Elsie Inglis: The Woman with the Torch

by Eva Shaw McLaren

A member of the Unit also gives us details:[16]

"I went twice down to the station with baggage in the evening, a perilous journey in rickety carts through pitch darkness over roads (?) crammed with troops and refugees, which were lit up periodically by the most amazing green lightning I have ever seen, and the roar and flash of the guns was incessant. At the station no lights were allowed because of enemy aircraft, but the place was illuminated here and there by the camp fires of a new Siberian division which had just arrived. Picked troops these, and magnificent men.

"We wrestled with the baggage until 2 a.m., and went back to the hospital in one of our own cars. Our orderly came in almost in tears. Her cart had twice turned over completely on its way to the station; so on arrival she had hastened to Dr. Inglis with a tale of woe and a scratched face. Dr. Inglis said: 'That's right, dear child, that's right, stick to the equipment,' which may very well be described as the motto of the Unit these days!...

"The majority of the Unit are to go to Galatz by train with Dr. Corbett; the rest (self included) are to go by road with Dr. Inglis, and work with the army as a clearing station.

"On the morning of October 22 the train party got off as quick as possible, and about 4 p.m. a big lorry came for our equipment. We loaded it, seven of us mounted on the top, and the rest went in two of our own cars. The scene was really intensely comic. Seven Scottish women balanced precariously on the pile of luggage; a Serbian doctor with whom Dr. Inglis is to travel standing alongside in an hysterical condition, imploring us to hurry, telling us the Bulgarians were as good as in the town already; Dr. Inglis, quite unmoved, demanding the whereabouts of the Ludgate boiler; somebody arriving at the last minute with a huge open barrel of treacle, which, of course, could not possibly be left to a German. Oh dear! how we laughed!"

Dr. Inglis would never allow the Sunday service to be missed if it was at all possible to hold it.[17] Miss Onslow tells us how she seized a seeming opportunity even on this Sunday of so many dangers to make ready for the service.

"Medjidia.—Sunday was the day on which we began our retreat from the Dobrudja. We spent most of the morning going to and from the station—a place almost impossible to enter or leave on account of the refugees, their carts and animals, and the army, which was on the move, blocking all the approaches—transporting sick members of the Unit and some equipment which had still to be put on the train, and only my touring car and one ambulance with which to do the work. Dr. Inglis had been at the station until the early hours of the morning, but nevertheless superintended everything that was being done both at the train and up at the hospital.

"Towards noon a Serbian officer brought in a report that things were not as bad for the moment as they expected. Whereupon the Doctor immediately gave orders to prepare the room for service at 4 o'clock that afternoon! And she began revolving plans for immediate work in Medjidia. But, alas! the good news was a false report—the enemy was rushing onwards. The Russian lorry came for the personal baggage and any remaining equipment which had not gone by train; and it, piled high with luggage and some of the staff, left at 3, the remainder of us going in the ambulance and my car. Dr. Inglis came in my car, and I had the honour of driving our dear Doctor nearly all the time, and am the only member of the Unit who was with her the whole time of the retreat from Medjidia until we reached the Danube at Harshova."

The four days of the Dobrudja retreat from October 22nd to 26th were days of horror for all who took part in it, not least for Dr. Inglis and the members of her Units. "At first we passed a few carts, then at some distance more and more, till we found ourselves in an unending procession of peasants with all their worldly goods piled on those vehicles.... This procession seemed difficult to pass, but as time went on, added to it, came the Roumanian army retreating—hundreds of guns, cavalry, infantry, ambulances, Red Cross carts, motor-kitchens, and wounded on foot—a most extraordinary scene. The night was inky black; the only lights were our own head-lights and those of the ambulance behind us, but they revealed a sad and never-to-be-forgotten picture. Our driver was quite wonderful; she sat unmoved, often for half an hour at a time. There was a block, and we had to wait while the yelling, frantic mob did what they could to get into some sort of order; then we would move on for ten minutes, and then stop again; it was like a dream or a play; it certainly was a tragedy. No one spoke; we just waited and watched it all; to us it was a spectacle, to these poor homeless people it was a terrible reality."[18]

At 11.30 that Sunday night Dr. Inglis and the party with her arrived at Caramarat. The straw beds and the fairytale dinner, and the cheery voice of Dr. Inglis calling them to partake of it, will never be forgotten by these Scottish women.