Chapter 7

_Later._--Officers have been on the train on both places begging for newspapers and books. We save up our 'Punches' and 'Daily Mails' and 'Times' for them, and give them any Sevenpennies we have to spare. They say at least forty people read each book, and they finish up in the trenches.

H.M. King George was up here yesterday afternoon in a motor and gave three V.C.'s.

We have only taken on 83 at the two places. There is so little doing anywhere--no guns have been heard for several days, and there is not much sickness. An officer asked for some mufflers for his Field Ambulance men, so I gave him the rest of the children's: the sailors on the armoured train had the first half. He came back with some pears for us. They are so awfully grateful for the things we give them that they like to bring us something in exchange. Seven men off a passing truck fell over each other getting writing-cases and chocolate to-day. They almost eat the writing-cases with their joy.

9 P.M.--We filled up at St Omer from the three hospitals there. A great many cases of frost-bite were put on. They crawl on hands and knees, poor dears. Some left in hospital are very severe and have had to be amputated below the knee. Some of the toes drop off. I have one carriage of twenty-four Indians. A Sikh refused to sit in the same seat with a stout little major of the Gurkhas. I showed him a picture of Bobs, and he said at once, "Robert Sahib." They love the 'Daily Mirrors' with pictures of Indians. The Sikhs are rather whiney patients and very hard to please, but the little Gurkhas are absolute stoics, and the Bengal Lancers, who are Mohammedans, are splendid.

_Thursday, December 3rd._--We kept our load on all night, as we got in very late. I went to bed 10.20 A.M., and then took all the train: unloaded directly after breakfast. Some men from Lancashire were rather interesting on the war; they thought it would do Europe so much good in the long-run. And the French might try and get their own back when they get into Germany, but "the British is too tender-'earted to do them things." They arranged that Belgium should have Berlin! They all get very pitiful over the Belgian homes and desolation; it seems to upset them much more than their own horrors in the trenches. A good deal of the fighting they talk about as if it was an exciting sort of football match, full of sells and tricks and chances. They roar with laughter at some of their escapes.

There was no hospital ship in, which spells a bath or no bath to me, but I ramped round the town till I found a hotel which kindly supplied a fine bath for 1.75. And I found another and nicer English church and a Roman Catholic one.

Grand mail when I came in--from home.

_Friday, December 4th._--Had a busy day loading at three places: just going to turn in as I have to be up at 2 A.M.; we shall have the patients on all night. It is a fearful night, pouring and blowing. We have taken a tall white-haired Padre up with us this time: he wanted a trip to the Front. We happened to go to a place we hadn't been to before, in a coal-mining district. While we loaded he marched off to explore, and was very pleased at finding a well-shelled village and an unexploded shell stuck in a tree. It specially seemed to please him to find a church shelled! He has enjoyed talking to the crowds of men on the train on the way down. He lives and messes with us. We opened the Harrod's cake to-day; it is a beauty. The men were awfully pleased with the bull's-eyes, said they hadn't tasted a sweet for four months.

One of the C.S. has just dug me out to see some terrific flashes away over the Channel, which he thinks is a naval battle. I think it is lightning. It was. The gale is terrific: must be giving the ships a doing.

_Saturday, December 5th_, 7 A.M.--We had a long stop on an embankment in the night, and at last the Chef de Gare from the next station came along the line and found both the French guards rolled up asleep and the engine-driver therefore hung up. Then he ran out of coal, and couldn't pull the train up the hill, so we had another four hours' wait while another engine was sent for. Got into B. at 6 A.M.; bitterly cold and wet, and no chauffage.

_Sunday, December 6th._--A brilliant frosty day--on way up to Bailleul. We unloaded early at B. yesterday, and waited at a good place half-way between B. and Calais, a high down not far from the sea, with a splendid air. Some of the others went for a walk as we had no engine on, but I had been up since 2 A.M., and have hatched another bad cold, and so retired for a sleep till tea-time.

Just got to Hazebrouck. Ten men and three women were killed and twenty wounded here this morning by a bomb. They are very keen on getting a good bag here, especially on the station, and for other reasons, as it is an important junction.

