'The Cellar-House of Pervyse'
A Tale of Uncommon Things from The Journals and Letters of the Baroness
t'Serclaes and Mairi Chisholm
A Story of Two
British Volunteer Nurses on the Yser Front
Chapter II - In the Thick of a Battle
By September 29, three days after they had arrived in Ghent,
Gipsy's vital energy had got too much for her, and she had to do something or
explode; so she found a job in driving the car of the Belgian Colonel, whose
own chauffeur had disappeared. She fell into this niche, which fitted her to a
nicety, in the simplest and most feminine way possible, because she walked up
to look at the Belgian trenches outside the town, and found the Colonel minus a
coat button. Of course she sewed it on, and followed up the obvious opening by
offering to fill the place as chauffeur. Though the Belgian Army was not nearly
so much swathed about with red tape as some of the older countries, yet it was
rather an innovation that the Colonel should accept a woman as chauffeur in
war-time, and therefore certain formalities had to be faced. These were got
through with the speed born of necessity, and the following day Gipsy took the
Colonel on his rounds to various outposts, picking up a wounded man on the way.
She had coffee with her new employer before he went on to the actual front, and
she concluded that he was "a dear, so kind and considerate;" he had
not taken any advantage of the unusual position.
Already it was beginning to be apparent that there was a
fatal lack of organization in the ambulance corps. The men part of it were
rushing hither and thither bravely enough, but in a most haphazard manner,
wasting much precious petrol, and even joy-rides were not unknown, whereas much
real ability and energy was running to waste.
Various signs of military activity were to be seen through
Ghent from time to time. Some field-guns caused a diversion, and when numbers
of sturdy plucky Belgian troops marched through, the lady members of the corps
gave them cigarettes to express that sympathy which for the moment they seemed
to have no other way of expressing.
The post of chauffeur, after all, took up very little time,
and even this outlet was blocked, for Dr. Munro, rather naturally, objected to
one of his corps being taken off for such work, and it had to be stopped. Gipsy
and Mairi therefore amused themselves playing games with the convalescent
soldiers, but all the while brain and heart were under a terrific strain; there
is no strain quite so bad as waiting in the certainty that any moment you may
be called upon to put forth all your resources and face scenes so horrible that
you may fail, for even the best of us never knows his calibre until tried.
"We mouched around," says Mairi miserably. "I felt bored with
life. Another day of waiting! One must have patience beyond everything!"
Then there swam into their ken the gay and gallant figure of a young Belgian
officer; he was slim and tall, with fair hair, showing up in contrast with his
well-fitting dark green uniform. They nicknamed him "Gilbert the
Filbert." At that time he was with the Voluntary Cyclists Corps, and used
to go out at nights on his motorcycle to pick off German outposts; he had
accounted for forty- eight Germans in the weeks preceding, so his presence was
inspiriting. He was to be very closely associated with them in their work, but
at the time he was merely a passer-by.
The first serious work came when the trainloads of wounded
men had to be met at the station at any hour of the night, and conveyed to the
hospitals. In the dark and icy-cold station the friends waited hour after hour
for the trains which never came when they were expected. They snatched hurried
moments trying to rest in a railway carriage, but the cold was so intense that
sleep was out of the question. Sometimes they talked to the men in charge of
the solid, heart-cheering British omnibuses, straight from London, having their
shiny sides painted with Clapham, Cricklewood, and other names which seemed
more lovable and attractive than London suburbs ever did before. There was a
dramatic moment when a trainload of terribly smashed and maimed Belgians came
in at one platform of the station, just as a trainload of self-confident,
clean, fresh British Tommies was going out from another. The little Belgians
had not as yet seen such assurances of help, and one and all, exhausted and
faint as they were, cheered and waved their poor bandaged hands; while, as the
other train began to move, the Tommies looked at them in pleased shyness, not
in the least knowing how to show they appreciated the welcome. "Give them
a cheer, boys!" shouted Gipsy, letting loose the spring at the psychological
moment, and the resounding shout in response echoed through the vaults of the
gloomy station roof.
