Wounded and a Prisoner of War, by an Exchanged Officer

by Malcolm V. Hay

III.

What had happened in the meantime to the battalion which had marched off in the dark while I lay at the corner of that little wood does not belong to the story, but the adventures of the soldier who sat so long in the night by my side have an indirect bearing on my own history.

The following letter was written by Sinclair at Caudry, and posted on his escape from enemy territory:—

Caudry, Nord, France.

Dear ——,—This last week has been the worst week I ever put in in my life. Since Sunday morning, 23.8.11, we have been fighting nearly every day, and to make it worse, we are being driven back by overwhelming numbers, but hope to get support soon. As I am in a house in this town, and can't move from the garret lest I be seen, as the house is now in the hands of the Germans, but, thank God, the people I am with are our friends, I know I will be safe till some arrangement is made about getting away. I am not the only one that is here; there are some poor fellows who have been in a cellar here since our retreat from this place. I know you will be wondering why I am left at the town, so I will try and explain. The officer who was in the trench with another four men and me was shot through the head early in the engagement, but after a while he came to his senses, but found he had lost the power in his legs and right arm. Well, as it happened that I was next him, it fell to me to make him as comfortable as possible, as it was impossible to get him shifted before dark.

We held the trenches till about 12 P.M., when we got the order to retire. When the officer heard that we were to retire he seemed very much cut up about it, as it meant that he would be left behind to be taken prisoner.

We did not care to leave him, so four of us put him on a coat and carried him about ¼ mile to where the regiment was to meet; when we got there we found there were no stretchers to put him on, so another officer gave us an order to leave him, and then decided to leave two men with him. Well, as we were left to do our best for him, by this time the battalion had passed, and not a stretcher was to be found.

Hearing another regiment passing, I sent the other man to try and get a stretcher or a horse; but when he asked for a stretcher, the officer of the other regiment asked what it was for, then told him he was to go back at once and leave a water-bottle and take any message, and that both of us were to fall in in rear of his battalion at once. When our officer heard of this he told us to obey orders, so what could we do? We made him as comfortable as possible, then went to rejoin the battalion, but found that we had missed the road they had taken, so we were lost.

We decided to sit in a field till daylight came, and with it came an officer of the Royal Irish, and four men who were in the same boat as ourselves. So we joined with them to try and find our way, but we did not get more than three miles when we ran into the enemy,—then it was every man for himself. I heard after from the village people that five of them were made prisoners. Anyhow I have not seen any of them since.

Well, when I got away I hid at the back of a garden; they made search for me, but I happened to escape from their view. I had to sit in the same spot for over seven hours till all the Germans were clear of the place, and they were a mighty lot to pass. However, after a time the man who owned the garden got his eye on me; he then started to work about his garden. When he came up my length he dropped a loaf from under his jacket; it was very acceptable, as I was feeling very hungry. I thought it was about time I was moving, but did not know which way to go. I then decided that I would go back and see how my officer had got on, but did not get far when I struck into another lot of the enemy, and had to sit tight for another two hours. After that I got the place where our officer was left, but found that he was away from that place. I have since heard that he is in hospital at this place—Caudry. I then thought it would be advisable to make for Maubeuge, as I knew that there was a large fort there; but when I made inquiries from the people as to the direction, all they would tell me was that the enemy was all round, and it would be impossible to get away from here.

In fact, I had been very lucky to get as far as I did without being caught, so they advised me to hide my kit and rifle, and put on civilian clothes till such time as the road gets cleared of the enemy. After having changed my clothes, one of them brought me to this town, and left me at this house....

P.S.—I am trying to escape from this place to-night.

7485 Pte. R. Sinclair,
D Co.,
—— Batt.,
—— Inf. Brigade,
3rd Div.

The night passed slowly by the little wood among the beetroot, where I had been left with my rolled-up mackintosh for a pillow, and a shell-torn greatcoat for shelter from the drizzling rain. On my left the burning village of Audencourt, less than half a mile away, lit up the night with a steady glow which occasionally leapt into flame. On the right, some distance away, a house, or houses, flamed high for a long time, and then all was black and dark again. The slowly moving dawn showed that I was lying within ten or twelve yards off the road which runs from Beaumont across the fields to the road between Caudry and Audencourt.

As I looked towards Audencourt a man in khaki came running. At the sound of my whistle he leapt aside like a deer, then when he saw me lying, ran up. I asked to be lifted down into the sunken road, as I was afraid of lying out in the open on account of possible shell fire. The soldier (a man in the Irish Rifles) took me by the shoulders and dragged me down the bank, made me as comfortable as he could, and then ran off down the road, crossed the road between Caudry and Audencourt, and disappeared across country. Hardly had he disappeared from view when two shells exploded somewhere behind me.

It was now clear, but not full daylight. Two French peasants came up the road; I tried to call to them with the purpose of getting carried away on a cart, and so avoid being taken prisoner. But the peasants were frightened to come near me; they made a detour in the field, and joined the road again fifty yards higher up.

The first I saw of the Germans was a small party of about seven or eight advancing across the field on my left in extended order. The one nearest to hand saw me, and calling the others, they all came and stood on the road in a circle. Their attitude was distinctly sympathetic, but I was too far gone to struggle with their language.

I watched these men following the line taken by the Irish soldier, and wondered if they were tracking him, and would overtake him.

Before very long another and larger party appeared beside me on the road, but I was quite unable to speak to them, and after stopping to stare, they went on their way.

The whole tide of invasion was now sweeping over the land. Several Uhlans galloped past across the fields, and the road from Audencourt, which was about 150 yards from where I lay, was filled with a procession of machine-guns and transport waggons.

For some inexplicable reason I now tried to get away. By seizing a tuft of grass in the left hand I could move along a few inches at a time. After advancing in this manner about a foot along the edge of the road, I collapsed from exhaustion, and drew the greatcoat over my head. I do not know how long I had been thus covered up when I heard a shout, and peeping through one of the holes in the coat saw a German soldier standing on top of the bank. He was gesticulating and pointing to his revolver, trying to find out if I was armed! but he soon saw I was past further fighting.

He offered me a drink from his water-bottle, and pointed to the Red Cross on his arm. I can never hope to convey to any one what a relief it was to me to see the cross even on the arm of an enemy. The man asked me if I could walk, tried to lift me up, and when he saw I was paralysed said he would go for a stretcher.

"You will go away and leave me here," I said.

"I am of the Red Cross," he replied; "you are therefore my Kamarad and I will never leave you."

I gave him my whistle. Before going off to seek for help he stood on top of the bank looking down on me where I lay, and pointed once more to the Red Cross badge. "Kamarad, Kamarad, I will come back; never fear, I will come back."

I covered up my head again and fell into a semi-conscious stupor.

The sound of a step on the road aroused my attention, and for a brief instant my eyes seemed to deceive, for they showed me the tall figure of an old man dressed in a white overall. Behind him were two youths carrying a stretcher.

The figure spoke in French: "Are you a wounded British officer? There are three that I am looking for; do you know where the others are?"

I told him our trenches were close behind; and as he and his acolytes were off at once for further search, leaving the stretcher on the road, I added, "First put me on the stretcher." To lie on the stretcher after the hard ground was inexpressible relief to my paralysed limbs. Soon the white figure returned. "We have found them, but they are both dead, et un d'eux a l'air si jeune." The sun was shining with vigorous warmth. One of the boys shaded my head with his cap, and we were about to start when my friend of the German Red Cross appeared on top of the bank with a stretcher. At the same time our little group was joined by a young Uhlan officer. The German Red Cross man wished to transfer me to his stretcher, and the old man in white was determined not to let me go. The beginning of a discussion instantly ceased on the arrival of the German officer, who, speaking French with ease, turned first to the old Frenchman, "Where is your Red Cross armlet? What authority have you to search for wounded?"

The old man drew from his pocket a Red Cross badge, which seemed sufficient authority. The officer, sitting on his horse between the two stretchers, then looked down at me, "Choisissez," he said.

I answered him with a smile, "J'y suis j'y reste."

The German Red Cross soldier came up to my stretcher and took my hand, "Adieu, Kamarad."

The young German officer leant over and offered me a piece of chocolate. "Why have you English come against us?" he said; "it is no use. We shall be in Paris in three days. We have no quarrel with you English."

His eyes sparkled with the joy of victory, yet as he rode off I knew that some day his turn would come to lie even as I was.

At the entrance, or near the entrance to the village of Caudry, we were stopped by another officer on horseback. This time the colloquy was in English. "Officer? What regiment? Good! What Brigade?" "I don't know." "How many divisions were you?" "I don't know." "Ah, you won't tell me, but I know there were four divisions. We have captured men from many different regiments. Pass on."

On the way through the village the stretcher party was held up by the passing of a grey-coated infantry regiment. I have in my mind just a glimpse of the houses in the village, and one of them wrecked by a shell, but I was too exhausted to keep my eyes open when my stretcher was put down outside the school, which had been turned into a field-ambulance during yesterday's battle.

The French have many qualities, but order in emergency is not one of them.

A crowd of civilians blocked the entrance to the school, and swarmed chattering around my stretcher: "Il est mort! Mais non il n'est pas mort, il respire! Mais je dis qu'il est mort!"

I settled the discussion by opening one weakly indignant eye.

On being carried into a room which is on the right as you go in at the lobby, I was put on a table. Part of the crowd from the street followed on behind. Some one at once took my boots off, and forgot to give them back again. The doctor took off my bandage and applied something which felt like snow to the top of my head, then whispered in my ear, "Do not speak, do not think; keep quiet if you wish to live."

---

Meubles vous
à la Maison

CAMILLE WANECQ,
160 Rue St Quentin,
Caudry .

Specialité de
Bureaux Américains.

Livraison à domicile.

The furniture had been removed from la maison Camille Wanecq and the shop turned into a hospital ward. The tall grey-bearded man in the white coat, who had taken complete charge, brought me to this house, which was opposite his own. Here on the night of the 26th word had been left that three British officers were lying wounded near the village of Audencourt. At daybreak M. Heloire had put on his white overall (he is a veterinary surgeon), set out with a stretcher, and searched until he found me lying by the roadside.

Still under the guidance of M. Heloire, I was taken through the shop up to a room on the first floor. The staircase is very steep, and they had great difficulty with the stretcher. I distinctly remember wondering if a coffin would present equal difficulties on the way down.

For the first time I began to feel great pain in my feet. There was also an awful twitching, jerky, sawing movement of the right arm, over which I had no control. This spasmodic movement was only stilled by the injection of morphia.

When the effects of the first injection began to pass off, I was conscious of some one sitting by the bedside, and, feeling very thirsty, I asked the shadowy form "à boire." The shadow did not respond, and after a while made the following remark: "I dunno what 'e is saying; 'e must be off his chump."

My brain was scarcely able for thought in more than one language, and it was after a long pause that I said in English, "Who the devil are you?"

The voices said they were English Red Cross soldiers, and had been sent in to look after me by a tall old gentleman dressed in a white coat.

Now this most excellent M. Heloire had acted as he thought for the best, but the result was not at all a happy one for me. Whenever I wanted anything the soldiers went downstairs and brought up somebody to whom I had to interpret my requirements. In my exhausted condition this was impossible. The request for a drink and the short conversation with the soldiers had nearly finished me off, but I made one more effort to a large French-speaking shadow. I said, "Renvoyez les anglais."

And so the English soldiers were sent away, and I came under the care of Marthe and Madeleine.

To my dim consciousness all persons were manifest as shadows. Marthe and Madeleine took turns watching me day and night. Marthe sat weeping; a long, long way off her shadow seemed, yet in an instant that same shadow was bending over the bed. "A boire." The water remained untasted; some of it trickled down my face. Then they tried in vain to get me to suck the liquid up a straw. I could hear every word spoken in whispers round my bed. "Il faut aller chercher M. le Curé et M. Heloire," and some one at the door murmured in a low voice, "Il va mourir cette nuit le pauvre." My own thoughts were monopolised by the thirst of fever. Deep black shadows now hovered round my bed. There seemed to be two—one larger and more active than the other. A voice full of pity asked me if I wished to make my confession. The possibility of speech was far away, and even to think was an effort that seemed dangerous. Seeing that I was too weak to make any response, the two Curés administered Extreme Unction. The sound of prayers, which seemed so far away, mingled with the tramp of soldiers, martial music, the rattle of wheels on the cobble-stones, the ceaseless tumult of invasion which for two days and two nights rolled on through the paved streets of Caudry.

It was indeed a feeble dam which from the 23rd to the 26th had held back such a torrent as, while I lay there listening, was flowing on triumphant and irresistible.

Early next morning M. le Curé returned.

"Yes," said Marthe, "he is better; see, he can drink from a glass." Marthe and Madeleine were arranging a table, some one in the room was weeping, the shadows moved and prayed.

There is between life and death a period when the normal process of thought comes to an end—a new mode of consciousness is taking the place of the old—the soul, standing on the threshold, looks back at the body lying helpless.

During the night, in that little room in Caudry, while Marthe sat by my bedside and wept, I was slowly discovering another self, distinct from the body lying on the bed, and yet connected with it in mist and shadow; and this was the shadow of death.

CHAPTER III.
CAMBRAI.

"En haut! Montez au numéro sept," shouted a shrill female voice; "c'est un officier, il faut le mettre au numéro sept."

And so I became No. 7, Hôpital Civil, Cambrai. My room was a small one on the first floor; the furniture consisted of two beds and two iron stands. The floor was polished, the walls painted a dull brown, the door of iron, with upper panel of glazed glass. It was some time before these surroundings presented themselves to my view. At least forty-eight hours I remained without much consciousness, thankful in my lucid intervals that the jolting of the cart which brought me the eight miles from Caudry had ceased, thankful for the soft bed and the quiet cool room.

I wonder if Dr Debu remembers his first visit to me as well as I do? My memory of all that happened during these days is very clear.

I could not yet see faces, to me nurse and doctor were different coloured shadows, yet I remember well the nurse whispering to the doctor, "He is very bad," and the doctor answering, "Oui! mais je crois qu'il va s'en tirer." I do not remember exactly when I began to recognise faces and to speak. They told me later, but at the time I did not realise that the words came singly and with great difficulty, as if the language was unfamiliar.

My powers of speech were stimulated by a visit from Madame la Directrice of the hospital, who came to my bedside speaking with weird gestures in a strange tongue. It occurred to me that she might perhaps be trying to speak English, and so I addressed her slowly as follows: "Mettez vous bien dans la tête, Madame, que je parle le Français aussi bien que vous." After that day no one in the hospital made any further attempt to practise English at my bedside.

The adjoining bed was occupied for a short time by a French Colonel, who had been shot through both thighs and seemed in great pain. The whole night long he kept up a constant groaning, with intermittent exclamation in a loud voice, "Je suis dans des souffrances atrrroces." These Marseillais are a most talkative race. This one was also very deaf.

Le Colonel Faméchon.

Attempts at conversation with me were hopeless, as he could not hear my whisper. However, he found consolation by talking to himself about himself most of the night.

When the nurse came in next morning she paid no attention to the old Colonel, whose wounds, although severe, were not dangerous, but after taking my temperature she looked anxiously at the thermometer.

My temperature was up two points!

That morning the Colonel was removed to another part of the hospital.

