Fanny goes to war

by Pat Beauchamp Washington

There were about fourteen entries for our race, several of them from Lamarck, and we all drew for polo ponies lent from the Brigade. Their owners were full of instructions as to the best method to get them along. We cantered up to the starting post, and there was some delay while Renny got her stirrups right. This was unfortunate, as our ponies got a bit "cold." At last the flag fell, and we were off! It was ripping; and the excitement of that race beat anything I've ever known. As we thundered over the sands I began to experience the joys of seeing the horses in front "coming back" to me, as our old jockey stable-boy used to describe. Heasy came in first, MacDougal second, and Winnie and I tied third. It was a great race entirely, and all too short by a long way.

One day I was detailed to drive the Matron and our section leader to a fête of sorts for Belgian refugee orphans. On the way back, crossing the swing bridge, we met Betty driving the sisters to their billets. I thought Matron wanted to speak to them and luckily, as it turned out, I slowed down. She changed her mind, however, and I was just picking up again as we came abreast, when from behind Betty's car sprang a woman right in front of mine (after her hat it appeared later, which the wind had just blown across the road). The apparition was so utterly unforeseen and unexpected that she was bowled over like a rabbit in two shakes. I jammed on the brakes and we sprang out, and saw she was under the car in between the wheel and the chassis. Luckily she was a small thin woman, and as Gaspard has so eloquently expressed it on another occasion, platte comme une punaise (flat as a drawing-pin). I was horrified, the whole thing had happened so suddenly. A crowd of French and Belgian soldiers collected, and I rapidly directed them to lift the front of the car up by the springs, as it seemed the only way of getting her out without further injury. I turned away, not daring to look, and as I did so my eye caught sight of some hair near one of the back wheels! That finished me up! I did not stop to reason that of course the back wheels had not touched her, and thought, "My God, I've scalped her!" and I leant over the railings feeling exceedingly sick. A friendly M.P. who had seen the whole thing, patted me on the arm and said, "Now, then, Miss, don't you take on, that's only her false 'air," as indeed it proved to be! The woman was yelling and groaning, "Mon Dieu, je suis tuée," but according to the "red hat" she was as "right as rain, nothing but 'ysteria." I blessed that M.P. and hoped we would meet again. We helped her on to the front seat, where Thompson supported her, while I drove to hospital to see if any damage had been done. Singularly enough, she was only suffering from bruises and a torn skirt, and of course the loss of her "false 'air" (which I had refused to touch, it had given me such a turn). I can only hope her husband, who was with her at the time, picked it up. He followed to hospital and gave her a most frightful scolding, adding that of course the "Mees" could not do otherwise than knock her down if she so foolishly sprang in front of cars without warning; and she might think herself lucky that the "Mees" would not run her in for being in the way! It has always struck me as being so humorous that in England if you knock a pedestrian over they can have you up, while in France the law is just the reverse. She sobbed violently, and I had to tell him that what she wanted was sympathy and not scolding.

It took me a day or two to get over that scalping expedition (of course the story was all round the camp within the hour!) and for some time after I slowed down crossing the bridge. This was the one and only time anything of the sort ever happened to me, thank goodness!

Our camp began to look very smart, and the seeds we had sown in the spring came up and covered the huts with creepers. We had as many flowers inside our huts as we could possibly get into the shell cases and other souvenirs which perforce were turned into flower vases—a change they must have thought rather singular. The steady boom of the guns used to annoy me intensely, for it shook the petals off the roses long before they would otherwise have fallen, and I used to call out, crossly, "Do stop that row, you're simply ruining my flowers." But that made no difference to the distant gunners, who carried on night and day causing considerably more damage than the falling petals from my roses!

We began to classify the new girls as they came out, jokingly calling them "Kitchener's" Army, "Derby's Scheme," and finally, "Conscripts." The old "regulars" of course put on most fearful side. It was amusing when an air-raid warning (a siren known as "mournful Mary") went at Mess and the shrapnel began to fly, to see the new girls all rush out to watch the little white balls bursting in the sky, and the old hands not turning a hair but going on steadily with the bully beef or Maconochie, whichever it happened to be. Then one by one the new ones would slink back rather ashamed of their enthusiasm and take their seats, and in time they in turn would smile indulgently as the still newer ones dashed out to watch.

We had no dug-out to go to, even if we had wanted to. Our new mess tent was built in the summer; and we said good-bye for ever to the murky gloom of the old Indian flapper.

One day I had gone out to tea with Logan and Chris to an "Archie" station at Pont le Beurre. During a pause I heard the following conversation take place.

Host to Logan: "I suppose, being in a Convoy Camp, you hear nothing but motor shop the whole time, and get to know quite a lot about them?"

"Rather," replied Logan, who between you and me hardly knew one end of a car from the other, "I'm becoming quite conversant with the different parts. One hears people exclaiming constantly: 'I've mislaid my big end and can't think where I've put the carburettor!'" The host, who appeared to know as much as she did, nodded sympathetically.

Chris and I happened to catch the Captain's eye, and we laughed for about five minutes. That big-end story went the round of the camp too, you may be quite sure.