Late this afternoon we had to turn out of Furnes and fly to Poperinghe. The drive was intensely interesting, through crowds of troops of every nationality, and the town seemed large and well lighted. It was crowded with people to see all our ambulances arrive. We went to a café, where there was a fire but nothing to eat, so some of the party went out and bought chops, and I cooked them in a stuffy little room which smelt of burnt fat.
After supper we went to a convent where the Queen of the Belgians had made arrangements for us to sleep. It was delightful. Each of us had a snowy white bed with white curtains in a long corridor, and there was a basin of water, cold but clean, and a towel for each of us. We thoroughly enjoyed our luxuries.
28 October.—The tide of battle seems to have swung away from us again and we were recalled to Furnes to-day. The hospital looked very bare and empty as all the patients had been evacuated, and there was nothing to do till fresh ones should come in. Three shells came over to-day and landed in a field near us. Some people say they were sent by our own naval guns firing wide. The souvenir grafters went out and got pieces of them.
DUNKIRK
2 November.—I have been spending a couple of nights in Dunkirk, where I went to meet Miss Fyfe. The Invicta got in late because the Hermes had been torpedoed and they had gone to her assistance. No doubt the torpedo was intended for the Invicta, which carries ammunition, and is becoming an unpopular boat in consequence. Forty of the Hermes men were lost.
Dunkirk is full of people, and one meets friends at every turn. I had tea at the Consulate one afternoon, and was rather glad to get away from the talk of shells and wounds, which is what one hears most of at Furnes.
I saw Lord Kitchener in the town one day; he had come to confer with Joffre, Sir John French, Monsieur Poincaré, and Mr. Churchill, at a meeting held at the Chapeau Rouge Hotel. Rather too many valuable men in one room, I thought—especially with so many spies about! Three men in English officers' uniforms were found to be Germans the other day and taken out and shot.
The Duchess of Sutherland has a hospital at our old Casino at Malo les Bains, and has made it very nice. I had a long chat with a Coldstream man who was there. He told me he was carried to a barn after being shot in the leg and the bone shattered. He lay there for six days before he was found, with nothing to eat but a few biscuits. He dressed his own wound.
"But," he said, "the string of my puttee had been driven in so far by the shot I couldn't find it to get the thing off, so I had to bandage over it."
I went down to the station one day to see if anything could be done for the wounded there. They are coming in at the rate of seven hundred a day, and are laid on straw in an immense goods-shed. They get nothing to eat, and the atmosphere is so bad that their wounds can't be dressed. They are all patient, as usual, only the groans are heartbreaking sometimes. We are arranging to have soup given to them, and a number of ambulance men arrived who will remove them to hospital ships and trains. But the goods-shed is a shambles, and let us leave it at that.[1]