As the window of my room could not be opened, I was taken into an exactly similar room on the opposite side of the corridor. This was a pleasanter room than the other, it got the morning sun, and the window opened on to the kitchen garden. Shortly after moving into this room two visitors came to see me. One was M. le Médecin Chef, who was afterwards imprisoned at the Hôpital 106. At this time, however, he was allowed by the Germans to visit the hospitals. I was quite unable to speak the day he came to see me, but was able to recognise and wonder at the French uniform.

My other visitor was a German officer. I can only vaguely remember that he was tall, well-built, and I think wore a beard. He spoke English fluently, and said that he used often to visit Cairo many years ago, when one of the battalions of my regiment was stationed there. I asked him if he would send news of me to England. He sat down by my bed, and put my name and regiment down in his note-book.

The post-card he sent, which reached the War Office viâ Geneva, was signed von Schwerin. It may seem a small thing to be grateful for, but the sending of that post-card was a very hard favour to obtain and a very great favour to be granted.

During the first few months of the German occupation of Cambrai no messages or letters were allowed to leave the district, and the severest penalties were imposed on those who were caught attempting to get letters out of the country. It was said that two German officers were sent home in disgrace for writing to Geneva on behalf of a wounded prisoner.

On September 15 a French Red Cross nurse came in to see me at 10 o'clock in the evening. She was a tall, fine-looking woman, dressed in a large heavy coat. After asking my name, she said she had a letter to give me from an officer of my regiment.

The letter, written in pencil, on a page from an exercise book, was as follows:—

Caudry Hospital.

My dear M.,—So glad to hear you are going on all right, as I heard you had a bad wound in the head, which sounded serious. I saw a priest a few days ago who told me there was an officer of my regiment at Cambrai, and I presumed it must be you.

I also heard you were brought to the hospital the day I was brought in, but had left by the time I got here.

I hear our regiment was captured en bloc at Bertry; they marched slap into the Germans in the dark, so we may be better off where we are. I hear M., M., and L. were killed the day we got wounded.

We are very well done here; it is rather an amateur show, but every one does what they can for us. I got a bullet across my scalp, but it is nearly healed now, and I am up and about. I expect —— Btt. must be in the country by now somewhere, but I don't know.

I hope this finds you in good spirits. I think we may hope to be relieved soon.

Best luck.—Yours ever,

A. A. D.

A nurse from Cambrai is here who has kindly volunteered to take this back with her.

---

The nurse told me that she was returning to Caudry next day and would take back an answer. She also added that my friend hoped to escape.

Next morning I was able to scrawl two or three lines, holding a pencil in the right hand and pushing it along with the left.

Major D. succeeded in getting away from Caudry, and after many adventures crossed safely over the Dutch frontier.

During the first month of my stay in the hospital, with a French surgeon, French nurses, and French soldier orderlies, there was little to remind me of the fact that I was a prisoner of war.

No one in the hospital believed that the Germans would remain at Cambrai for more than a few weeks. The arrival of the French troops was expected and hoped for from day to day. Optimists declared that in a week the city would be delivered, and only the most pessimistic put off the joyful day to the end of September. The prevailing belief that the Germans would soon be driven out of the country was strengthened by the vague reports of disaster to the German arms which were current in Cambrai after the battle of the Marne.

At this time every story, however improbable, found ardent believers. French and British troops were seen hovering on the outskirts if not at the very gates of the city. It was even asserted that somebody had seen Japanese troops! 200,000 of whom had landed at Marseilles some few days before! The suppression of all newspapers left the universal craving for news unsatisfied, and the daily paper was replaced by short type-written notes which were secretly passed from hand to hand. I remember the contents of one of these compositions which was handed me by a visitor with great parade of secrecy and importance.

It was composed of brief short sentences: "Cambrai the last town in German occupation. Germans retiring all along the line. Maubeuge re-occupied by French and British troops. Revolution in Berlin. Streets in flames. Death of Empress."

All such absurd stories probably emanated from a German source and represent some obscure form of German humour.

The most exciting incident which took place at Cambrai in September was the visit of two aeroplanes, either French or English, which flew over the town just out of rifle range.

The aviators were greeted with a tremendous fusillade, which was started by the sentry on the church tower close to my window. For nearly ten minutes rifles, machine-guns, and artillery kept up a steady fire. The nurses who had rushed out to see the aeroplanes soon came running back, as bullets were falling on the hospital roof.

The sequel of this first air raid was long a subject of discussion. The Germans allege that bombs were dropped by the aviators. The French declare that German guns fired at them from outside the town, and that the shells fell and exploded in the town.

The casualties were 7 civilians and 15 Germans killed, and a number of wounded. Seven horses were killed on the Place du Marché.

When the firing ceased a poor woman and her little child of three years old were brought into the hospital very severely wounded. The mother's leg had to be amputated, and the poor little baby had one of its arms taken off.

Although the German authorities blamed the British, it is hardly likely that bombs were dropped on Cambrai in September 1914, and there can be little doubt that the damage was caused by German shells.

During the first two or three weeks of my stay at the hospital I saw very little of either the surgeon or the two nurses, with whom afterwards I came to be on terms of great friendship. At that time the number of wounded was so great that the nurses had not a single minute to spare.

The hospital was overflowing with the wounded soldiers; many died within a few hours of arriving, and many more died in the operating-room. The number of severe cases was so great that it was impossible that all should receive the needful attention in time. Dr Debu spent twenty-four hours at a stretch in the operating-room.

More and more wounded kept arriving, until every bed was occupied and wounded men were lying in the corridors, and many were turned away from the door because there was no room.

Docteur Debu, Chirurgien-en-Chef, Hôpital Civil, Cambrai.

From the 27th of August to the first days of September, the increasing number of deaths in the hospital made it more and more difficult to make arrangements for removing the bodies to the cemetery. It was therefore suggested that graves should be dug in the hospital garden opposite my window.

The graves were actually dug, but were too shallow and could not be used. The open trenches remained empty for some weeks, until some of the wounded soldiers took on the job of filling in the earth.

Two nurses had charge of the ward and rooms on our floor—Mlle. Waxin, one of the hospital permanent staff, and Mlle. Debu, the surgeon's daughter.

Mlle. Waxin had also charge of the operating-room; she was as clever as a surgeon and as strict as a gendarme with her patients. Rather under the average height, her figure inclined, but very slightly, to plumpness. Very dark eyes that could sparkle and also look severe. A young, round, rosy, but very determined face. A typical French girl.

Mlle. Debu, although without hospital training and with no previous experience of nursing, volunteered from the first day of the invasion to help in her father's hospital. Mlle. Debu showed the true spirit of France. She was only nineteen. Never for a moment did she lose courage. From the very start she worked with the skill and endurance of a trained nurse, and her face, ever quick to smile, never betrayed, even for a moment, the fatigues and worries of the day.

When the rays of the morning sun lit up the top of the glass door it was time for breakfast, and punctually to the minute Mlle. Debu appeared with a cup of chocolate which she made for me herself. "Bonjour, Monsieur le numéro sept," the brown eyes twinkled and the dimple smiled at the daily jest.

The days passed very slowly. I was too weak to read, and even the occasional visit from a wounded French or British soldier was more than my head could bear. Every afternoon, at about five o'clock, a body of German infantry marched past the hospital, singing the Wacht am Rhein in part-song, an unpleasant daily reminder of the conqueror's presence.

In the room opposite there was a German officer who spent most of the day walking up and down the corridor whistling a hackneyed and out-of-date waltz tune. He always whistled the same tune, and it got on my nerves. The nurse told me that there was nothing the matter with him except an alleged pimple on his foot. This officer must have been a delicate specimen of German militarism. He was known in the hospital as "Parapluie," owing to the fact that when setting out one evening to dine in town he borrowed an umbrella to protect his uniform from the rain.

A regular plague of flies was one of the minor discomforts which had to be endured during the day. Mlle. Debu stuck a piece of fly-paper to the gas chandelier which hung in the middle of the room, but only a few dozen flies fell victims to greed and curiosity, and the others seemed to take warning from the sad example. At meal-times there were always crowds of these uninvited guests, who, from the contempt with which they treated me, were evidently quite aware that I was unable to drive them away. One fly, rather bigger than the others (Alphonse I called him), was very persistent in his endeavours to land on my nose. When tired of this game he would leave me for a while and circle round and round the fly-paper, always about to land, and yet always suspicious of danger. The career of Alphonse was cut short by a method of attack which is probably considered by the insect kingdom as contrary to the rules of civilised warfare. One afternoon Madame la Directrice brought up a box of powder which she said was guaranteed to destroy all the flies in the room in half an hour. The windows were shut, and the powder was sprinkled all over the room and all over my bed. In about ten minutes it was impossible to breathe. The powder got into my eyes and lungs, and I had to ring and ask for the windows to be opened. But the flies had succumbed, and poor Alphonse was swept up off the floor next morning along with at least a hundred of his companions.

I gathered a great deal of information about what was going on in the hospital from watching the glazed window in the door.

One morning I said to Mlle. Debu when she brought in breakfast, "Who was it died in the ward last night?"

The nurses always tried to hide from me the large number of deaths that took place in the early days, but I knew all about it from studying the glazed window through which the outlines of passers-by could faintly be distinguished. One man followed at a short distance by another meant a stretcher was being carried past. It is not hard to guess what is the burden of stretchers which are carried out of the ward when the dawn is just breaking. At this hour the hospital is at its quietest. But in the garden the sparrows twitter and chirrup that it will soon be time to get up. An early and hungry blackbird will sometimes whistle one or two impatient notes to hasten the coming of day. When the new daylight enters my room with its fresh, clean morning air, the first picture shown on the glass door is that of two men marching, with an interval between. They wear slippers and make no noise. And many months after the name of the burden they carry on the stretcher will appear on the Roll of Honour—"Previously reported missing—now reported died of wounds as a prisoner of war."

It is usually about eight o'clock that the surgeon's visit takes place. First there is the rattle and jingle of bottles all along the corridor, which heralds the advance of the portable dressing-table. This table runs on rubber wheels, and is fitted with an ingenious basin in which the surgeon can wash his hands under a tap which is turned on by pressing a lever with the foot. Sometimes, when the door of my room has been left ajar, I can see as they pass the surgeons in their white overalls followed by the nurses and orderlies. There are one or two very serious cases which have to be dressed by the surgeons, but the visit is chiefly an inspection. Cases where the balance lies between amputation and death have to be submitted to the sure judgment of Dr Debu.

During the early days there was a long waiting list for the operating-room, as there was scarcely time even to deal with those who were in immediate danger of death.

In the majority of the cases brought in the wounds had not been dressed for several days. Men had remained three or four days at the place where they had been struck down. Others were put into farmhouses with broken legs or arms, and left unattended for a fortnight. Others again—and they were very numerous—had been brought into Cambrai by the Germans and deposited in some temporary ambulance-shed, and left with scarcely any medical attention, their wounds dressed perhaps once a week. When such poor sufferers as these arrived at last at the hospital, it was as a rule too late for anything but amputation, and often too late even for that.

One evening, about the 10th of September, a German officer arrived at the hospital with an order that all wounded Germans should be at once taken to the station. There was at this time, in one of the rooms adjoining mine, a German officer who had been shot in the bladder. Mlle. Waxin had charge of the case, and, thanks to her careful nursing, there seemed to be some chance of his recovery. When the order came to move all Germans, Mlle. Waxin protested that if this officer were moved he would die. But the Germans refused to listen to her, and took their officer off to the station. That same evening the poor fellow was taken back from the station, and died in the hospital within an hour of his return. Next day a large number of French and British wounded were taken away to Germany.

The vacant beds were at once filled with cases brought in for operation from the various temporary hospitals. Among the new arrivals were several British officers, two of whom, Irvine in the King's Own and Halls in the Hampshire Regiment, were put in the room opposite mine. Halls had been shot through both ankles, but after a few days managed to hobble across the corridor to pay me a visit. A French officer, wounded in the knee, used sometimes to come and see me, but I have forgotten his name.

It was on a Sunday that the sad announcement was made that my two newly-found friends were to be taken away to Germany. Halls said it was such bad luck to be carried away just as the French were about to enter the town!

The French soldier-orderlies all left the hospital at the same time as Halls and Irvine, and the duty of looking after my room fell to an individual named François. Cheerfulness was his only virtue; laziness and dirt were his principal and more obvious vices. François was a young fellow of nineteen, formerly a bargee working on a neighbouring canal. Owing to an accident which happened about a year before war broke out, his leg had to be taken off, and he was afterwards kept on in the hospital to act as handyman. In spite of his wooden leg he was wonderfully active, and when aroused was capable of doing a lot of work. François invariably wore a very large and very dirty cap, tilted right on to the back of his thick, black, curly hair. The cap and the fag-end of a cigarette sticking to his under lip were permanent fixtures. His breath smelt of garlic and sour wine. The only person in the hospital to whose orders he paid the least attention was Mlle. Waxin, and it was only under her severe eye that François made any use of broom or duster.

On fine afternoons during the last week of September I was taken out on to the Terrace on a stretcher. Irvine was also lifted out in a chair, and looked very thin and pale. Like most of us in the hospital, he had been wounded on the 26th August; the wound was a very severe one, the bullet having actually hit the edge of his identity disc. Two other subalterns in the Manchester Regiment were both lying out on stretchers, and we had a talk with Captain Beresford of the Worcesters, who was already so far recovered from a bullet in the lung that he was able to walk. Several wounded French and British soldiers were also taken out to enjoy the sun.

One of the Frenchmen I at once recognised to be a Curé. His figure was more suited to the soutane than to the uniform of a Pioupiou, and a very pronounced accent betrayed the fact that he belonged to the Auvergne country. His comrades were evidently in the way of teasing him about his accent, and a great discussion was going on (with much winking at me by the other soldiers). In what part of France was the best French spoken? M. le Curé addressed me as an impartial witness: "N'est pas, mon capitaine, nous autres dans le midi de la France nous parlons plus grrammaticalemaing que les habitans du Nord—nous avons un peu d'assent mais nous parlons grrammaticalemaing." My verdict being in M. le Curé's favour, he entered into animated conversation, delighted, he said, to meet "enfaing" some one who could explain to him a question in which he was much interested but of which he understood nothing: "Qu'est que ce que le 'homme-roulle'?" It was time to go in, so we parted, and my inability to answer his question remained undiscovered. I never saw the Curé again, and was told he had been taken off to Germany.

Among the lesser discomforts of the early days in the Civil Hospital was the ordeal of being washed, which I only went through twice in the first three weeks. The nurses could not think of washing patients, as they had not time to dress all the wounds that required urgent attention, and therefore the washing was done by François, and it was a sort of job to which he was evidently quite unaccustomed.

The impossibility of getting any sleep, the pain from lying in one position, and the irritation of repeated mustard plasters (which were brought up and applied by François), soon became relatively unimportant in the presence of a new trouble. One evening something in my head began to throb. It felt like the steady regular beat of a pulse deep inside. When Mlle. Waxin came to see me that night I told her about it. Of course, as all good nurses do, she said it was nothing, but she would speak to the surgeon. Next morning Dr Debu, after examination, declared that an abscess had formed in the wound owing to the presence of a bone splinter. This would necessitate a small operation.

My first acquaintance with the movable dressing-table, which carried a fearsome collection of surgical weapons, took place at nine o'clock that evening. Mlle. Waxin started the proceedings with a shaving-brush. After lathering the top of my head, she then shaved the hair off all round the wound, and I was ready for the surgeon's visit. When Dr Debu came in, he said it would be better if I could manage to do without an anæsthetic. "How long are you going to be?" I asked.

