Our own retreat—the Ostend-Dunkirk bit of it—is memorable chiefly by Miss ——'s account of the siege of Antwerp and the splendid courage of Mrs. St. Clair Stobart and her women.
But that is her story, not mine, and it should be left to her to tell.
[Dunkirk.]
At Dunkirk the question of the Secretary's transport again arose. It contended feebly with the larger problem of where and when and how the Corps was to lunch, things being further complicated by the Commandant's impending interview with Baron de Broqueville, the Belgian Minister of War. I began to feel like a large and useless parcel which the Commandant had brought with him in sheer absence of mind, and was now anxious to lose or otherwise get rid of. At the same time the Ambulance could not go on for more than three days without further funds, and, as the courier to be despatched to fetch them, I was, for the moment, the most important person in the Corps; and my transport was not a question to be lightly set aside.
I was about to solve the problem for myself by lugging my lady to the railway station, when Ursula Dearmer took us over too, in her stride, as inconsiderable items of the business before her. I have nothing but admiration for her handling of it.
We halted in the main street of Dunkirk while Mr. Riley and the chauffeurs unearthed from the baggage-car my hold-all and suit-case and the British Red Cross lady's hold-all and trunk and Mr. Foster's kit-bag and Dr. Hanson's suit-case with her best clothes and her surgical instruments and the tin—No, not the tin box, for the Commandant, now possessed by a violent demon of hurry, resisted our efforts to drag it from its lair.[38]
All these things were piled on Ursula Dearmer's military scouting-car. The British Red Cross lady (almost incredulous of her good luck) and I got inside it, and Ursula Dearmer and Mr. Riley drove us to the railway station.
By the mercy of Heaven a train was to leave for Boulogne either a little before or a little after one, and we had time to catch it.
There was a long line of refugee bourgeois drawn up before the station doors, and I noticed that every one of them carried in his hand a slip of paper.
Ursula Dearmer hailed a porter, who, she said, would look after us like a father. With a matchless celerity he and Mr. Riley tore down the pile of luggage. The porter put them on a barrow and disappeared with them very swiftly through the station doors.