It was Mr. Gleeson and Mr. Ashmead-Bartlett who, with great gallantry, volunteered to go back and search for our leader. They took the light car and sped back toward the burning town. The ambulances went on with their cargo of wounded, and Lady Dorothie Feilding and I were left alone for a little time in one of the cars. We drove back along the road toward Dixmude, and rescued another wounded man left in a wayside cottage.
By this time there were five towns blazing in the darkness, and in spite of the awful suspense which we were now suffering we could not help staring at the fiendish splendor of that sight.
Dr. Munro joined us again, and after consultation we decided to get as near to Dixmude as we could, in case our friends had to come out without their car or had been wounded.
The German bombardment was now terrific. All the guns were concentrated upon Dixmude and the surrounding trenches. In the darkness under a stable wall I stood listening to the great crashes for an hour, when I had not expected such a lease of life. Inside the stable soldiers were sleeping in the straw, careless that at any moment a shell might burst through upon them. The hour seemed a night; then we saw the gleam of headlights, and an English voice called out.
Ashmead-Bartlett and Gleeson had come back. They had gone to the entrance to Dixmude, but could get no further, owing to the flames and shells. They, too, had waited for an hour, but had not found de Broqueville. It seemed certain that he was dead; and, very sorrowfully, as there was nothing to be done, we drove back to Furnes.
At the gate of the convent were some Belgian ambulances which had come from another part of the front with their wounded. I helped to carry one of them in, and strained my shoulders with the weight of the stretcher. Another wounded man put his arm around my neck, and then, with a dreadful cry, collapsed, so that I had to hold him in a strong grip. A third man, horribly smashed about the head, walked almost unaided into the operating room. Mr. Gleeson and I led him with just a touch on his arm. This morning he lies dead on a little pile of straw in a quiet corner of the courtyard.
I sat down to a supper, which I had not expected to eat. There was a strange excitement in my body, which trembled a little after the day's adventures. It seemed very strange to be sitting down to table with cheerful faces about me, but some of the faces were not cheerful. Those of us who knew of the disappearance of de Broqueville sat silently over our soup.
Then suddenly Lady Dorothie Feilding gave a little cry of joy, and Lieut. de Broqueville came walking briskly forward. It seemed a miracle; it was hardly less than that. For several hours after our departure from Dixmude he had remained in that inferno. He had missed us when he went down into the cellar to haul out another wounded man, forgetting that he had given us the order to start. There he had remained, with buildings crashing all around him until the German fire had died down a little. He succeeded in rescuing his wounded man, for whom he found room in a Belgian ambulance outside the town and walked back along the road to Furnes.
We clasped hands and were thankful for his escape. This morning he has gone again to what is left of Dixmude with a flying column. Dr. Munro and Mr. Gleeson, with Lady Dorothie Feilding and her friends, are in the party, although in Dixmude German infantry have taken possession of the outer ruins.
The courage of this English field ambulance under the Belgian Red Cross is one of those splendid things which shine through this devil's work of war.