EIGHTEEN MONTHS IN THE WAR ZONE

GOING ON DUTY AFTER A REST

EIGHTEEN MONTHS IN
THE WAR ZONE

THE RECORD OF A WOMAN'S WORK ON
THE WESTERN FRONT

BY
KATE JOHN FINZI

With an Introduction by
Major-General Sir Alfred Turner, K.C.B.

With Sixteen Plates

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1916

Dedicated

To the Memory of those
whom I have lost

[FOREWORD]

When the great history of this almost untellable War comes to be told, historians will find themselves faced with a collection of evidence so devious, so at variance, that their task will be well-nigh stupendous. Whether, when they come to sift their data, they will have time to cast more than a passing glance at the great military bases that sprung up in an allied country, where once an invading army had stood, remains to be seen. That these bases, and in especial the largest and nearest to the firing line, Boulogne, have played a large rôle in the scheme of things cannot be denied.

Yet, of all the many thousands who lived and passed through Boulogne, there remains not one who can tell of the gradual development of that once insignificant fishing town into one of the greatest bases in the War Zone.

Surely, therefore, it behoves those of us who love every inch of her harassing cobblestones; to whom her picturesque squalor is a thing of everlasting joy; those of us who see in the sun-bathed masts, half-hidden in grey mists, pictures whose Turneresqueness vies with Turner; who can clasp fisherfolk, peasants and townsmen by the hand and be proud to claim them friends—it behoves us to recapture what can never be recaptured again, because there is none left to tell the tale—a picture of Anglicised Boulogne in war-time.

True, our Boulognese coast is not riddled with fortifications like the approaches to an English naval port, nor are our fields honeycombed with trenches (though go past Calais, northward, towards Dunkirk, and you shall see what you shall see!). Yet there were days in 1914 when Boulogne promised to play a larger rôle in the history of England than she had ever played before—days when hospitals stood empty and all were prepared to evacuate the town at a moment's notice, in reply to the mayor's already printed mandates—days when, had the enemy but known how efficiently he had pierced the British lines, he might have realised his dream of devastating our island home and sweeping the coast with his long-range guns from Calais to Boulogne.

Those days will never return. Between us at the base and our enemies are a myriad valiant lives and countless guns of every size and device, a force, in fact, which no German strategy in the world, scrupulous or unscrupulous, can overcome; and still the little temporary British city grows and grows, a city of tents and red crosses and corrugated iron huts; and still stalwart British forms, marching along the winding white roads, cast longing glances at the dim coast of distant Albion.

But it is not for those who heard the call in the later months so much as in memory of those early heroes of Mons, who knew the bitterness of a valiant retreat, the horror of forced marches along parched roads, with only the prod of the next man's bayonet to keep him awake, and only a flap cut from the tail of his shirt between the pitiless sun and the dreaded delirium that would leave him a prey to the Huns' barbarities; in memory of these it is that I take up the pen to run the gauntlet of a thousand critical eyes on a way fraught with difficulties.

My acknowledgments are due to Mr. A. M. James for permission to use his photograph of the cemetery, and to my brother Edgar, whose patience in putting together what is of necessity a piecy document has made the publication of this diary possible.

"No easy hopes or lies
Shall bring us to our goal,
But iron sacrifice
Of body, will, and soul.
There is but one task for all—
For each one life to give;
Who stands if freedom fall?
Who dies if England live?"

—Rudyard Kipling.

[CONTENTS]

LIST OF PLATES

[INTRODUCTION]

By Major-Gen. Sir ALFRED TURNER, K.C.B.

In the following pages Miss Kate Finzi gives in a plain, unvarnished style a terrible and graphic picture of the horrors of war, which have been intensified, as never before, owing to the ferocious savagery of the German troops, as systematically ordered by their officers and commanded by the Kaiser himself, the greatest criminal in the world's record; for this war, planned and prepared deliberately by him, is the greatest crime ever committed against civilisation and humanity. It is charitable to designate him a criminal lunatic, or, as his prototype Caligula was described, an epileptic, with highly developed criminal instincts.

When one reads of such sufferings as those described by Miss Finzi, one wonders for what end Providence can have allowed such an inhuman monster to exist and cause such sorrow, such suffering, such death and destruction to be inflicted on mankind.

The books written upon the vast conflict are already legion, but I think this is the first record—a most pathetic and interesting record—of what happened at the base hospitals at Boulogne, where tens of thousands of wounded, maimed and mutilated incessantly arrived, to be passed on to England, or to linger there till death came as a happy release from their sufferings.

How many officers and men of those glorious "first seven divisions" which left these shores in August, 1914—a tiny but, for its size, an incomparable army, which stemmed the seemingly irresistibly flowing tide of von Kluck's legions against Paris—the "contemptible little army of General French," as it was described by the imperial braggart of Germany, lie buried near the spot where stands the memorial pillar in honour of Napoleon's army of invasion in 1804. After the war it will be incumbent on us, with the approval of our firm and faithful Allies, whose spirit, bravery and skill in fighting has astounded the world, to raise another monument especially to the memory of our heroic countrymen who withstood the hordes of the Hun and thwarted his advance both on Paris and Calais.

Miss Finzi's book is quite unpretentious, and is a simple record of facts which brings home vividly to our minds the sickening horrors of war and the awful sufferings that our gallant defenders have had to undergo in doing their duty, in the service of their King and country, for the honour and integrity of the Empire, and for the safety and protection of the people in this country in this great war of liberation. What they have been protected from can well be gathered from the openly expressed threats of the Germans—soldiers, military writers, professors and ministers of German religion—that the crimes and outrages which they committed in Belgium and France, Poland and Serbia, should be as nothing to those which they would make our people suffer. It is well that these things should be brought home to our people, who, owing to our insular position, have experienced nothing of the horrors of war and are apt to make too light of them from want of power to realise them.

Naturally there was great confusion at the base, owing to the suddenness with which war broke out upon nations entirely unprepared for it and taken by surprise, for, although dark suspicions of the evil designs of Germany lurked in many men's minds, the extent of the infamy of the Kaiser and his pan-German parasites did not enter into the minds of many people, not even in the case of those who, like myself, thought they knew Germans well. The latter veiled their innate brutality, their blood lust, and their intention to acquire world domination through brute force, with consummate craftiness.

Miss Finzi gives a graphic account of the troubles that had to be surmounted, owing to insufficiency of hospital requisites, beds, medicines, doctors and nurses; but this was inseparable from the nature of things, and has long since been righted. We may indeed be proud of our services of mercy; nothing can exceed their value and efficiency, namely the R.A.M.C and our nurses. If our gallant soldiers and sailors engaged, through political blunder, in the "Gallipoli gamble" and Kut disaster had been as well tended and supplied as those in France, how many lives, thrown away through political ineptitude, would now have been spared to us!

