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Autumn passed into winter. The fall of Antwerp; escape of the Goeben and Breslau; Declaration of War with Turkey; the bombardment of Scarborough and West Hartlepool these were landmarks in the sea of events.
People had begun to accept the War as a natural state, to cease expecting a sudden dramatic finish.
Mollie finished her three months’ training, and was drafted to a War Hospital in Wales. She came to see me before she went. She was serious and intent.
‘I wish I could do more,’ she said. ‘I hate to be safe, when the others are in danger, don’t you feel that, Helen? I do hope they will send me to the front.’
I said:
‘You are doing much more than I am. You are in it, not outside, like me.’
Mollie said:
‘Yes. I am sorry for you, Helen. It must be terrible for you to be outside, and not able to help. Of course you can’t,’ she added quickly, ‘your work is just as important really, more perhaps,’ and she smiled her delightful smile that was like George’s.
‘I feel,’ she went on earnestly, ‘that I can never do enough, if I worked myself to the bone, when I think what the men out there are going through already; what is waiting for George, and Guy, and Hugo, when they go out. It seems horrible to me to sit safe at home when they go, just nursing in a hospital.’
I said:
‘It will be pretty ghastly in a hospital if the War goes on,’ and I was surprised at myself; I had not thought consciously about the wounded men before.
Mollie shuddered.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I have seen some of it already. There were some my first month—blinded—it seemed so soon.’
And I thought:
‘Could Hugo be blinded?’
I was glad to have seen Mollie. She brought the War home to me more clearly than anything else had done. She understood what it meant, how dreadful it was, and yet she was sane. I wondered if I could help in a Hospital too; but I was nursing Eleanor still, and very much tied.
I went for a time with Mrs. Sebright and sewed shirts; then I did bandages myself, at home, instead.
In January, Guy crossed to France; George Addington sailed for Gallipoli in April; Hugo’s battalion went out as a reinforcement in the second battle of Ypres.
I did not see any of them before they went.