The Cellar House of Pervyse - Chapter 15 - Enter Romance

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 XV- Enter Romance

The spirits of the Two rose unaccountably at getting back to Pervyse; Steenkerke had been clean and comfortable, but never could take hold of them as Pervyse had done. Here they had inaugurated the great scheme, here they had worked for months against difficulties. Hungry and cold, and perforce dirty, lacking everything yet doing all things, they had struggled on and been able to perform marvels; their hearts had glowed at the gratitude of the Belgians, their spirits had been cheered by the lively companionship of brave men. They had their ups and downs, and, as was inevitable, all had not been quite smooth sailing between them, but each slight "breeze" had left their deep friendship for each other deeper than before, as they felt how necessary they were to each other. It was more than a year since they had come out, two members of a comparatively large band, ignorant of what would be expected of them, and unable to give effect to what they felt might be done and ought to be done. They had evolved this scheme and carried it through against opposition and difficulty which in these pages have been only faintly indicated; sometimes it had seemed as if they must be overwhelmed and let go, but always doggedly they had held on, and now they had emerged on to what seemed by contrast tolerably firm ground. 

From the cramped and stuffy cellar-house they had mounted to the shot-torn génie. Thence they had passed to the clean little newly built, and in some ways convenient, hut, but it had not held for them the homeliness they found in the desolate village of Pervyse. 

Mr. Colby had been as good or better than his word; when they came back after their holiday, full of eagerness, they found that the ceiling of the bedroom had been laid a foot thick in concrete and piled up with sand-bags. The other rooms were still unfinished, but they set gaily to work to splash about whitewash with energy, and to make the great red crosses outside to signify their merciful work. The bedroom and living-room in this house looked out over the street, and at the back were the blessé room and the cellar. Mairi ought to have been an engineer or architect, for she adorns her journal all the way through with little ground-plans, showing the arrangement of the rooms in all their abodes, and never seems satisfied until this is done. She was full of enthusiasm about the new house; it was at the same time an "abode of bliss," and "not such a bad little hole considering all things." 

The brasserie was exactly opposite, and the men of the regiment gave the Two a rousing welcome; they did not seem in the least surprised that Les Dames Anglaises had been unable to live far from them, and had felt impelled to come back again. There was so much to do to the house that they had not got it exactly as they wished until three months had passed. During this time they had more than one bombardment. One day it was very hot with 15- centimetre shells, which fell all around them and the brasserie, which was pierced in several places, one shell actually going down into the cellar there and wounding three men. A call was made for help, and the Two dashed across the road in the thick of the falling shells to do the bandaging. They had not lost any of their élan through familiarity with danger. They used the little hut near Steenkerke as an evacuation station, and took the wounded out there at once. The kind of incident that came very frequently into their lives at this time is best told in Gipsy's own words : 

"I had just come back from taking three badly sick men to Steenkerke Infirmary, and was tidying up, when the sudden distant boom of a German gun was heard, so quickly followed by the hasty shriek and the crash of explosion. I wondered why I had managed to get in just in time, and why Mairi and I had not been outside, as we so often are—our luck is so kind to us. This one shell was followed by the usual succession; I was glad we had a fortified dug- out, and that we were fairly safe. 

"Suddenly a little soldier came to our open door and told me, with tears in his eyes, that a comrade had been terribly badly injured, and they were bringing him to me. I hurriedly dragged out the wheels of the running stretcher, and he ran up the road, while I prepared the room and got all possible quick dressings ready. When this was done I went out to meet the stretcher, and I saw at once that the poor brave little soldier was past my aid. I said to them, 'II est mort.' They turned to me with an incredible look, as if I had spoken from inexperience, but I have seen so many—the number runs into thousands—that I could make no mistake. Poor comrades! they looked so sad and heartbroken; he was obviously a favourite. I ordered the stretcher to be taken to the garage—or, rather, what we call the garage—a tumbled-down outhouse, where stands our emergency car. Had this man had the remotest chance of life I should have, within five minutes, placed him in the car en route for La Panne. Poor man! it seemed so sad, and one cannot help asking, 'Why?—why should it be he, and not Mairi or I? Here was a laughing, cheerful, healthy man one short quarter of an hour ago, and now still and silent, and past all pain. His friends kept asking if I was sure he was dead. Was it possible to live with his terrible wound? A bit of shell had taken off half his head. I turned and asked a soldier to see if there was a doctor in the place, just to write out his paper; but, as is so often the case, there was no doctor: it was 'Madame' who had to do all the last little rites, so Mairi and I set to work to search his pockets—such a pathetic work, it brings one so much in touch with Life and its meaning. Just a few scraps of paper, containing a few words of happiness from friends or relatives, a tobacco-box, a pipe, his plaque d’identité, and a gold ring on his finger. His friends tell me his brother is at Avecappelle, and would like to have everything, even the ring, so it must be taken off—it is so tight and so difficult to get off. I put everything together in a little pile—such a little pile—and cross his arms upon his chest, and cover him with a rug. How I hate the look of those silent, humpy stretchers—and the thoughts keep racing through my mind, and I know by Main's face she is thinking the same! 'Why?’ and 'I wonder' and it gives one a longing to be miles away from this war. 

"As the batteries are silent and the road is clear and there is a long way to go, I have that stretcher placed in the car, and Mairi and I drive it to the cemetery at Adinkerke. There it is put on the long clean table, and measured for the coffin. We drive away once more for Pervyse, feeling weary of heart and sad. All along we meet the little soldiers who greet us with a cheer, and we have to force a smile in response." 

But it was not all depressing, for they had many true and staunch friends who came in to see them, and the brightness of both officers and men was extraordinary. A new joy also had entered into Gipsy's life, for every now and again, when the weather was too bad for any flying to be possible, the young Baron H. de T'Serclaes appeared at Pervyse, and his wonderful smile irradiated the most dismal day. In November, one day when Mairi as usual had discreetly absented herself to fulfil some household jobs, he proposed and was accepted! On talking it over the happy pair agreed (according to the usual custom on such occasions) that they would not be married for a long time. In their case there certainly seemed to be some reason, and they decided to wait until the end of the War. But the self- denying ordinance was about as lasting as it generally is in such cases, and as the days went on and love grew apace, they found the extreme difficulty of being engaged in anything like a satisfactory manner amid such extreme publicity, and began to waver. Of course it was quite possible to argue the matter both ways; the fact that they were in danger of their lives every day seemed to urge upon them the common sense of getting married at once, and making the best of what time might be left to them. This view was especially predominant when, after a long ride over execrable roads in abominable weather, the young Baron found himself discussing such subjects as the gramophone, the cars, and other superficial things during his short time off, and even this had to be carried on in gulps because of the incessant inroads of soldiers, chauffeurs, and every imaginable kind of "other," none of whom possessed the tact of Mairi. Gipsy suggests that it is a test of true love, whether it will stand this most aggravating experience, with the addition of continual bursts of huge shells banging overhead, draughts wreathing round one's feet, and perpetual small worries to improve one's temper. 

It was before Christmas that the idea, fostered by such influences, finally won the day, and it was decided they were to be married in January, 1916. 

To Mairi, of course, this would make an enormous change; never again would she have her friend entirely to herself, and the good days in which they had grown to know each other in all sorts of circumstances were over. 

But though Mairi felt the separation bitterly she was far too loyal to do other than rejoice in her friend's happiness, and even her private diary contains nothing but pleasure at this unexpected change. 

Except for the visits of "Harry," that winter was a very quiet one in Pervyse. The place was more desolate than ever. The year before, the houses, though ruined, were mostly standing, now many more were heaps of stones, without a suggestion of life. Previously horses had been quartered in some of the sheds, the Engineer officers had been coming and going, "one saw movement"; even in the village there were usually soldiers marching to or from the trenches, and when the first shells fell after an interval, there had often been a rush for shelter like that of rabbits flying to their holes in a warren on the approach of a "human." But this year there was hardly a living being to be seen; the only inhabited place besides the poste was the brasserie. "If one walks through the village one sees nothing but absolute ruin and desolation. Poor little Pervyse! The Germans certainly have knocked it about. In the Rue de Dixmude the houses which are left are crumbling to pieces, soon there won't be even an upstanding wall left. The Hôtel de Ville is most depressing, it lifts one great chimney to the sky, the other long since having fallen, and on one wall in the interior, which is now laid bare, is the figure of an angel. The weather has been awful, all through these months, rain falling unceasingly. Our shelter is filled with water, and we are obliged to pump it out frequently." As far as the rest went it was all much the same; the great artillery duels raged overhead, shells fell around, and many wounded were brought in. "Our work comprises every kind of thing. Now that the winter months are in full swing the men need much attention if they are to be kept alive. Woollen garments of every sort are in great demand. Often men come to us soaked through from head to foot, having fallen into the inundations while doing patrol work, and then we are able to give them a place to themselves where they can undress and wrap themselves up in blankets, while their clothes are being dried in the oven. We attend to all their wants: cuts, burns, sore feet, boils, all kinds of little ailments which a doctor cannot, or will not, be bothered with." 

The Two still carried out hot drinks at night to the sentinels at the avant-poste, and still made soup and cocoa for the hungry, cold men in the trenches. Their faithful friend, Robert de Wilde, who had become like an elder brother, dropped in frequently in the evenings, but there were not many others. 

So the time passed on until January. The day for the great event was fixed for the nineteenth, and there was much to arrange first. 

"It seemed as if everyone had to give their permission," says Gipsy. "The man sends in his demand to get married, and with it his fiancee's birth certificate, and an account of her parents, stating whether they are of good family or not. Then the round begins. This goes to the Commandant; he considers it and signs it. He sends it on to the Commanding Officer of the Aviation, who does the same. From there it goes to General Headquarters. From there to the Ministry. From there to the War Minister. From there to the King. Then it reverses the route and crawls back again." 

The ceremony was to take place in La Panne from the little villa which the Two had occupied in their last week there together, and two days before it, Gipsy was there arranging matters when up came Baron Harold de T'Serclaes laughing, and said the papers had indeed at last returned from their long journey, but there was no birth certificate with them; it had been dropped apparently somewhere on the way, and the Tribunal refused to go through with the marriage unless it turned up! 

And this at the eleventh hour, when all the guests were invited! 

"What could I do?" says the poor bride-to-be. "I sat down and racked my brains. There seemed no two ways open to me. I could wire to my wonderful shipping agent in Dover, who has so many times pulled me through difficulties, and ask him to send someone to London by passenger train to Somerset House, there to get a duplicate of the certificate, and with it catch the Calais boat the following day, so that he could hand the certificate to the Captain, and I would meet the boat at this end and get it from him. But all this would take a lot of explaining in a wire, and involved a fearful risk, as things might go wrong. 