Miss Finzi writes most modestly of her own work, but we know that she and all the genuine nurses and helpers worked devotedly and well, and that the deepest debt of gratitude is due from the nation to them, who softened the horrors of war to our soldiers, who ministered aid to them when they were sore stricken by wounds or diseases, and mitigated their tortures. It must not be forgotten that for many months the capture of Calais seemed not improbable; the Huns had no doubts upon the subject, and time after time, as in the case of Paris and Verdun, the bloodthirsty Kaiser gave his vain and arrogant orders: "To be taken at all cost, no matter at what sacrifice!" A truly beneficent ruler and father of his people! The R.A.M.C. and nurses, therefore, were working at terrible disadvantage, with no certainty that the bestial and brutish enemy would not shortly appear, to wreak upon them his savage instincts of murder and lust, signs of which were constantly brought in to them: terrible wounds caused by expanding bullets, and, worst of all, accounts by eye-witnesses and victims of the perpetual and designed firing upon hospitals, dressing stations, stretcher-bearers, it being, apparently, a craze of the Germans to kill and ill-treat what is helpless and cannot resist them. Tales also were related of civil population—men, women and children—being butchered, and Red Cross nurses outraged in the most fiendish manner, and then mutilated and murdered. With such possible prospects and fate at the hands of men compared to whom the Huns of Attila, the Goths of Alaric, the Tartars of Timur and the Mongols of Genghis Khan deserved a crown of mercy. Imagine what our nurses are and what blessings they have brought to our soldiers and sailors. At the commencement of the Crimean War there were no Army nurses and no civil nurses, except those dreadful creatures described by Charles Dickens in "Martin Chuzzlewit," such as Sairey Gamp and Betsy Prig—fat, waddling, coarse, ignorant, unclean and unkempt, and usually smelling of gin; they attended births, sick-beds, and laying out of corpses, in which they took great pride, as it brought them in touch with the undertaker, to their mutual advantage. Contrast such so-called nurses, in their poke bonnets, smelly robes and clogs, with their huge, bulging umbrellas, their noisiness and heavy hands, with those of to-day, with their neat and serviceable uniform, their gentleness, their light hands, their kindness and sympathy with their suffering patients. As the late Dean Hole wrote in his "Now and Then," they might be compared to a beautiful yacht scudding along in a light breeze, under a blue sky and shining sun, while the ancient apologies for nurses rolled along, a water-(or gin and water) logged barge in the Thames in a thick, yellow November fog. (Dean Hole.)

It was to Florence Nightingale, of ever-blessed memory, that we owe the foundation of our Army nursing system in 1854. When the news of the battle of the Alma came, and of many thousands of wounded men with no nurses and a totally insufficient medical staff, and not a single ambulance, she volunteered to take out a number of nurses. For a wonder her offer was accepted, for in those days every sort of change in Army matters was considered a pernicious innovation. She took out thirty-four nurses to the Crimea, and before long had 10,000 wounded in her charge. The work which she and her nurses did was marvellous, and they stuck to it till their health broke down, as our present nurses have done. After the war £50,000 was subscribed for the purpose of founding an institution for the training of nurses in connection with St. Thomas's and King's College Hospitals. From that time the Army nursing system has steadily developed under the practical and ever-ready patronage of Royalty, till it reached its present perfection. In the Soudan and South African Wars the services of the nurses were invaluable. When the present war showed itself to be one of such gigantic dimensions, and when our Army, due to the genius of Lord Kitchener, swelled to the size of millions, it was feared that a sufficient number of Army nurses could not be forthcoming; but then the women of England showed what they were made of. Hundreds and thousands devoted themselves at once to training as nurses, others to the less-skilled work required in hospitals for the victims of war; and now, owing to them and the admirable chiefs and subordinate officers of the R.A.M.C, and to the patriotic and self-sacrificing manner in which private medical practitioners have come forward with their services, little or nothing is wanted, considering the gigantic nature and scope of this terrible war.

Miss Finzi is to be congratulated upon having written a most interesting and readable book, full of facts and personal experiences, such experiences as, please God, no one will again have to relate; and this will be so when once the Hohenzollerns, the cause of all trouble in Europe and elsewhere for many decades, are exterminated or driven into obscurity.

The work shows forth in bright colours the universal devotion of our nurses—heroic women who face all dangers and hardships for the sake of doing good to others. Among these must ever stand forth the name of Edith Cavell, who spent her whole life in mitigating the sufferings of others, who nursed even German officers in her hospital who had probably committed unspeakable crimes and atrocities in Belgium. This weighed as nothing, as might have been expected, in the eyes of the barbarous Teutons, to whom mercy, justice and gratitude are unknown. She was done to death vilely and brutally, but her martyrdom will never be forgotten or forgiven; it will be one of the foulest of the many foul stains on the fame of the Kaiser and his accomplices, while it will ever shed a ray of glory upon the noble record of our British Nurses.

Alfred E. Turner.

[BOOK I]
1914
As It Was in the Beginning

[CHAPTER I]
October, 1914

October 21st, London. It was not without a sense of relief that we watched the hands of the station clock move on to the stroke of six, heard the train doors slam, and cast a last look at the anxious little group of friends who clustered round the carriage doors to bid us farewell and God-speed.

To be quite frank, their cheering savoured somewhat of mourning and much of admonition.

Were we not the tattered remnants of a once-flourishing Red Cross detachment, whose energies and equipment alike had been left behind at the enforced evacuation of Ostend? Were we not about to face all kinds of undreamed-of perils?

So they whispered to us; but as we relapsed into our seats, to the accompaniment of a cheery chorus of rag-times from the extensive répertoire of the recruits in a neighbouring carriage, our hearts beat hard with trepidation and anticipation of the Great Unknown. After all, who were we amongst the countless thousands clamouring to "get out" to the scene of action?

Merely two Englishwomen, of none too much experience and no too great age, whom it might please Fate to carry into the scene of action, there to play the smallest of parts and to be vouchsafed an insight into the vagaries of war.

Southampton. It was a clear, still, moonlight night when we reached Southampton, the docks silent and darkened. Outside many ambulance wagons awaited their turn to be loaded. The hotel to which we had been recommended had been commandeered as an embarkation office. Moreover, Mr. N——, the clergyman who was to have met us and finished the journey with us, failed to turn up. So, after passport formalities, we went straight on board.

All we carried by way of luggage was one small hand-valise apiece, containing, besides changes of underwear, the regulation Red Cross caps, aprons, dresses—that uniform so effective en masse, so unbecoming to the individual.

October 22nd, s.s. ——, 8 a.m. The cabins were nearly all taken for the officers of the Irish regiment crossing on the boat, so we passed a more or less restless night in the saloon. As the stewardess said: "We like to give the men the best of everything. Who knows when they will next sleep in a bed?" It makes one choke to see these fine strapping fellows going out so cheerfully to meet their fate. It is only then that one ceases to think of war as a great game, and sees it as a great slaughter!

When we set sail the mysterious blue, herald of dawn, was over all, but we are entering Havre harbour in a sea that is black and dreary and full of forebodings.

Le Hâvre. The post office here might be in Finsbury, the cablegram window in Leadenhall Street, for Havre is full of British Tommies in their smart new khaki and gilt numerals and badges, and they walk up and down the streets in twos and threes—very much at home, or separately—equally lost.

When we landed at Havre the Rev. E—— N——, our khaki-clad parson, joined us; and, having deposited our luggage at the station and lunched, we wended our way to the British Consulate, and British and French Red Cross offices, in the hope of gleaning some news of the rest of our party, who seemed to have vanished off the face of the globe.

Our Red Cross uniform carries with it a strange mixture of respect and suspicion—respect for the noble symbol we bear, suspicion on account of the many unlicensed people of somewhat doubtful repute who have flooded the country since the outbreak of war, perpetrating many indiscretions, opening many uncalled-for charities—all under the name of the Red Cross, with which, ten chances to one, they have no connection at all.

To us, however, everybody is so kind and courteous, and our parson, being a tall, white-haired man of military bearing, and in appearance much more like a general than a sky-pilot, commands universal respect and salutes.

We decided to spend a night at Havre and call early for news at the Consulate, and it was then that my modicum of French and savoir-faire in the ways of hotels and hotel proprietors stood us in good stead, for the rest of the party knew no word of French and appeared never before to have travelled abroad.

At the Consulate we came across Lady ——, one of the women we were seeking and who was supposed to be seeking us. As we entered the room a familiar voice rang out: "In the name of the Belgian Government you can do anything"—and we found ourselves face to face with the chic little woman who, charming though she may be at a London "at-home," is, we fear, liable to give our Allies a false impression of English women in war-time.

