Then, just as I was congratulating myself that the shame of Ecloo was to be wiped out (to say nothing of that ignominious overthrow at Melle), there occurred a contretemps that made our ambulance conspicuous among the many ambulances in the courtyard of the Hospital.
We had reckoned without the mistimed chivalry of our chauffeurs.
They had all, even Tom, been quite pathetically kind and gentle during and ever since the flight from Ghent. (I remember poor Newlands coming up with his bottle of formamint just as we were preparing to leave Ecloo.) It never occurred to us that there was anything ominous in this mood.
Mrs. Torrence and I were just going to get into (I think) Newlands' car, when we were aware of Newlands standing fixed on the steps of the Hospital, looking like Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in khaki, and flatly refusing to drive his car into Bruges, not only if we were in his car, but if one woman went with the expedition in any other car.
He stood there, very upright, on the steps of the Hospital, and rather pale, while the Commandant and Mrs. Torrence surged up to him in fury. The Commandant told him he would be sacked for insubordination, and Mrs. Torrence, in a wild flight of fancy, threatened to expose him "in the papers."
But Newlands stood his ground. He was even more like Lord Kitchener than Tom. He simply could not get over the idea that women were to be protected. And to take the women into Bruges when the Germans were, for all we knew, in Bruges, was an impossibility to Newlands, as it would have been to Lord Kitchener. So he went on refusing to take his car into Bruges if one woman went with the expedition. In retort to a charge of cold feet, he intimated that he was ready to drive into any hell you pleased, provided he hadn't got to take any women with him. He didn't care if he was sacked. He didn't care if Mrs. Torrence did report him in the papers. He wouldn't drive his car into Bruges if one woman—
Here, in his utter disregard of all discipline, the likeness between Newlands and Lord Kitchener ends. Enough that he drove his car into Bruges on his own terms, and Mrs. Torrence and I were left behind.
The expedition to Bruges returned safely with the forty-seven Belgian wounded.
We found rooms in a large hotel on the Digue, overlooking the sea. Before evening I went round to the Hospital to see Miss Ashley-Smith's three wounded men. The Kursaal is built in terraces and galleries going all round the front and side of it. I took the wrong turning round one of them and found myself in the doorway of an immense ward. From somewhere inside there came loud and lacerating screams, high-pitched but appallingly monotonous and without intervals. I thought it was a man in delirium; I even thought it might be poor Fisher, of whose attacks we had been warned. I went in.
I had barely got a yard inside the ward before a kind little rosy-faced English nurse ran up to me. I told her what I wanted.