"Secondly, I might go to Havre and myself fetch the missing certificate, which must be there. But Havre is a seven-hour journey by road, and is outside the zone of my pass—that left me only one day to get a laissez-passer—and supposing I allowed for a fifteen- hour journey, I could only just do it without counting any break- downs. What a position! I saw my wedding-day vanishing into dim mists, but as my fiancé was being cheery I was going to be so too, and I did not let him see how dreadfully worrying all this was to me. I crawled back to Pervyse that night, still beating my brains to find a way out. There I found the poste full of sick and wounded, and so much work to do that I had not time to think even about my own wedding. 

"But in the middle of the night a thought flashed upon me that I had with me an old tin box full of papers, and in among them all my hospital examination papers, and I had had to have a birth certificate to get into the hospital, so it might be there still." 

It was! 

So the ceremony had not to be postponed, after all! 

It had been suggested that the marriage might take place in the ruined church of Pervyse, open to the sky, where there was still a bit of the altar standing, but, used as she was to continuing her work calmly amid falling shells, Gipsy considered that in such conditions her responses might not be so clear and firm as she would wish, and also that the coming and going of such a party of people might draw the German fire, and so the idea was set aside. 

January 18 was a Tuesday, and on the evening of that day Mairi writes: "The day before THE DAY! How strange it seems that the dear kid is going to get married! We have so often talked about it and discussed it laughingly, and now it is going to become fact. How things change! The last day I shall ever have Winkles to myself! (Winkles was another pet name evolved spontaneously.) Pray God she may be happy! She deserves happiness, if anyone does. Dear little Winkles, what a good friend you have been to me! You will never realize what it has meant to me to be with you for these months. I shall miss you horribly. Goodbye, Winkles; good luck to you, and all my very best wishes for your future life." 

Captain Robert de Wilde, who was to be best man, turned up early and had breakfast with them. Gipsy says of him: "One of the most charming and bravest of the Belgian officers I have met. We have shared the ups and downs of shelling ever since the first days of Pervyse, when he was observation officer. He is now in command of a battery. He talks English as we do, and is one of those rare men who are always cheerful." 

They started in the Wolseley car at eight o'clock, and no sooner had they got clear of the village than Gipsy remembered she had left her shoes behind, and had to go back. Lucky that she wasn't caught by a shell. She was dressed for the wedding in a blue frock and a big black hat, with a white wing across the front—very suitable in view of the bridegroom's position. They arrived at the villa which had been lent to them about 9.30, and there the bridegroom met them for the civil ceremony. Then they went on to the church, a Roman Catholic chapel, which faith the bride had embraced before her marriage. 

The organ was beautifully played during the ceremony, and the congregation rivalled that to be found at any West End London church at a society wedding. 

There were present Brigadier-General Prince Alexander of Teck, the Russian representative, General Jacquez, Lady Denbigh and her two daughters, one of whom—Lady Dorothie—had played her part in the ambulance work, Baron de Bleaumaerts, Baron de Wahliss, many of the officers of the Belgian Army, and personal friends. Even the photographers were not omitted, and the war-wedding was quite like those usually known in peace. 

With this the book might end, as 80 per cent, of the reading public consider a wedding the only satisfactory conclusion, but there is still something to say. Main went over with the happy pair on leave to England. She obtained permission, after exceeding difficulty, for her father to come and share her rough and dangerous life at Pervyse. She was back at her post before the honeymooners, and went down to Boulogne to welcome them on their return on February 8. Then she performed the really amazing feat for a girl of her age (she was by this time close on twenty) of driving them back from Boulogne to La Panne and taking the car on to Pervyse, altogether 160 miles! 

The poste was further fortified by endless sandbags and made more secure. But the question of means continued to be an anxious one. When Gipsy resumed her work she and Mairi discussed it often. They realized that they could not continue to draw from the few personal friends, who had already given as much as they could possibly afford, yet how were they to reach a larger public? One day, when the question was to the fore, someone said to them that if only means could be found of letting the general public in England know what they had done and were still doing, he was sure many, many people would gladly subscribe, a view that seemed borne out by the ready way which money flowed in if one of the hard workers themselves told the people of England of their life. It was suggested, therefore, that their cherished diaries, which they had kept entirely for their own interest, should be handed over to someone they knew, who had the requisite knowledge of the conditions, to be written out in book form, and then they should be published. Thus the wider public—that which reads—might be reached, in which case it would be easy to ask everyone who sympathized with the work to send some trifle, even if only a shilling, after reading the book. Many shillings would fill the exchequer. After some persuasion this was agreed to. The Two had always hated publicity, but owing to the unique character of their work and the approval of the King of the Belgians, they had not been altogether able to hide their light under a bushel, as they would have preferred to; so for the sake of that work, which was their very life, they agreed to go further, and with pain and grief handed over the journals to see what could be made of them. 

Main is still hard at work, and Gipsy is still as devoted as ever, despite her new responsibilities. 

On March 2, 1916, in the early morning a message came to them that King Albert was going to visit the trenches at Pervyse, and would probably look in at the poste on the way. Luckily Gipsy had been staying there for the night, so she was on the spot, and able to help Mairi to tidy up with all speed. The dug-out looked very dusty and sombre when they viewed it to see if it was fit for the King, but they had done all that was possible. 

As early as 8.15 the King came down the village street accompanied by two Generals; he was dressed in khaki, with a khaki metal helmet on his head, and looked taller than ever among those gaunt ruins. The Two stood by the door of the poste to see him go by, and when his eye fell on them he came across to them and held out his hand in a friendly way. 

"I want to congratulate you on all you are doing for my soldiers," he said. "I think you are very courageous to stay up here." 

Glowingly they replied that they loved their work more than ever; it had become a part of them. 

"I hope you are sufficiently sheltered?" he asked, glancing at the piled-up sandbags. 

Yes, indeed, they assured him. Would he care to look inside? So he lifted his helmet and, stooping, came in. 

Now among the most valuable possessions of the poste was a Siamese kitten, which had been given to the Two, and which was never allowed to stray into the street, lest its small life should be abruptly ended. With the usual propensity of its species, its one endeavour was always to get out, and whenever the door of the dug-out was opened from outside, those coming in put down a wary hand and stopped its tumultuous exit. In this case, however, neither of the Two could go in before the King, and they looked at each other as the door opened. The orderly, Henri, who had been with them for a long time, and loved them and all things that were theirs, including the kitten, with deep devotion, seeing the door open and the kitten make a bolt, flew from the innermost recesses, crying out: 

"Hélas! Attention là, que le petit chat ne se sauve pas!" Thus he came right up against the King! Poor man, he looked as if he would never get over it! 

The King only laughed as the petit chat was frustrated, and looking round the low room with interest, he noted the portraits of himself and the Queen and their family hanging on the walls, doubtless remembering that Gipsy was now legally his own subject. 

When he turned to go he thanked them again in a simple, friendly way, and asked how long they had been in Pervyse. 

When they told him, he echoed, "Eighteen months! It is a long time," and with a kindly hand-clasp he passed on. 

Baroness de T'Serclaes said at her recent public meetings in England: "I found that far too many of the stretchers contained dead bodies when they arrived at the base hospital, and it seemed to me that the reason must be that they had died from shock or from the way they were driven over the badly-shelled roads. I appealed to the Belgian Government, and asked if they would permit Miss Chisholm and myself to go into the trenches and try and see if, by treating the soldiers for shock at once, we could save life.” 

"After several refusals we were allowed to go into the trenches for twenty-four hours, and have stayed nearly two years.” 

"In March, 1915, when the big war conference was held in Paris, and it was decided that no women were to be permitted in the trenches at all, it was further decided, after examining the work I and Miss Chisholm were doing, that we should be the only two women who were permitted in the firing-line, because our treatment was necessary, I found it was as I thought, and if one could get to a soldier directly he was hit, and treat him for shock, he was able to stand an operation better than one who was bundled into an ambulance and driven quickly over bad roads to the operating-table, where he, perhaps, died under the operation or from the after effects. We are in telephonic communication with every trench in the division, and have many thousand men to look after. The telephone means that when a man wants our care we can get to him right away. We do all we can to save the men's lives, and on many occasions we are able to deal with them so quickly that they are on the operating-table within twenty minutes!" 

And even after the war, when Belgium comes into her own again, the work will not cease; there will be crippled men, and helpless men, and men wholly incapable of doing anything for themselves: these will all need care and attention, and in her new country the Baroness will find ample work to fill her life in devoting herself to the "splendid little Belgian soldiers" whom she has learned to love. 

The Cellar House of Pervyse - Chapter 14 - The Steenkerke Hut

'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 XIV - The Steenkerke Hut

As there were no other houses that could be inhabited in Pervyse, and, furthermore, as, even if there had been, there was no manner of use exposing wounded men to the dangers of that much shelled place, it was decided that a hut must be put up some way back from Pervyse for the sole purpose of the poste. As the Two had now a banking account, and were in consequence feeling free to do what they thought best, they talked it over with Mr. Costa, Harrod's representative, who was then doing some hospital-building at La Panne. He entered into their plans warmly, and brushing aside obstacles set to work at once. For the week during which the little hut was being constructed the Two lodged in La Panne. The hut was put together in the manner of the prairie huts of Canada, and, when ready, was carted up on huge army lorries and put in position in a field just off the road away back from Pervyse toward Furnes. 

It will be seen from the map that Avecappelle and Steenkerke lie just off this road about halfway between Furnes and Pervyse. The hut was not far from Avecappelle. In the nature of the case there could be no cellar, but as it was supposed to be out of the fire-zone that did not matter. 

The Two finally took possession on Wednesday, April 11, when two sick men were sent to them. They revelled in the cleanliness and the newness of the hut after the constant smell of mortar and dust which they had breathed in the thickened air so long. Gipsy writes: "I wish I could show you our funny little wooden house. It is like a Canadian log-hut, and contains two fair-sized rooms, one for ourselves and one for the sick and wounded; and two wee cubicles, one for the orderly and one for our stores, dressings, etc. We have the motor-kitchen drawn up tight against our door, and we step out sideways into it. There we make soup for the soldiers and do our sick-room cookery. The work here is more tiring than it was at Pervyse, because we take both sick and wounded, and that makes more cooking; but I love it all, and only long to be able to keep it going." But, alas! they were not destined to be free from trouble. 

About six o'clock on Sunday, 14th, only three days after they had finally got straight, Mairi was writing out accounts in one room and Gipsy was massaging a patient in the other, the whole of the five available beds being occupied by wounded men. Suddenly a sound they never thought of hearing there shrieked into their ears, and "out of the nowhere" arrived a huge shell, which came down somewhere quite near with a thunderous crash. The noise and force of it, shaking the ground like an earthquake, told their experienced ears that it must be a twenty-one centimetre shell, commonly called a vingt-et-un; and this was dropping near a little wooden shed with a match-boarding roof which would not have stopped for the fraction of a second a 7.5 centimetre shell! Gipsy's face expressed all she felt; she was white with horror at the thought of the blessés lying there in her charge. She flew to help them on with their clothes, and bundled them out of the house into a little stone house; then, dashing out on to the road, she hailed a passing motor-bike, seated herself on the carrier, and went thus to Steenkerke to fetch the Wolseley ambulance, which was on duty there. 