4 P.M.--We have been up to B. and there were no patients for us, so we are to go back to the above bomb place to collect theirs. B. was packed with pale, war-worn, dirty but cheerful French troops entraining for their Front. They have been all through everything, and say they want to go on and get it finished. They carry fearful loads, including an extra pair of boots, a whole collection of frying-pans and things, and blankets, picks, &c., all on their backs.

The British officers on the station came and grabbed our yesterday's 'Daily Mails,' and asked for soap, so what you sent came in handy. They went in to the town to buy grapes for us in return. This place is famous for grapes--huge monster purple ones--but the train went out before they came back. We had got some earlier, though.

9 P.M.--We are nearly back at Boulogne and haven't taken up any sick or wounded anywhere. One of the trains has taken Indians from Boulogne down to Marseilles--several days' journey.

_Monday, December 7th._--Pouring wet day. Still standing by; nothing doing anywhere. It is a blessed relief to know that, and the rest does no one any harm. Had a grand mail to-day.

There is a heart-breaking account of my beautiful Ypres on page 8 of December 1st 'Times.' There was a cavalry officer looking round the Cathedral with me that day the guns were banging. I often wonder where the Belgian woman is who showed me the way and wanted my S.A. ribbons as a souvenir. She showed me a huge old painting on the wall of the Cathedral of Ypres in an earlier war.

I all but got left in Boulogne to-day. We are dry-docked about five miles out, not far from Ambleteuse.

It was bad luck not seeing the King. We caught him up at St Omer, and saw his train; and from there he motored in front of us to all our places. Where we went, they said, "The King was here yesterday and gave V.C.'s." We haven't seen the "d--d good boy" either.

_Tuesday, December 8th._--Got up to Bailleul by 11 A.M., and had a good walk on the line waiting to load up. Glorious morning. Aeroplanes buzzing overhead like bees, and dropping coloured signals about. Only filled up my half of the train, both wounded and sick, including some very bad enterics. An officer in the trenches sent a man on a horse to get some papers from us. Luckily I had a batch of 'The Times,' 'Spectator,' and 'Punches.'

We have come down very quickly, and hope to unload to-night, 9.30.

_Wednesday, December 9th._--In siding at Boulogne all day. Pouring wet.

_Thursday, December 10th._--Left for Bailleul at 8 A.M. Heard at St Omer of the sinking of the three German cruisers.

Arrived at 2 P.M. Loaded up in the rain, wounded and sick--full load. They were men wounded last night, very muddy and trenchy; said the train was like heaven! It is lovely fun taking the sweets round; they are such an unexpected treat. The sitting-ups make many jokes, and say "they serve round 'arder sweets than this in the firing line--more explosive like."

One showed us a fearsome piece of shell which killed his chum next to him last night. There is a good deal of dysentery about, and acute rheumatism. The Clearing Hospitals are getting rather rushed again, and the men say we shall have a lot coming down in the next few days. A hundred men of one regiment got separated from their supports and came up against some German machine-guns in a wood with tragic results. We are shelling from Ypres, but there is no answering shelling going on just now, though the Taubes are busy.

We are wondering what the next railhead will be, and when. Some charming H.A.C.'s are on the train this time, and a typically plucky lot of Tommies. One of the best of their many best features is their unfailing friendliness with each other. They never let you miss a man out with sweets or anything if he happens to be asleep or absent.

_Friday, December 11th._--They wouldn't unload us at 11 P.M. at Boulogne last night, but sent us on to the Duchess of Westminster's Hospital at a little place about twenty miles south of B., and we didn't unload till this morning. It was my turn for a whole night in bed. Not that this means we are having many nights up, but that when the load doesn't require two Sisters at night, two go to bed and the other two divide the night. After unloading we had a poke round the little fishing village, and of course the church. A company of Canadian Red Cross people unloaded us. The hospital has not been open very long. It was all sand-dunes and fir-trees on the way, very attractive, and cement factories.

Mail in again.

