CHAPTER XI
"AND THE BRIGHT EYES OF DANGER"
Since the beginning of things women have been mixed up in war, and it is only as the world has become more civilised (if in view of the present one can make that assertion) that their place in it has been questioned. The whole question of the civilian population has taken on a different aspect since the outbreak of this war, owing to the extraordinary and unprecedented penalties attached to the civilian status by Germany, but the sub-division labelled "Women" has perhaps undergone more revision than any. It has undergone so much revision, in fact, that women have, in large masses, ceased to be civilians and are ranked as the Army.
If it be frankly conceded that it is as natural for women to want to get to the war as men, one clears the way for profitable discussion without wasting time while the outworn epithets of "unwomanly" and "sensation-hunters" are flung through the air to the great obscuring thereof. The delight in danger for its own sake is common to all human beings, to the young as an intoxicant, to the old as a drug. It is not the least of the tragedies of woman that this is a delight in which she is so seldom able to indulge.
When the war broke, everyone wanted to go and see what it was like, and it is merely useless to observe that this was treating it as a huge picnic. Before the tightening-up process began, in the wonderful days when the war was still fluid, it was possible to get out to the front—the real front—on all sorts of excuses. The tightening-up was necessary, and all too slow, but let us not, because of that, fall into the error of calling the instinct which urged non-combatants "mere" curiosity, as though that were not the greatest of the gifts of the gods, without which nothing is done.
Among these non-combatants who wanted to see the war were many women, and if, mixed with their patriotism and desire to help, went a streak of that love of danger which is no disgrace to a man—why, I maintain that it is no disgrace to a woman either, but as natural an instinct as that which drives one to a wayside orchard if one is hungry.
There is nothing sooner slaked, for the time being, than this inherent love of danger. Men who wanted the fun of it at the beginning of the war are heartily sick of it now, though they wouldn't be out of it for worlds. But most of the women haven't been allowed enough danger to get sick of it, and so, in patches of young women you meet working in France, the old craving still lifts its head. I came across a delightful streak of it at T——, the oldest big convoy in France.
The garage, over which the girls live, for their camp is still a-building, is set in the eye of the cold winter winds on the top of a hill overlooking the sea. It was snowing heavily as I drove up, great fat flakes of snow that wove and interwove in the air in the way that only snowflakes can, so that sometimes they look as though they were falling upwards. The long line of the wooden garage showed dark in the background, in the space before it the ambulances stood about, but the girls were fox-trotting in couples all about them, their big rubber boots shuffling up little clouds of snow; on the head of one girl was swathed a greenish-blue handkerchief, which made a lovely note of colour against the swirling whiteness.
I was taken in through the garage, where two drivers were painting their cars—for all painting is done by the girls, sometimes with unexpected effects, as on one car which I saw, where "Eve" from the Tatler and her little dog were depicted in front of the body—and up a flight of wooden stairs with an out-of-doors landing on top, to the cubicles, which opened off on either side of the open-ended passage for the whole length of the building. Here, in one of the little bedrooms for two, we had a meal of cocoa and cake, known as the "elevener," for the obvious reason that it is consumed at eleven every morning. It was all quite different from my evening at the convoy at E——, but equally stimulating.
The great plaint of the girls was that they weren't allowed nearer the fighting line, and I heard a story of how, in the early days, two cars had managed to get right through to Poperinghe, when that town was the centre of the Boche's attentions, by the simple expedient of the girl-drivers turning up their coat collars, pulling their peaked caps well down over their eyes, and just going ahead. They had a lovely time in Poperinghe and lunched under shell-fire, and when the military, including the Staff, were sitting in cellars, the "Chaufferettes" sallied forth and bought picture post-cards.
"It's a shame they won't let us go up to the line now——"
"Yes, indeed," put in another very seriously, as though she were adding the last uncontrovertible proof to the perfidy of the authorities—"They let the sisters get shelled, so why shouldn't they let us?"
Isn't that a delightful spirit, and, I beg leave to insist, a perfectly natural and proper one? Any decent human being would like to be shelled—who hasn't been shelled too much. It is like being in love—a thing that ought to happen at least once to everybody.
One of my hostesses was a violinist and plays at all the concerts for the wounded which take place thereabouts. I asked her whether she didn't find the work ruination to her fingers for the violin, but all she said carelessly was that they had been ruined for three years now, but it didn't matter, as anyway she couldn't have practised even if she had the time, since there were always some girls trying to sleep.
