IV
THE RETURN TO BRUSSELS
This seemed a favourable moment for me to go to Brussels for a day or two to visit my flock. The Committee gave me leave to go, but begged me to be back in two days, which I promised to do. A laissez-passer had been obtained from the German commandant for a Red Cross automobile to go into Brussels to fetch some supplies of dressings and bandages of which all the hospitals in the neighbourhood were woefully short. And I was also graciously accorded a ticket of leave by the same august authority to go for two days, which might be extended to three according to the length of stay of the automobile.
The night before I left, an aeroplane which had been flying very high above the town dropped some papers. The doctor with whom I was lodging secured one and brought it back triumphantly. It contained a message from the Burgomaster of Antwerp to his fellow-citizens, and ended thus: "Courage, fellow-citizens, in a fortnight our country will be delivered from the enemy."
We were all absurdly cheered by this message, and felt that it was only a matter of a short time now before the Germans were driven out of Belgium. We had had no news for so long that we thought probably the Antwerp Burgomaster had information of which we knew nothing, and I was looking forward to hearing some good news when I got to Brussels.
I found Brussels very much changed since I had left it some weeks before. Then it was in a fever of excitement, now it was in the chill of dark despair. German rule was firmly established, and was growing daily more harsh and humiliating for its citizens. Everything was done to Germanize the city, military automobiles were always dashing through, their hooters playing the notes of the Emperor's salute, Belgian automobiles that had been requisitioned whirred up and down the streets filled with German officers' wives and children, German time was kept, German money was current coin, and every café and confectioner's shop was always crowded with German soldiers. Every day something new was forbidden. Now it was taking photographs—the next day no cyclist was allowed to ride, and any cyclist in civil dress might be shot at sight, and so on. The people were only just kept in hand by their splendid Burgomaster, M. Max, but more than once it was just touch and go whether he would be able to restrain them any longer.
What made the people almost more angry than anything else was the loss of their pigeons, as many of the Belgians are great pigeon fanciers and have very valuable birds. Another critical moment was when they were ordered to take down all the Belgian flags. Up to that time the Belgian flag, unlike every other town that the Germans had occupied, had floated bravely from nearly every house in Brussels. M. Max had issued a proclamation encouraging the use of it early in the war. Now this was forbidden as it was considered an insult to the Germans. Even the Red Cross flag was forbidden except on the German military hospitals, and I thought Brussels looked indeed a melancholy city as we came in from Charleroi that morning in torrents of rain in the Red Cross car.
My first business was to go round and visit all my nurses. I found most of them very unhappy because they had no work. All the patients had been removed from the fire-station hospital and nearly all the private hospitals and ambulances were empty too. It was said that Germans would rather have all their wounded die than be looked after by Englishwomen, and there were dreadful stories afloat which I cannot think any German believed, of English nurses putting out the eyes of the German wounded. Altogether there were a good many English Sisters and doctors in Brussels—three contingents sent out by the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, to which we belonged, a large unit sent by the British Red Cross Society, and a good many sent out privately. It certainly was not worth while for more than a hundred English nurses to remain idle in Brussels, and the only thing to do now was to get them back to England as soon as possible. In the meantime a few of them took the law into their own hands, and slipped away without a passport, and got back to England safely by unofficial means.
The second afternoon I was in Brussels I received a note from one of my nurses who had been sent to Tirlemont in my absence by the Belgian Red Cross Society. The contents of the note made me very anxious about her, and I determined to go and see her if possible. I had some Belgian acquaintances who had come from that direction a few days before, and I went to ask their advice as to how I should set about it. They told me the best way, though rather the longest, was to go first to Mâlines and then on to Tirlemont from there, and the only possible way of getting there was to walk, as they had done a few days previously, and trust to getting lifts in carts. There had been no fighting going on when they had passed, and they thought I should get through all right.