I put on a skirt to return to London for a rest. I found there people dressed modishly, and it looked uncomfortable. Styles had been changing: women were in funny shoes and hats. I went wondering that they could dress like that.
And then an overpowering desire for pretty things came on me—for a piece of old lace, a pink ribbon. After sleeping by night in the clothes worn through the day, wearing the same two shirts for four months, no pajamas, no sheets, with spots of grease and blood on all the costume, I had a longing for frivolous things, such as a pink tea gown. Old slippers and a bath and shampoo seemed good. I had a wholesome delight in a modest clean blouse and in buying a new frock.
I returned to Pervyse. The Germans changed their range: an evening, a morning and an afternoon—three separate bombardments with heavy shells. The wounded were brought in. Nearly every one died. We piled them together, anywhere that they wouldn't be tripped over. To the back kitchen we carried the bodies of two boys. One of the orderlies knew them. He went in with us to remove the trinkets from their necks. Every now and then, he went back again, to look at them. They were very beautiful, young, healthy, lying there together in the back kitchen. It was a quiet half hour for us, after luncheon. The doctors and nurses were reading or smoking. I was writing a letter.
A shell drove itself through the back kitchen wall and exploded over the dead boys, bringing rafters and splintered glass and bricks down on them. My pencil slid diagonally across the sheet, and I got up. Our two orderlies and three soldiers rushed in, holding their eyes from the blue fumes of the explosion. When one shell comes, the chances are that it will be followed by three more, aimed at the same place. It had always been my philosophy that it is better to be "pinked" in the house than on the road, but not on this particular day. An army ambulance was standing opposite our door, with its nose turned toward the trenches. The Belgian driver rushed for the door, slammed it shut because of the shells, opened it again. He ran to the car, cranked it, turned it around. We stood in the doorway and waited, watching the shells dropping with a wail, tearing up the road here, then there. After that we moved back to La Panne.
POSTCARDS SKETCHED AND BLOCKED BY A BELGIAN WORKMAN, A. VAN DOORNE.
Belgium suffering, but united, is the idea he brings out in his work.
There I stayed on with Miss Georgie Fyfe, who is doing such excellent work among the Belgian refugees. She is chief of the evacuation of civilians who still remain in the bombarded villages and farms. She brings the old and the sick and the children out of shell fire and finds them safe homes. To the Refugee House she takes the little ones to be cared for till there are fifty. Then she sends them to Switzerland, where brothers and sisters are kept unseparated in family groups until the war is over. The Queen busies herself with these children. For the newest generation of Belgians Miss Fyfe has established a Maternity Hospital. Nearly one hundred babies have come to live there.