And what do the local French people think of these young girls in their midst, who work like men and are out in all weathers and drive the soldiers wounded in the great common cause? They are quite charming to them, and indeed, when they first came, the French met them at every station with bouquets of flowers, so that the girls, pleased and embarrassed, English fashion, had a triumphal progress. But there are some of the French neighbours who think the life must be very hard on the poor things, and when, a little while ago, the Convoy organised a paper chase, the popular belief was that the hares were escaping from the rigours of life.... When the panting hares asked wayfaring traps for a lift, it was refused them, as, though the kindly drivers had every sympathy with the projected escape, they were not going to assist them to defy authority!
The hardships which this Convoy had undergone I did not hear about from them, but from their Commandant. She told me of three weeks at the beginning of things, when there were no fires, no hot water, except a little always simmering for pouring into the radiators of the cars when there came a night call—for the snow was frozen on the ground all those three weeks and the water in the jugs was ice. The girls didn't talk about that because they were not interested in it, but neither would they talk about one other thing, though for a very different reason—and that was of the time when, after the great German gas attacks at Nieuport, they had to drive the gassed men who came on the hospital trains.... You can't get them now to describe what that was like, nor would you have tried, warned by the sudden change of voice in which they even mentioned it.
There was one point in which this Convoy seemed to me to touch the extreme of abnegation attained by the G.S.V.A.D.'s. I had seen much earlier in my visit a G.S.V.A.D. Convoy, but have not mentioned it because I saw it before I had really grasped essentials, and it appeared to me then just a plain Convoy, and as the bare facts of it were not as spectacular as those relating to the Fannies, I chose the latter to write about.
The G.S.V.A.D.'s, as I have said, rank as privates, and among them are workers of every kind—scrubbers, cooks, dispensers, clerks, motor drivers. This G.S.V.A.D. convoy which I had seen was made up of girls who had exchanged from V.A.D. convoys, mostly from this very one at T—— where I now was; and so they happened to be all friends and all girls of gentle birth. But when I saw their quarters—in a couple of tall French houses that had been converted to the purpose—I was very upset by the terrible fact that the girls had to share bedrooms. In all the camps I had seen since, both of Fannies and V.A.D.'s, each girl had her own tiny room which she cherished as her own soul—which, indeed, is what it amounts to. And the Waac officers, of course, have their own private rooms, though the girls sleep in dormitories. This convoy at T—— was the only voluntary one I had come across where the inestimable privilege of solitude was missing, though that will be put right when the new camp is built.
And here I may mention that, deeply as I admire all the girls who are working so splendidly in France, I think perhaps my meed of admiration brims highest for those members of the G.S.V.A.D.'s who are gently born, for this very reason of the sleeping accommodation. Let us be frank, and admit that for the generality of working girls, such as the Waacs and a large proportion of the G.S.V.A.D.'s, it is not nearly so great a hardship to sleep in dormitories as it is for girls who have, as a matter of course, always been accustomed to privacy. It is not so bad in the case of members of a G.S. convoy such as that I have mentioned, where the girls are all friends, but what of those ladies who live in the big camps and sleep in long huts with other girls of every class, all, doubtless, decent good girls, but, in the nature of things, often girls with whom any ground of meeting must be limited to the barest commonalities of life? Also sometimes those in authority—those who are and always were professionals, not amateurs—have been known to use the power given to them, by the inferior rating of these girls, to make them rather miserable.
Personally, I have long had a theory, which will doubtless bring down on me howls of rage from those who will say I am decrying the most noble of professions, that women are not meant to be nurses. It brings out all that is worst in them. The love of routine for its own sake, that deadly snare to which women and Government officials succumb so much more easily than do men, is fostered in them. And so is the love of authority for their own sakes, which is almost worse. It has taken nothing less than this way to show what splendid creatures nurses are under their starched aprons. In times of peace only amateur women should be nurses; for it may be observed that the V.A.D. nurses, though they have had long enough to do it in, have not developed the subtle disease of nursitis. Evidently nursing is a thing, like love-making, which should never become a profession.
I was glad to have seen all the different convoys I had, because no two had been to me alike, and to each I am indebted for a differing expression of the same vision, which is the vision splendid of a duty undertaken gladly and sustained with courage. From my first convoys—the Fannies and the G.S.V.A.D.'s—I got the wonderful facts of it, at the V.A.D. Convoy at E—— I caught that side of it which I was most glad of all to encounter, and at the V.A.D. Convoy at T—— I found that delightful spirit of sheer joy in danger which is too precious to be allowed to die out of the world just because there happens to be, at present, such a great deal too much danger let loose upon it.