himself in bed. I must not try to lift him myself. If we do lift him we must keep his body tilted at the same angle. I must not give him any hot drinks and not too much cold drink.

And he is six foot high, so tall that his feet come through the blankets at the bottom of the bed; and he keeps sinking down in it all the time and wanting to raise himself up again. And his fever makes him restless. And he is always thirsty and he longs for hot tea more than iced water, and for more iced water than is good for him. The iced broth that is his only nourishment he does not want at all.

And then he must be kept very quiet. I must not let him talk more than is necessary to tell me what he wants, or he will die of exhaustion. And what he wants is to talk every minute that he is awake.

He drops off to sleep, breathing in jerks and with a terrible rapidity. And I think it will be all right as long as he sleeps. But his sleep only lasts for a few minutes. I hear the rhythm of his breathing alter; it slackens and goes slow; then it jerks again, and I know that he is awake.

And then he begins. He says things that tear at your heart. He has looks and gestures that break it--the adorable, wilful smile of a child that knows that it is being watched when you find his hand groping too often for the glass of iced water that stands beside his bed; a still more adorable and utterly gentle submission when you take the glass from him; when you tell him not to say anything more just yet but to go to sleep again. You feel as if you were guilty of act after act of nameless and abominable cruelty.

He sticks to it that he has seen me before, that he has heard of me, that his people know me. And he wants to know what I do and where I live and where it was that he saw me. Once, when I thought he had gone to sleep, I heard him begin again: "Where did you say you lived?"

I tell him. And I tell him to go to sleep again.

He closes his eyes obediently and opens them the next instant.

"I say, may I come and call on you when we get back to England?"

You can only say: "Yes. Of course," and tell him to go to sleep.

His voice is so strong and clear that I could almost believe that he will get back and that some day I shall look up and see him standing at my garden gate.

Mercifully, when I tell him to go to sleep again, he does go to sleep. And his voice is a little clearer and stronger every time he wakes.

And so the morning goes on. The only thing he wants you to do for him is to sponge his hands and face with iced water and to give him little bits of ice to suck. Over and over again I do these things. And over and over again he asks me, "Do you mind?"

* * * * *

He wears a little grey woollen cord round his neck. Something has gone from it. Whatever he has lost, they have left him his little woollen cord, as if some immense importance attached to it.

* * * * *

He has fallen into a long doze. And at the end of the morning I left him sleeping.

Some of the Corps have brought in trophies from the battle-field--a fine grey cloak with a scarlet collar, a spiked helmet, a cuff with three buttons cut from the coat of a dead German.

These things make me sick. I see the body under the cloak, the head under the helmet, and the dead hand under the cuff.

[_Afternoon._]

Saw Mr. Foster. He is to be sent back to England for an operation. Dr. Wilson is to take him. He asked me if I thought the Commandant would take him back again when he is better.

Saw the President about Mr. Foster. He will not hear of his going back to England. He wants him to stay in the Hospital and be operated on here. He promises the utmost care and attention. He is most distressed to think that he should go.

It doesn't occur to him in his kindness that it would be much more distressing if the Germans came into Ghent and interrupted the operation.

Cabled Miss F. about her Glasgow ambulance, asking her to pay her staff if her funds ran to it. Cabled British Red Cross to send Mr. Gould and his scouting-car here instead of to France. Cabled Mr. Gould to get the British Red Cross to send him here.

Mr. Lambert has been ill with malaria. He has gone back to England to get well again and to repair the car that broke down at Lokeren.[22]

Somebody else is to look after Mr. ---- this afternoon.

I have been given leave rather reluctantly to sit up with him at night.

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.

I reprove Tom for the sin of unpunctuality, and he has me.

His orders were to be ready at two-thirty and he is ready at two-thirty. And it is nobody's business what he did with himself ten minutes before. He wants to know where the Commandant is.

I go to look for the Commandant.

The Commandant is reported to have been last seen going through the Hospital on his way to the garage. I go round to the garage through the Hospital; and the Commandant goes out of the garage by the street. He was last seen _in_ the garage.

He appears suddenly from some quarter where you wouldn't expect him in the least. He reproves Tom.

Tom with considerable violence declares his righteousness. He has gathered to himself a friend, a Belgian Red Cross man, whose language he does not understand. But they exchange winks that surpass all language.

Then the Commandant remembers that he has several cables to send off. He is seen disappearing in the direction of the Post and Telegraph Office.

Tom swallows words that would be curses if I were not there.

I keep my eyes fixed on the doors of the Post Office. Ages pass.

I go to the Post Office to look for the Commandant. He is not in the Telegraph Office. He is not in the Post Office. Tom keeps his eyes on the doors of both.

More ages pass. Finally, the Commandant appears from inside the Hospital, which he has not been seen to enter.

The chauffeur Tom dismounts and draws from his car's mysterious being sounds that express the savage fury of his resentment.

You would think we were off now. But we only get as far as a street somewhere near the Hotel de la Poste. Here we wait for apparently no reason in such tension that you can hear the ages pass.

The Commandant disappears.

Tom says something about there being no room for the wounded at this rate.

It seems his orders are to go first to the British lines at a place whose name I forget, and then on to Melle.