9 P.M.--We came back to B. to fill up with stores after lunch, and haven't been sent out again yet; but we often go to bed here, and wake up and ask our soldier servants (batmen), who bring our jugs of hot water it the morning, where we are. I like the motion of the train in bed now, and you get used to the noise.

_Saturday, December 12th._--The French engine-drivers are so erratic that if you're long enough on the line it's only a question of time when you get your smash up. Ours came last night when they were joining us up to go out again. They put an engine on to each end of one-half of the train (not the one our car is in), and then did a tug-of-war. That wasn't a success, so they did the concertina touch, and put three coaches out of action, including the kitchen. So we're stuck here now (Boulogne) till Heaven knows when. Fortunately no casualties.

_Sunday, December 13th._--We've been hung up since Friday night by the three damaged trucks, and took the opportunity of getting some good walks yesterday, and actually going to church at the English church this morning.

Sister B. has been ordered to join the hospital; she mobilised to-day, and we had to pack her off this morning. The staffs of the trains (which have all been shortened) have been put down from four to three. Very glad I wasn't taken off.

We saw a line of graves with wooden crosses, in a field against the skyline, last journey.

We have seen a lot of the skin coats that the men are getting now. Sheepskin, with any sort of fur or skin sleeves, just the skins sewn together; you may see a grey or white coat with brown or black fur or astrakhan sleeves. Some wear the fur inside and some outside; they simply love them.

Reduced to pacing the platform in the dark and rain to get warm. It is 368 paces, so I've done it six times to well cover a mile, but it is not an exciting walk! Funny thing, it seems in this war that for many departments you are either thoroughly overworked or entirely hung up, which is much worse. In things like the Pay Department or the Post-Office or the Provisioning for the A.S.C. it seldom gets off the overworked line, but in this and in the fighting line it varies very much.

"The number of victims of the Taube attack on Hazebrouck on Monday is larger than was at first supposed. Five bombs were thrown and nine British soldiers and five civilians were killed, while 25 persons were injured."--'Times,' Dec. 9th.

We were at H. on that day.

_Monday, December 14th._--Got off at last at 3.30 A.M. Loaded up 300 at Merville, a place we've only been to once before, near the coalmines. Guns were banging only four miles off.

Had a good many bad cases, medical and surgical, this time: kept one busy to the journey's end. We are unloaded to-night, so they will soon be well seen to, instead of going down to Rouen or Havre, which two other trains just in have got to do.

We have a good many Gordons on; one was hugging his bagpipes, and we had him up after dinner to play, which he did beautifully with a wrapt expression.

We are going up again to-night. "Three trains wanted immediately"--been expecting that.

_Tuesday, December 15th._--We were unloaded last night at 9.30, and reported ready to go up again at 11 P.M., but they didn't move us till 5 A.M. Went to same place as yesterday, and cleared the Clearing Hospitals again; some badly wounded, with wounds exposed and splints padded with straw as in the Ypres days.

The Black Watch have got some cherub-faced boys of seventeen out now. The mud and floods are appalling. The Scotch regiments have lost their shoes and spats and wade barefoot in the water-logged trenches. This is a true fact.

I'm afraid not a few of many regiments have got rheumatism--some acute--that they will never lose.

The ploughed fields and roads are all more or less under water, and each day it rains more.

We have got a Red Cross doctor on the train who was in the next village to the one we loaded from this morning. It has been taken and retaken by both sides, and had a population of about 2000. The only living things he saw in it to-day besides a khaki supply column passing through were one cat and some goldfish. In one villa a big brass bedstead was hanging through the drawing-room ceiling by its legs, the clothes hanging in the cupboards were slashed up, and nothing left anywhere. He says at least ten well-to-do men of 50 are doing motor-ambulance work with their own Rolls-Royces up there, and cleaning their cars themselves, at 6 A.M.

I happened to ask a man, who is a stretcher-bearer belonging to the Rifle Brigade, how he got hit. "Oh, I was carrying a dead man," he said modestly. "My officer told me not to move him till dark, because of the sniping; but his face was blown off by an explosive bullet, and I didn't think it would do the chaps who had to stand round him all day any good, so I put him on my back, and they copped me in the leg. I was glad he wasn't a wounded man, because I had to drop him."