Mairi, who had not for one instant lost her steadiness, waited until the last man cleared the door, and then locked up. François, a new orderly who had been lent to them by the army, stayed with her, and when they came round the corner of the house the others had vanished. The first shell had been quickly followed by many similar ones, and they were now simply raining round. It was not safe to go upon the road, which is usually more shelled than anywhere else; besides, if a shell does drop on the hard pavé, the resulting explosion from the impact is so terrific that there would be nothing left of anyone within a wide radius. Knowing this, Mairi cut across the fields, with François at her heels, but they had the most awful time of their lives, and it took them half an hour to traverse one small field! When they heard the murderous shriek they went flat on their faces in the mud, and waited for the final explosion, and then got up and ran a few feet and dropped again. Sometimes, even as they ran, the force of an explosion threw them down. The air was literally humming with shells. But even in her bewilderment Mairi noticed the curious clean scoop they make in the soft mud of a field, like an inverted funnel or a wine-glass, with the sides as smooth as paste—so different from the jagged, broken craters of the smashed roads. Once, as she lay there, expecting every instant she would be wiped out of material existence, she put out her hand mechanically to touch the fragment of a shell which had fallen beside her, and started to feel it burning hot. Another most odd fact was that the larks were singing all the time. They almost seemed to like the noise, and in every tiny scrap of silence their notes rose high and clear. The whole effect was awesome, like some weird dream. 

When they finally got on to the Steenkerke Road they were out of range, but where was Gipsy? Hardly had the question arisen when she appeared with the Wolseley ambulance. She had come back to look for them, and was thankful beyond words that they were safe. Her fine sense of responsibility had made her put in safety first of all the wounded who were in her charge, but the instant they were disposed of she had sought for her friend. 

All thoughts of remaining in a hut in that position was at an end. When the shelling quieted down a little later on they returned and collected some of their belongings, and, after talking the matter over together, asked Mr. Costa to put up the hut for them again nearer Steenkerke. 

Three times they had been shelled out of their refuges and escaped unhurt. What would the end be? 

The building of the hut had made a big hole in the funds collected for the upkeep of the poste, and its removal was a disaster, because it necessitated further inroads on their small capital. However, they were not to be daunted, and with the hut once more set up the work began again. 

They were certainly much better off in many ways than they had ever been before. Here, besides the five beds for soldiers, there was one in a separate room for an officer. They were well provided with cars. Mairi, who has a head for detail, gives an exact list of them: "A 16-20 h.p. Wolseley ambulance (St. John Ambulance car), a 75 h.p. Mercedes, and a 40-60 Fiat with a kitchen body." Besides these, the British Red Cross had given them a lorry for fetching goods from Dunkirk, but it was "such a beast" that they exchanged it for a "dear little 10-12 h.p. Mors," which did excellent work. 

The first officer to occupy the small room was the son of General Jacquez, and his being entrusted to their care was felt to be a mark of great confidence. Rumour at once rolled around. "It was the son of a General they had in charge. What General? Oh, General French, of course. No, it was a royalty. Then it must be Prince Alexander of Teck." And so on. All these surmises and conjectures reached their ears from time to time, and caused them much amusement. 

From this time the poste took on a more established character. Mrs. Knocker appealed for cards, puzzles, French books, chocolate, and cigarettes for her beloved wounded. "It is such a splendid little country!" she said. "I have lived amongst the soldiers so long, and know how plucky and cheerful they are. I see them patched up, returning to their regiments unmurmuring. I wonder if even our British Tommy would fight so cheerfully as he does if he were established on twenty miles of Kent, knowing that all the rest of his country was in the hands of the Germans, not knowing where his mother, wife, or sisters were, or if he would ever see them again. What awful odds against them! I am asking for funds to enable me to keep up my little hospital, and not give up the work I am so keen about." 

Rations were supplied by the army for each wounded soldier, but they needed more than that to feed them up. Also there was no allowance of food for the ladies themselves, or the orderly and chauffeurs, and coal and other necessaries had to be provided. Even with the utmost economy the cost of running the poste was not less than three pounds a week. 

 One of the most untiring of their friends was Major A. A. Gordon, M.V.O., Courrier de sa Majesté le Roi des Belges, who had known them through all their vicissitudes in the Pervyse days, and now continued his visits, never without bringing priceless treasures of condensed milk, preserved café au lait and other necessaries. 

They had arranged to have stores sent out from Harrods' to Dunkirk once a week, and one of them had to motor in and fetch them. By this time Mairi was quite a good hand at a car, not only at driving it, but in knowing "how to poke her nose inside the bonnet" to make it go when it was sulky. 

Now that they were not living right up at the trenches, and had their own ambulance, they used to go to collect the wounded. On those open roads they were clearly visible from far away, and the Germans used to make a target of them whenever they saw them. Gipsy draws an amusing little diagram showing the shells marking their course, but always breaking just behind them, so that they look as if the car had dropped them out as it ran. 

The Wolseley car, already mentioned as having been presented by Sutton Coldfield and district, did wonderful work. Mairi says of it, "It is a car in a million." Since March, 1915, up to the time of writing, it has carried 1,500 sick and wounded men, and that without any break- down—a record any car might be proud of. The car has always been driven by one of the Two themselves, and that has helped to keep it in order, for careful driving goes a long way towards the preserving the life of cars, and the way some chauffeurs knock them about is appalling. The experiences of the Two with their various chauffeurs have been painful and amusing together, and the amount of energy expended in the futile hope of keeping some of the men in order is enough to move one to tears. 

Gipsy says, "Our cars and our chauffeurs have made us feel older and thinner than any hard work we have ever done." Of course, the first requisite for a driver at the front is pluck, and not only the sort of pluck coming of sound nerves, which almost every chauffeur, even in ordinary home traffic on good roads, must possess, but a kind of dare-devil recklessness in addition. The trouble out there was that if they got a man with this kind of courage, he was as a rule utterly undisciplined, and refused to obey orders, and generally made himself a nuisance. It seemed sometimes as if it were a choice between a polite man who agreed to everything he was told, but simply dropped off the car and sat in a ditch if he approached a tight place, and a reckless, careless, rude fellow who went when he liked and where he liked without the least consideration for what was expected of him. As an instance of the first type, one day when Mairi was driving up to Pervyse, and reached the long, straight stretch before the village, she found that shells were bursting ahead, but felt she must go on. She continued therefore steadily, but when she reached the village and turned to give an order to the chauffeur Joseph, who should have been seated behind, she found that he had vanished. He had thought it simpler and easier to roll out of the car and lie in the ditch until the danger was over 

In contrast to Joseph there was Paul, who met an order with a dark scowl, and if told to get ready to drive, sometimes replied promptly, "I'm not going to drive this morning," not happening to be in the mood for it. Supposing he were severely reprimanded, he would disappear until he thought his employers had been sufficiently punished. Yet of his pluck there could be no question. He not only went headlong into danger if the mood took him, he really seemed to enjoy it; and if the car broke down he knew every screw and nut in her, and not only could put her right again, but would do it even under fire. Yet at last he got so unbearable that Gipsy asked the General to give him a word of reprimand, thinking innocently that, coming from the General, it must make some impression. When she told her recreant that the General had sent for him at three o'clock, all the reply she got was, "What for?” 

She did not give anything away, merely repeating that the General wished to see him, and that he must present himself at Headquarters at three. He answered quite calmly, "Then you can go down and tell the General I'm busy," and departed, hands in pockets, with an expression on his face showing there was no work of any kind to be got out of him for twelve hours; someone had to suffer for their rash interference with his liberty! This was unbearable, and he had to go, and was replaced by Joseph, whose exploits have been detailed. 

Good driving of an ambulance car is not only necessary for preserving the life of the car itself, but the lives of those who are in it. The man who goes fifty miles an hour at and over and into anything, as the Belgian chauffeurs love to do, will probably kill many of those he is carrying, and even if they are not actually murdered, he will cause them unnecessary agony. In driving ambulances holes should be avoided wherever possible, and, even if there is shelling going on, a really good driver will consider his charges and his ear rather than his own instinct to get out of it as quickly as possible. Both Gipsy and Mairi thoroughly understand cars, and it is pain and grief to them to hear the gears grate and the nuts wrench and jar by foolish or reckless carelessness. Sometimes Gipsy has been advised, "Madame, if you would leave your chauffeurs alone and trust them, they would never give you any trouble." At last, in desperation, thinking the trouble could not be greater than it was, she did leave them to themselves for one day, with the result that the big 75 h.p. Mercedes was rushed out to Calais for a joy-ride, and had to be towed back on a lorry because the back axle was smashed! Leaving the chauffeurs alone for a day usually meant a big bill for repairs. 

One day the Two were at Oestkerke when the shelling was very hot. Every movement must have been visible to the enemy. They were in the Wolseley ambulance, and turned to the right at some cross- roads and drew up beside a farm-house. A Captain came out from the house and told them there was a wounded man in the village needing them, so they turned and raced back to fetch him under a killing fire. They managed to find him and dashed back, though one shell burst right behind the car. Gipsy, who was in the front seat beside the chauffeur, looked sharply back, expecting to see that the rear part of the car had been sliced off. But for the splendid qualities of the Wolseley car they would never have got out alive, and the Sutton Coldfield donors may feel satisfied that their contributions have achieved notable work. It was for this feat they were mentioned in despatches. The orders of the day ran : 

"J'exprime tous mes remerciements à Madame Knocker et à Mademoiselle Chisholm pour le nouvel acte de dévouement qu'elles ont posé le 25 courant en allant relever un de nos blessés dans une endroit battu par l'artillerie ennemie." 

The General himself came to congratulate them and stayed to have tea. 

Money soon began to fail them again, and Gipsy contemplated another run over to England to fill the coffers. It seemed hard that when she was there and able to tell people in person about the work, she should get what she wanted, but the moment she went back to take up the work again subscriptions ceased. "It seems easy enough to get money," she says pathetically, "when people see you, and hear you talk, and realize what you are doing, but the moment you get back and begin to do it again, and cease talking, they forget all about you." 

Even though they were now outside the worst danger-zone, they soon realized that it would be the prudent course to bank up the little poste with sandbags to deaden any splinters or shrapnel that might come that way, and Gipsy wrote home praying for bags of any kind, only not too big, because they couldn't lift them themselves. She especially asks that her little son might make one, and have his name painted in large letters across it, so that it might be recognized and could be stuck up in a prominent position. Besides this they had a dugout made beneath the hut into which they could hurry their wounded charges at the first alarm. 

