Far-away Stories

by William John Locke

"Well, if you like 'em, it's all the same to me. I'm delighted to have you. But give me the good old ghosts of blighty all the time!"

The piercing of the line at Cambrai was a surprise no less to the Germans than to the British. The great tent of the casualty clearing-station was crammed with wounded. Doctors and nurses, with tense, burning eyes and bodies aching from strain, worked and worked, and thought nothing of that which might be passing outside. No one knew that the German wave had passed over. And the German wave itself, at that part of the line, was but a set of straggling and mystified groups.

Camilla Warrington, head of the heroic host of women working in the dimly lit reek of blood and agony, had not slept for two nights and two days. The last convoy of wounded had poured in a couple of hours before. She stood by the surgeon, aiding him, the perfect machine. At last, in the terrible rota, they came to a man swathed round the middle in the rough bandages of the field dressing-station. He was unconscious. They unwound him, and revealed a sight of unimaginable horror.

"He's no good, poor chap!" said the surgeon.

"Can't you try?" she asked, and put repressing hands on the wounded man.

"Not the slightest good," said the medical officer.

No one in the great tent of agony knew that they were isolated from the British army. From the outside, it looked solitary, lighted, and secure. Two German soldiers, casual stragglers, looked in at the door of the great tent. In the kindly German way, they each threw in a bomb, and ran off laughing. Seven men were killed outright and many rewounded. And Camilla Warrington was killed.[[1]]

[[1]] The bloody and hideous incident related here is not an invention. It is true. It happened when and where I have indicated.—W.J.L.

The guards, in their memorable sweep, cleared the ground. The casualty clearing-station again came into British hands.

There is a grave in that region whose head-board states that it is consecrated "to the Heroic Memory of Camilla Warrington, one of the Great Women of the War."