"Not more than a minute."

The apprehension was worse than the reality. A quick movement of the lancet laid open the abscess and disclosed the jagged splintered edge of the skull. With a pair of pincers the surgeon broke off one or two pieces of bone about the size of a tooth, then jammed in a piece of lint soaked in iodine. The whole affair lasted two minutes. From now onwards my head had to be dressed every day, and a piece of lint nearly a foot long was pushed in every morning to keep the wound open, and any splinters that could be found were snipped off with the pincers.

Now that the pressure of work in the hospital was somewhat relieved, my two nurses would sometimes come and sit in my room, and I was cheered with a regular afternoon visit from some of the nurses from neighbouring hospitals. Mlle. L'Etoile and her friends used to bring me books, boxes of the sweets known as "Bétises de Cambrai," peaches, nectarines, grapes, and long, fat, juicy "poires Duchesse," the largest and sweetest pears I have ever tasted. Afternoon tea "avec le numéro sept" was a cheerful and often noisy meal. It was such a relief to forget for a moment the presence of the Boche and to hear the sound of laughter.

In addition to my friends who were regular visitors, we had occasional visits from curious but well-meaning strangers. Some people find it impossible when visiting hospitals to get beyond the everlasting phrase, "Where were you wounded?"

The limit of conversational inanity was reached by one of these casual visitors, a stout blonde dame. Our conversation ran as follows:—

"Bonjour, bonjour; vous êtes un officier anglais, n'est-ce pas?"

"Mais oui, Madame!"

"Où avez-vous été blessé?"

"A la tête...."

"Vous restez couché comme ça toute la journée?"

"C'est que j'ai la jambe paralysée."

"Et vous n'avez pas eu de blessure à la jambe?"

"Rien du tout."

"Alors vous étiez donc paralysé avant la guerre!!!"

"Ce qui prouve," as one of my nurses said, "que toutes les bétises de Cambrai ne sont pas dans les boîtes à bonbons."

It was about this time that a visit was paid to the hospital by Mgr. l'Archevêque de Cambrai, who went round all the wards with kind words of consolation for each one. The Archbishop hesitated on the threshold of my room, and was about to pass on, fearing no doubt to disturb me, and perhaps foreseeing the probable difficulties of conversation.

"Entrez donc, Monseigneur," I said; "Veuillez prendre la peine de vous asseoir."

The Archbishop was quite taken aback, and I could see Mlle. Waxin behind was convulsed with inward mirth. She said to me afterwards, "Où êtes vous allé chercher de si grandes phrases?"

His lordship came and sat by my bedside for a few moments. He is a man of great personality and charm, who gives an impression of strength and tact.

After the Archbishop had gone, Mlle. Waxin told me that the vacant bed in my room was to be occupied by a British officer. This turned out to be Wilkinson in the Manchester Regiment. The manner of his arrival next morning was somewhat peculiar. The door opened slowly, and a large, very tall man, dressed like a nigger minstrel in black-and-white striped pyjamas, and covered with bandages, hopped across the room on the left leg; with three vigorous hops he was sitting on the bed. His right foot was bandaged, also one of his hands. Nothing could be seen of his face but a nose and one eye.

"Thank goodness there is some one to talk to," was what the strange figure said. Then followed the necessary mutual explanations.

The only method of movement possible to Wilkinson was hopping, at which he had become quite an expert. Shrapnel bullets had lodged themselves all over his body, fortunately avoiding vital spots. The worst of his wounds was a fractured jaw, which gave him a great deal of pain, and made chewing of food impossible.

When Mlle. Waxin came in to dress my wound, some of the other nurses sometimes came out of curiosity, as the working of the brain was quite visible. The pushing in of long pieces of lint and the removal of splinters, which took place every morning, was quite painless, and only took a few minutes. But it usually took the two nurses half an hour to dress the various wounds of the new arrival, and on the first morning Dr Debu extracted a bullet from just under the skin below the small of the patient's back.

Shortly after Wilkinson's arrival a most tragic event took place in the adjoining ward.

In some mysterious manner the electric bells ceased to ring every evening about nine o'clock. This was a very serious matter, especially as the night nurse that particular week—Mme. Z—was very slack about her duties, and never went round the hospital during the night to see if all was well. The disturbance started about eleven o'clock, with a dull thud as of a body falling, followed by shouting and rattling of the iron tables on the floor of the ward. The noise, heard through closed doors, was sufficient to wake Wilkinson. The shouting ceased for a moment, only to start afresh with new vigour. Wilkinson took two hops across the room and opened the door; the tables still rattled, and the calls for help continued. A French soldier, with one arm in a sling, clothed in nothing but a nightshirt, came walking gingerly down the corridor in his bare feet. When he saw our door open, he came in to tell us all about it. A soldier who was badly wounded in the head had suddenly become delirious, torn off his bandages, and fallen out of bed. There was no one in the ward able to help the poor fellow, who lay moaning on the floor in a state too awful for description. The bells did not ring, and there was nothing to be done except shout. The French soldier went along the corridor to the head of the staircase to call for the night watcher. After quite a long time some one downstairs woke up to the fact that there was something wrong. The night nurse appeared, followed by the night porter. They lifted the dying man on to the bed, bandaged up his poor head, and gave him a strong injection of morphia. One of the French soldiers told me some time after that the poor fellow died quite noiselessly in the middle of the night, but I knew early that morning when a stretcher passed the glass door that the tragedy was over.

Mlle. Waxin used often to tell me about the different cases under her charge.

I was never able to get the name of one of her favourites whom she called her "petit anglais." This was a young Irish boy badly shot in the stomach. Dr Debu told me that he might live for several months, but that there was no hope of recovery. The dressing of his wounds was nearly always done by Mlle. Waxin, under whose gentle hand he never complained of the awful agony from which morphia was the only relief. Although the ward in which he lay was on the ground floor, we could sometimes hear the screams of agony upstairs, screams which no one but Mlle. Waxin could silence. "C'est mon petit anglais qui m'appelle," she used to say.

It is remarkable that no matter how badly a soldier is wounded, even when he can neither eat nor drink, he will be soothed by a cigarette. The Frenchman above mentioned, unable to eat, unable to speak, and scarcely conscious, his brain bleeding from a great hole in the skull, was yet able the day before he died to smoke a cigarette. "Le petit anglais," who was never free from pain, found his greatest joy in the few cigarettes that Mlle. Waxin, in spite of the shortage of tobacco, brought to his beside every morning. It was very hard to get any tobacco in Cambrai until late in October, when the Germans allowed it to be imported from Belgium.

One of the nurses who was able to speak English used sometimes to come and see me, and one day she brought me the following note from a soldier in my own regiment who was in one of the wards downstairs:—

No. 0000, Pte. N. N.,
B Co.,
1st —— Highlanders.

Dear Sir,—I was sorry to hear that you had been one of the unlucky ones, along with myself, to be put aside and away from the regiment. I hope that you will pull through all right. I am getting on, but it is my legs that are all the hinder. It was a very bad place I was wounded in the stoumick. Now, dear sir, I hope that you won't think me forward in asking you for a favour. If you would let me have the advance of 2s. so that I could get some tobacco, as I have lost everything.

N. N.

This man recovered, and was exchanged many months afterwards.

Another young Irishman, who was a great favourite, had been badly wounded in the foot. It was found necessary to take the foot off, and after the operation, when Mlle. Waxin went to console him, she found him lying with his face to the wall, silently weeping.

"I was going to scold him for being such a baby," she said to me afterwards, "but when the English-speaking sister explained to me the reason of the tears, I felt like crying myself."

"It is not the pain, sister, that troubles me," he said to them, "but you see with a wooden leg I can never go back again to the old regiment."

On 9th Oct. we had a very strict inspection of the hospital, and a great number of the remaining British wounded were put down on the list of "transportables." The French nurses always sent off the British wounded dressed in French uniform, as it was a fact notorious at Cambrai that the Germans robbed British wounded of their uniform. In many cases German soldiers took greatcoats away from wounded men and gave a five-mark piece in exchange. The ill-treatment which was specially shown to British soldiers on the journey to Germany was the principal reason why the French, whenever they could get a chance, disguised our wounded soldiers in French uniforms. The fact that, in the early days of the war, British prisoners were invariably treated worse than the French cannot be denied, and will be amply proved from the evidence of returned prisoners, and from other sources of information at present unavailable. It is the truth that nearly all British soldiers taken prisoners and sent to Germany during the first months of the war were made the object of special contempt, neglect, or cruelty. Such conduct undoubtedly constitutes a departure "from laws of humanity, and from the dictates of the public conscience," which are supposed to govern the conduct of civilised nations.[1] To ill-treat or insult a wounded and helpless enemy is the most despicable offence a soldier can commit. Men who do these things dishonour the name of soldier.

The meaning of war without chivalry was first brought home to the inhabitants of Cambrai when they saw the way the victorious Germans treated the unfortunate wounded who had been brought into the town from the neighbouring battlefields. During the first week of September hundreds of wounded, French and English, were sent to Germany packed in cattle trucks, with no medical attendance, no food, no water. It was only natural that in our hospital both nurses and patients should dread the days when German officials came round searching for cases that could be considered "transportable." The inspections which took place on the 9th and 11th of October were carried out with great severity. My companion Wilkinson was taken away, and many were put down on the list who were quite unfit to travel.

Great consternation was created in the hospital on the evening of the 11th, when an order arrived that the whole male staff of the hospital was to report forthwith at the Kommandantur. This was the end of the Civil Hospital as a French hospital. The doctors (except Debu), orderlies, and assistants were marched off to the Kommandantur at seven o'clock that evening, and spent the whole night in a cold unfurnished room without food or drink. Next morning the whole party, with two exceptions, were told that they were prisoners, and had to leave at once for Germany. The two exceptions were one of the surgeons, who was able to make up a plausible story, and François, whose wooden leg saved him from a German prison. Next morning the hospital was taken over by the Germans, and French orderlies were replaced by German soldiers.

The operating-room was shared between the French and German surgeons. Dr Debu operated in the morning on the French and British, and in the afternoon the room was occupied by German surgeons, the chief of whom was Professor Fessler, a celebrated authority on gunshot wounds. The French nurses at Cambrai told me that they found the German surgeons were, as a rule, quite indifferent and careless in causing pain to the wounded, of which fact the following incident from my note-book is an example.

"Oct. 16th.—Dreadful screams from downstairs, lasting two or three minutes. Mlle. Waxin tells me it is only the German surgeon starting to operate before the ether had taken effect."

An exception must be made of Professor Fessler, who was always most humane in the operating-room. Professor Fessler once said to Mlle. Waxin, "If the men who are responsible for war could be made to realise the horror of the operating-room, war would always be avoided." A dying Frenchman was brought in one afternoon in the hope that instant operation might save his life. Professor Fessler performed the operation at once, working with the utmost care, as Mlle. Waxin told me, to avoid giving the poor sufferer unnecessary agony.

The numbers of German patients in the hospital increased day by day, which we took as a hopeful indication that the Germans were not having things all their own way. We had several German officers about this time, and I used to hear about them from Mlle. Waxin. One of them, who was very seriously wounded, insisted upon being dressed by the French nurse, and would not allow the Schwester to touch him. The officer in the room next mine was dying of chest wounds complicated by pneumonia. During the night, through the thin partition, I could follow every sound of his death agony—the groaning, whistling laboured breathing, the whispering of nurses, the low steady tones of prayer, and then silence.

A very different death scene took place in the hospital a few days later. A German officer was brought in badly shot in the stomach. After his operation he was told that food or drink during the first twenty-four hours would be fatal. He ordered his servant to fetch him a bottle of champagne, drank half of it down and died within five minutes. A bestial and truly Hunnish death.

Now that the Germans had installed themselves in the hospital, there was an end to the pleasant afternoons on the sunny terrace. I was no longer lifted out of bed to sit in a chair, nor was I able even to sit up in bed lest some German should see me and mark my name down as "transportable." The hospital gate was now guarded by a sentry, and no visitors could enter without a written permit from the German authorities, who imposed their authority throughout the whole hospital, without meeting any effective resistance until they encountered Mlle. Waxin. German authority said that a German Schwester would, in future, assist the French nurse in the operating-room. Mlle. Waxin declaring that she would allow no one to interfere with her work, locked the room up and put the keys in her pocket. German authority, after threatening imprisonment, exile, and other dreadful punishments, had to climb down. It would have been easy to take the keys or to force the door, but the services of Mlle. Waxin were indispensable, and it was obviously impossible to compel her to work against her will. So the German Schwester was dismissed. The morning after this matter had been settled another storm arose, when Mlle. Waxin's father came to pay his daily visit and was stopped by the sentry. The determined young girl went to the German Head Surgeon and declared that she refused to work in the hospital unless her father was allowed to visit her at any time of the day or night without hindrance.

After the first few days the friction between the French and German hospital staff began to grow less. The German nurses, although good at sweeping and cleaning, had little or no training at Red Cross work, and were very glad to leave the dressing of complicated injuries to Mlle. Waxin or Mlle. Debu. The night orderlies were stolid, silent, very willing and obliging. The German surgeons from all accounts behaved with tact and courtesy.

This comparatively peaceful state of affairs was upset by the visit of an extremely ugly, very cross and disagreeable individual, with a grey ragged beard, whom we christened "le père grigou." His chief business at Cambrai was to compile lists of "transportables." Grigou, a personage of high rank, was the senior medical officer at Cambrai. To our great horror he made the Hôpital Civil his headquarters, and on the day of arrival paid a surprise visit to my room. But not quite a surprise visit, for Mlle. Waxin had wind of his coming and had made all preparations. She bound an extra bandage round my head, took my pillow away, and drew the window curtains. When Grigou arrived I was lying flat on my back in semi-darkness, breathing heavily. My eyes, bloodshot from ten minutes' hard rubbing, looked vacantly up at the ceiling. As Grigou bent over the bed I heaved a long tremulous sigh. Grigou consulted with his colleague, and the verdict was that it was doubtful if I would live till next morning! My name was of course put down on the list of "non-transportable." If Grigou, who visited our floor every day, had seen me, or any German had reported that I had been seen sitting up in bed, our harmless trick would have resulted in my immediate departure for Germany, and my nurses would have got into serious trouble, so I had to live up to my supposed dying condition. Grigou did not remain with us more than a few days, but even when he had left the nurses did not dare to take me out on a stretcher or even to put me into a chair.

At this time the other bed in my room was occupied by a soldier of the Middlesex Regiment. His case was an example of the terrible results which came from delay in attending to shell wounds. After lying out two days he was taken to Cambrai, and remained for more than a week in a German ambulance with little or no attention. A German surgeon opened his leg without using an anæsthetic. Perhaps there was none to be had. As a result of this the poor fellow's nerve was completely shattered. When he came under Dr Debu's care it was hoped that his leg might be saved, and a further opening was made just below the knee. The dressing of this man's wounds was a sight not easily forgotten. When the nurses entered the room with the dressing-table he begged them to leave him to die. While the bandage was being unrolled he sat with chattering teeth, his face twitching with nervous apprehension; the leg was dreadful to look at, the flesh just above and below the knee lay folded back, raw and discoloured, with rubber tubing protruding from both sides of the calf. It was a hopeless case, and the attempt to save his leg had to be given up. After the amputation he suffered far less pain, but never recovered his self-control. On 20th October he was taken away to Madame Brunet's Convalescent Hospital, reserved for amputated cases, where he died just before Christmas.

