Chapter 8

Outside on the verandah the Commandant was fairly ramping to be off. No--I can't see the Hospital. There isn't any time to see the Hospital. But Miss ---- could not bear me not to see it, and together we made a surreptitious bolt for it, and I did see the Hospital.

It was not like any hospital you had ever seen before. Except that the wounded were all comfortably bedded, it was more like the sleeping-hall of the Palais des Fetes. The floor of the great concert-hall was covered with mattresses and beds, where the wounded lay about in every attitude of suffering. No doubt everything was in the most perfect order, and the nurses and doctors knew how to thread their way through it all, but to the hurried spectator in the doorway the effect was one of the most _macabre_ confusion. Only one object stood out--the large naked back of a Belgian soldier, who sat on the edge of his bed waiting to be washed. He must have been really the most cheerful and (comparatively) uninjured figure in the whole crowd, but he seemed the most pitiful, because of the sheer human insistence of his pathetic back.

Over this back and over all that prostrate agony the enormous floriated bronze rings that carried the lights of the concert-hall hung from the ceiling in frightful, festive decoration.

Miss ---- whispered: "One of them is dying. We can't save him."

She seemed to regard this one as a positive slur on their record. I thought: "Only one--among all that crowd!"

Mrs. Stobart came after us in some alarm as we ran down the garden.

"What are you doing with Miss ----? You're not going to carry her off?"

"No," I said, "we're not. She won't come."

But we have got off with Dr. ----.

Mrs. Stobart has refused the Commandant's offer of one of our best surgeons in exchange. He is a man. And this hospital is a Feminist Show.

We dined in a great hurry in a big restaurant in one of the main streets. The restaurant was nearly empty and funereal black cloths were hung over the windows to obscure the lights.

Mr. Davidson (this cheerful presence was with us in our dream-like career through Antwerp)--Mr. Davidson and I amused ourselves by planning how we will behave when we are taken prisoner by the Germans. He is safe, because he is an American citizen. The unfortunate thing about me is my passport, otherwise, by means of a well-simulated nasal twang I might get through as an American novelist. I've been mistaken for one often enough in my own country. But, as I don't mean to be taken prisoner, and perhaps murdered or have my hands chopped off, without a struggle, my plan is to deliver a speech in German, as follows: "_Ich bin eine beruehmte Schriftstellerin_" (on these occasions you stick at nothing), "_beruehmt in England, aber viel beruehmter in den Vereinigten Staaten, und mein Schicksal will den Presidenten Wilson nicht gleichgueltig sein_." I added by way of rhetorical flourish as the language went to my head: "_Er will mein Tod zu vertheidigen gut wissen_;" but I was aware that this was overdoing it.

Mr. Davidson thought it would be better on the whole if he were to pass me off as his wife. Perhaps it would, but it seems a pity that so much good German should be wasted.

We got up from that dinner with even more haste than we had sat down. All lights in the town were put out at eight-thirty, and we didn't want to go crawling and blundering about in the dark with our ambulance car. There was a general feeling that the faster we ran back to Ghent the better.

We left Mr. Davidson and Dr. Wilson in Antwerp. They were staying over-night for the fun of the thing.

Another awful struggle on the downward slope from the quay to the bridge of boats. A bad jam at the turn. A sudden loosening and letting go of the traffic, and we were over.

We ran back to Ghent so fast that at Saint Nicolas (where we stopped to pick up our poor little Belgian professor) we took the wrong turn at the fork of the road and dashed with considerable _elan_ over the Dutch frontier. We only realized it when a sentry in an unfamiliar uniform raised his rifle and prepared to fire, not with the cheerful, perfunctory vigilance of our Belgians, but in a determined, business-like manner, and the word "Achille," imparted in a burst of confidence, produced no sympathy whatever. On the contrary, this absurd sentry (who had come out of a straw sentry-box that was like an enormous beehive) went on pointing his rifle at us with most unnecessary persistence. I was so interested in seeing what he would do next that I missed the very pleasing behaviour of the little Belgian professor, who sat next to me, wrapped in his brown shawl. He still imagined himself to be on the road to Ghent, and when he saw that sentry continuing to prepare to fire in spite of our password, he concluded that we and the road to Ghent were in the hands of the Germans. So he instantly ducked behind me for cover and collapsed on the floor of the ambulance in his shawl.