 The weather had now become very hot. At first this was a welcome change after the long dreary winter, but presently the heat became almost more trying than the cold had been. The glare and dust were awful. But the Two had occasional changes; once one of the naval men took them for a run along the coast in a motor-boat, and the breath of the sea air came like a vivifying blast to both. On another never-to-be-forgotten occasion they went down by invitation to the aviation ground, and there quite suddenly Gipsy found herself being introduced to Baron Harold de T'Serclaes de Rattendael, a representative of one of the oldest Belgian families, and recognized with a quick movement of surprise that this was the officer who had brought messages from his Colonel, and whom she had often thought of since. They had hardly had two words together until then, but the acquaintance formally made seemed as if it were going to blossom. From the very first Mairi, with instinctive tact, always found someone else to talk to at the right moment. 

Both the girls were dreadfully tried by that summer. Not for anything would they have given up the work, but yet, "I feel I should love to be quietly at home in a wee cottage with the sound of guns miles away. One gets tired of the same old grind, the same old food, and never a change. I dare not say how sick one gets of it for fear of being disheartened," tells its own tale. 

About the end of July, Gipsy visited Pervyse again one day, and discovered how terribly the little poste was missed there, so she began to wonder if it would be possible to reopen it. The hut was all very well, but it was not right at the front where the men could get at it any time in coming from the trenches, and the atmosphere of hope and brightness which the mere presence of women had been able to create in the village, was sadly lacking while they were some miles out. There was an empty house opposite the brasserie where the officers lived, which, though badly shattered, might perhaps do. She considered the matter, talked it over with the officers, and after a good deal of trouble with Headquarters, gained permission to return there if she wished. 

The four outside walls of this "possible" house were still standing, but the roof and inside walls had quite gone, except for two rooms, one of which was the cellar. Mr. Costa put up a wooden partition inside to replace the broken wall, and the Engineers were willing to do all they could, and helped to fix iron rafters across the roof by working at night. They had only just accomplished this when they got orders to move elsewhere. But the two girls, with indomitable pluck and perseverance, themselves dragged up sandbags and piled them on the rafters; and this they did after a heavy day's work at the poste, coming up from Steenkerke at nights in order to put it through. A friend, named Mr. Colby, found them at it one night, and was horrified that they should be using their strength in this rough work. He was most kind, and sent men and materials to the rescue, and it was time someone did, for the heavy work and long strain had had their effect, and Gipsy, who had been showing signs of nerve strain for some time, broke down completely. So both she and Mairi obtained leave, and went over to England. It can hardly be said that this was a holiday any more than the former trip, but at any rate it was change of work; and after lecturing and interviewing, and running about a good deal, they both came back quite well on September 9, 1915. 

It was at this time they met again Miss Eva Moore, whom they had worked for when attached to the Women's Emergency Corps. Miss Moore was immensely interested in all they had done since then, and set herself to work untiringly to help them, sending them out funds and contributions in kind which were the greatest help; in fact, had it not been for her, the poste might have had to cease altogether. 

The Cellar House of Pervyse - Chapter 13 - Shelled Out

'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 XIII - Shelled Out

Geneal JAacquez, commanding the Belgian Army, had been once or twice to call upon the ladies of the poste. But when he came in a day or two after this, accompanied by three staff officers, there was something official in his air which set them on the alert. Mrs. Knocker and Mairi stood before him, a little confused at the magnificence of his salute, which had a sort of special impressiveness about it. They watched him, wondering what on earth was coming as he drew out a paper; was this at last a "notice to quit." The General's air of satisfaction hardly portended that. 

He said with great dignity, "I have been sent by His Majesty the King of the Belgians to inform you that he has created you Knights (Chevaliers) of the Order of Leopold II, and I ask you, ladies, to accept my most sincere congratulations," and he handed them the King's Order. 

For a moment they stood stock-still, dumb-founded, not realizing all it meant, only perceiving with a rush of gladness that what they had tried to do had been known and appreciated by the hero-King, for whom they cherished the deepest admiration. 

It was so unexpected that it was a little difficult to assimilate. From time to time some of the officers had let fall hints of a possible decoration, but that it would be other than a medal, bestowed at the end of the war, had never entered their heads. It was not until General Jacquez had left that they were able to think coherently, and then they drank each other's health in a glass of Horlick's malted milk. 

It came out later that the King's attention had been drawn to them since that first awful day at Melle, when they had insisted on going back under fire and bringing out the German wounded. The episode of their driving to Fumes, alone and unprotected, five German prisoners, had also been brought to the King's notice; Mrs. Knocker's marvellously heroic work in driving the ambulances under terrible conditions, when even hardened chauffeurs gave way, had made her name famous; and their steady and purposeful work under constant fire at Pervyse, where the King had himself seen them, had been the culminating point. One thing had led to another, and had it not been for the previous work, which had shown such unusual qualities of pluck and devotion, the development of this poste at Pervyse could never have been permitted. It was only very exceptional women who could be trusted to keep their heads amid such strange and trying conditions, which demanded the utmost discretion and resource. And now that the King had set his seal upon the work and given it his countenance they were in quite a different position. Gipsy recognized with joy, not only the personal honour, which she valued as highly as anyone could, but the greatly increased opportunities of usefulness it opened the way for in the future. 

The sequel came in a message from the King, asking whether they would like him to send the insignia, or whether they would go to him to receive the decoration at his hands. They chose the latter, naturally. The day fixed was February 1, on which many of the officers were to be decorated; curiously enough, it coincided with the birthday of little Kenneth, Mrs. Knocker's only child. The two who were to be decorated had agonisedly inquired of everyone exactly what was the etiquette of the occasion, and what they ought to say and do; but they were both extremely nervous, and a cold, blustery day did not improve matters. Here is Mairi's description of that nerve-trying morning: "A lot of dashing round trying to find things, and vainly hoping to improve our appearances; falling over everything, and getting in each other's way." 

The wind blew straight from the sea, bringing with it a tang that bit pink cheeks and made noses unbecomingly red. They were clad in weather-stained khaki knickers, long leather coats, and high boots, with khaki wool caps bearing in brass letters the number of the army division to which they were attached. They stood ranged in rank at the end of a long line of officers for about three hours. Mairi is much the fairer of the two, and her clear blue eyes have something in them of the glint seen in the eyes of a man who knows not fear. They are so limpid and candid, no one could dream of the horrid experiences and revolting sights which have bitten deep into the life of this brave little Scot, and have, so she says, made her feel ten years older since she went to Belgium. Mrs. Knocker's eyes are hazel, or, as someone has called them, "khaki-colour"! 

All the hastily acquired ideas concerning etiquette fled from their minds when the immensely tall King towered above them, his sad, deep-blue eyes looking down upon them as he pinned the Cross on their tunics. He talked with them a long time in English, and asked many questions about Pervyse, expressing his personal gratitude for their work among his beloved soldiers; and when he had passed on to decorate others, they realized with something like dismay that he had so completely enthralled them they had quite forgotten to curtsey, and had talked with him as if he had been a kind friend or one of the officers who came familiarly in and out of the génie house. 

The tufty grass was iced, and when they came to themselves again they found their feet were too! 

Miss May Sinclair, in an article in the Daily Chronicle about this time, says: 

"The special correspondent has missed Mrs. Knocker altogether, and yet perhaps it is by her services and those of Miss Mairi Chisholm that the Munro Ambulance has best proved the fitness of women in the actual field." She goes on to speak of what they had endured. "The net of death around a field ambulance is at times woven so fine that only by a miracle can they escape it." There was no limelight on the field at Melle, on that road between Dixmude and Furnes, or among the blood and straw in the cellar at Pervyse." 

In a private letter to one of Mrs. Knocker's near relations Miss Sinclair says: 

"You will have heard of the great honour that has just been bestowed on lier (Mrs. Knocker) and Miss Chisholm: they have both been made Chevaliers de l'Ordre de Leopold II., which is a great honour, and given by the King himself. I dare say she has not been able to tell you how thoroughly she has deserved it; but you will realize that. I am rejoiced that it has come so soon, and come to them alone of the corps, for there is not one of them that has done such fine work so unobtrusively and untiringly or shown quite such splendid courage as they. And it has been so sad to know all this, and to see other people getting the credit for what they have done —the establishing and carrying through of the dressing-station at Pervyse was done by Mrs. Knocker and Miss Chisholm only. I hear that there are several conjectures as to what particular deed has won them this honour.” 

"I wish I could have done more to make their splendid work known as it should be. It was enough honour for any woman to have been with them and to have seen some of it." 

However, when the new decorations were freshly pinned on their tunics they were very shy about them, and, buttoning their leather coats over them, they went into the town to try to buy something "special" to take back to celebrate the occasion, and to their great joy managed to procure a leg of mutton! In the inn they encountered some of the naval officers who had not been present at the ceremony, and were surprised to see them both together so far from their "cheery little village." Their curiosity was uncompromisingly snubbed, but men of the sea are not easily put off' when they want to know anything, and at last they wormed out the secret. Then they called, "Three cheers for King Albert," until the roof rang. 

"It was Justice with a big 'J' when you were singled out," said one of them cordially. "So far as I know, you are actually the only women right up in the firing-line at all—and you jolly well shouldn't be," he added, after a pause. 

It was true. Nurses work at base hospitals which are established beyond the fire-zone; some canteens are fairly near, but none can be said to be right up at the front. But these two girls had not only been there, but been there all the time, which is more than could be said of the soldiers themselves, who were withdrawn and changed at intervals. Members of the ambulance corps had dashed in and out and given a hand now and again, but Gipsy and Mairi were the only two who had, in the slangy but expressive phrase, "stuck it out" all the time. The poste was due to them, and them alone. It was Gipsy's idea, and her personality only had made it possible. Yet this view was not taken in all quarters; there were some who loved the limelight, and having been in it pretty frequently, thought the King must have suffered from myopia to pass them over, though as a matter of fact he had really proved his uncommon keenness of vision. 

On their arrival back at Pervyse the Two found themselves plunged into a white heat of excitement; the avant-poste, right out on the long road across the water, had been taken by the Germans! So often had they visited that poste at nights with jugs of hot chocolate that they felt a keen personal interest in it, and when the Belgian guns began to talk and express their views of the matter they listened with eager attention, wondering anxiously if the shells fell straight and true. The noise, of course, was terrific; this was no time for economising munitions, and the many batteries went to work whole-heartedly to help out the infantry, and by ten o'clock that evening the poste was recovered. Now that the King had recognized their work it was on a different footing altogether. The Headquarter Staff approached Gipsy with a request that she would open another poste, similar to that at Pervyse, elsewhere on the front. A higher compliment could hardly have been paid to the utility of the work, but there were great difficulties in the way of compliance. It would be impossible to have the two postes sufficiently near together to be run at once; even the coming and going between the two houses in little Pervyse had been a greater strain than they had anticipated, and yet, if the postes were to be run separately, who was to look after them? Excellently trustworthy as Mairi had proved herself, she was too young to be left in charge of one alone. So they asked for time to consider the matter, and meantime went to Wimereux for a few days' holiday with friends, and while there celebrated Mairi's nineteenth birthday. She had a birthday-cake with a Cupid and candles in the centre, though the Cupid surely must have been a jest, as he was not in Mairi's line at all! 