She has already courted notoriety quite successfully in Belgium, where she would appear at the most busy moment in the wards with a smile and a "May I see round your hospital?" only to be followed by her press-man with a camera. Seeing she has never, to our knowledge, done a day's work in the wards, we are growing tired of her portraits in the daily papers and weekly journals:

"Lady —— rendering valuable aid to a severely wounded Belgian," or:

"A war heroine who is giving her services at the front."

We retired early, but the incessant sounds of coming and going made sleep impossible to me. As the moon peeped through the open window on to the restless form of my companion, I crept out of bed and knelt by the embrasure. She looked very young with her halo of fair hair, and for the first time I realised how utterly alone we were. It is odd how quickly people come into one's life nowadays, become the most important factor of existence, and, meteor-like, pass out of one's ken, leaving nothing but a fast-dimming memory to prove how large they once loomed on the horizon. After all—war or no war—we are absolute strangers, of different interests, different education, different social standing. Yet for weal or woe our lot is cast together. Only for a moment these thoughts assailed me; then the bigness of the Great Game in which we are to play our parts drove all little personal feelings away.

October 24th, Rouen. We arrived yesterday in the wild-goose chase after the Mrs. C—— who wired for us and was to have given us employment, and are installed at a little hotel perched on the top of the hill, from the windows of which we can enjoy the old garden, gorgeous in its autumn tints of brown, gold and green.

There being an over-sufficient number of well-equipped hospitals here, as in Havre, we have not bothered to inquire after work, but the Rev. E—— N—— has gone on to Paris, and so we spent the day enjoying the sights of Rouen. Of the beauties of the Gothic Cathedral of St. Ouen, of the smartness of our Tommies, of the less solid but strikingly lithe and businesslike-looking French soldiers, in their historic and treasured red trousers and blue coats, there is much to be said. Yet it is the incongruity of the cosmopolitan crowd that is most noteworthy.

Dusky Zouaves, in wide pantaloons and brilliant coatees, are to be seen on all sides—mostly with bandaged limbs, be it noted—and alongside swarthy Indian Mussulmans, clad in khaki and topped with turbans. Side by side with them go interpreters in mufti, Scottish soldiers in tartans and covered kilts. Little French girls walk past with R.A.M.C. badges and numerals pinned across their shawls; Army nurses, in grey and red; the usual crowd of dark Frenchwomen in their sombre weeds.

Watching the seething mass of humanity on the quay, the marching soldiers, the footsore, homeless refugees, the motley crowd culled from every conceivable race and every quarter of the globe, it seems as if the Powers Above had decided to abolish the distinction between east and west, black and white, and weld together one race to combat the oncoming Germans. For surely we are pitted against a foe so strong in physique, and so brave and cunning, that many years of strenuous training and thrift will be required to fit the united races to withstand his onslaught.

October 25th. Mr. N—— returned last night from Paris armed with introductions to Lord ---- at Boulogne headquarters, where we are to go, and the information that the Paris hospitals are being steadily cleared.

All this time we have had very little news. Since the fall of Antwerp on October 9th, and the beginning of the Ypres-Armentières battle two days later, we have had nothing but rumours to subsist on, and these alternately wildly optimistic and disquieting.

It seems so strange to think, while wandering through the churches here, glorying in the leisure to enjoy the exquisite contour of the Gothic arches, the rich mediæval windows, the Renaissance chapels, that to those enemies, who are proving themselves such utter Vandals, we really owe so much of our knowledge of Art and Architecture. Can any cultured being who has at some time or another associated with his art-loving foe, studied his literature, perused Burckhardt, delved into the depths of Faust's philosophy and the heights of Zarathustra's madness; sat on Brunhilde's rock or felt the Valkyrie riding past in the furious sweep of the snowstorm; gazed from the heights of the Black Forest into the unknown stretch of sky beyond the blue hills with that yearning for beautiful things engendered by a land endowed by Nature with every gift; and, descending into the darkening forests, realised the milieu which inspired Grimm's "Fairy Tales" and Morgenstern, and even the translators of Ibsen and Jacobsen—can such a being fail to be nonplussed at this huge upheaval?

October 26th, Train militaire. We are passing through the lovely Norman country at a snail's pace in a military train bearing French soldiers to the front. Their distant "Marseillaise" sounds less hearty than our Tommies' "It's a long way to Tipperary," but then they already know the devastation War has wrought in their homes; they are the defenders of an invaded country.

The cost of our ticket to Abancour (military rate, for our uniform amongst the French receives the utmost consideration) is 1 franc 50 centimes. After Abancour, it appears, there are no trains to Boulogne, so how we are to get across the sixty intervening miles no man knows!

Abancour, 7.30 p.m. We reached the neat little model village of Abancour at dusk. It stands on a wind-swept plain, over which the lowering clouds are scurrying menacingly this evening. Just as at Havre market women offered us flowers "for the blessed Croix Rouge," so here the proprietor of the post-card shop insists on giving us pastilles de menthe to take on our journey.

Eu. This is the nearest point we can get to Boulogne, and having knocked up the sleepy hotel-keeper at 10 p.m. to obtain a night's lodging, having made bovril for us all out of the tablets some good friend had thrust into my travelling kit, and served out rations of horse-flesh sandwiches and nuts to make them savoury, I have at last tumbled into my damp bed, wrapped in a travelling rug.

A dismal rain has set in, which brings to mind the words of the secretary at the Rouen Consulate: "When winter sets in the fighting must temporarily cease. I know every inch of Belgium; know, too, that no attack can be made on country so sodden that every wheel sinks at least a yard into the ground. Believe me, what the Germans have they will hold—at least this winter. For Belgium will be impregnable!"

October 27th. We arose at 5 a.m. to catch a train bound towards Abbeville, and, after a refreshing draught of black coffee in glasses, found ourselves installed in the train, with the prospect of staying there till 5 p.m. If we had wondered at finding Eu well guarded on all sides, we no longer did so when we learned that only a few weeks back it was in enemy hands, and formed, in fact, the German headquarters on the march on Paris.

Shortly before reaching Abbeville a young Belgian soldier in the carriage next door put his head in to inquire politely whether we were some of the infirmières anglaises who had tended the Belgian wounded in Ostend.

It appeared he recognised Miss A——, as soon as she doffed her ugly felt uniform hat, as the nurse who had dressed his wounded back the day he was carried into the Casino hospital after the Battle of Termonde.

His career, which he sketched delightedly for our edification, perched on the arm of the window seat, had been eventful, to say the least of it.

Aged 17, Fernand L——, of Brussels, together with fifteen others of his school class of twenty, joined the ranks as volontaires and served through Namur. Captured by the Germans in a farmhouse where he was scouting, he contrived to escape and reach his native town, where the now famous burgomaster, the valiant M. Max, got his papers viséd. By asserting that he was only fifteen years old, and therefore not liable to military service, he finally reached Cherbourg, and is now on his way back to the front, hoping to join some regiment at Calais.

A charming boy, full of enthusiasm for the war and the conviction that we shall soon be marching into Berlin, his one regret, when he heard how the hospital equipment had had to be abandoned to the enemy, was that he had not helped himself to a much-needed blanket.

"Had I but known," he exclaimed, "I would have taken four!"

Fernand L—— was clad in a wonderful combination of garments that he seemed to have gleaned on his journeyings; most remarkable amongst them were the green knitted socks and pair of canvas shoes which some Good Samaritan had given him at Ostend, in those days when even the supply of anæsthetics was apt to run low. Proudest of all was he of the fact that he had once spent a few days in Liverpool to play in a football match, which fact, he felt, bound him to his allies more than any of the forced ties of war. His companion, a few years his senior, who spoke seven languages, was a good-looking youth with a radiant smile. They had been together through various escapades, and were full of the atrocities of the Germans, which, alas! seem authentic enough.

Once when they were fleeing they had come to a deserted village where a farmer gave them shelter. His only daughter had been brutally mutilated and murdered before her own parents because, in resisting the embraces of an officer, she scratched out one of his eyes.

"They cut off her breasts and carried away a foot as a trophy," was the tale they told.

As they got out, the Belgians, in token of gratitude, pressed into our hands the little paper flags of the Allies that they were wearing and buttons from their coats. Then, seizing a notebook from my pocket, Fernand L—— inscribed their names and addresses at Bruges, exacting at the same time promises that we would call and see them, or their families, on our way "to the Rhine in a few months"!

The well-guarded lines, the ammunition trains, the big guns and horses and other paraphernalia of war—how real it all begins to seem!

At Abbeville, where we explored the shops and camps and churches, a nasty rumour came through, via two cavalry officers, that the Germans are at Calais, and many of the townsfolk appeared at their doors to bewail their fate.

On leaving every place of beauty one wonders how long it will remain safe from the Vandals—one leaves it with a sentimental longing to linger for "one last look."

October 27th, Boulogne. The sky was a lurid red as our train steamed into Boulogne, and an evening mist hung over the town. On all sides high masts rose into the sky; hospital ships, ambulance trains, little fishing-smacks, one does not know to which to give most attention. Everywhere the population of picturesque fisherfolk in their brown blouses gives way admiringly to the Red Cross ambulances and officials who carry on their work on such an enormous scale.

HOSPITAL SHIP

The journey had seemed long enough in spite of its many incidents, as day by day we watched the pretty though uninteresting fields slip by, or restlessly paced the stations during the interminable halts, with little food for thought, save vague surmises as to the future, and little to eat save the slightly bitter bread of the people and apples, the only things obtainable at wayside stations already ransacked by the hordes of hungry soldiers who had passed through earlier; and oftentimes we had been glad enough to descend from the carriages to refresh ourselves at the station pumps, marked "drinkable" or "non-drinkable," as the case might be.

We had formed an odd trio. The tall, bent figure of the clergyman, with his dreamy demeanour and utter obliviousness of all things practical; my commandant, a young woman who, having spent most of her life at hospital work, hailed every diversion from the same gleefully. Everything to her was new, for she had never been out of England before, and to a veteran traveller her joy at the ways of this new country was extraordinarily interesting. Thirdly, there was myself, fresh from the salutary discipline of the wards of a London hospital.

And now it is all over, that journey. The destination is reached. The Unknown will soon be revealed.

The Commissioner to whom we were directed received us with open arms.

"Nurses—thank God!" was the exclamation as we were turned over to the mercies of the billeting officer, who designated an airy room overlooking the quayside, on the third floor of the Red Cross headquarters, for our use.

Yet it appears that in spite of the dearth of nurses there are many formalities to be gone through before we can begin work; and as only nurses who have had three years' training in a big London hospital are to be accepted (for is anything but the best good enough for our fighting men?), there may be some difficulty for probationers.

Thus, having deposited our bundles in our billets, we were sent to see Lady —— at the hotel, where she combines the duties of lady-in-waiting to Queen Amélie of Portugal and organiser-in-chief of the Red Cross nurses.

Here we learned for the first time of the confusion that arises out of the fact that both qualified nurses and members of the Voluntary Aid Detachment are wearing the same uniform; we heard, too, of the difficulties experienced by the authorities to prevent unlicensed people organising hospitals which they are unfitted to run.

As we wended our way back wearily through the lighted, crowded streets teeming with life (Miss A—— having signed a year's contract as a trained nurse), something told me that this is to be the scene of my activities too; that so long as my betrothed is in France, Providence will let me play my part.

On returning to headquarters we learned for the first time the unpleasant function of the Censor. All letters have to be left open, posted in the military box, and, if they are to pass the Censor, must contain no mention or description of places, troops, ships, people we have met on our journey, etc.

This is not merely a precaution against spies, we are told, but a measure of prudence in regard to false rumours; for men who have never got farther than Boulogne, and never been within gunshot, have been known to write home long tirades about the bloody trenches in which they stand all day, dodging fragments of shells and killing Germans by the score!

October 28th. After breakfast this morning we set out to see whether there were any letters from home at the Consulate. On our way up the hill a funeral overtook us. There were four hearses and seven coffins, each covered with a Union Jack, which contrasted strangely with the weird-shaped French funeral carriages and the drivers in costumes like beadles with large three-cornered hats.

We followed the cortège a quarter of an hour up the hill to the cemetery, where the newly consecrated ground was full of freshly covered graves.

The coffins were soon lowered, and as they lay there in a row not an eye of the little group of onlookers was dry.

The R.A.M.C. pall-bearers, the chaplain who went through the service with a rapidity that showed his familiarity with the job, a handful of French peasants—that was all. And they laid them to rest at the top of the hill, and only two English nurses who never saw them could bear the message of their last resting-place to their homes. God! that such wanton destruction should be.

Opposite our window, as I write, the ambulance men are deftly unloading a train and carrying their sad, still burdens aboard the hospital ship on which Miss A—— crossed from Ostend. All day long, all night long, the wagons come and go. Funerals pass, not one, but three, four, five at a time, followed by orderlies; turbaned Sikhs and Gurkhas, looking quaintly odd with their unaccustomed shirts (gifts, no doubt, from some willing helpers at home) hanging loose below their coats, like a flounced skirt, and creating a perfect sensation whenever they pass the simple peasant folk.

Later, we walked into Wimereux and took snapshots of the wounded Tommies who thronged the beach. They were mostly arm and leg cases, and a cheery, if rough-looking, lot too, in their bedraggled khaki, which, from the distance, was scarcely distinguishable from the sands.

The Reverend E—— N—— has found plenty to do, and is already taking work out of the overtaxed Bishop's hands. I, in the meantime, am making the best of my leisure and enjoying every hour of the sunshine. "Father N.," as we call the padre, got into conversation with an Army veteran to-day at lunch, whose views were interesting.

"Do you think the Germans will get to Calais?" he asked.

"Probably not; but if they do, they'll make for here. This is the place they're after—as a post for their submarines. And Heaven knows what we shall do with our stores. It won't be possible to get them away in time!"

About a mile along the quay we came upon the debris of a camp with the fire still burning; piles of reaping machines, traction engines and carts, all bearing the names of English firms from Manchester to Crouch End, lay alongside; and, finally, in the distance there hove in sight the French refugee ship which was blown up in the Channel yesterday between here and Folkestone.

In the evening we joined a group of nurses round the fire. They are pleasant girls just down from Paris, where they did relieving work at some of the hotel hospitals.

The Astoria in particular they describe as a maze. "You go to get a drink of milk for a patient, and when you've found the milk you've lost your man and may hunt for hours, only to find in the end that his need has already been supplied," they say. Their assistants were culled from the French nobility, whose unflagging efforts to help are typical of France's indomitable spirit. Amusing incidents often occur.

One doctor, on being much pressed, accepted an invitation to tea with a well-known aristocratic family, who assured him they were inviting people who would be of especial interest to him. His amusement on arriving may be pictured when he found that the other guests consisted of a roomful of wounded Tommies.

Another doctor, overwhelmed by the amount of titles to whom he had been introduced, meeting a nurse in the corridor, began wearily with:

"Look here, I say, now, are you a blooming princess?" before he gave his orders!

In spite of the wonderful dirt and bad drainage that reigns in the nurses' quarters, we must be grateful, they say, for our accommodation. Nurses aren't expected to require much, it seems. Someone quoted the old chestnut from Punch of the lady who, on being asked by the newly arrived nurse in which room she was to sleep, exclaimed in blank amazement:

"Oh, but I thought you were a trained hospital nurse!"

October 29th. Let me tell the tale of No. —— Stationary Hospital. It should go down to posterity as a memorial of what British resourcefulness may achieve, even if its existence was the outcome of the proverbial British state of unpreparedness. For what in the annals of History has equalled the holocaust and chaos of modern warfare, of which there was no precedent, of which everything has had to be learned by the bitterest experience?

Three days before we left England, at the beginning of the fight for Calais, which continues to grow more violent daily, a certain Major N—— found himself in charge of the wounded who were being brought down by the thousand in trains, and left helpless on their stretchers by the quayside to await the arrival of the ever-busy hospital ships.

Already the C—— and I—— Hotels were choc-à-bloc with wounded, who lay so close together in the corridors that it was necessary to climb over one stretcher to reach the next patient, and often stand astride the pallets to dress the wounds.

The Casino was opened, but in less time than it takes to tell was as crowded as the others.

A disused sugar shed, a vast wooden barn whose cracked cement floor is piled high with dust, whose smashed glass roofing is besmirched with dirt, is hardly an ideal site for a hospital, but it is the best thing to hand, and the Major commandeered it, and here, before the lumber had been cleared, before the glass had been repaired or the walls whitewashed, the wounded began to tumble in. It wasn't much of a place, but it was out of the torrential rain which had set in and bade fair to continue, and it was less cold than the open air.

By day and night the orderlies worked, alternately preparing the place and attending to the wounded. A solitary English girl who happened to be on the spot had volunteered her services, and was doing her best single-handed in the wards. One day the Major, walking on the quay, saw some Red Cross nurses. They were the identical ones we had met on their arrival from Paris. On hearing they were waiting for their orders, and that they were all qualified women, he commandeered them, even as he had commandeered his barn. Back they came to Headquarters to fetch more assistance.

"Why don't you come too? It's a case of all hands aboard!" said one. It was thus I came to work at the first clearing station at the base. Such was the stationary hospital when, laden with all the loaves we could carry to supplement the ration biscuits, we set to work in the "casualty ward" this afternoon.

For the thousand wounded likely to come through daily there are six fully-trained nurses and myself, besides the male staff of R.A.M.C. doctors and orderlies, and two or three Red Cross surgeons and lady doctors.

Ten beds and a number of sacks of straw form the main equipment. Planks, supported by two packing-cases, are the dressing-table. At one end men are engaged in putting in three extemporary baths, others whitewashing the walls.

A boatload had just left for England as I came in, and we proceeded to get a meal for those who remained. But it was a struggle to get sufficient tea out of the orderlies, who had been working all night and were dead beat. The men's delight at the bread and old newspapers we had brought in was incredible.

Those who were able to, clustered round the solitary stove in the centre. Great rough, bearded fellows, covered with mud from the trenches in which they have lived for weeks, how different they look from those who set out! The worst cases lay on their stretchers as they had arrived. One said simply, as I took him his tea, "This is heaven, Sister."

A tall, dark man entered—the C.O., someone said. "Take those two Germans down to the boat," I heard him order. Then, turning to us, "You'd better come to our mess-room and get some tea yourselves," he said. "Four trainloads are expected in shortly."

We trooped into the small sanctum dignified by the name of "mess-room," where the Major's orderly was busy preparing tea on a Primus stove. There was no milk, but the bitter black beverage out of the large tin mugs was welcome none the less. Someone had secured a cake that we cut with a sword as the cleanest thing present.

Next to the mess-room are the officers' quarters (into which we were privileged to take one glance)—small whitewashed cubicles furnished with a camp bed, a shaving-glass about three inches by six inches in size, and an old sugar-box converted into a washstand.

Tea finished, we set to work to get "beds" ready for the next batch, the first of the four trainloads expected. Ten bedsteads for a thousand men! It sounds almost incredible, but it is nevertheless true; and although we are told that more are expected at any moment, we have only wooden pallets at present and a limited supply of blankets. One to lie on, two for cover, a coat for a pillow was the order of the day until a pile of mattresses came in.

October 30th. We worked till midnight and were on duty again by 7.30 this morning. From our billets to the hospital is nearly half an hour's walk, which, over the rough cobblestones in the blinding rain, is hardly attractive. At any rate, it has the advantage of clearing the haunting smell of the gas-gangrene out of our nostrils. As we came on duty this morning, laden with every old journal we could find, a huge, burly Scotsman let himself down from the ambulance train. We gave him a newspaper, but he was inclined to talk. He is the first man I've met so far who has signified his longing to get back to the firing-line.

"While I've a limb left," he said, "I should like to have a pot at the Germans. And I can fire my machine as well with two fingers as with five—if they'll let me."

AT AN IMPROVISED CASUALTY CLEARING STATION
"This is Heaven, Sister!"

The cause of his indignation was the mutilated corpse of a Red Cross nurse they had found in a little village where the Germans had been.

"God knows how far they'd dragged her round with them, but she was horribly mutilated," he said with a shiver. "I'm a big man, but our major was bigger, yet neither of us could help choking. And can ye wonder we want to get at 'em again?"

The worst part of the wounds is the fearful sepsis and the impossibility of getting them anything like clean.

"First time I've had my boots off for seven weeks!" is the kind of exclamation that recurs all day, as we literally cut them off. Hardly any of the boots have been off for three weeks, with the result that they seem glued on, whilst the feet are like iron, the nails like claws.

Some of the men have not had their wounds dressed since the first field dressing was applied, for the simple reason that the rush on the hospital trains makes it impossible to attend to any but the worst cases, many of whom, as it is, are dying of hæmorrhage, accelerated by the jolting on the journey.

There is no time to do anything but the dressings, and if we did want to wash the patients there is nothing but the red handkerchiefs we hang round the lights for shades by night, for towels by day.

Water, especially boiling water, is at a premium, as it all has to be fetched from outside where the veteran cook stokes hard all day in the driving rain, ladling us out a modicum into each bowl from his cauldrons.

"I never thought to see such sights," exclaimed a nurse of thirty years' experience as a new trainload came in. But we have no time to think of our own sensations.

Fingerless hands, lungs pierced, arms and legs pretty well gangrenous, others already threatening tetanus (against which they are now beginning to inoculate patients), mouths swollen beyond all recognition with bullet shots, fractured femurs, shattered jaws, sightless eyes, ugly scalp wounds; yet never a murmur, never a groan except in sleep. As the men come in they fall on their pallets and doze until roused for food.

A few are enraged to madness at the sight of a German.

"They fired on our Red Cross!" they cry. "Burnt every man alive! Why do we treat them so well?"

Quite a number of prisoners who had been taken near Lille were brought into the clearing station this morning. Being the only linguist present, I was installed as interpreter. They were in a horrible state of nerves, and asked when they were likely to be killed.

One of them was nastily peppered about the heart with shrapnel and asked: "When shall we be shot?" I explained whilst dressing his wounds that Britain is a civilised country, and, in contrast to the Huns, does not hit a man when he is down. Never shall I forget the look of relief on the man's face.

"They told us we'd be tortured if you got us!" he exclaimed.

Later on I was asked to send a card to his mother. It was difficult to know what to say, but "Your son, though a prisoner and wounded, is safe and being well cared for," seemed to meet the occasion. Suddenly without a word he seized the scissors from my belt. Recalling tales of vindictive prisoners, I stepped back. The precaution was unnecessary, for the little Hun was only cutting a button off his coat pocket.

"Hier, Sie haben ja nichts genommen" ("Here, you have not taken anything"), he exclaimed, Teuton boorishness veiling the kindliness as he handed me the "souvenir."

A strangely human incident occurred a little later.

A group of Tommies were watching a Boche having a bayoneted hand dressed. He spoke quite good English, but was apparently too frightened to answer any of their sallies. Presently, however, he turned to me with a request that he might be allowed to send a line to his wife to say he was alive.

"'E's young to 'ave a wife, Sister," suggested a lame man, the maintenance of whose large family apparently proved a burden to him.

"'Ow old are yer? You?" he added, addressing the prisoner.

The Hun pulled out an old letter-case and abstracted the portrait of a pretty English-looking girl in a garden arbour.

"My vife," he exclaimed. "She has seventeen years, I nineteen. Ve was married two days when I come away!"

In a moment the hostile crowd round him was turned to one of sympathisers. "Poor beggar! After all, he probably doesn't want to fight any more than we do," said the lame man.

A WARD IN THE SUGAR-SHED CLEARING STATION

"No," replied the prisoner, and all the racial antagonism of Saxon versus Prussian showed itself in his words, "Ve Saxons not want war—ve want peace—but they not ask us!"

October 31st. Who could believe, had they not seen for themselves, the manifold horrors of war? The vermin, against which there is no coping, vermin that in ordinary times one never saw. The men are alive with them, so are we, a fact which necessitates a tremendous "search" at every available opportunity. Even amputated limbs are found to be crawling.

The girl who was working single-handed in this barn until we arrived was walking along the quay yesterday when a feeble voice called her from a stretcher. It was her brother. He died in the night, but she is on duty all the same.

All day long the rush continues. The question "Shrapnel or bullet?" rings incessantly in our ears as each man comes up to get his dressing done.

One boy of nineteen had no fewer than six bullet wounds in one arm and two in each leg. It took two of us an hour to dress his wounds, and afterwards, as I washed his beardless face in response to a gentle request, I could scarce refrain from sending up a prayer of gratitude that my own brothers are dead and not mutilated like these boys.

Towards sunset I was called to the side of a youthful Saxon already rigid with tetanus.

Through his clenched teeth he could still groan to the orderly's command to lie still: "Ich kann nicht still liegen" ("I can't lie still").

At seven o'clock (after nearly twelve hours' work) we went home to dinner, and, it being our turn to take night shift, were back again at our posts, with clean aprons and a satisfied inner man, two hours later. The orderly officer called for any who had not yet had their second anti-typhoid injection, and I, being one of them, was injected on the spot.

During the long night, as we hurried from patient to patient in the darkened cry-haunted ward, covering the restless sleeping figures, moving them into more comfortable positions, with a prayer for each one's mother, I could screw up no feeling of resentment towards the dying Saxon boy, in spite of the cries of our men, but only against that vile Prussianism that brought up its children to regard rapine and slaughter as a divine necessity. By midnight things were quiet enough to allow us to cut up dressings as best we might. By this time, owing to there not being a chair in the place, I confess my legs were almost giving way. Moreover, the injection took speedy effect, and a stiffening arm and rising temperature do not facilitate work of this kind. Frankly, I do not think any of us will ever be as busy again, and our one prayer was for strength to "carry on." Many of the men were tormented by coughs that kept the others awake. All we had to give them was lukewarm water and the rinsings of a condensed milk tin. (For euphony we called it "milk.")

Those who could not sleep for vermin lit cigarette after cigarette until their supply ran out. At 2 A.M. we retired to the nurses' "bunk"—a whitewashed, rat-ridden, ill-smelling partitioned compartment, whose sole furniture consisted of two shelves—until someone was inspired to fetch the "dressing-table" (two empty boxes—oh, joy of joys! upon which we took it in turns to sit)—and a coke fire, on which we boiled eggs for our midnight meal. Half-way through my egg the orderly called me: "The prisoner can't last much longer. Will you come and speak to him, Sister?" It seemed as if the ward were one huge battlefield, for cries greeted me on all sides. "Get at 'em, lads!" shouted the burly Scot in the corner as he urged forward his comrades in his sleep. "Christ help us!" groaned an armless dragoon, coming round from the anæsthetic.

I soothed the dying German as best I could when the awful spasms came, and through his clenched teeth he signified the pain in the "kreuz" (small of the back). What could I say but "Guter Junge—bleib still. Es dauert nicht mehr lange!" ("Good boy—lie still. It will not last long now!") With his remaining hand he pressed mine as I wiped the pouring sweat from his brow. After all, suffering is a great leveller.

The orderly, an old South African campaigner, looked at the light that began to flood the sky.

"They usually go West at this hour," he remarked grimly, with a shudder. I shuddered too; the place was alive with spirits.

For a moment we seemed to hear the sigh of the departing, feel the rushing of many wings as they brushed past. Then a gaunt, muffled figure appeared at the door bearing a lantern, for all the world like a hoary figure of "Time," and we awoke to reality.

"I've brought down a trainload," he said. "A round dozen of them are urgent cases and must have beds."

Perforce we had to shift the sleeping forms on to the concrete floor, all bruised and torn and bleeding though they were, cutting shorter their all too short rest.

An officer was brought in wounded in the abdomen, but cheerfully talking of getting home. He, too, passed away before eight o'clock.

From the nursing point of view the work is most unsatisfactory, as disinfectants, to say nothing of dressings, are continually at low ebb. To-day the iodine ran out. One of the surgeons came round and signified his intention to dress a bad femur case. I had got together what things I could when he called for iodine. There being none to be had, he sighed resignedly, and with "Then we will leave the dressings for the present," walked off, only to return an hour later with a quantity he had found in the town.

Of course there can be no attempt at asepsis in a place so ill ventilated, or, rather, not ventilated at all, for there are no side windows, and, although the skylight is sufficient for lighting purposes, the ventilation is effected by means of the excessively draughty entrances.

It is distinctly unhealthy, and the odours in the place are indescribable and never to be forgotten. There is no lavatory accommodation—although latrines are situated along the quay, whither the blind are led by the armless, the lame carried on orderlies' backs.

Refuse of all sorts that cannot be burned in the incinerator is disposed of in the sea, and it is good to note that the sacks of straw are being gradually replaced by real beds and the supply of blankets is greatly augmented.

Unsatisfactory, too, from the nursing point of view is the fact that the men pass through the clearing station so rapidly that we seldom do the same dressing twice; and though there are days when, owing to rough seas or overladen boats, we are able to watch the progress of the patients, for the most part it is only the immovable cases that remain, and the rest are hurried through, leaving one wondering how they will get on.

Did I say hurried through? There is no need to hurry the men who are to go home, for no sooner is a boat announced than a general scramble ensues, and they will leave their breakfast, clothing, even their treasured trophies behind, in order not to be late.

"Just a bit of 'ome, and we'll be twice as strong for the next bit o' fightin'," they say.

There follows the inspection of labels (for each man is labelled for his destination: blue for England, yellow for Havre, white for a convalescent depot), and sad indeed are the faces of those to whom the medical officer has not vouchsafed the coveted blue ticket.

Just as day dawned, with a last spasm, more awful than the others, the little Saxon prisoner died. As his close-clenched jaws relaxed the orderly remarked: "Not bad-looking for a corpse, Sister; must have been a pretty child!"

I asked for his corpse number, but it was not to be found. In my heart I wished the boy's mother could have known he died well cared for.

It is all very primitive; we have no screens to hide what once was mortal from the others.

We came off duty at 10 A.M., just as another batch of 1,100 men began to arrive, and on our way home caught a glimpse of K. of K., who is paying an incognito visit, as he stepped from a destroyer.

[CHAPTER II]
November, 1914

November 1st. It is impossible to keep note of the daily occurrences. Things move too quickly out here—besides, if the spirit is willing the flesh is very exhausted. Nevertheless, not for a moment do our spirits flag; on the contrary, the worse things grow the more cheerful do we become, the more determined to make the best of things. It is strange that all the years we worked hard to amuse ourselves at home not one brought an eighth of the satisfaction of this.

There is a wonderful dearth of utensils, though the store grows larger daily. It is no infrequent occurrence to have to sally out to the nearest chemist to buy air cushions, eye baths, etc., as they are required.

Night, and the wards are full. Another train disgorges its burden. The stretcher cases have to remain on stretchers. The walking cases are huddled round the stove, extended on the concrete, their blood-stained, bug-ridden greatcoats for coverings.

Without, for a moment the rain has ceased, and in the clear night the moon smiles peacefully over the silver, gleaming sea.

What a contrast to the scene within! The restless figures of the wounded—the busy nurses.

Everyone is exhausted, for it is an almost superhuman task for seven women to tackle by day and by night; but they say the Army Nursing Service will be here in sufficient numbers soon. The lady doctors have been invaluable, their zeal unflagging. They are splendid operators, and in the midst of the worst rushes never careless. Besides their work here they spend much time at the "Women's Hospital" at a château some three miles out of Boulogne, where everything is run by volunteer women workers, who act as doctors, nurses, orderlies and quartermasters.

The theatre looks quite smart, with the large sterilisers that have been installed and the operating table. What tales those whitewashed walls could tell!

Will those who are knitting away at home ever realise the value of their own handiwork, I wonder?

If they could but see the eager faces of the men as the meagre stores are issued, and they receive those ill-fitting coats, and socks, and card-board-footed shoes (the nightingales they one and all disdain); could they for a single moment glance at the contented expression of the "movable cases" as they wriggle out of their creeping shirts, so torn, so stiff with congealed blood and stained with Flanders mud, into garments that are both soft and warm, all those hours of patient knitting would be well rewarded; they would know they are not labouring in vain.

In spite of the so-called "Red Cross Store Room" that is being replenished daily by stock drawn from all sources, of course there aren't enough things to go round, and although we grouse at the wise quartermaster's inquiries as to whether each article we need is an imperative necessity or not, in our heart of hearts we know him to be in the right.

EXTEMPORISED OPERATING THEATRE AT A CLEARING STATION
"The theatre looks quite smart with the huge sterilisers that have been installed and the operating table"

A strange thing happened to-day. A man came in with a badly shattered forearm. I dressed it myself, and can vouch for the fact that in other respects he seemed fit enough.

Not long afterwards one of his companions disengaged himself from the group by the stove and came to me, saying: "Sister, that man has gone blind suddenly."

I remarked it must be nonsense, and told him to go to sleep. Nevertheless, on passing a light before the other man's eyes there was never a flicker. He was blind, as the medical officer can vouch; whether it is temporary or not we shall never know, for the cases pass through so quickly.

November 2nd. Someone has been asked to volunteer to run the military baths. I, being the one whose work in hospital must be of least value, naturally did so, and was accepted.

November 3rd. Most of the men are very subdued, and either loath to talk of what they have been through or ultra-full of reminiscences, many of which have to be taken with a grain of salt.

A large percentage of them stammer or have developed a nervous impediment in their speech, owing, no doubt, to the strain of the past months; and this is very often the case in Territorial regiments, whose members were accustomed to a more or less easy life in peace time.

Quite a number of the London Scottish—whose "charge" has been so boomed by the daily papers as a proof of the efficiency of the Territorial Army—are coming down now. They are very annoyed and very ashamed of the fuss that has been made of them.

"We only did what is done by one regiment or another every day," they said, "and now we hardly like to show our faces for the ridicule that must be cast upon us by the Regulars, who have seen ten times as much fighting and never been mentioned at all."

The "dum-dum" lie is no lie at all. Anyone who has seen the strangely mutilated limbs can vouch for that. In one case the bullet passed clean through one leg and exploded in the other. Bah! the smell of the gas gangrene—shall we ever forget it?

We hear many tales about the Germans from the men. Devoid of honour, they train machine-guns on ambulances, and accredit us with the same devilish tricks. One French civilian ambulance unit was totally destroyed a few days back, and wounded, surgeons, stretcher-bearers and nurses alike were blown to atoms.

November 7th. I am now installed as "Lady Superintendent of Military Baths," an entirely new post!

The scene of my activities is the public baths in the Rue des Vieillards, that have been rented from the old proprietress. With six orderlies to do the rough work—the washing of towels, the cleaning of the twenty baths, and my own spacious office in which to do the men's dressings—things are cheerful enough.

About 100 men come through each day—the convalescents in the morning, so that the whole forenoon is taken up with dressings.

The difficulties at first were many, a fact which considerably enhanced the joy of the work.

1. To get the place clean was a veritable chef-d'œuvre.

2. Drawing things from the Ordnance is no easy matter. One must not buy what may be drawn; and as I have no notion of what can be drawn there is often considerable delay.

3. Persuading the orderlies that water for dressings must be boiled, and not lukewarm, is likewise far from easy.

The days are no longer so strenuous. I arrive at eight to see that the men are getting on with their work, cut up dressings, leave out and mark towels until ten o'clock, when the convalescents begin to arrive.

By 3.30 I am able to go down to the clearing station to write letters for the helpless.

To-day a man who was brought in with a badly fractured pelvis dictated one to his brother. It ran:

"Dear George,—After going through all the big battles of Mons, the Marne and the Aisne, I am sad to say I've got hit at last, but hope soon to be home with you all. I'm glad to know you've joined to be a soldier, and hope soon to hear you're helping in the fight."

"It isn't true, Sister," he added; "but perhaps it will help him through, poor fellow—if I die!"

Needless to say, none of the hospital personnel have time to sandwich letter-writing for the men in between their medical work, and civilian help is welcome in this matter.

No one who has not seen the intricacies of the office work of a large military hospital can have the least conception what an amount of forethought, what a number of clerks are involved. The distribution of the wounded into the different wards, the notification and specification of each case—each is an art in itself. Whilst in the quartermaster's domain the drawing of rations for an elastic number of patients, ranging each meal from 50 to 400, is wellnigh stupendous.

And although we who know nothing of these matters have often laughed at the theoretical red tape of the Army, there is no denying that, in working order, it is a thing to be venerated rather than scoffed at.

November 8th, On the Ramparts of Boulogne. After the hush of the unornamental cathedral the soft autumn breezes out here are refreshing. Even in the well ventilated baths the pungent smell of segregated humanity permeates. What a strange place is Boulogne now, the city of hospitals, every hotel a hospital, every road thronged with troops and nurses!

Yesterday I had a slight fracas with my corporal, a nice but utterly untrained boy, who has a way of wandering into the office, cigarette in mouth.

Now, there is no law in the Army, so far as I can make out, that compels an orderly to pay the slightest respect toward a nurse. He must stand at attention when addressed by a junior subaltern, but may loll and smoke at his ease whilst taking a nursing sister's orders. Thus it seems that from time immemorial a slight antagonism has reigned, for the men are apt to take advantage of a woman, who, unless she have infinite tact, often enough finds things hard.

However, after two cups of black coffee to give me the requisite courage, I faced the little difficulty boldly. "Corporal," I suggested, "it doesn't matter what you do outside, but I would rather you didn't smoke in the office. You set the example to the others, who are beginning to turn the office into a sort of smoking-room. Besides, it isn't usual in the Service, is it?"

There was an awkward silence, as the poor boy blushed and grunted. Then I changed the subject, and think all will be well, for though surly in manner he is most anxious to please.

One afternoon I was asked to go and speak to some prisoners at the Imperial (No. —— General Hospital), where Miss A—— is now working. A young "Freiwillige" of 19 immediately inquired: "What about Paris?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, astonished.

"When did we take it?" was the somewhat surprising reply.

