But it was not by any means so simple as it sounded.
First of all we had to collect ourselves. Then we had to collect Dr. Hanson's luggage. Dr. Hanson was one of Mrs. St. Clair Stobart's women surgeons, and she had left her luggage for Miss —— to carry from Ostend to England. There was a yellow tin box and a suit-case. Dr. Hanson's best clothes and her cases of surgical instruments were in the suit-case and all the things she didn't particularly care about in the tin box. Or else the best clothes and the surgical instruments were in the tin box, and the things she didn't particularly care about in the suit-case. As we were certainly going to take both boxes, it didn't seem to matter much which way round it was.
Then there was Mr. Foster's green canvas kit-bag to be taken to Folkestone and sent to him at the Victoria Hospital there.
And there was a British Red Cross lady and her luggage—but we didn't know anything about the lady and her luggage yet.
We found them at the Kursaal Hospital, where some of our ambulances were waiting.
By this time the courtyard, the steps and terraces of the Hospital were a scene of the most ghastly confusion. The wounded were still being carried out and still lay, wrapped in blankets, on the terraces; those who could sit or stand sat or stood. Ambulance cars jostled each other in the courtyard. Red Cross nurses dressed for departure were grouped despairingly about their luggage. Other nurses, who were not dressed for departure, who still remained superintending the removal of their wounded, paid no attention to these groups and their movements and their cries. The Hospital had cast off all care for any but its wounded.
Women seized hold of other women for guidance and instruction, and received none. Nobody was rudely shaken off—they were all, in fact, very kind to each other—but nobody had time or ability to attend to anybody else.
Somebody seized hold of the Commandant and sent us both off to look for the kitchen and for a sack of loaves which we would find in it. We were to bring the sack of loaves out as quickly as we could. We went off and found the kitchen, we found several kitchens; but we couldn't find the sack of loaves, and had to go back without it. When we got back the lady who had commandeered the sack of loaves was no more to be seen on the terrace.
While we waited on the steps somebody remarked that there was a German aeroplane in the sky and that it was going to drop a bomb. There was. It was sailing high over the houses on the other side of the street. And it dropped its bomb right in front of us, above an enormous building not fifty yards away.
We looked, fascinated. We expected to see the building knocked to bits and flying in all directions. The bomb fell. And nothing happened. Nothing at all.