When they returned on March 3 they were greeted by a salvo of shells, and the pluck and nerve possessed by nineteen-years-old can best be gauged by the following incident: 

Two men were brought into the poste too far gone for anything to be done; they were bad head cases, the most shocking of all forms of wounds, and the brains were protruding. Mairi says: "Immediately they were dead we took them out and put them in the back yard; shells were coming in all the time. We helped to search through the clothes of the poor fellows. One, a boy of nineteen, had only been in the trenches two days. As I was searching through the pockets of a big overcoat, I came across the brains of one of the men, evidently blown there by the force of the explosion"—and she adds sedately, "a very curious incident." 

The shelling continued with unabated force, and the Belgian doctor, Martin, grew uneasy, saying the poste was no place for wounded men to be in, and they ought to get away at once. But what could be done? It was also much too dangerous to take them down that shell-swept street, so for the time they had to remain where they were. The next day terrible cases continued to accumulate, nearly all these ghastly head-wounds, which proved so fatal that one after another of the poor fellows had to be carried out and laid on the verandah. Poor lads, only about Mairi's own age, who had gone up singing to the trenches the evening before! All the morning of the 4th the cruel, heart-tearing work went on. Dr. Martin, who was one of the best and staunchest of men, slipped out to get his lunch with the officers, but returned directly afterwards. 

He was wanted elsewhere, and had only come back to get his mackintosh; while he stood there a military ambulance came up to carry away the dead bodies. It had required some fortitude for the chauffeur to bring it through, for the shelling was still going on, though it was not quite so bad as it had been. The chauffeur leapt from the car, and with that desperate feeling which leads everyone to rush to shelter, even though they know it affords no real protection, he ran into the kitchen, where were another chauffeur and the orderlies. As he did so, there came an appalling crash, one of those which spoke of something more than a mere burst, and they all knew the house itself had been struck. Stones and mortar came clattering down, and stray bricks flew about amid a great cloud of evil-smelling smoke and choking dust. The chauffeurs and orderlies staggered through into the living-room, where the shock had been slighter, holding their arms up over their faces to protect their eyes, which nevertheless were smarting with bits and splinters. 

As the confusion slowly calmed down, like a death-knell in the hearts of the two devoted women rang the word "Evacuation!" They knew there was no chance of staying after this. Once already they had hung on to a poste until it had actually been struck and they had been driven out, and now they must retreat a second time! 

"Get on your hats and coats, and make a rush for it," someone shouted. The chauffeur, recovering himself, gallantly went first, expecting every second the impact of another large shell, and got his car turned ready for the rest; then they all rushed out, tumbling into it pell-mell, knowing that each second's delay might cost them all their lives. So they fled, leaving a piece of their hearts behind at the dear little poste which had sheltered them. They were followed down the road by the Belgian doctor in his own car, but before they reached the brasserie, where was the headquarters of Colonel Flébus, the doctor was struck and fell. There was a boy from the Congo, personal attendant of one of the officers, a faithful lad who stuck to his master through thick and thin, and many times proved his brave heart. He dashed out and carried the doctor in triumphantly, and when he was examined they thought his wounds were not serious, and he would live for many a day to continue the work he had done so unweariedly. Alas, gangrene set in and he died! 

The Two were welcomed at the brasserie, and the Colonel said that of course they must give up all idea of being at the poste for the future. Once the German guns had been trained actually upon it, it was only a matter of time when it would be demolished altogether. So miserably they waited, their hearts heavy with sorrow, until about five o'clock, when, the shelling having subsided, they went back to collect all they could from the ruined house. It was a dismal sight. The kitchen was a shapeless mass, and in falling had made a natural tomb for the poor dead bodies on the verandah. The walls were riddled, and one soldier who had taken refuge in the shed adjoining, that they called the garage, had been killed as he stood. 

It was very difficult for the two friends to know where to go now they were refugees. However, that evening found them at La Panne, a little place on the sea-coast, the most miserable-looking objects you could find, covered with mud and blood, and terribly depressed at this wholesale retreat forced upon them, which came across their high spirits like a shameful bruise. 

They remained ten days or so at La Panne, walking along the sandhills and thinking things out. Everything was in a state of flux and uncertainty hard to bear. Some of the officers who knew Gipsy's passion for riding lent her their horses, and many a good gallop she had, passing through the dunes covered with coarse, bent grass, beaten down by the wind, out on to the firm, flat sands, where the grey sea frothed and moaned. 

One day she was riding with one of the artillery officers, and as she went off full stretch he was left a little behind. All at once he yelled "Halte!" with such swift unexpectedness and ferocity that she pulled up sharply, looking behind. "I really thought I must have dropped my horse's tail!" 

Amid the immensity of desolate sand walked one simple little lady who was taking an afternoon stroll, and the officer was sitting very erect in his saddle with his hand at the salute. All too late Gipsy gathered that she had ridden at full speed past the noble Queen of the Belgians, of whom it has been said, "She is the greatest heroine in history." It seemed as if Fate was to compel them to miss the Queen, and the chagrin was most mortifying. 

The Belgian military authorities soon communicated with Mrs. Knocker, and things began to be put on a better footing. The last threads that bound her and Mairi to the ambulance corps, now temporarily at Coxyde, were severed. The Two were officially attached to the Third Division of the Belgian Army. They were asked to continue their work, but at the same time it was announced that no women except these two were to be allowed near the front at all. It was inevitable. The establishment of the poste at Pervyse had been the signal for the crowd of sight-seers and those who loved the limelight to dash in and out, often bringing visitors who had nothing whatever to do with ambulance work, but came out of mere curiosity. Frequently even those who might have helped, instead of setting to work and lending a hand in times of emergency, merely made the tour of the trenches, thereby disturbing everyone and making themselves a nuisance. This could not be permitted any more. The decree went forth, and henceforward Gipsy and her companion were singled out and set apart from all other women in the sight of the army, of which they became a part, and to them alone was accorded this great privilege of remaining in the place of honour and danger. They were asked to establish their poste again wherever they thought advisable, and meantime were granted ten days' leave to go over to England to arrange their affairs, and incidentally to collect funds, which were sorely needed. 

They might well have used this congé for complete rest, but in some ways it was harder than anything they had done yet. Gipsy soon discovered that if she herself could tell the people in England about the work being done, and of the actual state of the case, there was none so mean of soul as to grudge his pence. But the telling was a great strain; to rush about and lecture and allow interviews, which she loathed, tried her sorely. 

It was at this time that she focussed into words the idea which had seemed to her more worth while doing than anything else in life. 

"The great object of my work, the theory on which I have been acting and which my experience has proved to be sound," she says, "is the treatment of the wounded for shock before anything else. We have saved many a man who has been brought into my station saying, 'I don't care what you do to my wound; get me warm.' The effects of shock are worse in many cases than the wounds. It is not difficult to imagine it perhaps. When one is under fire, when a shell is coming, one feels like shrivelling up. Even if one is not hit, the effect upon the nervous system is very trying. If a man is hit in such circumstances the effects are much worse. For a time, some are like mad people. I have known a man wounded, and under ordinary conditions unable to trot, run round and round my dressing-table unable to stop. Another poor fellow, brought in wounded in the lung, was stone grey with cold, unconscious, and apparently lifeless. He was given up as hopeless, and it was said that if an attempt were made to get him back to the hospital he would certainly die on the road. I got him in front of the fire, wrapped him in hot blankets, applied hot-water bottles, rubbed his extremities, and got him warm. After two hours' work he roused up and asked for a drink. That man is now convalescent in a hospital in England, and is expecting to go back to the front. That is one case out of many.” 

"The object of my dressing-station, situated as near as I can possibly get it to the trenches, is to provide a place of rest for the wounded. They are made comfortable and warm, and given some hours' rest, before being joggled over the rough Belgian roads to the hospitals where their hurts can be attended to. If the wounded soldiers can rest out of the trenches before being treated they recover quicker. In the ordinary way, the wounded remain in the trenches until night, when the military ambulances can be brought up for them. Our work is to get them out of the trenches as soon after they are hit as possible." 

 No wonder all those who heard her story were melted by it, and money came in rapidly—at any rate, rapidly enough for the little they needed. Lord Norreys gave an ambulance car, a 16-20 h.p. Wolseley, which had been presented to the St. John Ambulance Association by Sutton Coldfield and district. This did the most wonderful work described later. With two hundred pounds in hand, the Two returned to Pervyse full of cheer. They were proud and pleased to find themselves for the first time beyond the hand-to- mouth state they had always hitherto existed in, and knowing how far they could make the money go, they felt quite rich and above the possibility of want for some time to come. 

They were once more in Belgium before the end of March, and began to look about for a lodging. Naturally they returned to Pervyse, which had so strong a hold on their affections. Just outside the village, farther out than the poor ruined genie house, was a little place called the Villa Espagnole, which it seemed to them might be made to do. It was in a filthy state, but that was easily remedied. Mairi started at once to scrub it with that thoroughness characteristic of her, while Gipsy went into La Panne to fetch out the possessions they had left there. But all the time Mairi scrubbed she felt uncomfortable; there was something lonesome and decayed about that villa, an awful smell of the dead, and more than once she got up and went outside to draw in a long breath of the clean air before getting on with her natural vigour. Directly Gipsy returned with the pots and pans she had to go out again to retrieve a wounded man, and she was away a long time. Dusk began to gather, and with it there crept up like a thickening fog this eerie feeling that could no longer be ignored. Least imaginative of persons, there is yet in Mairi that vein of "second sight" so often found in her countrymen, and an audible voice whispered softly to her in warning: 

"Take care; leave this place; you mustn't stay here." 

So strong did the obsession become that she left off trying to do anything and went outside, preferring to wait in the road, though it was now pitch dark, until Gipsy came back. 

The villa was very small. It consisted only of two downstairs rooms and one upstairs. There were two or three steps down to the road, and these opened directly from the principal room. This room itself communicated with the kitchen at the back by another two steps, and from it also a stairway led up to the room above. Beneath this stairway was a third door, bolted and barred, which gave access to some cellar or underground place. 

Mairi stood at the foot of the front steps in the road until she heard the welcome sound of the returning car. The wounded man was bound up and sent back to La Panne in charge of the chauffeur, who presently returned. 

The fire burnt cheerfully enough that evening as they ate their simple supper of bread and butter, but though Mairi naturally said nothing about her odd feelings, Gipsy got up once or twice and moved uneasily round like a dog or a cat in a new house, and even while she was sitting her eyes roved about disquietingly. 

They had thrown down plenty of straw in one corner and laid their two sleeping-bags upon it, and in another corner there was straw for the new chauffeur, Augustus, who had superseded Tom, required for duty elsewhere. They called him Augustus for the all-sufficient reason that he "looked like it." 