I remember Tom's views on the subject of field-women. And suddenly I seem to understand them. Tom is very like Lord Kitchener. He knows nothing about the aims and wants of modern womanhood and he cares less. The modern woman does not ask to be protected, does not want to be protected, and Tom, like Lord Kitchener, will go on protecting. You cannot elevate men like Lord Kitchener and Tom above the primitive plane of chivalry. Tom in the danger zone with a woman by his side feels about as peaceful and comfortable as a woman in the danger zone with a two-year-old baby in her lap. A bomb in his bedroom is one thing and a band of drunken Uhlans making for his women is another. Tom's nerves are racked with problems: How the dickens is he to steer his car and protect his women at the same time? And if it comes to a toss-up between his women and his wounded? You've got to stow the silly things somewhere, and every one of them takes up the place of a wounded man.

I get out of the car and tell the Commandant that I would rather not go than take up the place of a wounded man.

He orders me back to the car again. Tom seems inclined to regard me as a woman who has done her best.

We go on a little way and stop again. And there springs out of the pavement a curious figure that I have seen somewhere before in Ghent, I cannot remember when or where. The figure wears a check suit of extreme horsyness and carries a kodak in its hand. It is excited.

There is something about it that reminds me now of the eager little Englishman at Melle. These figures spring up everywhere in the track of a field ambulance.

When Tom sees it he groans in despair.

The Commandant gets out and appears to be offering it the hospitality of the car. I am introduced.

To my horror the figure skips round in front of the car, levels its kodak at my head and implores me to sit still.

I am very rude. I tell it sternly to take that beastly thing away and go away itself.

It goes, rather startled.

And we get off, somehow, without it, and arrive at the end of the street.

Here Tom has orders to stop at the first hat-shop he comes to.

The Commandant has lost his hat at Melle (he has been wearing little Janet's Arctic cap, to the delight of everybody). He has just remembered that he wants a hat and he thinks that he will get it now.

At this point I break down. I hear myself say "Damn" five times, softly but distinctly. (This after reproving Tom for unfettered speech and potential insubordination.)

Tom stops at a hat-shop. The Commandant to his doom enters, and presently returns wearing a soft felt hat of a vivid green. He asks me what I think of it.

I tell him all I think of it, and he says that if I feel like that about it he'll go in again and get another one.

I forget what I said then except that I wanted to get on to Melle. That Melle was the place of all places where I most wished to be.

Then, lest he might feel unhappy in his green hat, I said that if he would leave it out all night in the rain and then sit on it no doubt time and weather and God would do something for it.

This time we were off, and when I realized it I said "Hurray!"[23]

Tom had not said anything for some considerable time.

We found the British lines in a little village just outside of Ghent. No place there for a base hospital.

We hung about here for twenty minutes, and the women and children came out to stare at us with innocent, pathetic faces.

Somebody had stowed away one of the trophies--the spiked German helmet--in the ambulance car, and the chauffeur Tom stuck it on a stick and held it up before the British lines. It was greeted with cheers and a great shout of laughter from the troops; and the villagers came running out of their houses to look; they uttered little sharp and guttural cries of satisfaction. The whole thing was a bit savage and barbaric and horribly impressive.

Finally we left the British lines and set out towards Melle by a cross-road.

We got through all right. A thousand accidents may delay his going, but once off, no barriers exist for the Commandant. Seated in the front of the car, utterly unperturbed by the chauffeur Tom's sarcastic comments on men, things and women, wrapped (apparently) in a beautiful dream, he looks straight ahead with eyes whose vagueness veils a deadly simplicity of purpose. I marvel at the transfiguration of the Commandant. Before the War he was a fairly complex personality. Now he has ceased to exist as a separate individual. He is merged, vaguely and vastly, in his adventure. He is the Motor Ambulance Field Corps; he is the ambulance car; he is the electric spark and the continuous explosion that drives the thing along. It is useless to talk to him about anything that happened before the War or about anything that exists outside it. He would not admit that anything did exist outside it. He is capable of forgetting the day of the week and the precise number of female units in his company and the amount standing to his credit at his banker's, but, once off, he is cock-sure of the shortest cut to the firing-line within a radius of fifty kilometres.

Some of us who have never seen a human phenomenon of this sort are ready to deny him an identity. They complain of his inveterate and deplorable lack of any sense of detail. This is absurd. You might as well insist on a faithful representation of the household furniture of the burgomaster of Zoetenaeg, which is the smallest village in Belgium, in drawing the map of Europe to scale. At the critical moment this more than continental vastness gathers to a wedge-like determination that goes home. He means to get through.

We ran into Melle about an hour before sunset.

There had been a great slaughter of Germans on the field outside the village where the Germans were still firing when the Corps left it. We found two of our cars drawn up by the side of the village street, close under the houses. The Chaplain, Ursula Dearmer and Mrs. Lambert were waiting in one of them, the new Daimler, with the chauffeur Newlands. Dr. Wilson was in Bert's car with three wounded Germans. He was sitting in front with one of them beside him. They say that the enemy's wounded sometimes fire on our surgeons and Red Cross men, and Dr. Wilson had a revolver about him when he went on the battle-field yesterday. He said he wasn't taking any risks. The man he had got beside him to-day was only wounded in the foot, and had his hands entirely free to do what he liked with. He looked rather a low type, and at the first sight of him I thought I shouldn't have cared to be alone with him anywhere on a dark night.

And then I saw the look on his face. He was purely pathetic. He didn't look at you. He stared in front of him down the road towards Ghent, in a dull, helpless misery. These unhappy German Tommies are afraid of us. They are told that we shall treat them badly, and some of them believe it. I wanted Dr. Wilson to let me get up and go with the poor fellow, but he wouldn't. He was sorry for him and very gentle. He is always sorry for people and very gentle. So I knew that the German would be all right with him. But I should have liked to have gone.