They were as fresh as paint and very cheerful. Mrs. Torrence was wearing a large silver order on a broad blue ribbon pinned to her khaki overcoat. It was given to her to-day as the reward of valour by the Belgian General in command here. Somebody took it from the breast of a Prussian officer. She had covered it up with her khaki scarf so that she might not seem to swank.
Little Janet was with her. She always is with her. She looked younger than ever, more impassive than ever, more adorable than ever. I have got used to Mrs. Torrence and to Ursula Dearmer; but I cannot get used to Janet. It always seems appalling to me that she should be here, strolling about the seat of War with her hands in her pockets, as if a battle were a cricket-match at which you looked on between your innings. And yet there isn't a man in the Corps who does his work better, and with more courage and endurance, than this eighteen-year-old child.
They told us that there were no French or Belgian wounded left, but that two wounded Germans were still lying over there among the turnips. They were waiting for our car to come out and take these men up. The car was now drawn up close under some building that looked like a town hall, on the other side of the street. We were in the middle of the village. The village itself was the extreme fringe of the danger zone. Where the houses ended, a stretch of white road ran up for about [?] a hundred yards to the turnip-field. Standing in the village street, we could see the turnip-field, but not all of it. The road goes straight up to the edge of it and turns there with a sweep to the left and runs alongside for about a mile and a half.
On the other side of the turnip-field were the German lines. The first that had raked the village street also raked the fields and the mile and a half of road alongside.
It was along that road that the car would have to go.
M. —— told our Ambulance that it might as well go back. There were no more wounded. Only two Germans lying in a turnip-field. The three of us—Mrs. Torrence and Janet and I—tried to bring pressure to bear on M. ——. We meant to go and get those Germans.
But M. —— was impervious to pressure. He refused either to go with the car himself or to let us go. He said we were too late and it was too far and there wouldn't be light enough. He said that for two Belgians, or two French, or two British, it would be worth while taking risks. But for two Germans under German fire it wasn't good enough.
But Mrs. Torrence and Janet and I didn't agree with him. Wounded were wounded. We said we were going if he wasn't.
Then the chauffeur Tom joined in. He refused to offer his car as a target for the enemy.[24] Our firm Belgian was equally determined. The Commandant, as if roused from his beautiful dream to a sudden realization of the horrors of war, absolutely forbade the expedition.
It took place all the same.