It had been decided by the German authorities that beds in the Hôpital Civil were to be reserved solely for cases requiring operation. Dr Debu therefore found that it was no longer possible for me to stay, and arranged for my being sent to another hospital.

On the 21st October I was taken away from my kind friends, and for the first time carried by Germans on a German stretcher. Outside the hospital a motor ambulance was waiting. The night was dark, wet, and very cold. My leg was soon numbed with cold, as the ambulance did not start for nearly a quarter of an hour. Through the open end I could see a flickering street lamp which threw glinting reflections on the wet cobble-stones.

A martial step, with the clink of spurs, woke echoes down the silent street; a German officer passed, came into view for an instant under the lamp, then clanked away into darkness.

The ambulance driver and another soldier, who had been conversing together in low tones, stood rigidly to attention until the sound of the officer's steps had died away in the distance. Then the French soldier for whom we were waiting was carried down and placed in the ambulance beside me, the door was closed, shutting out the cold air and the dripping street. "Eh bien, mon lieutenant," said a voice from the stretcher, "nous voila partis! My father was taken prisoner in 1870, and voila, I am now also a prisoner, but that is nothing—on les aura, cette fois ci, on les aura ces sales têtes d'alboches!"

CHAPTER IV.
LE NUMÉRO 106.

The school building, hurriedly transformed on the outbreak of war into a hospital, forms three sides of a quadrangle, the fourth side of which is blocked by a high wall, so that in the courtyard thus formed the sun can never shine.

This was the hospital of the French Red Cross—L'Hôpital Auxiliaire du Territoire, No. 106, Union des femmes de France. The accommodation for patients is limited to five rooms, all of which look on to the dismal courtyard. "Salle un," to which I was taken on arrival, the only room at all resembling a hospital ward, is a long lofty room running the whole length of one side of the quadrangle.

Along each side of the room beds of various sorts and sizes were ranged several yards apart. Mine was a large and brand-new double bedstead with large ornamental brass knobs. The sheets were of the finest Cambrai linen. Under several layers of blankets, and surrounded on all sides by hot bricks wrapped in flannel, I soon began to recover from the effects of my journey in the ambulance.

The first thing that struck me about my new quarters was the number of nurses and orderlies, most of whom were local volunteers whose experience of hospitals dated from the German invasion. They were relieved from night work by a number of extra volunteers attached to the hospital, who each took one night a week.

L'Hôpital "106."

It was now past eight o'clock, the nurses had all left, and the night staff—three youths from the city—had taken off their bowler hats, retaining their coats and mufflers, and sat themselves at a table near the door. At the far end of the ward a tall young German soldier sat working silently at his table far into the night. He belonged to the motor transport, and was suffering from earache—so much I had gathered from the nurses. I speculated that perhaps he was working to pass examinations for a commission; the little lamp burning late, the absorbed attitude of the student, seemed incongruous in such surroundings. In the bed opposite mine lay a badly-wounded German officer, shaded by a screen from the lamp round which the night-watchers sat reading. These were the only two Germans in the hospital. Presently the studious German put aside his books, retired to bed, and the ward was silent. The services of the orderlies did not seem to be required,—one sat for a while aimlessly turning over the leaves of an illustrated paper, then rested his head awhile upon the table, and was at once asleep. From the bed opposite there came a gentle tinkling sound. One of the watchers, a young lad, still a schoolboy, crossed the ward on tiptoe and bent over the wounded man, whose whisper was too feeble to reach my listening ear. The light was turned on, the sleeper resting on the illustrated paper awoke, left the ward, and returned after a few minutes with the night nurse. Now that the screen was moved I could see that the face in the bed opposite was that of a young man, perhaps not more than nineteen; it was the face of a gentleman and a soldier, but drawn, pinched, more yellow than reality in the gaslight, gasping with pain, gasping for morphia. When at last the merciful injection had been given, "Merci, merci," said a strengthened voice; "merci, vous êtes tous si bons pour moi." The screen replaced, the gas turned low, the watchers returned to their table, and all was quiet again till dawn.

Next morning just before ten o'clock the ward was visited by two surgeons, one a German, the other my friend from the Hôpital Civil, Dr Debu. By the dull light of a wet October morning they examined the wounded German officer. From Dr D.'s face I knew the case was hopeless. Still, an operation might save life, if not the leg. When the stretcher-bearers came to carry the young officer away he thanked the nurses for their kindness, speaking perfect French with pathetic accents of real gratitude. He asked that the chocolates, cigarettes, &c., on his table should be distributed among the French soldiers in the ward, and again expressed his thanks, and asked pardon for the trouble he had caused. The operation was unsuccessful. He was taken, such are the coincidences of life and death, to the same bed as I had occupied at the Civil Hospital—numéro sept—where a few days afterwards he died, but not before his mother, in mourning already for two sons, had been called from Germany to his bedside.

No special accommodation was provided for officers at the 106 Hospital. There was a French officer in Salle 5, on the ground floor, and it was arranged that I was to be taken downstairs to his ward.

The worst ward in the hospital was undoubtedly No. 5. The room had formerly been a classroom for junior pupils. Poor little children! how miserable their lessons must have been in that damp sunless schoolroom. On the courtyard side, facing north, the light is obscured by a large wide verandah; on the south side the ground of another small courtyard is five or six feet higher than the level of the room.

Of the Salle cinq I have many pleasant memories, but my first impression of it—a picture which I cannot forget—was sadly depressing. The room is a small one, not more than 36 by 20 feet. One had the impression of entering a basement, almost a cellar. The windows were all shut. Judging from the heavy fetid atmosphere, they had not been opened since the declaration of war.

Except for a small open area in the centre, the whole floor-space was filled with beds, which were ranged all round the room, each one close up against the other. In the corner next the door one bed, standing by itself, was occupied by the French officer, X., a reserve Captain of the Colonial Infantry. My bed was also a corner one. On one side stood a cupboard in which bandages, morphia, and other necessaries were kept.

Salle 5 was not only the worst ward, but it also contained the worst cases. This was probably owing to the fact that the nurse in charge, Mme. Buquet, was the most efficient nurse in the hospital. The number of beds was thirteen. No. 1, known as "le Picard," was a cheery, jovial, hardy little fellow, who had lost a leg. No. 2, Sergt. Blanchard, suffered from a badly suppurating wound in the thigh, and was taken away for an operation to the Civil Hospital, where he died a few days after. No. 3, Chasseur Alpin, shot through the chest about an inch above the heart. A very serious case. No. 6, left arm amputated, right leg and foot shattered. Nos. 8 and 9, very bad gangrenous leg wounds. Both died shortly afterwards.

M. Vampouille in the Salle Cinq.

Under the circumstances it was perhaps only natural that on my arrival into the Salle cinq I was rather depressed. Most of the poor fellows in the ward were in continuous pain, but the only one who made audible complaint was No. 6. This man was a Charentais from Cognac. His wounds, although very terrible, were yet not so bad or so painful as those of many others who suffered in silence. No. 6 never ceased day or night, except when under the influence of morphia, from groaning and whining about his foot; he was known in the ward as "Oh mon pied!" On the afternoon of my arrival No. 6 came near to death—nearer even than he did on the day when a German shell blew off his arm and destroyed most of his right leg. No. 6 was sitting propped up in bed, when suddenly his head fell back, his thin yellow face turned a pasty white, and he lay back apparently a corpse. Fortunately an orderly was in the room at the time, and help was immediately forthcoming. About a dozen nurses crowded round the bed. There was nothing to be done. The doctor was sent for, also the Curé. "The man was dying;" "he was dead." "No, he still breathed." Then some one made an intelligent suggestion. "Look inside the bed." The bedclothes pulled down revealed a dreadful sight, which explained at once what had happened. The whole bed was soaked in blood. A blood-vessel had burst in the wound and the man was bleeding to death. The bleeding was easily stopped by the application of a tourniquet, but it was doubtful if any man could live after the loss of so much blood. Doctor and Curé arrived together as No. 6 was beginning to come round. The tourniquet had been applied just in time.

No windows were left open during the night.

Café au lait came in next morning at 7.30, and was distributed by Pierre, the orderly, a most willing and really excellent fellow. During breakfast one window was opened about three inches. As soon as breakfast was over the window was closed, the breakfast things removed, and the nurse began to prepare for the morning's work.

Mme. Buquet, head nurse of the ward, wife of a well-known French surgeon, was assisted by two volunteers from Cambrai, Mlle. Marie and Mlle. X. The dressing of wounds is quite a simple, straightforward business when the wounds are clean, but it is a very different story when there is gangrenous infection. No. 1, "le Picard," whose bed was just opposite mine, gave no trouble; his stump had nearly healed up and required very little attention. A deal of time was given to No. 3, the Chasseur Alpin; the bullet wound had made a small hole just over the left nipple, and the dressing of it was most painful to watch, as the poor boy evidently suffered great agony, though he never cried out or complained. No. 6 provided what one might call "le pièce de résistance." He began to howl before he was touched, and during the whole time his wounds were being dressed he continued either to shout or groan, or repeat his favourite exclamation, "Oh mon pied, mon pied!" Picard used to jeer at him for making so much fuss. "There is no one in the ward who makes such an infernal row as you do." No. 6 replied that no one in the ward suffered so much pain. This statement met with vigorous opposition from all over the room; even No. 3, who could scarcely breathe, was roused for the first time to husky speech. "Some of us suffer in silence: you should do likewise." In the heated discussion which followed No. 6 forgot for a time all about his bad foot. Poor No. 6 was in a minority of one. He was told that, though we were all very sorry for him, we objected to the continual groaning and shouting, which could do no good, and only disturbed those who suffered far worse pain in silence.

Nos. 8 and 9, the two beds nearest to mine, were the last to be dressed that morning. No. 9, whose bed was so close to mine that there was only just room between for the nurse to stand, was badly shot in the upper part of the thigh. The wound was in such a condition that there was no hope of recovery. A stream of dark-green gangrenous liquid poured out of the wound at the first washing. I covered up my head under the sheets and lit a cigarette, but even so could not escape from the sickening smell.

Owing to the serious condition of most of the wounded, the limited number of surgical instruments, and the cramped space in which the work had to be done, the dressing of wounds went on the whole morning, and was seldom finished before midday. During all this time the windows were kept shut, until just immediately before lunch, when one window was opened—not too wide, lest too much of the foul putrid atmosphere should escape and let in some of the clean air of a fresh autumn morning.

After lunch, M. le Médecin Chef Faméchon and Capt. Viguié came to pay us a visit. The Médecin Chef is a man between sixty and seventy years of age, tall, straight as an arrow, dignified, reserved, almost austere in manner, au fond the kindest and best of men, as I found out later on from personal experience. He was taken prisoner at Arras, and now remained a prisoner in this hospital. Thus do the Germans observe the Geneva Convention.

The Médecin Chef and Captain Viguié shared a small room at the other side of the hospital. Viguié, who had formerly occupied my bed in Salle 5, used to come every morning to visit his old friends. The visits were always an occasion for the exchange of humour between Viguié and myself, in which combats Viguié, possessed of a Parisian quickness of repartee, always came off best. Perhaps it was the case as Mme. Buquet said, that I suffered from "du retard dans la perception." We all used to tease Viguié, and I used to greet him in the morning as "vieux coco." "Dites donc, Monsieur l'Ecossais," was the usual answer; "nous n'avons pas gardé les cochons ensemble." It has taken nearly a year and a half to find the correct answer to this pleasantry—an answer which I could send to my friend in his German prison, only that the Boche might refuse to pass it. "Non, mon ami, mais nous avons été gardé ensemble par les cochons!"

My diary states that "on October 26th I got up in the evening and had dinner at the table. There is great excitement in the hospital on account of large bodies of German troops having passed through the town. This is supposed to be a retirement." This opinion was strengthened by the visit of a simple-minded citizen of Cambrai, who came in with the news that "Metz had fallen." Stupid stories such as these were believed for a time by a great many people. "The smell in my ward is not so strong to-night. I have succeeded in getting a window kept open."

"October 30th. M. Heloire, the Veterinary Surgeon from Caudry, came to see me yesterday." Perhaps it was because he was not wearing the white overall that I did not recognise the tall, erect, grey-bearded man, who stood at the door of the Salle cinq and looked anxiously round the ward. Presently he came over to my bedside and stood looking. Then he spoke some commonplace, but not until he mentioned Caudry did I realise who it was. Labouring under a racial disability, I struggled to express my gratitude, but M. Heloire put an end to my efforts. With tears rolling down his cheeks he embraced me tenderly and thanked the Bon Dieu that I was still alive. "They said at Caudry that you had died on the way to Germany, and so I came to ask the truth as soon as I could get a permit." We talked of many things, and M. Heloire refreshed my memory as to many incidents of my short stay at Caudry which I had forgotten. He told me among other things that when I was carried on a stretcher out of La Maison Camille Wanecq and put into the cart, the villagers standing by, who were not quite sure if my immediate destination was to be the hospital or the churchyard, were overcome with astonishment at my exclaiming, as the stretcher was lifted on to the cart, "En route la marchandise!" "Every day," went on the old man, "for days after you had left, my little granddaughter, who is only eight years old, begged to be taken to the place where grandpère had found the poor wounded officer. One Sunday afternoon, when it was fine, we went for a walk along the road that you must so well remember—the cart road from Caudry to Beaumont. When we reached the place, the ditch by the roadside, where, the morning after the battle, after much searching, I found you lying, my little girl, asking me to show her exactly where you had rested, picked from the spot some of the grass and a few common wild flowers to keep as a souvenir of grandpapa's wounded soldier."

On that same evening, after M. Heloire had gone, I made another friend, M. Vampouille, a Belgian, the proprietor of a small pork-butcher's business, Rue de l'Arbre d'Or, Cambrai. M. Vampouille worked in the hospital during the day when his business would permit, took one night a week in the Salle cinq, and was to me a faithful and devoted friend, to whom I never can hope to express as I would my admiration and deepest gratitude. Vampouille himself would be much astonished to hear me express such sentiments, for the kindness which always took thought and trouble, the tact and common-sense which made his companionship so agreeable, are natural virtues of which he is wholly unconscious.

At the 106 we had no restrictions as to visits; at all hours of the day numbers of people used to visit the wards, many came out of curiosity, and such visits were for me at any rate a penance, chiefly owing to the prevailing mania for shaking hands. At times whole families, dressed all in deep mourning, would drift into the room and stand awkwardly grouped at the foot of my bed. "Allons ma petite Françoise, va dire bonjour à ce brave soldat," and the whole tribe would come, one after the other, to perform the ceremony of "le shake-hand." After this function followed the inevitable question, "Where were you wounded?"

My method of dealing with this question always amused Mme. Buquet.

"Où avez-vous été blessé?"

"A Caudry."

"Oui! mais à quel endroit avez-vous été blessé?"

"A l'entrée du village!"

"Oui, mais dans quelle parti avez-vous été blessé?"

"In the head, that is why I wear these bandages."

"Go, Françoise, say au revoir to the poor wounded soldier."

The function of le shake-hand having been re-enacted by each member of the family, they passed on to the next bed.