He told me some French ladies were killed in their horse-and-cart on the road near their trenches the other day; they would go and try and get some of their household treasures. Two were killed--two and a man--and the horse wounded. He helped to take them to the R.A.M.C. dressing-station.

_Wednesday, December 16th._--We are on our way up again to-day, and by a different and much jollier way, to St Omer, going south of Boulogne and across country, instead of up by Calais. We came back this way with patients from Ypres once. It is longer, but the country is like Hampshire Downs, instead of the everlasting flat swamps the other way. Of course it is raining.

6 P.M.--For once we waited long enough at St Omer to go out and explore the beautiful ruined Abbey near the station. We went up the town--very clean compared with the towns farther up--swarming with grey touring-cars and staff officers. Headquarters of every arm labelled on different houses, and a huge church the same date as the Abbey, with some good carving and glass in it. We kept an eye open for Sir J.F. and the P. of W., but didn't meet them. Saw the English military church where Lord Roberts began his funeral service. For once it wasn't raining.

_Thursday, December 17th._--Left St O. at 11 P.M. last night, and woke up this morning at Bailleul. Saw two aeroplanes being fired at,--black smoke-balls bursting in the air. Heard that Hartlepool and Scarboro' have been shelled--just the bare fact--in last night's 'Globe.' R. will have an exciting time. We're longing to get back for to-day's 'Daily Mail.'

There has been a lot of fighting in our advance south-east of Ypres since Sunday.

The Gordons made a great bayonet charge, but lost heavily in officers and men in half an hour; we have some on the train. The French also lost heavily, and lie unburied in hundreds; but the men say the Germans were still more badly "punished." They tell us that in the base hospitals they never get a clean wound; even the emergency amputations and trephinings and operations done in the Clearing Hospitals are septic, and no one who knew the conditions would wonder at it. We shall all forget what aseptic work is by the time we get home. The anti-tetanus serum injection that every wounded man gets with his first dressing has done a great deal to keep the tetanus under, and the spreading gangrene is less fatal than it was. It is treated with incisions and injections of H_{2}O_{2}, or, when necessary, amputation in case of limbs. You suspect it by the grey colour of the face and by another sense, before you look at the dressing.

At B. a man at the station greeted me, and it was my old theatre orderly at No. 7 Pretoria. We were very pleased to see each other. I fitted him out with a pack of cards, post-cards, acid drops, and a nice grey pair of socks.

A wounded officer told us he was giving out the mail in his trench the night before last, and nearly every man had either a letter or a parcel. Just as he finished a shell came and killed his sergeant and corporal; if they hadn't had their heads out of the trench at that moment for the mail, neither of them would have been hit. The officer could hardly get through the story for the tears in his eyes.

VI.

On No.-- Ambulance Train (4)

CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR ON THE TRAIN

_December 18, 1914, to January 3, 1915_

"Judge of the passionate hearts of men, God of the wintry wind and snow, Take back the blood-stained year again, Give us the Christmas that we know."

--F.G. SCOTT, _Chaplain with the Canadians_.

VI.

On No.-- Ambulance Train (4).

CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR ON THE TRAIN.

_December 18, 1914, to January 3, 1915._

The Army and the King--Mufflers--Christmas Eve--Christmas on the train--Princess Mary's present--The trenches in winter--"A typical example"--New Year's Eve at Rouen--The young officers.

_Friday, December 18th_, 10.30 A.M.--We've had an all-night journey to Rouen, and have almost got there. One of my sitting-ups was 106° this morning, but it was only malaria, first typical one I have met since S.A. A man who saw the King when he was here said, "They wouldn't let him come near the trenches; if a shell had come and hit him I think the Army would 'a gone mad; there'd be no keeping 'em in the trenches after that."

This place before Rouen is Darnetal, a beautiful spiry town in a valley, pronounced by the Staff of No.-- A.T. "Darn it all."

