A long day at Étaples intervened between this little scene and the arrival at G.H.Q.—a day devoted not only to an inspection of some of the great hospitals, but also to a more unusual experience. Étaples was the scene of a huge training-camp where troops from England received their final “polish” before going up to the Front; amongst other things, they were taught how to throw bombs, and Mrs. Ward was taken to see them do it. “We climb to the very top of the slope,” she wrote in her journal at the time, “and over its crest to see some live bomb-practice. A hollow in the sand, three dummy figures twenty yards away—a parapet and a young soldier with three different bombs, that explode by a time-fuse. He throws—we crouch low behind the parapet of sand-bags—a few seconds, then a fierce report. We rise. One of the dummy figures is half wrecked, only a few fragments of the bomb surviving. One thinks of it descending in a group of men, and one remembers the huge hospitals behind us. War begins to seem to me more and more horrible and intolerable.”
The next day, March 1, they were taken in charge at Boulogne by Captain H. C. Roberts, sent thither by G.H.Q. to fetch them, and motored through a more spring-like land to St. Omer, where they took up their quarters for two nights in the “Visitors’ Château” (the Château de la Tour Blanche). Captain Roberts said that his orders were to take them as near to the battle-line as he safely could, and accordingly they started out early in the afternoon in the direction of Richebourg St. Vaast, calling on the way at Merville, the headquarters of General Pinney and the 35th Division. The General came out to see his visitors and said that, having an hour to spare, he would take them to the Line himself. He and Mrs. Ward went ahead in the General’s car, Dorothy and Captain Roberts following behind. At Richebourg St. Vaast the road became so much broken by shell-holes that they got out and walked, and General Pinney informed Mrs. Ward calmly that she was now “actually in the battle,” for the British guns were bellowing from behind them. Early the next morning she wrote down the following notes of what ensued:
‘Richebourg St. Vaast—a ruined village, the church in fragments—a few walls and arches standing. The crucifix on a bit of wall untouched. Just beyond, General Pinney captured a gunner and heard that a battery was close by to our right. We were led there through seas of mud. Two bright-faced young officers. One gives me a hand through the mud, and down into the dug-out of the gun. There it is—its muzzle just showing in the dark, nine or ten shells lying in front of it. One is put in. We stand back and put our fingers in our ears. An old artillery-man says ‘Look straight at the gun, ma’am.’ It fires—the cartridge-case drops out. The shock not so great as I had imagined. Has the shell fallen on a German trench, and with what result! They give us the cartridge-case to take home.
‘After firing the gun we walked on along the road. General Pinney talks of taking us to the entrance of the communication-trench. But Captain Roberts is obviously nervous. The battery we have just left crashes away behind us, and the firing generally seems to grow hotter. I suggest turning back, and Captain Roberts approves. ‘You have been nearer the actual fighting than any woman has been in this war—not even a nurse has been so close,’ says the General. Neuve Chapelle a mile and a half away to the north behind some tall poplars. In front within a mile, first some ruined buildings—immediately beyond them our trenches—then the Germans, within a hundred yards of each other.
“As we were going up, we had seen parties of men sitting along the edge of the fields, with their rifles and field kit beside them, waiting for sunset. Now, as we return, and the sun is sinking fast to the horizon, we pass them—platoon after platoon—at intervals—going up towards the trenches. The spacing of these groups along the road, and the timing of them, is a difficult piece of staff-work. The faces of the men quiet and cheerful, a little subdued whistling here and there—but generally serious. And how young! ‘War,’ says the General beside me, ‘is crass folly! crass folly! nothing else. We want new forms of religion—the old seem to have failed us. Miracle and dogma are no use. We want a new prophet, a new Messiah!’”
Mrs. Ward left her new friend with a feeling of astonishment at having found so kindred a spirit in so strange a scene.
The next day they were up betimes and on their way to Cassel and Westoutre, there to obtain permits, at the Canadian headquarters, for the ascent of the Scherpenberg Hill, in order that Mrs. Ward might behold Ypres and the Salient. There had been a British attack, that morning, in the region of the Ypres-Comines Canal; it had succeeded, and there was a sense of elation in the air. But, by an ironic chance, Mrs. Ward had heard by the mail that reached the Château a far different piece of news, and as she drove through the ruined Belgian villages—through Poperinghe and Locre—dodging and turning so as to avoid roads recently shelled, her mind was filled with one overmastering thought—the death of Henry James, her countryman.[34]
But now they are at the foot of the Scherpenberg Hill. Her journal continues:
‘A picket of soldiers belonging to the Canadian Division stops us, and we show our passes. Then we begin to mount the hill (about as steep as that above Stocks Cottage), but Captain Roberts pulls me up, and with various halts at last we are on the top, passing a dug-out for shelter in case of shells on the way. At the top a windmill—some Tommies playing football. Two stout lasses driving a rustic cart with two horses. We go to the windmill and, sheltering behind its supports (for nobody must be seen on the sky-line), look out north-east and east. Far away on the horizon the mists lift for a moment, and a great ghost looks out—the ruined tower of Ypres. You see that half its top is torn away. A flash! from what seem to be the ruins at its base. Another! It is the English guns speaking from the lines between us and Ypres—and as we watch, we see the columns of white smoke rising from the German lines as they burst. Then it is the German turn, and we see a couple of their shells bursting on our lines, between Vlamertinghe and Dickebusch. Hark—the rattle of the machine-guns from, as it were, a point just below us to the left, and again the roar of the howitzers. There, on the horizon, is the ridge of Messines, Wytschœte, and near by the hill and village of Kemmel, which has been shelled to bits. Along that distant ridge run the German trenches, line upon line. One can see them plainly without a glass. At last we are within actual sight of the Great Aggression—the nation and the army which have defied the laws of God and man, and left their fresh and damning mark to all time on the history of Europe and on this old, old land on which we are looking. In front of us the Zillebeke Lake, beyond it Hooge—Hill 60 lost in the shadows, and that famous spot where, on the afternoon of November 11, the ‘thin red line’ withstood the onset of the Prussian Guard. The Salient lies there before us, and one’s heart trembles thinking of all the gallant life laid down there, and all the issues that have hung upon the fight for it.”
So, with gas-helmets in hand, they retraced their steps down the hill, finding at the bottom that the kind Canadian sentries had cut steps for Mrs. Ward down the steep, slippery bank, and on to see General Plumer at Cassel. With him and with Lord Cavan—the future heroes of the Italian War—Mrs. Ward had half an hour’s memorable talk, returning afterwards to the Visitors’ Château in time to pack and depart that same evening for Boulogne. Next day they sailed in the “Leave boat”—“all swathed in life-belts, and the good boat escorted (so wrote D. M. W.) by a destroyer and a torpedo-boat, and ringed round with mine-sweepers!” In such pomp of modern war did Mrs. Ward return.