The fire was still well alight when they tucked up in their sleeping- bags for the night, but it did not seem to produce any warmth. There was a chill as of death in the air, and the "something" kept on its almost audible whisper, "Go away, go away." At last even matter-of- fact Mairi could bear it no longer, and creeping nearer to her friend she felt for her hand. 

"What is it?" asked Gipsy, startled. 

"Gipsy, there is something dead in here; but— yet—it's—not—dead- -----" 

Gipsy sat upright suddenly. "I haven't dared to tell you," she said. "But ever since I have been in this house something has been saying quite distinctly in my ear, 'Go,' and it makes me feel cold all over. But, Mairi, it isn't real cold; it's a queer kind of cold that never gets warm—any—more-----" 

They had spoken in whispers, but suddenly the chauffeur sat up and said in French, "II y a quelque chose de je ne sais quoi-----" 

They were not apt to suffer from nerves, those three; they had seen death too often and in too many horrid forms to be scared by it, but now they knew it was something beyond death that had awed them, something which was vague and terrible, and to all three it seemed as if this "thing" was behind that rusty barred door. It was imprisoned, yet menacing, and was trying intangibly to thrust them away. 

They did not sleep at all for the remainder of the night, and were glad when the morning dawned. Without consulting each other, they had simultaneously made up their minds that this house was impossible, and as soon as they could they went to Headquarters and stated that it was unsatisfactory, without giving reasons, and asked for suggestions as to settling elsewhere. 

Afterwards there came rumours of the strange influence of that house on others besides themselves. A priest had been living there, and was unable to move because his military duties tied him to the place, and there was no habitable corner elsewhere in it. From the first he had felt uncomfortable, but had struggled against the nameless horror that crept into his veins, and in the end he had gone mad with it! 

The Cellar House of Pervyse - Chapter 12 - Waiting for Attack

 '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 XII - Waiting for Attack

After having seen death around in so many guises, it seems natural for Mairi Chisholm to open her New Year's diary with the terse and unaffected words: "What will 1915 bring to us? Death, I suppose, to many—I wonder which ones!" Fortunately they were both spared; not a scratch did they get, though they worked the whole year through in the thick of the danger. 

For women, especially women unaccustomed to continuous physical exertion, the difficulty is to keep on doing the same thing, as many heads of canteens have found. A woman in her own home may do a little housework, but there is nothing to prevent her knocking off and resting when she feels it too much; to "keep on keeping on," as Mr. J. C. Snaith has it, is the test. There are hundreds of women willing to do a day a week in canteens, handing out food to munition workers or soldiers, but even the one continuous day, always the same day, seems more than many are able to manage, and it is the units among the tens who hold on regularly. But to go on as the Two did, day in, day out, while months ran into years, with every nerve on the alert, under a strain both physical and mental, is a wonderful feat. 

The New Year made them both very busy, as the fighting continued active, and the urgency of the work compelled Gipsy to break off her journal, which does not begin again until September; but sturdy Mairi continued hers, and Gipsy's letters home fill the gap. 

In the very beginning of the year, she took over a party of six soldiers to England; they were going to convalesce in a little house which had been given by friends. That journey was a nightmare. The men were very ill—they were not merely slight cases; three of them were on stretchers. The crossing was rough as it could be; all the half-dozen were sea-sick, and, as some of the poor fellows were stomach cases, and ought never to have had this added strain, their cone on became pitiable. Each separate one needed a nurse to himself, and in the close quarters, with the violent motion of the ship, Gipsy had to do everything for them all, with only the help of anyone who might happen to be there. The responsibility for those poor racked bodies was hers. When they drew near Dover, it was so rough no pilot would come out, and they tossed about three weary hours outside, until by desperate signalling as to the condition of the wounded on board a pilot was obtained. They got into Dover at nine at night instead of five o'clock, as expected, and the additional hours of tossing about seemed spun out into eternity for each suffering man. The last train up to town had gone, and as arrangements had been made on the supposition that they would be in London that night, there was no accommodation ready at the town. Mr. G-----, one of the ambulance corps, had fortunately come to meet the boat, and had got some ambulances. From the pier Gipsy telephoned to the military hospital to ask that her patients might be taken in, but there was no room. Then she tried the King's Head Hotel, and was able to get them in there. Naturally they were all frightfully ill with pain and exhaustion, and all night long she had to run from one to the other, helped by an R.A.M.C. officer who fortunately happened to be staying there. She must have been feeling very bad herself, but she never mentions this in her account of the incident; all she says is, "They were splendid." 

This was on a Saturday. The men were taken up by train to London next day and across to Euston, and here, owing to the scarcity of Sunday trains, it was impossible to avoid a delay of five hours. Out of the six sufferers, four were really in a very precarious state and one in particular very nearly died. It was an immense relief when at last they reached their goal and were handed over to the willing helpers waiting for them. But the experience was enough to turn anyone's hair grey, and it is easily understood that Gipsy found it v actually "restful" to get back to Pervyse. She was knocked up by the experience, and looked forward to a decent night's rest, but instead of that the guns split the air all night long. 

The floods at this time were terrible; it looked almost as if Pervyse itself might be inundated. The ground was saturated, and the water rose a foot high in the cellar, so that it could not be used at all. In the génie house they were dry underfoot, but in spite of all they could do to stop it the rain dripped through the cracked and battered roof into the living-room. The Two lived in oil-skins and rubber boots as they paddled to and fro on necessary errands. The men in the trenches were knee-deep in water, and agonizing cases of cramp, rheumatism, and neuritis, came in daily. To add to all these joys, the Two discovered a new form of danger which had so far escaped their notice; this was the risk from their own shrapnel when the empty cases fell in the village. "We were watching some aeroplanes when we heard a most quaint sound—an indistinct low whistle, like a shell, and yet different from any kind of shell we had met. We heard it for some time, and were puzzled by it, but came to the conclusion it certainly was getting nearer, and quite suddenly, with one impulse, we both fled like rabbits into our hole, and an empty shrapnel case pitched on the side of the road exactly where we had been. It was from our own shrapnel. We had never thought of that." A brief record of some of the cases dealt with from day to day is given by Mairi. A sergeant was brought in on a stretcher, but he was already dead, half his head having been blown off. Another man had gone out of his mind with the noise and horror; another had his hand badly scalded; several had severe internal pains brought on by inflammation in the cold, and one morning at 3.30 they were woke up to tend a man in supreme agony who had had the bad luck to blow off his own hand with his rifle. He had somehow managed to shoot off his right thumb, and the same bullet had gone on and penetrated his left arm. How he had done it remained for ever a conundrum—there seemed to be no sort of attitude that even a contortionist could take to manufacture that particular damage. 

All this time the Two had paid for their own food, and had never asked a penny from the Belgians. They lived precariously on whatever they happened to get. "We had a ham to boil, and I made the breadcrumbs," said Mairi, showing that they did not neglect any amenities within their reach. Another day "An officer shot eight sparrows, which he gave us, and I started in and plucked the little jossers. Quite a job!" 

The occasional runs into Furnes to fetch stores were a pleasant break in lives which, though full of incident, tended to become monotonous. In Pervyse they had to spend most of their days in "two dingy, smelly, little postes," the only alternative being that depressing street with its brooding death. The rattling drive into the town was over roads pock-marked with shell-holes, varied by an occasional bump when the car ran off the pave and landed in the mud. On these occasions they had to get out and heave her back; once they had even to use a jack, and, as shells were flying about and they were well within the radius, it required some nerve. When they arrived in Furnes, "we had a mad rush round the shops and grabbed all the stores we could find; it all seemed so new and interesting after a desolate village. Then a mad rush back again over the same old bumpy, holey road, and home to our tumbled- down cottage. Yet you have no idea what a great treat it all seems to us." 

The first time they did this in January, though they were only away two hours, they found that it was just that scrap of time in which the Queen of the Belgians had chosen to pay them a visit. They could have wept with disappointment at having missed her. "We were as sick as death," says Mairi in her expressive slang, "and it will take us some time to get over it." 

There were other visitors of much less consequence who had found them at home, and that she, the heroine Queen who had been the inspiration of Belgium in these its darkest days, should have missed them caused them acute chagrin. The Mayor of Paris was among their visitors one day, and Gipsy remarks ironically: "There never is a wounded man here when these great folks arrive. I think I shall have to get a tame blessé and keep him permanently bandaged on a stretcher on the floor, and when I see them coming get busy and look interesting with hot chocolate and bandages." 

They had grown to be quite expert in the matter of judging the different kinds of shells, and even their size, from the noise they made, and by now they were accustomed to the crash of the naval guns from the coast, which pitched huge shells right over Pervyse. One day, when the bombardment was very bad, a priest and some soldiers ran into the genie house to recover their breath and shelter before going on. The shells from the German lines seemed to be dropping all round that particular spot. "They must be passing over the cellar-house, anyhow," Gipsy remarked; "they can't be in two places at once." 

But they could, and were, for some of them at any rate fell close by one poste, and some near the other, exactly as if those two houses had been the only objectives. The cellar-house itself was not hit, but it escaped by a miracle, for, judging from the destruction around, at least a hundred shells must have pitched close by it, and the first line of trenches just behind was churned up into mud. Luckily there did not happen to be any soldiers there on that particular day, and the damage done was trifling. The total bag was the priest slightly, and one soldier badly, wounded, for all that expenditure of shell- power. But it was obvious that the cellar-house was untenable, and sadly they decided to give it up altogether. The shelling now came very close to it constantly, and what with the wet and the danger, it seemed foolish to try to hold on to it, especially now that they had got the other poste where the necessary work could be carried on. 

One morning they agreed to go together to the cellar-house to bring up the few things that remained there. At the moment there was, as Mairi phrases it, "nothing doing," and they walked along light- heartedly. Close by the cellar-house half a dozen of the soldiers' horses were stabled in a dilapidated outhouse, and Gipsy, who was a good horsewoman and passionately fond of horses, went in to pet them. She and Mairi stood there a minute or two stroking the soft noses of their friends and feeding them with bits, and then went on. It did not take ten minutes to pick up what they wanted in the cellar, and they had just started homewards when "out of the blue" there came a most appalling explosion and then the smashing and falling of bricks. The noise was quite different from that of a shell bursting on the roadway, and they knew that something had happened. Wheeling round, they saw clouds of mortar and smoke and dust rolling about, and found that the room above the cellar was smashed to pieces, the last remnants had gone. Worse still, the stable had suffered too, and regardless of the fact that usually three shells pitch in quick succession about the same place, they ran back to see what had occurred. The cellar-house had only caught a little of the explosion, but it was obvious a large shell must have plumped right into the stable, for three of the horses lay dead, and the other three, badly hurt, struggled feebly. It was an agonizing sight, like a slaughter-house, with the crazy walls and damp straw splashed red with blood. It was, perhaps, more like "War," as seen in the imagination, than anything they had yet come across. One of the soldiers came to take the three surviving horses to L'Espérance, and led them up the village. When Gipsy saw the miserable procession, she realized at once that the poor animals were too severely injured to walk all that way, so she stopped them at the poste and had them put in the garage shed. 

All that day she spent in alternately trying to do what she could and "annoying every officer I saw, from a General to a Lieutenant," to send a vet. At length, at nine that evening, a vet came. He shot two of the remaining horses, saying their case was hopeless, while the Two stood beside him holding the lantern, with the wind and rain moaning round, and the only survivor looking on with patient eyes, as if he understood all about it. But alas, he had to go too! The vet took immense pains, and dug bits of shell out of him all over, but his case was hopeless, and the next day he shared the fate of his fellows. Both girls felt this deeply. Animals had a tremendous hold on their hearts, and it seemed a pitiable filiale to the little cellar- house, now finally abandoned. 

From henceforth a new chapter of the story was opened, and they lived in the génie house altogether and tended the men there. A notice was put up outside the cellar-house directing all who needed aid to come on farther. The genie was in reality not so safe as the cellar-house had been, because it was entirely above ground, but it was a little further from the guns, and one terror that had haunted both of the friends, though they had never confessed it in words, was laid to rest. At least, whatever happened, they would be always together. It had been secret agony to think that, with the coming and going from one poste to the other, one might be caught and smashed while the other was not there. More than ever they determined to cling to each other, always and everywhere, so that in death they should not be divided. 

In the midst of all this a painter came to paint their portraits. And in the words of the irrepressible Mairi, "We had to stand at fearful angles for unknown times." Tension was still growing, in spite of these frivolous incidents. Before the end of the month Furnes, having been heavily bombarded, was evacuated by the British hospital, which had so far "stuck it out," and though their connection with the hospital, or indeed any practical association with the ambulance corps, had long ceased, this cutting of the thread made them feel more than ever that they stood alone in their little shell- swept village. 

Custom breeds contempt, and so many times had they heard that the Germans might make a big attack and break through that they had grown to smile inquiringly at such rumours and pass on, forgetting all about it in five minutes. But now the rumour grew and gathered force, and was backed up by authorities there was no gainsaying; yet, as no orders had come through from headquarters about evacuating their post, they stayed where they were. On the evening of January 25 some of the officers whom they had not seen for a little while came in, and seemed surprised to find them still there. They obviously did not want to be alarming, and yet their grave looks and general air of tension indicated that something unusual was expected. The girls questioned them, and made them admit that they had every reason to expect a terrific onslaught before the morning. However, it was too late now to take any steps toward evacuation, even had they wished to; there was nothing for it but to see it out. It was the waiting in inaction that was most trying. Again and again both of them say in their journals, "I don't mind the shells while I am busy with the wounded; I forget all about them." But to sit and wait for this unknown terror, that was indeed a strain on nerve power. For the time all was quiet—-an uncanny stillness that was saturated with suspense! 

The officers continued to come in and out, going away to see to this or that item of supply, and returning again graver than before. 

Man after man got up and went out to hold mysterious whispered colloquies in the passage with despatch-riders; the atmosphere grew more tense with portent. Visions of the grey-clad Germans, lust-mad, bestial, pouring in like a herd of wild beasts, haunted the women. 

The room in which they sat has been described by Mary Rinehart, an American writer, who visited them here. "What a strange room it was, furnished with odds and ends from the shattered houses about! A bed in the corner, a mattress-bed on the floor, a piano in front of the shell-holed windows—a piano so badly cracked by shrapnel that panels of the woodwork were missing and keys gone—two or three odd chairs, and what had once been a book- case, and in the centre a pine table laid for a meal. Every opening of the door into the corridor brought a gale of wind through the ruined house—hardly a foot of the plaster interior of that room was whole. The ceiling was riddled, so were the walls; in the centre of the former was a great bulge.” 

One of the other ladies happened by an unlucky incident to be at the poste that night; it was the American, whose forte was piano- playing. Presently she sat down and began to play on the hacked and battered piano, that had once been used only for hymn-tunes strummed out on Sunday evenings by a respectable bourgeois family. The melody that was its soul now found utterance and streamed out from her finger-tips, and floating away through the chinks in the rough improvised shutters, carried the souls of her hearers up into the world of great spaces lit by stars. Even the men who brought those fateful messages paused for a moment at the shot-battered entrance outside as the music drifted round them. 

On and on she played, until one o'clock came, and still no guns were heard. One by one the officers slipped away, all except one who was on picket duty. As Mrs. G----- paused, letting the notes die away, a far-distant sound of mitrailleuses came over from the trenches. All the party were now very white, and it was long since anyone had uttered a word. 

Soon after a quick step was heard on the road, and there was a little stir of expectancy while Corporal Delmotte of the Mitrailleurs came in. They had not seen him for a day or two, as he had been on leave. He saluted the Captain, explaining that all the reserve mitrailleuse men on leave had been called back and centred in Pervyse, as a big attack was expected at earliest dawn. Even now, he suggested, there was time for the ladies to go back to Furnes. His proposal was no sooner understood than dismissed: they had had no orders— unanswerable reply. But to back it up, woman-like, they added: what better would they be if they did go? Supposing that accursed host burst through, would they be any better in deserted Furnes than here? 

"So we passed this strange, strange night." But the strangest incident of all was to come. 

Mrs. G----- had flung herself face downward on one of the beds and fallen asleep. Gipsy and Mairi linked arms and stole quietly to the door, with the Captain and corporal behind. They felt the street as vibrant as an electric wire, though all the sounds were muffled and any orders were in whispers. They had stood there only two minutes, when behind them on the side remote from the German lines they saw an electric torch flash out— once, twice, dot, dash, dot, stop! It was away out in the fields, and even though they could not read the message, there could be no doubt of its purport: it was telling the Germans what reinforcements were being brought up. A bright blue light from the German side sprang out in reply. 

The man beside them gave a deep hiss in his throat, "S-s-sacré!" There was a hurried whisper, then a quick scuffle and rush as the corporal with a detachment of three swept past to nail the traitor in his lair. They did not get him, needless to say— traitors are far too wily to remain where bayonets may pin them to the door-post. 

By five o'clock the two friends had fallen peacefully asleep, utterly unable to keep their eyes open any longer, and when they reopened them in broad daylight everything was as usual, and the Germans had not materialized, but all day long came in an avalanche of wounded, which showed what the cost of holding them up had been! 

The Cellar House of Pervyse - Chapter 11 - The End of 1914

'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 XI - The End of 1914

The piano in the new house proved better than the old one. There was also room for a double bed, a food cupboard, and other luxuries; after the cellar it seemed Paradise. At nights, wooden shutters had to be put up to hide the light, as the Two were now above ground. The glass in the windows had long been smashed. They had no idea yet of abandoning the cellar-house; they intended to keep that as a poste, for it was nearer to the trenches, but they themselves lived in the genie house. This, of course, entailed continual passing to and fro over the quarter of a mile or so that separated the two, and in the weeks that followed they grew used to ruined Pervyse in all its aspects. By the bright moonlight, with the black shadows lying in the corners, it suggested in a ghastly way a horribly decayed mouth with missing and broken teeth. By day it was very like one of the pit villages of the North, left to fall to pieces when the coal has run out, and abandoned by the whole population in a body; only in Pervyse there were more signs of violence than in such a melancholy village. Some of the houses were unrecognizable—just a heap of stones—and others had had a slice taken cleanly off the front, so that the whole interior lay revealed in naked intimacy. In some of these the furniture was still intact, and in others smashed and riddled with holes. In many cases, where it had been spared by the shells, it had been wantonly split up for firewood by the troops and good polished mahogany and walnut lay in splinters. It was the furniture that made the place so pitiful. In the colliery villages the inhabitants take their household goods with them when they remove, and there is no evidence of occupation cut suddenly short and left like an unhealed wound. To peep into one of the Pervyse houses, to see the pictures hanging all askew, the carpets or rugs mouldy and stained, the china ornaments in atoms, the easy-chairs rotted and fallen, conveyed an awful sense of desolation. In one room, where the upper floor had been cut in two, a baby's cot balanced precariously by one of the rockers, and the coverlets were hanging down. Where was the baby occupant? 

One day, as Gipsy passed along, she stopped, and started at hearing a sound of digging at the back of one of these houses. There was no shelling at the moment, and in the unusual stillness such a sound needed explanation. She passed round among the ruins, and came upon a very old woman, tall but bowed, with eyes like red pits, so inflamed were they with weeping. She was groping in the fallen débris, and had evidently found what she sought, for she stood up trying to hide beneath her shawl a cheap painted timepiece with a penthouse wooden roof and gaudy flowers smeared on the wood. 

By one of those strange chinks in the general danger the clock-face had slipped through the bombardments and was unbroken. As the old woman gazed at it her weather-hardened face looked quite beautiful; she smiled at Gipsy, and without a word started to walk back again to Furnes, her sabots clanking on the cobbles. She had come out with one object, and had attained it. That clock had probably been a wedding gift, and was associated with the only days of pride and joy she had ever known. It was at least likely that she had lived out her span of life entirely in Pervyse, and never been elsewhere until torn up by the roots and flung out. For her there was nothing more to do but fade away; she could never take root again. Gipsy had nodded and smiled and tried to speak to her, but she found it impossible to make her understand, and as she stood there watching the bent figure hobble away, a sense of pity welled up in her so strongly that the tears came to her eyes. She shook them impatiently away. What use to drivel? There was work to be done. No wonder she writes: "I don't think I shall ever forget my life at Pervyse; it was all so strange at times, so pathetic, and yet there were moments when we giggled like children." 

Continually terrible cases called for attention. Some of these were of men who had been sent out as scouts toward the German lines, and who had been seen and shot at. One night Alexandre, who slept in the kitchen of the génie house, came in saying that there was a wounded man somewhere down the road. Taking a lantern, Gipsy started out to find him; as usual, it was wet and very cold. She groped along, calling softly now and again, bracing herself for the sentry's challenge any moment. It came sharp and clear, "Halte là!" but when she explained the man knew her and let her go on. Presently a faint groan drew her in the right direction. Wheeling toward it, she nearly went headlong into a huge shell-pit; then she discovered that the groans came from there. The man was at the bottom, lying in a foot of black water. She slipped and slithered down beside him, and found the poor fellow had an awful cut right across the head which had penetrated the skull. It was amazing that he lived, and still more so that he had managed to struggle so far as this in the direction of the poste before he fell into the pit. She bandaged him up first, and then, calling some passing soldiers for assistance, carried him into safety, and eventually he recovered sufficiently to go into Furnes. 