I had many friends whose welcome visits helped to break the monotony of hospital life. Mlle. Waxin and Mlle. Debu used sometimes to come and talk to their old "Numéro Sept," and tell me all the latest news. From them I first heard of poor Captain Lloyd, an English officer very seriously wounded, who occupied my old room in the Hôpital Civil. I wrote a short note to Lloyd, expressing my sympathy, and next morning, when Dr Debu made his daily visit to the ward, I asked him to take it back with him.

There must be some special department of the German Staff solely occupied with the task of thinking out new things to make verboten. It is incredible, but true, that the Germans had forbidden any intercommunication between wounded and dying soldiers in the different hospitals, and so my correspondence with Lloyd was carried on secretly through the kind offices of Madame Buquet. Owing to her knowledge of German, Mme. Buquet was able to obtain a permit to visit the Hôpital Civil, and every day at 2 P.M., instead of taking her daily walk, she went to visit poor Lloyd, who was feeling rather lonely, and longed, as he said in one of his letters, to talk once more to a fellow-countryman.

It was after dinner on All Saints' Day, November 1, that I made my first attempt to walk without any one's help. I got outside the ward and along to a door which led into the courtyard. The night was clear and still, the wind cold and restless. I stood awhile on the wet gravel of the court, looking up once again at the clouds playing among stars by the light of a rising moon.

"Vous n'êtes pas fou," said a voice from the doorway. "We looked for you everywhere; you will catch your death of cold out there in the dark."

"You cannot understand," I replied, "how good it feels to stand once more on the soil of the earth and look up into the heavens."

Two of the worst cases, Nos. 8 and 9, were taken away during the night to the Civil Hospital for a fruitless operation. In the afternoon, it being La Fête des Morts, Madame Buquet went to the military cemetery. Even the frozen soul of a German staff officer could not forbid the citizens of Cambrai to visit their dead.

In the military cemetery of Cambrai, visited on this day by crowds of mourners, the French and British soldiers are buried together in a common tomb, under a single wooden cross. There are several such tombs in the cemetery, and each to-day is covered with wreaths. A row of long black crosses, with name and regiment painted in white on each, marks the resting-place of the officers. The same order prevails in the German quarter of the churchyard.

In all the surrounding countryside at Caudry, at Le Cateau, in village churchyards, in open fields by country roadsides, beside the plain wooden cross which marks the soldier's grave, some one to-day has laid a wreath and knelt in prayer.

At this time large numbers of troops were constantly passing through the city, coming from the direction of St Quentin and leaving in that of Valenciennes, from which point they proceeded to reinforce actual or impending attacks on Arras and Ypres. According to the universal opinion of Cambrai, the departure of the Germans from the city was to be expected at any moment.

The sound of the cannonade at Arras could be heard quite distinctly, and when the wind was favourable the boom of the big guns seemed nearer than ever. "They were coming nearer," said the citizens of Cambrai with mutual congratulations. The inevitable morning salutation now became, "Bonjour, bonjour; the guns sounded nearer last night and they will soon be here—listen! comme ça roule."

A gentle westerly wind carried to our ears the sound of the distant guns, like an echo of a distant thunderstorm.

One evening, late in November, a still clear night, when the cannonade could be heard more distinctly than usual, Captain Viguié and I stood out in the yard for a long time listening. To the long loud rumble of the German cannon we could hear, after an interval, a faint and more distant answer—an answer that spoke, as it were, in another tongue. It was the French 75!

It was obvious to those who did not yield to vain hopes that the German occupation of Cambrai was being organised on a permanent basis. Very few German soldiers remained billeted in the town. Numbers of them were constantly coming back on short leave from the front, and from them the story of the new trench war gradually became known to us all.

The Military Governor of Cambrai occupied the Town Hall, now known as the Kommandantur. The French préfet having fled the city on the approach of the enemy, a successor was appointed by the Kommandant, and the administration of the city proceeded under German supervision and according to the usual German methods. Edicts were published at regular intervals declaring some new thing to be verboten, and always under penalty of death. Such things as bicycles and sewing-machines were requisitioned and might not be retained under penalty of death. Any person at Cambrai or in the district found, after a certain date, in possession of pigeons of any kind would be condemned to death.

The old Cathedral had belonged for years to the pigeons, who, suspecting no danger, fell an easy prey, and for several days afforded fine game to the German sportsmen. Mlle. Marie, who passed the Cathedral every morning on her way to the hospital, told me that there were still a few survivors who, having learnt the lesson of their comrades' fate, circled high round the Cathedral tower or remained anxiously perched on some lofty gargoyle.

The "Cambrai" pigeons were presented to the Hôpital 106 by the Secretary of the Kommandantur, and thus did not meet with the final indignity of being eaten by the enemy.

A typical illustration of German morality is afforded by an edict which was published in Cambrai towards the end of November. All able-bodied Frenchmen were ordered to present themselves at the Kommandantur on a certain date, and were to be sent to Lille to dig trenches. Only a small number of men presented themselves on the appointed day, and were offered the job of digging trenches at five francs per day. Those who refused would be sent to Germany. Not more than twenty or thirty men accepted the proffered wage, and the remainder were sent to a German prison. Owing to the failure of the citizens to respond in sufficient numbers to this demand, the town of Cambrai was fined a large sum of money.

A declaration, printed in French and German, of which I have seen a copy, was posted all over Cambrai under the heading, "Who is responsible for this Terrible War—England." Only the German mind could have produced such an extraordinary document, in which England is accused, among other crimes, of "having abandoned Belgium to her fate." Most of the French population of Cambrai were much entertained by the clumsy anti-British propaganda which emanated from the Kommandantur.

Another large poster appeared in all parts of the town stating that the British had been convicted of using Dumdum bullets. A British rifle, with ammunition, was on show in a shop window in the market-place, and the German soldier in charge explained to those who stopped to look that the hollow thumb-piece of the cut-off of the British rifle had been designed explicitly for the purpose of manufacturing dumdum bullets. By inserting the point of a bullet into the recess and giving the cartridge a rapid jerk, the pointed end broke, leaving a square ragged surface.

In their dealings with the civilian population of Cambrai the Germans showed how they utterly failed to understand the French mind.

Salle cinq vastly enjoyed the visit of a certain German officer who came ostensibly to inspect, but in reality for purposes of propaganda. The man's name is unknown to me. He was always referred to among ourselves as l'imbécile. He was so short of stature that the long Prussian cloak reached almost to the ground, and a more fatuous face I have seldom seen on any man. He spoke French fluently but ungrammatically, and with a pronounced German accent. "Ponjour, Matame; here we are all French, is it not? Your so beautiful Paris I so much admire." The "imbecile," having gone round the ward, stood at the bottom of my bed facing the centre of the room, and entered into amiable conversation with Mme. Buquet and the other nurses.

He held forth at some length on the amenities of Cambrai, and expressed delight that the fortunes "of this terrible war" had been the occasion of his meeting and learning to love still more the French people, whom he had always held in such esteem.

"It is not the French who are the real enemies of Germany. If we had not been forced to do so by the treacherous English, never would we have invaded the soil of France. Ah, those English, what barbarians, what uncultured savages, such different types from those I see around me here!"

At this point Mme. Buquet, catching my wink from behind the "imbecile's" back, nearly exploded with laughter, which she, however, managed to turn into a coughing fit, and the Salle cinq listened eagerly for more.

We heard the whole pathetic story of how Germany had been goaded into war. Paris now was safe. The German armies thirsted solely for English blood. When England had been crushed, then France and Germany would fall into each other's arms and all would be forgiven and forgotten.

The "imbecile" departed, satisfied that he had sown good seed. Mme. Buquet, with tears rolling down her cheeks, was too exhausted for laughter. The Salle cinq remained silent for a while, stunned by this wonderful exhibition of stupidity.

Picard, the one-legged soldier, idiomatically expressed the thought of the Salle. "Eh bien, il n'a pas peur celui là," which remark might be translated: "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."

The Inspecting Officer, who came round every two or three days, was General Oberarzt Schmidt. In addition to this more or less regular visit, there was another doctor named Meyer, who was charged with making up lists of "transportables." Every one naturally wished to put off the evil hour of departure to Germany as long as possible, especially as hopes were still entertained by many that the French troops would drive the Germans out before Christmas. Meyer only paid one visit to the Salle cinq, on which occasion its inhabitants appeared all to be on the point of death!

The list of Salle cinq showed that there were ten French and one British. Meyer stopped at the foot of my bed and turned his cold cod-fish eyes at me. His finger reached for pencil and note-book. Mme. Buquet saved my name from going on his list by declaring that my paralysis was such that I could neither move nor speak. The cod-fish eyes looked hard at me: "Können Sie Deutsch verstehen?" I gazed at him with dropped jaw and vacant eyes, shaking my head very slightly. There were no "transportables" that day from the Salle cinq.

Meyer was cordially detested by the whole hospital staff, by reason of the contemptuous insolence of his manner. His hatred of the English was fanatical. Mme. Buquet once asked him if there was any prospect of an exchange. "Of the French, yes," he replied; "of the English, never!"

General Oberarzt Schmidt, Königliche Erste Bayrische
Reserve Corps.

General Oberarzt Schmidt, a very different type, was a tall, big-framed, and full-bodied man, large in the belly, bulging at the neck, with a pinky-red face and a large square head, bald on top, fringed with short-cut grey-blond hair. He spoke no English, and only a half-dozen words of French. It would be difficult to find an attractive feature in the face of General Oberarzt Schmidt. The large mouth which droops shapelessly to one side is decorated on the upper lip with a few clipped badly-grown blue-grey bristles. The eyes, small and shifting, are almost colourless. Whatever his true character may have been, to us at the 106 he was always courteous and well-behaved. He used to come to the Salle cinq every week, and often remained to talk to Mme. Buquet, who, owing to her fluent knowledge of German, was able to obtain from Dr Schmidt a certain amount of latitude regarding the question of the "transportables." It was thanks to Mme. Buquet that the two French captains, whose wounds were completely healed, were able to remain at 106 for several weeks after they were fit to travel.

At the Hôpital Civil, the German weekly inspection, when carried out by such men as Grigou, was a merciless visitation, and for those whose names went on the list there was no reprieve. But at the 106 we suffered from no such unreasoning severity. Doctor Schmidt was often induced to postpone the departure of any soldier really unfit for the journey.

"'Tetanus' made the night hideous with groaning and moaning, so that no one could get any sleep." This entry in my diary refers to a young Breton soldier who was isolated in a room opposite the Salle cinq. The word "room" gives a wholly wrong impression of the place where this unfortunate man had to be put. In one corner stood an old and useless bath, in another two broken bedsteads; the rough flooring was littered with rubbish. The walls had never been papered, the plaster still hung in patches, cracked and yellow with damp. A wooden partition half-way up to the ceiling divided the place off from the corridor, and thus the moans of the dying man could be heard distinctly in our room. There was no other accommodation in the hospital wherein a patient, such as this one, could be isolated. Tetanus was very common at Cambrai. We had eight cases at the Hôpital Civil, six of which died. Very little treatment could be given, as there was no anti-tetanus serum to be had. The horror of tetanus is unique, for there is no disease so insidious, so sudden in its effects, and so terrible in its end.

For three days the man lived in a semi-unconscious condition. The first evening we could hear him moaning, a low, steady, pitiful moan. About the middle of the night there was a sudden silence, then a crash, and a sound of struggling. M. Vampouille, who was on duty that night in our ward, rushed across the corridor and, by the light of a match, bent over the man's bed. It was empty! From the middle of the room came again the low moaning sound; the unfortunate man had struggled out of bed in a fit. The stitches of his leg, which was amputated above the knee, had burst, and he lay in a pool of blood. M. Vampouille's further description of the scene is too awful to dwell upon. From that evening of November 4 until the morning of November 7, almost without a stop day and night, there came from that room the most mournful lamentation, loud, deep, and sonorous, though it came through teeth clenched in the rigor of the dreadful disease. Through locked jaws and motionless lips came the sound that expressed the sole thought of his mind. There is no phrase or turn of writing that can express the pitiful, appealing, struggling effort of the dying soldier to articulate this dying call for his mother. For three days and three nights, first strong and loud, then weaker and weaker, his constant call was "Maman, Maman," expressed in this awful moaning. On the third day I went in to see him. A nurse was attempting to force some warm milk between his teeth, but with no success. It was better to let him die in peace. He did not look more than nineteen. Sweat ran in trickles down the pale face wrinkled in agony. His thick black hair fell low down over clammy forehead and temple. The blue-grey eyes stared fixed and sightless. The moaning was now low and weak, but one could hear that the call was still for "Maman, Maman." Early next morning I woke while it was still dark, sat up in bed and listened. From somewhere in the hospital there came a swishing, gurgling sound very like the whistling noise of a turbine engine. Still half asleep, I sat wondering what kind of engine it could be. When day dawned the swishing, whistling noise had ceased, and the suffering of the poor Breton boy was over. Mme. Buquet was very late in coming to the ward that morning. She told me that the last few minutes before the end were quite peaceful. M. le Vicaire-Général administered the Last Sacraments, and Captain Viguié spoke in the dying man's ear the only earthly consolation that remained: "Mon garçon, tu meurs pour la France."

In many respects life in the Salle cinq now began to be much easier. As a result of my insistent propaganda in favour of fresh air, I obtained some small concessions, and succeeded in obtaining a number of adherents to the policy of the open window. The worst cases in the ward had been taken away; those that were left gradually got better, and even No. 6 in the corner began to improve. In the afternoon I played bridge with the French captain and some other friends who used to pay me regular visits, or discussed the gossip and news of the town with Vampouille. First of all there was that most excellent M. Herbin, a big, strong, hearty man, certainly well past fifty, with honest brown eyes that looked you straight in the face, showing that his heart was in the right place, as the saying is. My friend was a man of few words. "Allons, mon pauvre vieux, ça va bien hein! la santé?" "Très bien, mon cher ami." "Tant mieux. Tant mieux." And the Boches? We used to talk of them.

Cambrai was like a city stricken by the plague. Most of the shops had their shutters up. No one went abroad for pleasure, one stayed at home these days; and the "place publique," with its German military band which played every day at 4 o'clock, the café where one used to take the evening "Pernod"—such places were now the haunt of the Boche.

M. Herbin owned a draper's shop, his speciality was ready-made clothes, and his business was practically at an end. At the time there was very little cash in circulation at Cambrai. Notes for 1, 2, and 5 francs were issued by the Town and the Chamber of Commerce, with an inscription stating that "this note will be cashed by the Chamber of Commerce 100 days after the signature of peace." The German usually paid for everything with "bons de réquisition." These vouchers were guaranteed by the German Government only when stamped by the Kommandantur.

During the first few weeks of the German occupation officers and men made a practice of entering shops, taking whatever suited their fancy, and then, by way of payment, offering the helpless tradesman a scrap of paper covered with unintelligible hieroglyphics. These scraps of paper were absolutely worthless. It was the German idea of humour thus to rob the unfortunate tradesman by presenting him in return for his merchandise with a written statement certifying "the bearer of this is a silly fool." A still more Germanic humour found its expression in coarse vulgar filth. When the bewildered shopkeepers brought their promises to pay to the Kommandantur for verification they were greeted with jeering laughter. German humour finds its happiest element in all that concerns the lowest functions of the body, and doubtless the story of such vulgar jests at the expense of a helpless enemy were repeated with much gusto by the elegant fraus of the Fatherland.

Among other visitors whom I was always glad to see were M. et Mme. Ray. The latter used to come to the Salle twice a week during the afternoons, so that Mme. Buquet could get off duty. Mme. Ray was an incorrigible optimist. Every movement of German troops, whether entering or leaving Cambrai, she always referred to as a retirement. Whenever the wind changed and the sound of guns was more distinctly heard—the French were advancing. On Christmas day, she used to tell me, we will be "in France." I rather think that these opinions were expressed for the purpose of cheering up the Salle cinq, for Mme. Ray was too sensible a woman in other matters to be in reality so lacking in judgment in this particular case.

M. Vampouille came every afternoon, except when detained by his business, which at this time consisted chiefly in killing pigs to make sausages for the German soldiers—sausages which they had to pay for in hard cash, as Vampouille always refused to deal in vouchers. My kind friend never came to see me without a "surprise," a little parcel which he brought in his pocket—a slice of "pâté," or ham, or "saucisson à l'aile," and many other tit-bits.

During these days there was a great scarcity of decent tobacco, although there was plenty of what was called "Belgian tobacco." It is difficult to suggest what this stuff might have been. It was sold in large square parcels, covered with blue paper, labelled "Tabac Belge," and cost one franc for a very large-sized packet. Once a week a woman came into the hospital yard bearing on her back a large basketful of tobacco, cigars, and matches with which she had travelled on foot from Belgium. The cigars only cost three sous for two. I never made any attempt to smoke them, but once out of curiosity I dissected one and made a strange discovery. The outside leaf was cabbage, stained dark-brown; it came off quite easily and disclosed a second and a third cabbage leaf of a light yellow colour. Inside these three layers of cabbage leaf was a hard rolled cylinder which, as it would not unroll, I cut into two pieces with a sharp knife. The cylinder was filled with small shavings and dust, whether from fag-ends of cigarettes or merely from street sweepings, it was impossible to tell. I have seen a soldier achieve the wonderful feat of smoking one of these cigars to its hot and bitter end. This was Picard, the one-legged man of Salle cinq—Picard, who smoked all day and most of the night, quite indifferent as to the substance he put into his clay pipe as long as it would produce smoke.

M. Vampouille succeeded where many other friends had failed. He found a supply of "English Tobacco." A patriotic marchande de tabac had buried the most valuable part of her stock in a back garden rather than let the Boches have the advantage. There were three four-ounce tins of Craven Mixture and three boxes of cigars "Bock." It was indeed a luxury to smoke real tobacco and real cigars.

"First flakes of snow. Result, windows shut tight day and night. Next day a stove was put into the middle of the room, which is now so stuffy that one can hardly breathe even with the windows open. To-day, November 16, I began to walk with two sticks."

My good friends, the two French officers, had at last to go, and it was a very sad day for us all. The list of transportables, a short one, included five or six French soldiers. They made a very sad picture as they limped painfully out into the yard and were helped up to a seat in the ambulance, each one carrying on his back a large bundle containing socks, a shirt, and as much meat and bread as could be taken by a wounded man on such a journey. Mme. Buquet went down to the station with the two captains. We were glad to hear that they were given good berths in a hospital train, and thus were able to make the long three days' journey in comparative comfort—a good fortune which in those days was invariably denied to British officers, even when very severely wounded.

On 25th November I got away from the ward and the fruitless struggle for fresh air by taking Captain Viguié's bed in the tiny little room shared with le Médecin Chef. The room was long and narrow—perhaps 20 feet by 5,—with only just room for two beds, the washing-stand, and a small table where the doctor and I used to sit and play piquet—a game at which I had neither skill nor luck, for when our games came to an end the doctor had scored over 5000 points to the good! A welcome interruption to our card-playing was the visit of Mme. de Rudnickna, a charming Polish lady who was nurse at the Hôpital Notre Dame, where she for many months nursed two British officers—Major Johnson and Lieut. Foljambe, both very seriously wounded. She saved Lieut. Foljambe's life by careful nursing, when the doctors had given up hope, and she did everything that could be done to make easier the slow decline of Major Johnson, who, mortally wounded in the spine, lived till the first day of 1915. Mme. de Rudnickna came two or three times a week with a delicious "Chausson au pommes," and sometimes a bottle of Vin d'Oporto to liven up the grey, dull winter afternoons. One day she brought me a copy of 'The Times' for November 19th, the first English newspaper I had seen since August 12th.

Taken at l'Hôpital Notre Dame, Cambrai, October 1914.

In a much-thumbed copy of the 'Figaro,' dated October 25th—a copy which, it was said, had been dropped from an aeroplane, and which we secretly circulated from ward to ward—we read the story of Ypres, vague reports of which we had heard from German soldiers, who were told by their chiefs, and firmly believed, that the objective now before them was first Calais and then London. We heard that, once Calais had fallen—and who could doubt that it would fall?—the famous big guns that had done such deeds at Liége and Antwerp would batter down the defences of Dover and sweep a passage across the Channel for the German troop-ships. It was Bismarck, I think, who, looking over London from the top of St Paul's, exclaimed regretfully, "Was für Plünder!" On this "Plünder" the mind of the German was now fixed; and soldiers billeted in the town talked grandly of the punishment to be inflicted on England for having treacherously hatched a cowardly plot for the destruction of the German Empire.

The bulletin of war news, posted up each morning outside the Kommandantur, boasted each day of the capture of countless Russian and French prisoners. One day in November the Cathedral bells were rung to celebrate the victory of German arms in the East. All such official displays of cheerfulness could not hide from our observant notice that all was not well with the German armies. The glorious victories always took place at the other end of Europe.

But nothing was published officially about the military situation on the Western front. German soldiers back from the trenches of Arras spoke bitterly of their failure to capture the French positions. Rumour said that the German casualties between Arras and Ypres amounted to over 100,000 killed. Arras was known to us as "Le Tombeau des Allemands." Reports from Valenciennes told of crowded hospitals, train-loads of wounded, and train-loads of dead. Somewhere behind the line of battle, not very far from Cambrai, there are large brick-fields. Here it was that a crematorium was built. A tale was told of trains that passed in the night, of open trucks in which men, limp and with nodding heads, stood upright, packed in close array. By the light of some dim country station lamp the corpses in their blue-grey uniform had been seen and recognised, though hidden by blood and earth, fresh from the field on which they had fallen. Even for the Boches this was too horrible an end, to travel in such manner to the grave, strung together like bundles of asparagus.

At times it would seem as if Martin Luther was right when he wrote in 1527 that the Germans are "a heathenish, nay utterly bestial, nation." But I do not hold with the judgment of this first apostle of frightfulness. The German nation consists of the High Command, with its hordes of obedient slave-drivers, and the rest of the nation, which in the inner chambers of the High Command is referred to as the mob—die Menge. The High Command is certainly heathenish, and may be looked upon as utterly bestial, in view of the fact that they have replaced the elementary principles of honour by some sort of jungle law of their own making.

Germany at Home! A Member of the Medical Staff at Cambrai.

But there are still symptoms of humanity left in the mob, something of human sympathy and of the brotherhood of man, which even at Cambrai made itself felt on rare occasions. Such an occasion was a visit to the Salle cinq of Herr Arntz. It was at the time when I was confined to bed, as much by the fear of Germany as by the paralysis, and on one of the darkest days of November. Mme. Buquet sat by my bedside, as she often used to do of an afternoon when the day's work was over, and spoke of a German who had called at the hospital a few days before, asking for her by name. He had stood out in the corridor waiting for her to come, bare headed, closely cropped, in the uniform of a private soldier, and not until he spoke did she recognise a friend. They had not met for three years, and the place of their parting—the Black Forest in the spring-time. Herr Arntz, then a young student in chemistry on his holiday tour, had now passed his degree as Doctor der Chemie. In spite of weak eyesight and the wearing of blue spectacles, he had been called up shortly after the outbreak of war, and was doing railway duty at Cambrai. So much and more had Mme. Buquet told me of her friend on that afternoon when he came again to see her.

It was cold, dark, and inhospitable in the corridor, and she brought him into the Salle cinq, where the gas lamps, which had just been lit, gave the room a touch of homely comfort. Perhaps it was the Numéro 6 who had called for morphia, or some other wounded man who required attention, so that Mme. Buquet left her friend sitting alone not very far from my bedside. I cherish no friendly feeling towards any Boche, yet there was something about this one which commanded my attention. This was not the manner of our usual German visitors—to sit there quietly and as if ashamed.

I started conversation with a hybrid sentence in French and German, which encouraged Herr Arntz to draw up his chair closer to my bed. There was nothing remarkable in the subject of our conversation. His attitude towards the war was that of a fatalist towards an earthquake; he showed a real sympathy for my state of health and the effect of my wound, choosing strange and almost unintelligible phrases in his efforts to speak the French tongue.

"Ah, mais 'le cerf' il n'est pas touché," then you will get well. That was good. And to me when I would speak of der Krieg, "let us forget it for a moment." How could this quiet gentleman and I, lying sick, be at war? Was it indeed wrong, as many said at the 106, thus to converse with a Boche? Should I have refused my hand at parting? My friend, so I must call him for his kindness, lies in an honourable grave somewhere along the long battle line. A year later, promoted from guarding railway stations, blue spectacles and all, he "fell at the head of his company." One of the mob—die Menge.

St Andrew's Day.—Captain Lloyd is very much worse. Mme. Buquet goes to see him every day at 2 P.M., carrying a note from me and a custard pudding made by Mme. Tondeur. There was never a more motherly soul than Mme. Tondeur. And there never was a cook so excellent and yet so good-tempered, so pestered with visitors in the kitchen, yet always smiling and with a kind word for each one. Wounded men able to hobble out of the Salle cinq, or down from the other wards upstairs, loved to sit in a corner of her kitchen and peel potatoes or wash dishes and listen to the day's gossip. What with nurses and orderlies, stray visitors from the town, soldiers on crutches, all congregating in the kitchen, which might have been the H.Q. of the hospital, it was indeed a wonder that Mme. Tondeur could produce such an excellent dinner.

When M. Vampouille, of his own idea and specially to please me, cured a piece of bacon à l'anglaise, Mme. Tondeur and I put our heads together over the cooking of bacon and eggs. The simple barbarity of English cooking is always puzzling to French people. My dish, which started on the range as bacon and eggs, arrived on the table as an omelette au jambon.

What a sordid thing is a boiled potato in comparison with "des pommes frites"! We had fried potatoes one day a week, on which occasion all available hands were turned on to the work of peeling and slicing, no unskilled labour, when wastage is not to be endured. For every ward there was a large dish piled high, golden, crisp, and scalding hot and appetising—good to take with one's fingers like fine pastry, very different from the soppy, flaccid, colourless British imitation.

Every morning Mme. Tondeur prepared the custard pudding in a small dish, which was then wrapped up in a napkin ready to be carried by Mme. Buquet to our poor friend at the Hôpital Civil. "Ah, mon Lieutenant," she used to say, "what a joy it is to do something to help, even if so little. I also have a son in the trenches, and I pray le bon Dieu to send him back to me, even with a leg or an arm less I would not complain. Si seulement je le savais comme vous!"

Here in England, far from the presence of war, it is impossible to realise the suffering of these unfortunate people in the North of France who have never been allowed to get news from the trenches, who will not know of the death of husband or son for months and years after. No correspondence is allowed even with neutral countries. Though the land under German occupation is a place of misery and desolation, it has one redeeming feature—there are no pseudo-conscientious objectors. German invasion and occupation of Britain would not be too high a price to pay for the extirpation of this national dry-rot.

One who has lived long months among these despairing people writes to say how hard it is for those outside the German zone to realise the misery of invasion. "Old men and little children work in the fields with neither horses nor oxen nor ploughs. In many places German soldiers plough and sow, desecrating the soil of France.... And when in France I hear it said that the war is without end, that the strain is too great, I think of those who live in the invaded districts, those who are exiled from France under the enemy yoke and yet do not despair, but wait with patient confidence for the hour of deliverance; perhaps they have some right to say the strain is hard to bear."

I do not envy the man, be he ploughman, starred tradesman, or merely possessed of a sickly conscience, who can apply for leave to stay at home, while old men and little children till the fields of Northern France without horses, oxen, or ploughs, under the hard rule of the Hun.

We were a sad party on that St Andrew's Day at the Hôpital 106. Mme. Buquet came in the afternoon rather later than usual to the little room, where the old Colonel and I sat playing piquet, bringing sad news from the Civil Hospital. Poor Captain Lloyd was not expected to live more than a few hours.

We sat silently while the twilight melted into darkness. When a friend is dying those that watch and busy themselves with small services can find therein some small consolation. But we, weighed down in mind, powerless to influence in any degree the inevitable order of fate, found the pattern of the universe a hard reading.

To die is unimportant and common to all, the only important thing is the manner of our leaving. Captain Lloyd, my friend whom I have never seen, showed how the spirit of a man can rise above the saddest catastrophe of war and throw a gleam of light on the apparently hopeless and senseless maze of human misery.

Mme. Buquet used to come every afternoon straight back to my room after her visit to the Hôpital Civil, and her report to me never varied. "He never speaks of himself, but asks insistently for news of you." His eyes lit up on hearing that I could walk with crutches. "Do tell him to be careful and not try too much;" and to-day, and on this sad St Andrew's Day, his last words to Mme. Buquet showed the full measure of unselfish thoughtfulness: "Do not let him worry, do not let him know how weak I am."

It was quite dark when M. Vampouille came in. He would not suffer the darkness even after hearing the sad story, but lit the gas and kept a cheery manner. "It is something to know," said he, "that there are 'de si braves gens de par ce monde.'"

St Andrew's Feast was not forgotten that evening. Monsieur Vampouille had brought me a scarce and much-valued delicacy which was prepared with special care by Mme. Tondeur and served up at dinner as a savoury. There was no escape from the six large healthy snails sitting in their shells enthroned on pieces of toast soaked in oil and vinegar mixed with chopped onions and garlic.

From Mme. Buquet there was a flower-pot with some early primroses and a note, "To the Scotch Lieutenant on St Andrew's Feast Day."

These gracious incidents, as R. L. Stevenson remarked, are distinctive of the French people, and "make the ordinary moments of life ornamental."

Also I had almost conquered my insular prejudice against the eating of snails, which are really quite succulent when served with such a sauce.

CHAPTER V.
STORIES FROM LE NUMÉRO 106.

Behind one of the hospital wings there is a tiny garden walled in on all sides by high buildings. Here were some mouldy-looking pear-trees, a ragged gooseberry bush, and a patch of ragged cabbage-stalks. The ground was thickly covered with rotten leaves; in one corner empty broken rabbit-hutches, pieces of broken furniture, broken bottles, and miscellaneous débris gave an additional note of depression. Still it was a change from the dulness of the courtyard, and the garden, such as it was, became the object of my daily excursions. The gardener, now digging trenches in some distant part of France, might never dig here again, but his two little children played at soldiers every afternoon among the decayed leaves. A large shed at the end of the garden, which had at one time been used as a wash-house, now falling to ruin, still contained a rusty boiler and some broken wash-tubs. In one corner, piled one on top of the other, stood six or seven roughly-hewn coffins made out of old packing-cases.

Le Picard was often a partner in these explorations round the dead garden, and together we visited the coffins. "Ça voyez vous," said this one-legged philosopher, "ça c'est le dernier costume."