The girls worked with the strength of ten; when none of the
men of the party were available they even did the heavy lifting, raising the
dead weight of unconscious or helpless men on stretchers. They worked sometimes
right through the night, so that when they got back to their quarters in the
morning there was only time to wash and be ready again for what the day should
bring forth, for they might be wanted at any moment. "I never felt so
googly and utterly played out in my life," says Mairi after one such
night. Still, they had comfortable rooms to go back to, and good food when they
wanted it; this was child's-play to what came afterwards. The waiting, which
had seemed so interminable to their eager hearts strung up to expectation,
really endured for only a few days, and they soon began to range around the
outlying villages to find wounded men. By the beginning of October they had
learnt many things. They had seen the Belgians working busily at digging
trenches, in absolute silence, so as not to attract the Germans, who were only
a hundred yards away. They had run along in the open, expecting any moment to
be noticed and made a target for shells. They had had the most discouraging of
all experiences, that of seeing their
allies obliged to retreat. In one place they passed through one of those
experiences which remain like a hurt on the heart. Fifty men had been left to
guard the retreat of the rest, left to what was almost certain death. Theirs to
hold up the flood-tide so long as they might before going under. There was a
look on the faces of these men seen only on the faces of the dead who have died
in peace. There was no uncertainty, no disquietude. They awaited their fate as
if they had already met it, not lightly or discounting what it meant, but with
the calm willingness of those who had seen all they loved in the world swept
away. The clear blue eyes of every rough soldier had in them something of the
light that comes from a vision of the beyond. There was no faltering, but no
braggart conceit; they were invincible alive or dead.
And the fate that descended on them was not left only to the
imagination of those who perhaps might have found it difficult to imagine,
having had no previous experience of such things. For a few days later Gipsy,
going out with some of the men of the ambulance, came upon what was left of
just such another group, at Nazareth, not far from Zele. Twenty-six military police
holding an outpost had been surrounded by about three hundred Germans, who had
acted according to their kind and passed on.
The Belgians had resisted to the death, and the whole
twenty-six lay there, pitched about in various attitudes. They had been shot at
by a ring of their foes at a range of from ten to fifteen yards, but that was
not all. Even this finished slaughter had not satiated the Germans' stomach for
blood, and they had deliberately set to work to mutilate and rob the dead foe.
That tiny plot of grass was rusty with blood. Every face was smashed in except
that of the Captain, who had been shot through the heart and left as he was, to
be identified, possibly with the cool intention of showing that the leader had
not escaped. From the others everything had been stolen—boots, purses,
stockings, and other clothes—so that the dead were nearly naked, and even their
identification discs had been removed.
One of the first times Gipsy and Mairi were actually under
fire was on October 5, and it was at Berleare, a little village about four
miles west of Termonde and a good way east of Ghent. The account is best told
in Gipsy's own simple wording, taken from one of her letters home, which was
afterwards reproduced in a local paper:
"We went through busy lines of cavalry, and all the way
along the firing got louder and louder."
“We ran into Berleare about 9.30 a.m., and about 9.45 a big
shell fell on a neighbouring house and shattered the roof. I was able to get a
large piece. While we were standing listening to the fearful noise of shell and
rifle fire, the order came through that there were wounded at Appels to be
fetched. Off we went, and we found that we were bound to leave the ambulance
close to the main road and walk with the stretchers, as we had to go toward the
river, and the Germans were the other side. We had to walk about three miles,
and then came to the river (Dendre). The river was, I suppose, about fifty
yards wide, with a high trench built on either side. We had to creep, bent
double, all along the side, until we came to these wounded men. I will try and
explain the position. The river bank had been highly trenched, and there was a
pathway along the side of the trench, about five yards wide. There was a steep
bank descent, and at the bottom a boggy water-meadow country, with only a small
foot pathway, raised out of the water, across each field. At 2 p.m. it began to
rain heavily, and it was difficult keeping one's feet on the muddy, wet ground,
as it was thought safer to walk on the bottom of the bank in the water.”
"So our little band trudged on with four damp
stretchers and our heavy box of dressings. At last, lying on the soaking grass
and wet through, we discovered a Belgian Tommy almost exhausted and terribly
wounded; his right foot carried away by shrapnel and also shot badly in the
back. We did what we could for him, but we could only put him on a damp
stretcher and leave him in charge of someone while we went on. No talking was
allowed, as sounds carry over the river. All this time the shells were whizzing
over our heads and rifle-fire was heard all round.”
"We crept along the bank, slipping and falling, until
we saw on the river pathway, just behind the trench, the uniform of a Belgian
Major. He was badly shot in the thigh, and had to be carefully attended. It was
terribly difficult work, as the German patrol spotted us on the other side of
the river, and it was not a pleasant moment. If you can imagine us exactly
between the two firing-lines, you have some idea of our position. You can
imagine those big shells whizzing over our heads, and with lives to save, it
was not a moment to laugh. We had to carry the Major practically along the
ground—that is, we had to be bent nearly double, so that our heads were below
the level of the river trench. I wonder if anyone can realize what it means. I
only ask them to put a heavy grown man on a stretcher and attempt to carry him
by bending double; it is a terribly difficult and exhausting proceeding, and
all the time that awful heavy fire. And it was getting so dark that it was hard
to see. Suddenly everything was lit up by the firing of some houses in Berleare
by the Germans.”
"We nearly got lost on the way home. We had to tramp
over the fields those three miles back to rejoin the ambulances, resting every
fifty yards to change arms and bearers. I shall never forget the evening. We
could not light a match on account of being watched by the Germans. But we
managed to find our ambulance and get the men home at last. How plucky these
little Belgians are!"
To this account it may be added that the danger of getting
back to Berleare was much emphasized by the great dykes full of water to be
crossed somehow, and that the cheeriness of the whole expedition was enhanced
by a steady downpour of rain.
One day came the news that Antwerp had been evacuated. Even
if they had not heard it they would have known it by the flood of fugitives
which poured into Ghent. The roads were choked by them, men and women and
children, piled on carts or dragging handbarrows, some, who had lost all they
loved—children, husbands, wives, or mothers, without much prospect of ever
again discovering them—were still clinging grimly and quite unconsciously to a
tawdry ornament or some such trifle, snatched up automatically and gripped with
the grip that death does not loosen. Out of all this welter of horror one or
two scenes stand out by reason of the pathetic touch. An old woman of the
working classes was conveying a small cart dragged by a dog; in the cart sat
two wee babes, probably her grandchildren. The dog had been wounded, for his
fore-paw was bleeding, and he limped along painfully, but with great
determination and full consciousness of his immense responsibility. Every now
and then he turned his brown eyes on his mistress, as if asking permission, and
then sank down on the roadside to lick his paw, while the stream of amazingly
mixed traffic swept by on each side of him. The old granny looked at him
mutely, but did not hurry him; she knew that in him lay the sole chance of her
babies reaching safety, for she was too old and weak to carry them. If the dog
failed they would die, and therefore she waited with feeble resignation until
he himself, without being urged, took up the collar- work of his little living
load and staggered on.
It was the sense of personal isolation which struck one most
in these crowds. In normal life if one falls out by the way there are always
any number of healthy and well-to-do folk to give a hand; but here, where each
tiny group was tried to the utmost in struggling up out of their own avalanches
of misfortune, there was no one who, however willing, could help. It was sink
or swim for each family or individual, alone.
Most of the people in this crowd were Flemings, and they are
a curious race. Nothing seems to disturb them. As they tramped along in
hundreds it was rare to see a woman in tears. They seemed to accept the
inevitable with a stoical patience; no questions were asked, no complaints
made, and there was certainly not the least sign of panic. They trudged along,
scarcely paying any attention to the troops they met, or those that passed them
marching, also in retreat. Their absolute lack of emotion was almost uncanny;
their faces were unnaturally calm. To an outsider it appeared as if it might be
the calm of un-intelligence, but the look of pain in the eyes of some of them
contradicted that theory. The Two could not help asking, "What lies behind
that mask of indifference? Are there any feelings there at all?" It is
difficult for one of another race to understand the Flamand. Is he only stupid,
or is there a lack of frankness in his nature which forbids one to trust him
entirely? Most of these people were agriculturists—the Flamand does not take
kindly to mechanical work. These strong, thick-set men and women looked what
they were, farm-labourers born and bred, without any streak of the vivacity of
their fellow-countrymen the Walloons.
One day a message was brought to the ambulance corps that
there was a wounded officer awaiting rescue in a shattered house at Lokeren,
then on the very furthest fringe of the Belgian territory, up against the
German lines. On the way out indeed, the ambulance in which Gipsy was, passed
part of the Belgian Army in retreat. But this did not deter the party; on they
went past those stained and worn men who were still unconquered and as resolute
in retreat as in advance. Some of the last of them stopped a minute and pointed
out the house where the wounded man was to be found, before they hurried after
their comrades, and were lost in that dull-coloured mass of muddy clothes and
torn uniforms. The place was a little cottage, which had received some
battering, but was still comparatively whole; it looked utterly deserted. With
tense expectation the rescuers pushed open the door, and stopped for a moment
to get used to the gloom; there was a horribly eerie sound ringing through the
emptiness, a drip, drip, steady and unexplained, like the drip of a kitchen
tap. Then the cause was revealed, for on the table lay an officer, a young man
in the prime of life, in a beautiful new uniform with brightly polished buttons
and stars gleaming, and as he lay there his blood dropped slowly and steadily
on to the floor, draining away his life. He was beyond help.