6 P.M.--We unloaded by 12, and had just had time to go out and get a bath at the best baths in France.

Shipped a big cargo of J.J. this journey, but luckily made no personal captures.

Got to sleep this afternoon, as I was on duty all yesterday and up to 2 A.M. this morning.

Pouring cats and dogs as usual.

No time to see the Cathedrals.

We had this time a good many old seasoned experienced men of the Regular Army, who had been through all the four months (came out in August). They are very strong on the point of mixing Territorials (and K.'s Army where it is not composed of old service men) and Indians well in with men like themselves.

One Company of R.E. lost all its officers in one day in a charge. A H.L.I. man gave a chuckling account of how they got to fighting the Prussian Guard with their fists at Wypers because they were at too close quarters to get in with their bayonets. They really enjoyed it, and the Germans didn't.

_Saturday, 19th._--We are dry-docked to-day at Sotteville, outside Rouen. Z. and I half walked and half trammed into Rouen this morning.

It is lovely to get out of the train. This afternoon No.-- played a football match against the Khaki train and got well beaten. They've only been in the country six weeks, and only do about one journey every eight days, so they are in better training than ours, but it will do them a lot of good: we looked on.

_Sunday, 20th_, 6 P.M.--At last we are on our way back to Boulogne and mails, and the News of the War at Home and Abroad. At Rouen, or rather the desert four miles outside it, we only see the paper of the day before, and we miss our mails, and have no work since unloading on Friday. This morning was almost a summer day, warm, still, clear and sunny. We went for a walk, and then got on with painting the red crosses on the train, which can only be done on fine days, of which we've had few. The men were paraded, and then sent route-marching, which they much enjoyed. It was possible, as word was sent that the train was not going out till 1.30. It did, however, move at 12, which shows how little you can depend on it, even when a time is given. They had a mouth-organ and sang all the way.

_Monday, December 21st._--Got to Boulogne early this morning after an exceptionally rackety journey, all one's goods and chattels dropping on one's head at intervals during the night. Engine-driver rather _ivré_, I should think. Off again at 10.30 A.M.

Mail in.

Weather appallingly cold and no chauffage.

On way up to Chocques, where we shall take up Indians again. How utterly miserable Indians must be in this eternal wet and cold. The fields and land generally are all half under water again. We missed the last two days' papers, and so have heard nothing of the war at home, except that the casualties are over 60,000. Five mufflers went this afternoon to five men on a little isolated station on the way here. When I said to the first boy, "Have you got a muffler?" he thought I wanted one for some one on the train.

"Well, it's not a real muffler; it's my sleeping-cap," he said, beginning to pull it off his neck; "but you're welcome to it if it's any use!"

What do you think of that? He got pink with pleasure over a real muffler and some cigarettes. You start with two men; when you come back in a minute with the mufflers the two have increased to five silent expectant faces.

_Wednesday, 23rd._--We loaded up at Lillers late on Monday night with one of the worst loads we've ever taken, all wounded, half Indians and half British.

You will see by Tuesday's French communiqués that some of our trenches had been lost, and these had been retaken by the H.L.I., Manchesters, and 7th D.G.'s.

It was a dark wet night, and the loading people were half-way up to their knees in black mud, and we didn't finish loading till 2 A.M., and were hard at it trying to stop hæmorrhage, &c., till we got them off the train at 11 yesterday morning; the J.J.'s were swarming, but a large khaki pinny tying over my collar, and with elastic wristbands, saved me this time. One little Gurkha with his arm just amputated, and a wounded leg, could only be pacified by having acid drops put into his mouth and being allowed to hug the tin.

Another was sent on as a sitting-up case. Half-way through the night I found him gasping with double pneumonia; it was no joke nursing him with seven others in the compartment. He only just lived to go off the train.

Another one I found dead about 5.30 A.M. We were to have been sent on to Rouen, but the O.C. Train reported too many serious cases, and so they were taken off at B. It was a particularly bad engine-driver too.

I got some bath water from a friendly engine, and went to bed at 12 next day.