Then somebody said "We're in Holland!" and there were shouts of laughter from everybody in the car except the little Belgian. Then shouts of laughter from the Dutch sentries and Customs officers, who enjoyed this excellent joke as much as we did.

We were now out of our course by I don't know how many miles and short of petrol. But one of the Customs officers gave us all we wanted.

It's heart-breaking the way these dear Belgians take the British. They have waited so long for our army, believing that it would come, till they could believe no more. In Ghent, in Antwerp, you wouldn't know that Belgium had any allies; you never see the British flag, or the French either, hanging from the windows. The black, yellow and red standard flies everywhere alone. Now that we _have_ come, their belief in us is almost unbearable. They really think we are going to save Antwerp. Somewhere between Antwerp and Saint Nicolas the population of a whole village turned out to meet us with cries of "_Les Anglais! Les Anglaises!_" and laughed for joy. Terrible for us, who had heard Belgians say reproachfully: "We thought that the British would come to our help. But they never came!" They said it more in sorrow than in anger; but you couldn't persuade them that the British fought for Belgium at Mons.

We got into Ghent about midnight.

Dr. ---- is to stay at the Hotel de la Poste to-night.

[_Monday, 5th._]

The mosquitoes from the canal have come up and bitten me. I was ill all night with something that felt like malarial fever, if it isn't influenza. Couldn't get up--too drowsy.

Mr. L. came in to see me first thing in the morning. He also came to hear at first hand the story of our run into Antwerp. He was extremely kind. He sat and looked at me sorrowfully, as if he had been the family doctor, and gave me some of his very own China tea (in Belgium in war-time this is one of the most devoted things that man can do for his brother). He was so gentle and so sympathetic that my heart went out to him, and I forgot all about poor Mr. Davidson, and gave up to him the whole splendid "scoop" of the British troops at Saint Nicolas.

I couldn't tell him much about the run into Antwerp. No doubt it was a thrilling performance--through all the languor of malaria it thrills me now when I think of it--but it wasn't much to offer a War Correspondent, since it took us nowhere near the bombardment. It had nothing for the psychologist or for the amateur of strange sensations, and nothing for the pure and ardent Spirit of Adventure, and nothing for that insatiable and implacable Self, that drives you to the abhorred experiment, determined to know how you will come out of it. For there was no more danger in the excursion than in a run down to Brighton and back; and I know no more of fear or courage than I did before I started.

But now that I realize what the insatiable and implacable Self is after, how it worked in me against all decency and all pity, how it actually made me feel as if I wanted to see Antwerp under siege, and how the spirit of adventure backed it up, I can forgive the Commandant. I still think that he sinned when he took Ursula Dearmer to Termonde and to Alost. But the temptation that assailed him at Alost and Termonde was not to be measured by anybody who was not there.

It must have been irresistible.

Besides, it is not certain that he did take Ursula Dearmer into danger; it is every bit as likely that she took him; more likely still that they were both victims of _force majeure_, fascinated by the lure of the greatest possible danger. And, oh, how I did pitch into him!

I am ashamed of the things I said in that access of insulting and indignant virtue.

Can it be that I was jealous of Ursula Dearmer, that innocent girl, because she saw a shell burst and I didn't? I know this is what was the matter with Mrs. Torrence the other day. She even seemed to imply that there was some feminine perfidy in Ursula Dearmer's power of drawing shells to her. (She, poor dear, can't attract even a bullet within a mile of her.)[15]

Lying there, in that mosquito-haunted room, I dissolved into a blessed state, a beautiful, drowsy tenderness to everybody, a drowsy, beautiful forgiveness of the Commandant. I forgot that he intimated, sternly, that no ambulance would be at my disposal in the flight from Ghent--I remember only that he took me into Antwerp yesterday, and that he couldn't help it if the outer forts _were_ thirty kilometres away, and I forgive him, beautifully and drowsily.