As the party left the house the German forces poured in at
the other end of the village.
However, the ambulances had already picked up three other
wounded soldiers, and they felt their perilous dash into danger had been worth
while. When they were almost clear of the houses on the way back a blind man
came slowly groping towards them, and they stopped for him, though they knew
that the Germans were right behind them. He advanced, but his movements were
slow, and he had only placed one foot on the step when a burst of rifle-fire
told them that they were fully in range, and were being deliberately made a
target of. It was a choice between the life of one civilian and three wounded
soldiers, and they decided for the latter, and went off at full speed. It is,
however, satisfactory to hear that the blind man was afterwards brought in
safely by an armoured car.
The party had hardly returned to Ghent when a call came for
them to go to Melle, a little village about six miles off on the main road
running southeast from Ghent. Here the Two were to have one of the greatest
experiences of their lives—one of those experiences which scores a deep mark
across consciousness, so that the "after" can never again be quite as
the "before."
When they arrived at Melle at about 8 o'clock at night they
were told by soldiers who were dodging round the houses that the main street
was "cleared for action," and that they must on no account go there;
so the ambulance was drawn up in a side-street right in the heart of the
battle, for close behind it was the Belgian artillery. Wounded men soon began
to require aid, and the car was quickly filled and ran back to Ghent, to return
again just as the Germans made a rush and swept down the main street.
Unimaginable uproar and confusion resulted. Shells were not actually bursting
in the town, because neither side could be sure of not hitting their own men,
but the artillery were hard at work sky-rocketing their missiles at one another
overhead to prevent reinforcements coming up, and in among the houses a perfect
storm of bullets hissed like deadly hail, rebounding off the houses or lodging
in the crevices of the woodwork. It cannot have been given to many women,
especially those of another race than the combatants, to have been in the thick
of such a battle.
The French marines were helping the Belgians, and both
together were resisting in a desperate fight, the most deadly fighting of all,
hand-to-hand combats hemmed in by houses. It was quite dark, for there was no
moon, and all around the ambulance party were little groups of French marines
awaiting the word of command to spring into action. Some of them brought up a
stretcher, whispering about the blessé who was on it, hit in the leg. Groping
to feel the horrible wound, Gipsy leant over him and began bandaging, and then
some inertness made her aware she could do nothing. At her request a match was
struck, and she saw her surmise was true, the man was already dead. Then there
were sudden shouts and the jangle of field equipment and a hideous scuffle, and
all in the dark, right around the car, Belgians and French and Germans
inextricably mixed in bayonet-fighting swept past. The car held already one
badly wounded man, and it was about time to move, so when the tense moment was
past they worked their way out of the town to go back. But in doing so they
naturally came under shell-fire, and hardly had they started than shells burst
within fifty yards of them, crashing into the ground and exploding with volumes
of sickening smoke, leaving great pits.
It was mere touch-and-go whether one would not land on the
top of the ambulance and exterminate the whole party, but they escaped injury
as by a miracle, and arriving at the hospital, left their precious burden and
actually returned once more through the deadly fire- zone. The scene had changed;
the combined Belgians and French had thrust back the invaders, and the town was
saved, the line being where it had been before. Perhaps the most remarkable
feature of the whole episode was the coolness of Mairi. This girl of eighteen,
who had so little experience to prepare her, had been under fire the whole
afternoon and through this awful turmoil; and in her diary, written with no
intention of anyone ever seeing it, but merely as a personal record, she
writes: "It was most interesting; the shrapnel was screaming overhead the
whole time—a most fascinating sound."
Gipsy's comment is: "We got more than we wanted: we
nearly lost the ambulance. Mairi and I were on the step under heavy fire, and I
saw a German soldier with a good eye taking deliberate aim at us."
One would feel instinctively that he had a good eye!
She too, ends up on a note of exultation: "It was a
wonderful and grand day, and I would not have missed it for anything."
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