How well our wounded soldiers were tended in France is shown by the following letter from a French nurse, who received her training in this country:
"Last Sunday I went to see some wounded English soldiers at Versailles. They are nursed in one of the largest and newest hotels there. You should see how happy and jolly they are, and how petted by the French people who go to see them and take them tea, grapes, cigarettes, etc. Your soldiers are great favourites here. They are so glad when they meet with somebody who speaks English. I spoke to them about England and English people, and we sang English songs—'Dolly Gray' and 'Tommy Atkins.' They made some tea and gave some to all the ladies present."
A French woman who could speak English said laughingly to a Highlander, "If you kill the Kaiser you may marry my daughter." The soldier replied that he would do that all right and that she could have a hair of William's moustache.
Of a French lady, at whose house four British soldiers were billeted, one of them wrote: "She was wondrous kind, and when we left for the front Madame and her mother sobbed as if we had been their own sons."
Here is another little tribute: "I am very pleased with the way the French have treated us. They are good-hearted people. Don't matter who you see out they all salute you, and the ladies bow to you. What more could you wish for?"
This man went on to say that he was always addressed as Monsieur (Why not?) and that he began to think that he was an officer.
And the Belgians also think of the British soldier as a kind-hearted rescuer.
A little girl, an orphan refugee from Flanders, was taken and cared for by a family in a London suburb. In spite of the kindness that encompassed her, she was unhappy and full of terror. She remembered the strange people with a strange tongue who had swept down upon her home in Flanders, and the brutality and horror that followed their incursion. The English people with whom she stayed were kind, but they were strange, and their tongue was strange, and they terrified her. One day the son of the house came home. He was in the New Army, and he wore khaki. At the sight of the khaki the little girl flung herself at the boy, clung about his legs, and called out "Anglais! Anglais!" She knew now she was safe.
A wounded Seaforth Highlander heard that a woman with a newborn baby was in a cottage in a village that was being shelled by the Germans. He left the Red Cross van, rushed in and saved both mother and child as a shell crashed through the roof. As he left another shell demolished the cottage.