‘Come and see the men,’ he said.
They walked together to the church. The west door was open. The smell of sepsis and foul wounds met them as they entered the graveyard. Near the door some R.A.M.C. orderlies were tending a cooker, and on a bench a cheese stood among some long loaves and a few tins of Maconochie’s ration. Packets of lint and cotton-wool were scattered on the ground, and some mugs and ration tins were piled in the porch. The floor of the church was covered with wounded men in ragged khaki. They lay upon straw close together. Some of them were moaning quietly; others muttered in their delirium. Some were dying as the doctors stood near, and more than one had entered into rest. The smell, the dirt and the misery of it all was overwhelming. It was heartrending, too, to think of the women to whom these men belonged. In the midst of such squalor and wretchedness, an Army Sister, radiant in scarlet and white, presented a strange contrast.
When ambulances could be spared, they came down in the evening and carried as many wounded as they could to a station—where the men waited sometimes for days for a train. In this way they were transported long distances, even to St. Nazaire on their way to England. Such suffering! Such loss of life! And yet within sixty miles lay Paris with thirty thousand empty beds, but with no organised transport.
Dr. Garrett Anderson had two places in her car, and she offered to take back with her two wounded men who could sit up. Out of the medley the orderlies produced two. They sat them on a bench and washed their faces with a piece of lint wrung out of the copper. They put their caps on their heads, gave them a drink of tea and intimated that they were ready. Dr. Anderson looked at them, and it seemed to her that one of them was too ill for the long drive in an open car; but when he saw that she was hesitating, the tears came into his eyes, and he caught her arm, pleading:
‘Do take me, lady. Don’t leave me behind.’
So he had to be taken. She fortified them both with a dose of morphia and some brandy diluted with water from the copper; then they were helped into the car and driven away.
The memory of the men she had left in that putrid atmosphere and under such comfortless conditions was never to be forgotten.
* * * * *
No doubt some report of circumstances like these reached the authorities in England. Towards the end of September, the War Office sent over a representative to examine into existing conditions, and to inspect and report on the auxiliary hospitals, of which Claridge’s Hôtel was one. The ‘Milord’ selected for this mission made a handsome, martial figure as he strode through the streets of Paris. He was resplendent in khaki and brass hat, and a beautiful order hung round his neck. Rumour said he was the Duke of Connaught or Lord French or Sir Frederick Treves or Mr. Bottomley! But whoever he was, his appearance commanded great respect. He was saluted on all sides, and men stepped from the pavement to let him take his noble way.
The first hospital which he visited was Claridge’s. He was an imposing figure as he entered the central hall. His spurs rang on the pavement and his steps re-echoed in its vastness. He fixed a suspicious blue eye on the senior medical officers who went to meet him, and interrogated them sternly: