"A bishop who has faced the fighting with his people in the field, who has watched his whole diocese gradually destroyed, will not fear the rain!" they said.
Addressing a few words of thanks to the crowd for being present, the bishop hastily robed. The choir chanted. A new young widow beside me began to sob. Scarce an eye in that vast concourse of black and uniforms was dry.
"Requiescat in pace!"
It seemed to me that no passed souls could be so needful of that prayer as the restless, tortured souls of the living mourning crowd.
An irresistible something drew me once more towards the now deserted hospital on the quay. It had had to be abandoned for reasons of hygiene. For even after the rise of its now celebrated dental, ocular and aural departments, even when the lavatories and baths and X-ray apparatus had been satisfactorily installed, its situation—low down by the sluggish water—its lack of proper ventilation, made it untenable, and within the space of a few days it was transferred to healthier quarters facing the sea and refreshed by sun and breezes, where there was no fear of the low fever that continually attacked the staff in that original charnel-house. Once more it is an evil-smelling empty barn. I clapped my hands to my eyes to see if I was awake. Could this ever have been the place we knew, the harbour of so much pain! Oh, could those whitewashed walls and dirty floors speak! No tales of massacre could be more lurid than the remembrance of the original British Expeditionary Force who passed through and will not come again. In spite of the dead stillness that reigned I could feel the throbbing of the many souls who passed away. Vividly, as if no intervening year had elapsed, their faces rose up to greet me with cries for water and release from pain, whilst eager blue-ticketed crowds pressed forward as the arrival of a hospital ship was announced.
A rat ran across the concrete, emphasising the desolation of the scene. Out of the gloom of a certain corner the spirit of a nameless prisoner greeted me. With a last tetanus spasm—a writhe—a death-rattle—the jaw relaxed like a gaping fish, and a strange little sigh seemed to betoken a released spirit.
The mortuary door was blacked over. Why not removed? For what purpose could such a place ever be used again? The theatres still stood—deprived of their hardly accumulated equipment. A sigh of wind came through a broken pane. Was it imagination, or did it bear with it faintly from afar the old oft-heard cry: "Christ help us!"
Bah! It was but an evil nightmare. They are all gone. I alone am left to tell the tale; and generations to come will never know.
Outside things are not much changed. The cobblestones, responsible for the premature demise of such innumerable pairs of stout boots and shoes, are as uneven as ever. The best part of the road, however, has now been railed off for the use of ambulances only, in order that the wounded may be subjected to as little jolting as possible. I recall how, after our first few days at the Gare Maritime Hospital, one of the nurses discovered an easier method of getting from our billets to our work, and how the half-hour's walk to the hospital was soon superseded by a ten-minutes' row in one of the many ferryboats from one side of the harbour to the other. Sometimes, of course, it had been too rough. Once, indeed, there was nearly a calamity when an old boatman, rather more anxious for the welfare of his pocket than the safety of his passengers, ventured out in a storm so violent that the little boat was in danger of being swamped by the waves, and necessitated the putting out of the lifeboat, or whatever is the Boulognese equivalent. Even then the strong current proved almost too much for the frail craft, which was gradually drifting seawards. For several days afterwards most of us risked extra weary feet rather than face the elements at sea.