But when he came running up in great haste to see me, and rushed down into the kitchens of the Hotel to order soup for me, and into the chemist's shop in the Place d'Armes to get my medicine, and ran back again to give it me, before I knew where I was (such is the debilitating influence of malaria), instead of forgiving him, I found myself, in abject contrition, actually asking him to forgive _me_.

It was all wrong, of course; but the mosquitoes had bitten me rather badly.

* * * * *

Mrs. Torrence and Janet McNeil have got to work at last. All afternoon and all night yesterday they were busy between the Station and the hospitals removing the wounded from the Antwerp trains.

And Car 1 had no sooner got into the yard of the "Flandria" to rest after its trip to Antwerp and back than it was ordered out again with the Commandant and Ursula Dearmer and Mrs. Torrence to meet the last ambulance train. The chauffeur Tom was nowhere to be seen when the order came. He was, however, found after much search, in the Park, in the company of the Cricklewood bus and a whole regiment of Tommies.

One of these ambulance trains had been shelled by the Germans (they couldn't have been very far from us in our run from Antwerp--it was their nearness, in fact, that accounted for our prodigious haste!), and many of the men came in worse wounded than they went out.

We are all tremendously excited over the arrival of the Tommies and the Cricklewood bus. We can think of nothing else but the relief of Antwerp.

Ursula Dearmer came to see me. She understands that I have forgiven her that shell--and why. She wore the clothes--the rather heart-rending school-girl clothes--she wore when she came to see the Committee. But oh, how the youngest but one has grown up since then!

Mrs. Torrence came to see me also, and Janet McNeil. Mrs. Torrence, though that shell still rankles, is greatly appeased by the labours of last night. So is Janet.

They told rather a nice story.

A train full of British troops from Ostend came into the station yesterday at the same time as the ambulance train from Antwerp. The two were drawn up one on each side of the same platform. When the wounded Belgians saw the British they struggled to their feet. At every window of the ambulance train bandaged heads were thrust out and bandaged hands waved. And the Belgians shouted.

But the British stood dumb, stolid and impassive before their enthusiasm.

Mrs. Torrence called out, "Give them a cheer, boys. They're the bravest little soldiers in the world."

Then the Tommies let themselves go, and the Station roof nearly flew off with the explosion.

The Corps worked till four in the morning clearing out those ambulance trains. The wards are nearly full. And this is only the beginning.

[_Tuesday, 6th._]

Malaria gone.

The Commandant called to give his report of the ambulance work. He, Mrs. Torrence, Janet McNeil, Ursula Dearmer and the men were working all yesterday afternoon and evening till long past dark at Termonde. It's the finest thing they've done yet. The men and the women crawled on their hands and knees in the trenches [? under the river bank] under fire. Ursula Dearmer (that girl's luck is simply staggering!)--Ursula Dearmer, wandering adventurously apart, after dark, on the battle-field, found a young Belgian officer, badly wounded, lying out under a tree. She couldn't carry him, but she went for two stretchers and three men; and they put the young officer on one stretcher, and she trotted off with his sword, his cap and the rest of his accoutrements on the other. He owes his life to this manifestation of her luck.

Dr. Wilson has come back from Antwerp.

It looks as if Dr. Haynes and Dr. Bird would go. At any rate, I think they will give up working on the Field Ambulance. There aren't enough cars for four surgeons _and_ four field-women, and they have seen hardly any service. This is rather hard luck on them, as they gave up their practice to come out with us. Naturally, they don't want to waste any more time.

I managed to get some work done to-day. Wrote a paragraph about the Ambulance for Mr. L., who will publish it in the _Westminster_ under his name, to raise funds for us. He is more than ever certain that it (the Ambulance) is the real thing.

Also wrote an article ("L'Hopital Militaire, No. 2") for the _Daily Chronicle_; the first bit of journalism I've had time or material for.

Shopped. Very _triste_ affair.

