"It's simply wonderful what they do for us!" he says, all his face lighting up. "When I was worst there wasn't an hour in the day or night my Sister wasn't ready to try anything in the world to help me. But they're all like that."
Let me here gratefully recall, also, the hospitals organised by the Universities of Chicago and Harvard, entirely staffed by American Sisters and Doctors, each of them providing 34 doctors and 80 nurses, and dealing with 1,040 patients. Harvard has maintained a general hospital with the British Force in France since July, 1915. The first passages and uniforms were paid for by the British Government, but the University has itself paid all passages, and provided all uniforms since the start; and it is proposed, I am told, to carry on this generous help indefinitely.
Twenty thousand wounded!—while every day the ambulance trains come and go from the front, or to other bases—there to fill up one or other of the splendid hospital ships that take our brave fellows back to England, and home, and rest. And this city of hospitals, under its hard-pressed medical chief, with all its wealth of scientific invention, and painsaving device, and unremitting care, with its wonderful health and recovery statistics, has been the growth of just twelve months. The mind wavers between the two opposing images it suggests: war and its havoc on the one hand—the power of the human brain and the goodness of the human heart on the other.
II
It was late on the 29th of February that we reached our next resting-place, to find a kind greeting from another Base Commandant and final directions for our journey of the morrow. We put up at one of the old commercial inns of the town (it is not easy to find hotel quarters of any kind just now, when every building at all suitable has been pressed into the hospital service) and I found delight in watching the various types of French officers, naval and military, who came in to the table d'hôte, plunging as soon as they had thrown off their caps and cloaks, and while they waited for their consommé, into the papers with the latest news of Verdun. But we were too tired to try and talk! The morning came quickly, and with it our escort from G.H.Q. We said good-bye to Colonel S., who had guided our journey so smoothly through all the fierce drawbacks of the weather, and made friends at once with our new guide, the staff-officer who deals with the guests of G.H.Q. Never shall I forget that morning's journey! I find in my notes: "A beautiful drive—far more beautiful than I had expected—over undulating country, with distant views of interlocking downs, and along typical French roads, tree or forest bordered, running straight as a line up-hill and down-hill, over upland and plain. One exquisite point of view especially comes back to me, where a road to the coast—that coast which the Germans so nearly reached!—diverged upon our left, and all the lowlands westward came into sight. It was pure Turner, the soft sunlight of the day, with its blue shadows, and pale-blue sky; the yellow chalk hills, still marked with streaks of snow; the woods, purple and madder brown, the distances ethereally blue; and the villages, bare and unlovely compared with the villages of Kent and Sussex, but expressing a strong old historic life, sprung from the soil, and one with it. The first distant glimpse, as we turned a hill-corner, of the old town which was our destination—extraordinarily fine!—its ancient church a towered mass of luminous grey under the sunshine, gathering the tiled roofs into one harmonious whole."
But we avoided the town itself and found ourselves presently descending an avenue of trees to the eighteenth-century château, which is used by G.H.Q. as a hostel for its guests—allied and neutral correspondents, military attachés, special missions, and the like. In a few minutes I found myself standing bewildered by the strangeness and the interest of it all, in a charming Louis-Quinze room, plain and simple in the true manner of the genuine French country house, but with graceful panelled walls, an old armoire of the date, windows wide open to the spring sun, and a half-wild garden outside. A femme de ménage, much surprised to be waiting on two ladies, comes to look after us. And this is France!—and we are only thirty miles from that fighting line, which has drawn our English hearts to it all these days.
A map is waiting for each of us down-stairs, and we are told, roughly, where it is proposed to take us. A hurried lunch, and we are in the motor again, with Captain —— sitting in front. "You have your passes?" he asks us, and we anxiously verify the new and precious papers that brought us from our last stage, and will have to be shown on our way. We drive first to Arques, and Hazebrouck, then southeast. At a certain village we call at the Divisional Headquarters. The General comes out himself, and proposes to guide us on. "I will take you as near to the fighting line as I can."
On we went, in two motors; the General with me, Captain —— and D. following. We passed through three villages, and after the first we were within shell range of the German batteries ahead. But I cannot remember giving a thought to the fact, so absorbing to the unaccustomed eye were all the accumulating signs of the actual battle-line; the endless rows of motor-lorries, either coming back from, or going up to the front, now with food, now with ammunition, reserve trenches to right and left of the road; a "dump" or food-station, whence carts filled from the heavy lorries go actually up to the trenches, lines of artillery wagons, parks of ammunition, or motor-ambulances, long lines of picketed horses, motor-cyclists dashing past. In one village we saw a merry crowd in the little place gathered round a field-kitchen whence came an excellent fragrance of good stew. A number of the men were wearing leeks in their ears for St. David's Day. "You're Welsh, then?" I said to one of the cooks (by this time we had left the motor and were walking). "I'm not!" said the little fellow, with a laughing look. "It's St. Patrick's Day I'm waitin' for! But I've no objection to givin' St. David a turn!"
He opened his kitchen to show me the good things going on, and as we moved away there came up a marching platoon of men from the trenches, who had done their allotted time there and were coming back to billets. The General went to greet them. "Well, my boys, you could stick it all right?" It was good to see the lightening on the tired faces, and to watch the group disappear into the cheerful hubbub of the village.
We walked on, and outside the village I heard the guns for the first time. We were now "actually in the battle," according to my companion, and a shell was quite possible, though not probable. Again, I can't remember that the fact made any impression upon us. We were watching now parties of men at regular intervals sitting waiting in the fields beside the road, with their rifles and kits on the grass near them. They were waiting for the signal to move up toward the firing line as soon as the dusk was further advanced. "We shall meet them later," said the General, "as we come back."