Entrance to the hospital through an archway under the building was barred by a massive wooden portail. One morning, when the bread-cart had left the gateway open, Picard and I took up our stand on the threshold and looked out into the street. The houses opposite the hospital are modern and uninteresting, walls covered with dirty white plaster, shutters closed and in need of paint. Farther down on the right, as you stand at the hospital door, the street, as it nears the Place Publique, begins to curve, and here were old houses with their quaint roofs grouped picturesquely against the dull sky, where heavy clouds prepared to renew their steady downpour.

The street was empty. Farther down there are shops, but they are closed. A German soldier came clattering along the pavement. Just as he reached the hospital we two standing at the door caught his eye and aroused his curiosity to such an extent that he stopped, stared for a moment, then walked backwards for quite a long way and nearly bumped into an officer. A few sad-looking women, carrying baskets and bundles, stopped in the middle of the street and feasted their eyes on Picard. "It stirs the heart," said they, "to see the French uniform." These poor people made a collection of their scarce sous and presented Picard with one franc fifty. The children gathered in such numbers that I had to ask them to move on for fear of the Germans.

After the children had gone, a little girl, perhaps ten or eleven years old, came shyly up to the door. Under a threadbare cloak, which in the cold wind and rain afforded small protection to her tired little body, she carried a bundle of picture post-cards. Her present errand was not concerned with asking for charity. She came quite near without speaking or looking up, and stretched out a thin grimy little hand to give me a two-sous piece. Having given me the two sous and rendered me speechless with mixed emotions, she turned to run, but Picard stopped her. "Wilt thou not show us the pretty post-cards, my little one?" "That I cannot do," came the resolute answer; "they are not mine to give away, and they cost two sous each to buy." But I, being obviously the possessor of two sous, was allowed to see the post-cards, and in exchange for my two-sous piece chose a view of the Place Publique.

Foundlings from La Bassée.
Photo taken at Cambrai.

At this time the army of occupation at Cambrai was the 6th Bavarians. On the whole, the behaviour of the Bavarian soldiers was excellent. Cases of rioting and drunkenness were rare, and we heard no stories of atrocities such as the Germans were guilty of in Belgium.

Picard and I stood at the hospital gate every morning for several days in succession, and in no case were we greeted with insults, although I found later on from personal experience that even a severely crippled enemy was not safe from the insulting jests of a German soldier. Of course we always saluted any officer who passed, and our salute was always punctiliously returned. Sometimes a private soldier saluted, and one day two tall bearded reservists stopped, crossed the street, and gave me a packet of cigarettes. Next morning we found the gate closed. A note had been sent from the Kommandantur stating that "it was forbidden for soldiers to stand at the door of the hospital." The watchful "Verboten Department" scored another point and deprived us of a harmless amusement.

A German orderly came on the 17th December with the following strange message: "The General is coming to inspect the hospital, and wishes to know if the Scotch officer would be good enough to wear his uniform." Being deficient of sporran, glengarry, kilt apron, S.B. belt, brogues, and spats, my "uniform" consisted of the khaki tunic, kilt, kilt pin, hose-tops and flashes, grey woollen socks, and black cloth snow-boots. On a black glengarry made by M. Herbin to my design I wore the cap badge, which I had fortunately taken off and put in my pocket when sitting in the trenches on the morning of the 26th August. I was making the best of this strange equipment when the arrival of the General and his Staff was announced. They were waiting for me in the corridor outside the Salle cinq. The picture of this group of German Staff officers is one not easily forgotten. I turned slowly in at the door with crutch and stick, laboriously dragging one leg after another, rested against the wall, and saluted. Among the group I recognised Dr Meyer, scowling and ill at ease; also General Oberarzt Schmidt, who, eager to show me off as being his own particular prize, was at once snubbed by the General, and subsided into a dignified silence. These Staff officers were all big heavy men of the usual German type, but the General, small, slimly built, with a light grey moustache, had an air of distinction that was almost French. His manner also was tactful and dignified.

After a preliminary question about my health and inquiry as to my white hair, which I had to explain was probably due partly to shock and partly to my head having been so long bandaged up, the conversation got beyond the little German I possessed, and one of the big Staff officers came to the rescue in fluent but guttural English. They could not believe that the kilt was worn in the winter-time, and seemed to think that it was only a parade uniform. Many questions were asked about the advantages of the kilt as fighting kit. I said that it was a very adaptable uniform, good both for fighting and for running away. This remark was recognised to be a joke, and translated as such to the General. I was asked how many regiments in Scotland wore the kilt, and if all the Highland regiments were composed of Highlanders.

"No," I said in reply to another question, "we do not wear trousers even in winter."

"Schrecklich kalt im winter," they repeated, nodding at each other suspiciously.

With a polite wish for my speedy recovery the General intimated that the parade was at an end. The Staff clicked its heels and saluted—even Meyer had to swallow his hate and follow the example of the senior officers.

Outside the corridor, Mme. la Directrice and some of the nurses were standing at the foot of the stairs ready to accompany the officers round the hospital, but the General passed by and went out into the court without taking any notice.

The inspection was over.

A lady who lives near Caudry came to see me. She told me that the graves of the British soldiers, both in the churchyard and in the fields around the village, are well cared for by the villagers, and that a large number of identity discs had, with the consent of the German authorities, been locked up at the Mairie. Near the little wood between Audencourt and Caudry, on the spot where we had dug our trenches on the morning of the 26th August, there are buried seventeen soldiers and three officers.

About the middle of December the Médecin Chef was taken away to Germany.

A number of causes now contributed to make life at the 106 wholly unendurable. An entire absence of discipline among the hospital orderlies and the constant squabbling of the nurses had been points which the doctor and I used often to discuss and deplore. Now that the restraining influence of the doctor's age and rank was no longer with us, the evils of disorganisation became every day more apparent. The "Directrice," or head matron of the hospital, was wholly incapable, and by her tactless mismanagement set the whole hospital by the ears. The orderlies grew noisier and more slovenly every day. Youths who had no occupation in the hospital, and only appeared at meal-times, were allowed to air their opinions in endless discussion. Noisy, chattering visitors strolled in at all hours of the day, and there was no corner of the hospital safe from invasion. Quarrels among the nurses reached such a stage of bitterness that many were not on speaking terms. Friends whose kind visits I had always welcomed now came rarely or not at all. It was evident that such a state of affairs portended something more serious than tactlessness or mismanagement. The gossips of Cambrai were busy with many stories to the discredit of Mme. la Directrice, but it seemed to me unreasonable that the voice of scandal should be concerned with a plain-looking woman the wrong side of forty. The whole affair may have been merely foolishness and vanity, but it was certainly an indiscretion on the part of Mme. la Directrice to receive in the courtyard of the 106 Hospital, from the hand of a German orderly, bouquets of white chrysanthemums presented with the compliments of a German officer.

Every morning at 11 o'clock I paid a visit to the Salle cinq. Many of the older inhabitants had gone, some to Germany, others now rested in what Picard calls le dernier costume. No. 6 still complained unceasingly from his corner bed. No. 3, the Chasseur Alpin with a bullet through the chest, had recovered from various complications and was now able to sit up in a chair. Among the newcomers were three English soldiers. Ben Steele, a reservist from Manchester, had one bullet through his arm and one through his leg. Both wounds were healed, but the leg remained stiff, swollen, paralysed, and the pain was ceaseless.

The story of his wound is one of those ugly tales of atrocities committed by individual German soldiers, for which the German Army, with its perfect discipline, cannot escape responsibility. Ben was badly wounded in the arm, and was left lying in the trenches when his company retired. "I got that in fair fighting," said Ben, pointing to his wounded arm. He told me the rest of the story briefly, and did not care to refer to it again. "When the Germans came along they shouted 'Hands up.' I was lying in the bottom of the trench. I lifted my left hand, but a German soldier, jumping over the trench, fired down at me point-blank, and the bullet, which went through my right thigh, knocked me unconscious." Ben was sent back to England a few months later, and will probably be crippled for life.

On December 5th a party of convalescent British soldiers arrived from the Civil Hospital, among them R. Anderson, a reservist from my own battalion, L.-Cpl. M'Donald, Royal Irish, and James Prime, Rifle Brigade.

I can never forget the four days these men spent with me at the 106—first, because they were such good companions, and second, because two of these men subsequently met death at German hands under circumstances of revolting inhumanity.

Pte. R. Anderson.
L.-Cpl. M'Donald. Mme. Buquet. Pte. James Prime.

British Soldiers at the "106."

Prime represented all that is best in the typical English soldier. He came from the Midlands, the heart of England. It was a treat for me to sit and listen to the story of his short battle experience, which, a plain and common tale in these times, acquired enthralling interest from the graphic language and quiet humour of the speaker.

Irish, Scotch, and English, we all gathered in the Salle cinq and forgot our troubles, present and impending.

Prime was a born story-teller. He possessed the rare faculty of making pictures in the minds of his hearers. He showed me a photograph of his wife and children, and I can well remember the description of his home in England. We found a subject of mutual interest in the keeping of poultry on the "intensive" system, and discussed the respective merits of Wyandottes, Leghorns, and Buff Orpingtons.

"Bob" Anderson, when I first saw him, was sitting dressed in blue coat and red kepi at the refectory table with Prime, M'Donald the Irish Lance-Corporal, and half a dozen French soldiers. Right glad I was to hear the familiar accents of my native land!

Anderson could give me no news of the battalion, as he had been knocked out at the same time and place as myself. On the whole, the Germans had so far treated him fairly well. "It was surely the whole German army," said Bob, "that marched along the road near Audencourt when I was lying in the ditch with a broken leg, smoking my pipe. They didn't take much notice. At one of the halts a German stepped out of the ranks—'Hullo, Jock, what's ado wi' you?' said he, and gave me a drink out of his water-bottle. This was a German who had lived for fifteen years in Glasgow! The next halt was a different story. Several of the Germans gathered round, shook their fists at me, and one of them snatched the pipe out of my mouth and threw it away."

M'Donald, who soon after died a hero's death at Wittenberg, was a young fellow not more than twenty-one or twenty-two, quiet, sad, and delicate-looking. He had quite recovered from a dangerous wound in the chest, though he was still weak and walked with difficulty.

A photographer came and took a group of the British soldiers, who were mostly dressed in French uniform, and next day they were all taken off to Germany. Their departure for Germany was such a day of sadness for us who were left behind, that it seems as if we must have had some premonition of the future. The men went off loaded with as many parcels as they could carry—shirts, socks, tobacco, food, a bottle of wine in each greatcoat pocket, and five francs each from the Hospital Funds.

Of the three soldiers, Anderson is the only one who has lived to tell the story of what befell after leaving the courtyard of the 106 on Dec. 7, 1914. Anderson survived, was eventually exchanged, and we met a year later in Millbank Hospital. The following is the story in his own words, taken down in shorthand. It is a story which bears the stamp of truth in every word, and is corroborated in every detail by a Government report published in all the daily papers on April 10, 1916:—

"When we left Cambrai Station, we were sent in a hospital train to Giessen; it took us three days. We had one basin of soup each day, and a piece of bread.

"When we got to Giessen we were taken to a waiting-room at the station and bad used. All the English were put on one side, called 'English swine' and that kind of thing. We were then taken in a motor ambulance to the Town Hall in Giessen. We were three weeks in that hospital and the food was all right there, but we, especially the English, were bad used all the time by the orderlies. There were four English altogether—M'Donald, Prime, and myself, and another chap in the Wilts. We went from there to Giessen camp, a great big French camp, and had to march two and a half miles with two sticks; I was nearly dead when I reached that camp; it was all uphill, and a crowd behind us shoving us on. We were there three days, then had orders to fall in and march to the station again. We started to march to the station, but I was not fit to do it, and some one stopped me in the town, put me on a car, and took me to the station in the car. We got to Wittenberg the next day, and as soon as we arrived in Wittenberg all the people were at the station, a big crowd, men and women. They all had big sticks, some had bars of iron, and we had to run the gauntlet of this,—of course I could not do so. I got one terrible kick, but anyhow I managed to get into camp, and as soon as we got into camp we got knocked about by the Germans, and everything was taken from us.

"Of course the food was horrible all the time. We had heard stories about typhus in the camp, and the French doctors inoculated us. I took ill about the beginning of February, and the Frenchman took my temperature, which was very high. He ordered me to the hospital, but there were no stretchers to be got. Six men carried me down to the bottom of the camp, about half a mile, and dragged me into an empty bungalow. It was in the same camp; there was no isolation. I was put on the floor amongst a lot of Russians; there were very few beds, and I was on the bare floor. In the camp there was one bed between three men, and I had left my bed in the camp. I lay on the bare floor all the afternoon; no orderlies were there; nobody came near me. The soup came up at night—just the same ordinary rations as we got in camp. The soup came up in a wooden tub without a cover, and they had to carry it about half a mile from the cook-house, and it arrived at the hospital full of dust and dirt—at the door of the hospital. The strongest that were able to get it got it, and the weakest lay without. That is a fact. I lay there about three or four days, when some Englishmen volunteered to come down and look after us.

"I took typhus first: when I was in hospital four or five days, Prime was carried there; he was put down on the floor, and died four or five days afterwards. Sergeant Spence of the Scots Guards was with him when he died. Just before the end they got him a ramshackle bed made up with boards, no mattress.

"The place was a long, narrow hut, whitewashed all over, and about one hundred men in it, absolutely packed, and not more than half a dozen beds at the first. We lay on the floor. There were stoves, but hardly any coal. No one brought in any food. You had to go outside to get it, and the orderly would give you some soup in your basin if you were there. Those not fit to rise from the floor got none unless a comrade brought it to them.

"The French doctors came round, but what could they do? They had nothing to give you, and could do absolutely nothing.

"The Germans had all left the camp as soon as typhus broke out. They built up wooden shoots to put the food down. When parcels from home came they went down the shoot.

"When the beds came in carts they were lifted over the barbed wire. No Germans came in.

"There were never enough beds, and men were lying on the floor all the time.

"We had nearly 100 deaths a day at one time. The total population of the camp was about 16-17,000, with only about six doctors, French and Russian. Then we had six British R.A.M.C. doctors—Captain Sutcliffe, Major Fry, Captain Fielding, Captain Vidal, and Mr Lugard. Major Fry, Captain Fielding, and Captain Sutcliffe took the typhus and died. I never got a wash all the time I was there until I was able to go to the tap. There was one fellow, a private in the Gordons, who never had his wound dressed; it was running all the time. He died of pure neglect and typhus. A man died next me with his clothes on, never had them off, even his greatcoat on. Our clothes were running with vermin—millions!

"You could not get dressings or bandages. I have seen men with open wounds who have had to wash their bandages, and hang them up to dry before they could put them on again.

"M'Donald volunteered as an orderly in the Typhus Ward, and when he came along he was only one day on duty when he took typhus. He got better, but declined because of the starvation diet. I had him out walking for a little bit up and down, but he was very weak, a living skeleton. He would fall down, and I told him to try and get up and walk a little bit. 'Oh, Jock,' he says, 'I'm no' fit.' 'Come on,' I said, 'try.' He got a parcel from home—one from his mother—just before he died. It was just from hunger and neglect.

"Things were getting that bad about the month of April that the Germans began to get a little afraid, and started a new hospital—about half a dozen of huts. It was isolated from the camp, and we moved there about the beginning of May.