Went to mass in the Cathedral. Sat far back among the refugees.

If you want to know what Religion really is, go into a Catholic church in a Catholic country under invasion. You only feel the tenderness, the naivete of Catholicism in peace-time. In war-time you realize its power.

[_Evening._]

Saw Mr. P., who has been at Termonde. He spoke with great praise of the gallantry of our Corps.

It's odd--either I'm getting used to it, or it's the effect of that run into Antwerp--but I'm no longer torn by fear and anxiety for their safety.

[?] Dined with Mr. L. in a restaurant in the town. It proved to be more expensive than either of us cared for. Our fried sole left us hungry and yet conscience-stricken, as if after an orgy, suffering in a dreadful communion of guilt.

[_Wednesday, 7th._]

7 A.M. Got up early and went to Mass in the Cathedral.

Prepared report for British Red Cross. Wrote "Journal of Impressions" from September 25th to September 26th, 11 A.M. It's slow work. Haven't got out of Ostend yet!

Fighting at Zele.

[_Afternoon._]

Got very near the fighting this time.

Mr. L. (Heaven bless him!) took me out with him in the War Correspondents' car to see what the Ambulance was doing at Zele, and, incidentally, to look at the bombardment of some evacuated villages near it (I have no desire to see the bombardment of any village that has not been evacuated first). Mr. M. came too, and they brought a Belgian lady with them, a charming and beautiful lady, whose name I forget.

When Mr. L. told me to get up and come with him to Zele, I did get up with an energy and enthusiasm that amazed me; I got up like one who has been summoned at last, after long waiting, to a sure and certain enterprise. I can trust Mr. L. or any War Correspondent who means business, as I cannot (after Antwerp) trust the Commandant. So far, if the Commandant happens upon a bombardment it has been either in the way of duty, or by sheer luck, or both, as at Alost and Termonde, when duty took him to these places, and any bombardment or firing was, as it were, thrown in. He did not go out deliberately to seek it, for its own sake, and find it infallibly, which is the War Correspondent's way. So that if Mr. L. says there is going to be a bombardment, we shall probably get somewhere nearer to it than thirty kilometres.

We took the main road to Zele. I don't know whether it was really a continuation of the south-east road that runs under the Hospital windows; anyhow, we left it very soon, striking southwards to the right to find what Mr. L. believed to be a short cut. Thus we never got to Zele at all. We came out on a good straight road that would no doubt have led us there in time, but that we allowed ourselves to be lured by the smoke of the great factory at Schoonard burning away to the south.

For a long time I could not believe that it was smoke we saw and not an enormous cloud blown by the wind across miles of sky. We seemed to run for miles with that terrible banner streaming on our right to the south, apparently in the same place, as far off as ever. East of it, on the sky-line, was a whole fleet of little clouds that hung low over the earth; that rose from it; rose and were never lifted, but as they were shredded away, scattered and vanished, were perpetually renewed. This movement of their death and re-birth had a horrible sinister pulse in it.

Each cloud of this fleet of clouds was the smoke from a burning village.

At last, after an endless flanking pursuit of the great cloud that continued steadily on our right, piling itself on itself and mounting incessantly, we struck into a side lane that seemed to lead straight to the factory on fire. But in this direct advance the cloud eluded us at every turn of the lane. Now it was rising straight in front of us in the south, now it was streaming away somewhere to the west of our track. When we went west it went east. When we went east it went west. And wherever we went we met refugees from the burning villages. They were trudging along slowly, very tired, very miserable, but with no panic and no violent grief. We passed through villages and hamlets, untouched still, but waiting quietly, and a little breathlessly, on the edge of their doom.

At the end of one lane, where it turned straight to the east round the square of a field we came upon a great lake ringed with trees and set in a green place of the most serene and vivid beauty. It seemed incredible that the same hour should bring us to this magic stillness and peace and within sight of the smoke of war and within sound of the guns.

At the next turn we heard them.