On the whole, in spite of the rigorous discipline that makes it necessary for German officers to go behind their men to save their own skins and goad on their victims; in spite of the fact that they seem to be treated like cattle and have been found chained to their machine-guns, as a whole (and probably as the outcome of the patriotism that is inculcated into every German from his earliest days) they seem loyal to their superiors; and, relieved though they appear at being captured, are not garrulous on the score of the reign of terrorism from which they have escaped. For not the most warlike can covet the privilege of being driven in massed formation, over heaped-up corpses, into the face of the enemy's fire that literally mows them down like hay. It turns even our own machine-gun men sick.

As we were about to turn in, ten funerals went up without even an escort, as the R.A.M.C. orderlies are too engrossed with their duties towards the living to be spared.

So die the flower of English manhood! Buried in their deal boards in French clay, with only a French grave-digger or two and a cluster of children playing round the massive gates to see them to their last resting-place.

Well might the bells of Shoreditch peal, muffled, on All Saints' Day!

November 9th. The autumn leaves are falling. Before me sit a group of convalescents in the courtyard, basking in what there is of mellow sunlight—awaiting their turn for baths. To say they look dejected is too mild. There is a look of weariness in their eyes that appals one. There is no mistaking a man from the front. They all have it—the trench-haunted look.

"Any man who says he wants to go back is a liar," say most. "It isn't fighting; it's murder, you see." And one is left all the more astounded at the heroism with which they face the inevitable when it comes to returning to the front, the unanimity of their: "Are we down-hearted? Never!" as they march off.

On the whole there is wonderfully little "swinging the lead" or "dodging the column," as the men themselves call malingering; and though some of the medical officers were apt to look upon the early cases of trench feet as much ado about nothing, it has since been found that the acutest pain is often present when all swelling has subsided.

It is a relief to get back in the evenings to the society of the nurses. Many of them already look knocked up. "Fifty patients on my floor, and only two orderlies," says one. And at home thousands of trained workers are waiting for work.

We often wonder that no use is made of the members of the Voluntary Aid Detachments as probationers under the trained nurses. True, in their present stage of efficiency (or inefficiency, for what are a number of first-aid lectures or stretcher drills as compared with the real hospital training?) many of them might prove more of a hindrance than a help in an emergency. Nevertheless, they could be of as much use as probationers out here—where, everything having been improvised, the inconveniences necessitate much extra labour—as they could be at home.

It is ridiculous to imagine that V.A.D.'s, with their theoretical experience, are competent to run hospitals by themselves; it is equally ridiculous to allow the valuable qualified nurses to run themselves to death, doing jobs an untrained woman can do, instead of utilising the many eager workers willing to take over the menial work.[A]

It will not be hard to sift the wheat from the chaff, the seekers after sensation from the genuine workers. For there is no romance in the work of a hospital, no jaunts to battlefields bearing cups of water to the dying, no soothing of pillows and holding the hands of patients; but ten to twelve hours each day occupied in the accomplishment of tasks so menial that one would hesitate to ask a servant to perform them.

[A] This has since been done, and members of Voluntary Aid Detachments are now used extensively in France as probationers in military hospitals where they come under direct War Office control.

November 10th. We awaken to bugle calls, we fall asleep to the sound of tramping feet. Oh, that long weary high road into the jaws of death! The sudden evacuation of Boulogne seems less imminent now than it did, though the German advance on Calais continues. Now that England has declared war on Turkey, we realise how little of the big scheme of things we see in our niche. Sometimes, between waking and sleeping, a vision of home comes back to me, of soft carpets and steaming hot baths, and everywhere clean linen and creature comforts and ease. After all, I should like to end my days as I began them—in luxury.

November 11th. No wonder Boulogne is full to overflowing. No wonder the little out-of-the-way cafés have taken on something of the glamour and éclat of Rumpelmayer or the Ritz. No wonder everyone who can afford to be is in France. One feels it in the air, it is the Real Thing; one is no longer a looker-on, but a moving factor of things who can afford to pity those at home whose activities have not yet had occasion to be called into play.

The town itself consists of the Haute Ville enclosed by massive thirteenth century ramparts flanked by round towers, whose history for years centred round Godfrey de Bouillon, and the four celebrated gates (Porte Gayole, Porte des Dunes, Porte de Calais and Porte des Degrés). Crowning all stands the Cathédrale de Notre Dame, whose dome from the distance, whether viewed from the town or the environing country, brings back faint remembrances of St. Peter's in the Holy City.

There is nothing of great artistic interest or value to be found within (unless it be the seventh century antiquities in the crypt), but the spirit of earnest devotion that characterises all Catholic places of worship, uniting every worshipper and raising the lowliest edifice to equality with the most ambitious building, is more marked here than in any church I have yet visited. The reverence of the bare-headed peasants, holding up their woollen shawls as coverings for their heads, of the shambling wounded, of the smart mondaines, is alike worthy of those Russian allies who recognise no sin greater than lack of veneration to their God.

The legend of the miraculous statue of Our Lady of Boulogne, as depicted in a picture over the altar of the chapel in the cathedral, dates back to the year 636. In that year a strange boat, radiating with light, was seen to enter the harbour, propelled by some miraculous power and devoid of sailors or pilot. When the excited population reached the shore it was to find on the bridge of the barque a beautifully carved image of the Holy Virgin carrying the infant Jesus, beside which lay a silver-bound copy of the Scriptures.

Over the spot that marked the miraculous image's first resting-place in the Haute Ville the oft-destroyed cathedral has grown, and although, after many vicissitudes, the Holy Statue was finally destroyed during the eighteenth century Reign of Terror, many are the pilgrimages still made to the solitary relic of the holy image—a hand that was cut off prior to the burning, which is preserved in a gilt heart, suspended from the new statue.

The fame of its miracles spread abroad so widely that not only did kings and princes hasten to pay homage, but some unscrupulous priests at St. Cloud attracted large numbers of pilgrims by trafficking in the public faith and maintaining that they were in possession of the miraculous statue. Hence the name of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, and the fact that the image is known as Our Lady of Boulogne-sur-Mer.

Beyond Notre Dame runs the Calais—St. Omer road which has seen so much bloody traffic in the past and may see so much more in a few days.

Guns, ammunition convoys and ambulances rumble along it ceaselessly by day and night, pausing only to answer the challenge of the sentries posted at intervals at every cross-road of importance. The ruined Jesuit monastery lies along this road, alive with wounded Indians, who, when convalescent, are shifted into the outlying tents that form the Convalescent Depot.

Only about one mile away on the same road stands the Colonne de la Grande Armée, that huge Doric column surmounted by the figure of Napoleon, erected to commemorate the expedition against England and commenced 110 years ago, when Marshal Soult (as the inscription on the base tells us) laid the first stone in the presence of the whole army.

Walking townwards one comes across the fisher village built in tier upon tier of squalid, unsanitated streets, as odorous as the Naples of ten years ago—and as picturesque; and pinnacled by St. Pierre-des-Marins, whose lofty fourteenth century Gothic spire is one of the few architectural beauties to be found here, and whose interior, so full of votive offerings, witnesses the toll of matelot lives exacted yearly by the sea from those who would snatch their living from her.

Crowning all stands the revered Calvary to which all wise fishermen pray as they sail in and out of the harbour.

"THE REVERED CALVARY TO WHICH ALL WISE FISHERMEN PRAY"

From here the panorama of the whole place is laid bare, the jetées, the coast, the Gare Maritime, the Bassin Loubet, the River Liane winding in and out of the valley and losing itself finally in the mists; and nearer, the gay flower-market and the Halle des Poissons, where the vendors, almost as soon as the nets of herrings are unladen, are rid of what fish they can get in these troublous times, when every man who is not fighting is trawling for mines.