"Things gradually got a little better after that, but January, February, and March were three awful months.

"The Germans did not come back into the camp till the month of August.

"After I was better of the typhus I was back in the same camp. All food was thrown over the barbed wire. Even packets were sent down the shoot. The Germans never came near; you would see them outside the wire. Just before the American Ambassador came there was a new thing for carrying down the food—something like a dustbin with a lid on. The shoot is still there, but is not used. After the Ambassador came we put in a claim, saying we had been passed as unfit for military service, and men who ought to have gone home last August had had it cancelled at the last moment; but we heard no more. The American Ambassador said that must be the Government's fault; he would see about it. He sent us a lot of games. We were only allowed to play games between the huts.

"The camp was run by the Russians, and nobody to look after us. The Germans never came in; you could do what you liked as long as you did not go too near the wire, when they used to sound the alarm. When the alarm sounded at night we had to run into the park, and if you did not get into the park soon enough they fired at you. They fired one night and killed six Frenchmen. One of the Royal Irish who came up with me had a bullet right past his ear,—I suppose it made him pretty nippy.

"We got no clean clothing or a change. The English were all in rags: you would not know they were soldiers at all to look at them. Just three days before the American Ambassador came, when they heard he was coming, they paraded us all up and looked at our underclothing. We got a shirt and a pair of socks to smarten us up. You could never get hot water; but the day that the American Ambassador came the Germans came round in the morning and told us that if any of us wanted hot water, to send two men out of each room to the cook-house and get as much boiling water as we wanted. We wondered what was up: we were saying there was something up that day. The Ambassador asked us what clothing we had. He made a great improvement: we got shirts and overcoats, but they took all our overcoats away.

"He asked a lot of men if they had had typhus; he seemed to know all about it. Just previous to that, a Mr Jackson from the American Embassy came. It is wonderful how things got about the camp. This was shortly after the typhus was cleared out, but he did not come into the camp. There were about thirty yards of space between the wires, and he could not speak to any of us; he just went round. There was a crowd of Germans; but when Mr Gerard came himself he came into the barrack-room and asked one man a question, then another.

"There was a German who could speak English, but he never came near them. Mr Gerard seemed to go about the thing very business-like: he was not afraid. He was very keen on getting hold of any man who had been out working and had come in again to camp. Some had not been paid. They were only paid 30 pfennigs (3d.) a day for a hard day's work. The camp was working at a big factory, and you had to get up at 4 in the morning, and they drove you into a big square like a sheep-pen and put all the English together. We called it the Slave Market. They drove you into this pen, and the gangers would come in the morning and take you out. 'I will have you,' and 'You come along with me,'—just like a slave market. We had to get up at 4 and went out at 5. You were put in the slave market at 5.30, and worked from then till 6 at night—and very hard work too. We were working on building a big factory where they were making hand-grenades—very intricate machinery. Nobody seemed quite to know what they were manufacturing there. The men were carrying the stone for the building. One German who could speak English told one of my chums that the factory was for making hand-grenades.

"They gave out an order that there was to be no smoking in the barrack-room, as the French had refused to allow German prisoners in France to smoke, so they would stop it there. If they caught a man smoking, and they had a stick, he got it. There were no orders printed to tell us what we had or had not to do. They never deliberately tied an Englishman to a post, but I have seen them doing it to Russians, tying them up to the post. If you did anything that did not please them, you were put in the coal-hole, we used to call it, the place where they get the coal-briquettes from, and kept without food for three days—only bread and water, solitary confinement. Many an Englishman got that. We used to carry down some of our dinner and slip it into them.

"The day the American Ambassador came, Captain Vidal looked well after it, and anything that was done he reported it at once. I think he had been saying something to the American Ambassador, and one of the Germans had overheard it. When the Ambassador went away, he struck Captain Vidal with his sword. We heard that was the reason why Captain Vidal did not come with us, as there was an inquiry about it at the time. Then Major Priestly was in solitary confinement for a while—I don't know what he had done; we heard that he was found with a revolver, but we could not say. He was isolated away from the officers altogether for close on two months—never saw him. He is back again in camp now. We read in the 'Continental Times' that he was going home on the 3rd September—or August—but some proceedings were being taken against him. It said in the 'Continental Times' misbehaviour,—I suppose in looking well after the wounded—or something like that.

"One day we had to pass the German doctor and then went back to barracks. Heard no more until six days afterwards, and the 1st December a German came up about 8 A.M. and formed us up in the barrack-room. Some of those going home had a new shirt given them. A Russian was stopped and told to take off his clogs and give them to that Englishman. Then we went to Aachen. A complaint had been sent to Wittenberg about us; they were kicking up a terrible row for sending us away like that. The officer commanding the camp asked us where we came from. When we said Wittenberg, he said he thought so. We looked such awful sights—filthy; and we were supposed to be dressed coming away. We were very well treated at Aachen—they always do so. Every one was nicer than another, to try and create a good impression. We knew what it was.

"I was sorry for two chaps. One of the London Scottish had been there fourteen months, and had a bad wound in his leg, and could not move his leg. He was sent back because he was a non-commissioned officer. Another man, a sergeant, with his leg off, could speak Hindustani, and I think that was the reason he was sent back, but I am not sure. His leg was off to the thigh. He was with the Lugard party. A lance-corporal, with his arm off, was also sent back, after thinking he was going to be exchanged. None of the non-commissioned officers got away from that place."

---

There is a corner of the hospital courtyard where in December the rays of the sun will fall for the space of an hour, illuminating first the big high wall which shuts off light and air from the north-west, then throwing upon the ground itself a triangle of light which gradually broadens, loses shape, and fills at last the narrow passage between the courtyard and the dead garden, but stops short of the broken wooden paling, throwing no cleansing ray on the dismal rubbish-heaps, leaving undisturbed the sepulchral clamminess of the shadows beyond.

In days of peace this corner was surely favoured by the school children. From the high wall to the gable of the main building stretches a single heavy beam, which had perhaps once been painted green, but was now green with the mould of decay. A few rusty rings and hooks, from one of which a piece of sodden rope still hung, showed to what purpose the beam had served.

The rain, which had been falling steadily, as it seemed, day and night during November, was checked by the first threat of frost, and during the fortnight before Christmas we had bright and cheerful weather. A few convalescent patients were tempted to take a seat in the sun, and came to notice the hour, early in the afternoon, when the triangle of light first strikes the high wall.

We had a bench placed against the wall (it was a very tiny one, and belonged to one of the junior classrooms). Picard, myself, and two French soldiers from Salle un were at first the only habitués; none of the British soldiers remaining at the 106 were able to leave their beds, and most of the other Frenchmen were either too weak or too frightened of fresh air to come out and sit in the yard.

It is a common failing of human nature to feel comforted at the sight of other people's misfortune. So it was that the sight of a French soldier who had been shot in the head aroused in me not only the interest of pity, but also, I must confess, a sense of superiority at finding some one worse off than myself. Jean was the name we called him by. No one knew his real name or his regiment, or the place where he was born, or any details of how he had been wounded. His wound in the head was on the left side, almost exactly in the same place as my own—the bullet had made the same furrow, all the symptoms were identical, the right leg dragging, the right arm hanging, the slow elephantine movement; but there was a difference, said Dr Debu, between the two points of impact. In the case of Jean the impact of the bullet was a hair's-breadth more to the front of the head, only the difference of perhaps a tenth of a millimetre. And so it was that poor Jean had lost not only the power of motion on the right side, but also speech, memory, and understanding.

A Ward at the "106."

All these faculties might return in time (doctors are optimists par métier), but at present understanding was limited to questions of the most primitive order—cold and heat, hunger and thirst; speech to a moan which signified no; memory to events of the past forty-eight hours, so that Jean knew nothing of the war, of his regiment, of his home; his face with his dropped jaw and vacant look was already the face of an idiot.

One morning in the refectory Jean fell off his chair on to the floor, grew purple in the face and foamed at the mouth. Urgent messengers flew off to fetch Dr Debu, and we all thought it was the end of Jean, until my nurse of the Salle cinq suggested epileptic fits, an opinion which was subsequently ratified by the doctor's verdict, "epilepsie Jacksonienne." Jean did not appear again in the yard until nearly a fortnight after this incident, and his place on the bench in the sun was taken by another whose name, according to his own statement, was "Mahamed, son of Mahamed."

Mahamed was still limping badly from a shot wound in the calf. He did not look more than nineteen, and came from near Oran. His knowledge of French was confined to "Merci le Madam," with a shining smile, and "Alleman grand cochon."

Mahamed, having discovered my knowledge of a few words of his native tongue and my acquaintance with his native country, followed me about like a shadow. For many months his feelings had perforce been suppressed, and now presuming too greatly on my supposed fluency in Arabic conversation, the poor fellow sat on the little bench in the sun pouring out his story.

We had the story nearly every day, and I began to put bits of it together. Of one thing he was quite certain, namely, that the "Alleman" was a pig and son of a pig, and that his other ancestors were of most infamous repute. In the mixed lingo of the bench, the same declaration was made every day at the close of the sitting, when the sun went behind the high wall: "Alleman no bon, kif kif cochon Yhoudi ben Yhoudi, Sheitan ben Sheitan, Halouf ben Halouf."

"Ça c'est tout de même vrai," said Picard the one-legged, patting his stump thoughtfully and pulling volcanoes of smoke from his clay pipe. "Alleman kif kif cochon." "Le Boche voyez vous," said Picard, addressing the bench party, which was slowly moving back to hospital, "le Boche ça a des petits yeux de cochon, c'est blanc et rose, comme le cochon, ça mange.... Ah, les Boches Halouf ben Halouf," and Picard hurriedly finished his discourse out of respect for M. le Vicaire-General, who had just joined the group.

"Bonjour, M. le Vicaire, you're just in time," I said. "Nous disions du mal de notre prochain." "Il n'y a pas de mal à ça, Monsieur le Curé," interrupted Picard, "puisque nous ne parlions que des Boches." "Voyons, M. le Curé," this aggressively, "the Gospel tells us to love our enemies. Do you love the Boches?" This question, and the spirit in which it was asked, was significant of the new atmosphere which had begun to permeate the Salle cinq after the arrival of the French soldier who had declared himself an enemy of fresh air. Gradually this man's evil influence pervaded the whole ward, just as the evil thing he stood for had permeated all France before the war.

M. le Vicaire-General came to the Salle cinq nearly every day, visiting each man's bedside, and no man, except one, however unspiritual his past, could resist the charm of the old priest, in whose smile shone an unselfish soul.

The "enemy of fresh air" was known to the British soldiers in the ward as "Judas Iscariot." When the priest came near his bed, Judas shook his head slightly and smiled an almost imperceptible smile, with all the air of saying, "La religion c'est pour les enfants, les femmes et les imbéciles."

It was some sneer from Judas that prompted Picard's question.

"Voyons, M. le Curé, aimez vouz les Boches?"

The old priest looked at Picard's honest troubled face and answered slowly—

"Mais puisque l'évangile nous ordonne de nous aimer les uns les autres et surtout d'aimer nos ennemis, il faut toujours faire son possible pour suivre ce divin conseil et je peux dire que j'aime les Boches—mais—chez eux—pas chez nous."

In Germany, just as in England, Christmas is kept with great feasting and rejoicing, and during the week preceding Christmas M. Vampouille was hard at work making sausages for his German customers, who were to hold a festive meeting at the Kommandantur. Great preparations were also being made at the 106, and the staff of the hospital, forgetting for the time being their private squabbles, joined with our friends in the town in preparing a Merry Christmas.

Christmas morning. Mass at 10 o'clock in Salle un. M. le Vicaire-General preaches a tactful sermon on "resignation." After Mass candles on the Christmas tree are lit and presents distributed.

The altar was erected at the extreme end of Salle un, and very artistically decorated with palms, laurel branches, and holly; behind the altar were two large flags (home-made) of England and France; on the right was a large Christmas tree.

M. le Vicaire-Général.

All patients who were fit to be moved, except Judas Iscariot, were carried up from the Salle cinq and grouped near the altar. In the bed nearest the altar a British reservist lay with a shattered spine, still alive, still conscious, still able to speak, the lower half of his body lifeless since the 26th of August 1914. This was his last week on earth. "Here's a funny kind of Christmas," he whispered; "next Christmas we'll be at home, shan't we?"

On my right, close to the altar steps, sat Picard, beyond him Mahamed ben Mahamed looking puzzled and depressed, and at the end of the row a lady on crutches, dressed in deep mourning, who had lost a leg during the aeroplane fight in September. The other wounded were seated in beds, packed in double row, half-way down each side of the ward, the remainder of which was filled with friends from the town.

Madame Tondeur was busy in the kitchen with three turkeys to roast and carve into very small pieces, so that every one might get a taste. The plum pudding being very small, was reserved for the Salle cinq. Printed directions on the tin suggested that the pudding could be eaten cold or boiled for "half an hour." Perhaps this was a misprint for "half a day." After the half-hour's boiling, the pudding still seemed to have a compressed appearance, and looked very diminutive under its large stick of holly. Madame Tondeur herself carried the flaming pudding into the Salle cinq, divided it up into twelve portions, the indigestible but fortunately small fragments were duly eaten, and the ancient tradition of Christmas remained for us unbroken.

Between Christmas and the New Year it was decided that my name was to go down on the list of "transportables," and that I would have to join the next party for Germany. Thinking over the last few days spent at the 106 Hospital, I remember first of all the parting words of my nurse: "In days to come try and remember the bright side of your stay here and forget the days of darkness." And here I may say in plain words what I feel most deeply, although these words cannot be read for many months, perhaps years, by those to whom I would wish to address them.

Many a limbless British soldier owes his life to the surgeon of the Civil Hospital. The question in those days was not merely "Will an operation save life?" but rather, "Is there time to operate on those whose lives might be saved?" Dr Debu proved himself to be the man for such an emergency. United to great skill, he possessed great physical strength and powers of resistance to fatigue. For three days and three nights he operated almost without taking time for meals or sleep.

For the devoted kindness of the French doctors and nurses, both of the Hôpital Civil, the 106, and the other ten or twelve hospitals of Cambrai, who for many months under conditions of great difficulty and danger, without many of the most necessary medical appliances, worked night and day to save the lives of British soldiers and to ease the last moments of the mortally wounded, I feel that this very inadequate expression of gratitude must be set down.

There are many other kind friends at Cambrai whose kindness I can never forget.

Consider my situation at Cambrai: unknown, cut off from all intercourse with the world, about to start off for a German prison, and without a sixpence. I did not like to ask a loan from my kind friends, who had already given me a complete outfit of underclothing and toilet necessaries. On New Year's Day the subject of money was broached by M. Rey in a straightforward business-like manner. "You are shortly going to Germany," he said; "even in prison money is useful; you will need some money; we have brought you some." The sum M. Rey proposed to give me was £50! We decided that half this sum would be ample, and I gave M. Rey a receipt "payable après la guerre."

After these true friends in need had left, M. Vampouille came in to sit with me, and he made the same suggestion about money, and insisted on my accepting a further sum, the loan of which, he said, is granted on one condition only: "You must not pay me by cheque, you must come yourself—after the war!"

Next morning a decrepit omnibus driven by a German soldier came to take me from the Hôpital 106 to M. Brunot's Hôpital Annexe, from where, after three days, I was sent off to Germany.

CHAPTER VI.
CAMBRAI TO WÜRZBURG.