We still thought that we could get to Schoonard, to the burning factory, and work back to Zele by a slight round. But at this turn we had lost sight of Schoonard and the great cloud altogether, and found ourselves in a little hamlet Heaven knows where. Only, straight ahead of us, as we looked westwards, we heard the guns. The sound came from somewhere over there and from two quarters; German guns booming away on the south, Belgian [? French] guns answering from the north.

Judging by these sounds and those we heard afterwards, we must have been now on the outer edge of a line of fire stretching west and east and following the course of the Scheldt. The Germans were entrenched behind the river.

In the little hamlet we asked our way of a peasant. As far as we could make out from his mixed French and Flemish, he told us to turn back and take the road we had left where it goes south to the village of Baerlaere. This we did. We gathered that we could get a road through Baerlaere to Schoonard. Failing Schoonard, our way to Zele lay through Baerlaere in the opposite direction.

We set off along a very bad road to Baerlaere.

Coming into Baerlaere, we saw a house with a remarkable roof, a steep-pitched roof of black and white tiles arranged in a sort of chequer-board pattern. I asked Mr. L. if he had ever seen a roof like that in his life and he replied promptly, "Yes; in China." And that roof--if it was coming into Baerlaere that we saw it--is all that I can remember of Baerlaere. There was, I suppose, the usual church with its steeple where the streets forked and the usual town hall near it, with a flight of steps before the door and a three-cornered classic pediment; and the usual double line of flat-fronted, grey-shuttered houses; I do seem to remember these things as if they had really been there, but you couldn't see the bottom half of the houses for the troops that were crowded in front of them, or the top half for the shells you tried to see and didn't. They were sweeping high up over the roofs, making for the entrenchments and the batteries beyond the village.

We had come bang into the middle of an artillery duel. It was going on at a range of about a mile and a half, but all over our heads, so that though we heard it with great intensity, we saw nothing.

There were intervals of a few seconds between the firing. The Belgian [? French] batteries were pounding away on the left quite near (the booming seemed to come from behind the houses at our backs), and the German on the right, farther away.

Now, you may have hated and dreaded the sound of guns all your life, as you hate and dread any immense and violent noise, but there is something about the sound of the first near gun of your first battle that, so far from being hateful or dreadful, or in any way abhorrent to you, will make you smile in spite of yourself with a kind of quiet exultation mixed very oddly with reminiscence[16] so that, though your first impression (by no means disagreeable) is of being "in for it," your next, after the second and the third gun, is that of having been in for it many times before. The effect on your nerves is now like that of being in a very small sailing-boat in a very big-running sea. You climb wave after high wave, and are not swallowed up as you expected. You wait, between guns, for the boom and the shock of the next, with a passionate anticipation, as you wait for the next wave. And the sound of the gun when it comes is like the exhilarating smack of the wave that you and your boat mean to resist and do resist when it gets you.

You do not think, as you used to think when you sat safe in your little box-like house in St. John's Wood, how terrible it is that shells should be hurtling through the air and killing men by whole regiments. You do not think at all. Nobody anywhere near you is thinking that sort of thing, or thinking very much at all.

At the sound of the first near gun I found myself looking across the road at a French soldier. We were smiling at each other.

When we tried to get to Schoonard from the west end of the town we were stopped and turned back by the General in command. Not in the least abashed by this _contretemps_, Mr. L., after some parley with various officers, decided not to go back in ignominious safety by the way we came, but to push on from the east end of the village into the open country through the line of fire that stretched between us and the road to Zele. On our way, while we were about it, he said, we might as well stop and have a look at the Belgian batteries at work--as if he had said we might as well stop at Olympia and have a look at the Motor Show on our way to Richmond.

At this point the unhappy chauffeur, who had not found himself by any means at home in Baerlaere, remarked that he had a wife and family dependent on him.

Mr. L. replied with dignity that he had a wife and family too, and that we all had somebody or something; and that War Correspondents cannot afford to think of their wives and families at these moments.

Mr. M.'s face backed up Mr. L. with an expression of extreme determination.

The little Belgian lady smiled placidly and imperturbably, with an air of being ready to go anywhere where these intrepid Englishmen should see fit to take her.