Yet mysteriously Nona and not even Barbara were so frightened as one might expect. In moments of great peril, as we all know, a courage is born which one does not have in the lesser moments of life.
Once Barbara thought with a whimsical twisting of her lips no one saw, that in all probability she was so terrified that she had no ordinary method of showing it. One could not scream or cry out and certainly one could not weep like a nervous school girl. Having made up her mind to go through with whatever lay before them, stoicism was the only possible way of facing the situation.
Finally the ambulance arrived at the edge of a woods about half a mile back from the stable which had been transformed into the temporary Red Cross hospital at the beginning of the fighting at Neuve Chapelle.
For the moment the noise of the cannon and guns from the two lines of trenches lying so tragically near one another, made speech between the occupants of the wagon almost impossible. Yet the young Englishman brought his ambulance to a stand-still behind a clump of trees that so far had been spared from destruction.
“We must leave the ambulance here,” he directed, “it will be wiser to bring the soldiers to the car, than run the risk of having it made a target.”
The ambulance surgeon nodded; there was no time for discussion.
“Will you wait here or come with us nearer the hospital?” he asked, looking at Nona.
She made no reply, only started to follow the two men across the open field that lay between the hiding place of the ambulance and the work before them. Barbara silently kept at her side.
The girls could see the ground shake as if stirred by an earthquake. Then from the line, where they knew the British trenches to be concealed, poured a steady stream of low-lying smoke crawling across the land like innumerable serpents. This was returned in the same fashion, while overhead thundered the larger field guns, whose smoke hung like a giant cloud overhead.
None of the guns were being turned upon the open space over which the two girls and two men were running at a steady pace. Moreover, they were somewhat protected by the breastworks which had been thrown up before the little emergency hospital and the fact that the Red Cross flag flew from a tall flagstaff set in front of it, visible many miles away.