Both women were much touched by the gratitude of the soldiers; however badly hurt, so long as they retained consciousness at all, they were never too far gone to try to express their thanks for what was done for them. And some of them were grievously hurt. One was shot in both shoulders by mitrailleuse bullets, and another had a bullet through the lung. A sergeant came in with a badly fractured leg and arm, and bullet wounds in his feet —"a terrible case, and just one of the pluckiest men I have ever seen. He smiled all the time, and was so brave and cheery—a fine soldier with a fine character." He died the next day. 

The bravery of the men was indeed almost beyond belief. One day one of the soldiers appeared with a fearful wound. His right hand had been shot to bits while he was wearing a woollen glove. "I have never had such a disagreeable job as taking off that glove," Gipsy writes. "I could see every finger was blown to pieces, and the bits of glove mixed up everywhere, and the hand smashed; I expected every moment to pull off a finger with the glove. I cut as much as I could away, but it was all such a mess and muddle that I was afraid the scissors might do more harm than good." It must indeed have been a loathsome task, enough to try the nerves of the strongest. 

One day, when some of the members of the corps came out in a car, seeing how white and worn Gipsy looked, one of them offered to stay for a night and let her have a rest, which she gladly accepted; but she had hardly made her preparations to go into the town, and had not got clear of the village, before a quite extraordinary number of wounded came in, and the lady sent after her begging her to come back, as it needed great experience to cope with such an influx. 

A cheery crowd of naval officers turned up unexpectedly in a car from Dunkirk to see for themselves what the Two were doing. Among them was Mairi's friend the "Spaniard," as she, with her readiness at nicknames, had christened him. They were amazed at the sight of the village, and freely expressed their opinion that no ladies should be allowed to live there. They had seen many bad places since this war began, but this—you know—why, it was absurd, and they might be killed any time too! What were the authorities doing to allow it? Etc., etc., lot of old muddlers. 

"The whole British Army objects to our being here," said Mairi; "but it can't do anything." 

"Well, if I were one of the red-hats, I'd soon have you out of it! Why, you'd be safer on board. You might get killed—killed, you know, any time." 

"Yes, we know all about that." 

"But then it's ridiculous," the "Spaniard" protested feebly. "Really, Mairi, you'd much better marry me." 

"So that you'd have power to keep me away, you think? Well, of course, if you are only proposing it on humanitarian grounds, I can tell you it wouldn't answer, because if ever I did such a mad thing, I'd come here just the same." 

"You're doing a much madder one now," he said promptly. 

"It's quite safe." 

"Oh, rot! I say, how did the place get like this if there hasn't been shelling, and big shelling too?" 

"Perhaps the Germans did it when they were here." 

"Do you mean to tell me that shells don't drop in here now and again?" 

"Perhaps they do. What are they like? Describe one." 

He looked at her, but she met him with the perfectly candid expression of a simple desire for information. 

"Well, I'm-----" he began, and then there was a long hiss and a scream and a crash, so near that they both instinctively leaped for the shelter of the genie house. 

"That's punctured a hole in your terminological inexactitude," he said reproachfully. But before he finished speaking another came, and another. They were in for a bad bout. They continued to scream and crash, and presently the Belgian batteries near took up the antiphon and there was a real hullabaloo. This upset the naval men altogether. They absolutely buzzed in their anxiety. 

"Do you mean to say you get this often? It's shameful! Someone ought to make you come away." 

"Write to The Times about it," suggested Gipsy pleasantly. "And, meantime, don't you think we might have luncheon?" 

"Luncheon? Oh, we brought a few things for you. We knew you couldn't buy much up here." 

They hastened out, and unpacked from the car a royal supply, which, with the invariable consideration of men of the sea, they had carried up with them. They lunched royally off excellent ham, and tinned fruit, and other luxuries, but all the while the officers grumbled: they seemed to feel a personal enmity against the military who permitted such things. And finally they insisted on leaving behind one of the two cars in which they had come. "Then you can make tracks, if ever the time comes when you must," one of them said. This certainly was considerate, because frequently the car they used was away, taking wounded to Furnes, and in case of a sudden evacuation the Two would have been stranded. 

"Dear fellows," said Gipsy, watching them bump off down the road in the other car. 

"Very young," said Mairi, with an old-world air—"such boys!" As for her familiarity with shells, which Mairi had so innocently repudiated, this was the kind of thing that constantly happened: she was walking between the génie and the cellar-house, when she heard the shrill warning whistle, and sprang to one side, though really the broken ruins afforded no protection; then, as she went on, a small shell burst about fifty yards on the right. She concluded it was silly as well as useless to mind, so very deliberately strolled on down the middle of the street with her hands in the pockets of her tunic. Just as she reached the poste, another burst in front, sending the mud spurting up in all directions. 

Gipsy had been watching her. 

"Why on earth didn't you run?" she inquired rather breathlessly, for it is much worse to watch another person in danger than to be in it yourself. 

"It's not dignified when you are in khaki," answered Mairi gravely. 

In her journal she constantly records some such remark as this: "Very little doing, except a few shrapnel coming in." 

Yet the time came when they had to take notice. They were all at the cellar-house, and had just decided it was too much trouble to go back down the village for lunch. So Mairi cut up some potatoes and put them on to fry, saying that would stave off the pangs of hunger till tea-time, and then, in an instant, with no sort of warning, a shell really did land almost on the top of the house. It struck it somewhere, though, mercifully for them, not square, and for the moment it seemed as if the whole building was coming bodily to the ground. Each, catching her breath, thought instantaneously, "Is this really the end?" 

Bricks and mortar flew, but when the noise subsided they found they were still alive and quite unhurt, though the explosion had carried away a corner of the house; one of the men in the cellar opposite had been wounded by a splinter which flew in, and the Daimler car, which stood in a ruined outhouse, had been peppered. They counted twenty-eight holes in the bonnet, besides other damage. 

When they had attended to the wounded man, they went on to the génie house, naturally feeling a little shaken, in spite of their nerve, and there they found the two doctors from the British Field Hospital to which the ambulance had been attached. These men had heard the explosion and seen part of the cellar-house collapse, and were dreadfully upset at the idea of women being in such peril. They couldn't get used to it. One of the soldier servants standing by looked at them open-mouthed, and exclaimed: 

"Vous n'avez pas peur?" 

What could they reply but, "Pas du tout," though limbs were still trembling and hearts palpitating? He was a cheery soul, and encouraged them by remarking complacently, "Les Boches bombardera encore cette maison-ci." 

Reinforcements were being hurried up. The fighting at Nieuport was furious, and the whole line was being attacked with unusual vigour; all around there was stir and menace. What had preceded seemed almost peaceful in comparison; anything might happen these days. Coming out of the génie house in the afternoon Gipsy passed a couple of the great patient mitrailleuse dogs who had been struck by a splinter of shell; their shaggy paws were being bound up by the gunners. She went over to help, regardless of the risk and exposure, and had them brought into the kitchen, and one of them licked her hand with his rough tongue, for all the world as if he were trying to express gratitude like his masters. 

Seeing that the bombardment continued to be pretty furious for days, it was natural that the naval men should turn up again to see how the Two were getting on; they seemed to think it a sort of personal slur that they should be under fire while they themselves were not. The "Spaniard" got no chance that night, for Mairi was surrounded. Her type appealed peculiarly to the men of the sea; they saw in her all that they adored in the vision of a "fresh British girl," and her cheery aloofness and lack of susceptibility heightened the flame. "You'll have to marry some time," one of them told her, with a touch of maliciousness in his tone. 

"No use meeting evils half-way," she retorted gaily. 

In spite of their anxiety, the officers were full of hope and expectancy; everywhere it was said that the offensive would soon be begun, and that the Germans would be driven back. The Taubes certainly had an idea also that something was afoot, for their visits were persistent, and hardly a day passed that one or more did not soar above, to be tackled by the French airmen. One day the Two watched with intense eagerness a fight between aviators in which neither eventually got the better of the other, though the manœuvres and dodges were splendid to watch. The Frenchman at last daringly dropped headlong on to his antagonist, endeavouring to smash one of his wings, missed by inches, as it appeared to the rapt onlookers, and fell too far to recover himself before his adversary flew away. 

Another time, seeing a Taube overhead, they ran out to look at it, and heard the firing of a mitrailleuse somewhere near. They could not make out where the firing came from. It couldn't be from the Germans, who were too far off; it couldn't be from their own men, because the bullets were beginning to splash around. Nearer came the deadly splashes until they realized they must beat a quick retreat into shelter of some kind, and it was only then they grasped the fact that the Taube man was leaning over his machine deliberately potting them with a quick-firing gun! 

At the very top of the village, near the railway line and the trenches, stood the church, with its high rectangular tower, which had for some time been used as an observation station by Captain de Wilde, and was now unsafe. It had parted company with the nave and leaned forward at an angle, and the military men decided it must come down. They sent a message to the poste inviting them to attend the ceremony, so they walked out along the stretch of melancholy street that they traversed so often in a day and were growing to hate. The first violent explosion under the church tower produced apparently no result at all. It was followed by another, but though the tower looked as if the push of a hand must send it over, it never stirred, and then there was a long interval, possibly five minutes, which seemed like fifteen to the spectators. "It's not going at all," said Mairi, as the third explosion rang out, but it was! Very slowly and with dignity the tower seemed to turn on its axis, revealing a gaping wound all down its side, and then it subsided almost gently. It was a melancholy sight, as if some living thing had received the coup de grâce. The huge clock-face, rescued from the débris, was sent down as a present to the poste; they found they couldn't take this rather unwieldy souvenir inside, so propped it up against the wall. 

It was a sad day when the 9th Regiment, which had been at Pervyse from the first, had orders to move elsewhere, saddest of all because their good friend Dr. Van der Ghinst had to go too. Pervyse was the most coveted position in the whole Belgian line by this time; every man in the army had heard the story of the wonderful ladies who were there to tend and sympathize. The incoming regiment proved itself quite as appreciative and grateful as the last, but one day the Two were amused to receive a note from the 9th, saying that if the poste wasn't happy at Pervyse with their successors, they had better come along and join them in their new quarters! 

It had been decided that Gipsy must be spared at Christmas to pay a brief visit home to see her little boy Kenneth, and in the meantime others must carry on the work as best they could. As she was the moving spirit and originator of the whole scheme, and she alone had made it feasible by her personality and capability, it was like losing the soul when she went. But Mairi by this time was a skilled assistant, and far beyond the average girl of her age in steadiness and sense. She was the first to see that her friend's highly strung nature was worn by the incessant noise and calls upon her sympathy, and by the burden of wearing responsibility, and must have relaxation. For though indomitable in spirit, Gipsy was built in a delicate mould. The way was made easier because Lady Dorothie Feilding agreed to come to live with Mairi in Pervyse while Gipsy was away. 

The farewells were touching, including letters of God-speed from the officers, loving good wishes and evidences of a wealth of devotion from the men which she warmly appreciated. 

She ran into Furnes in a car, and while there went to see Miss Macnaughtan, who was then working at her soup kitchen. The station was lit only by a dim swinging lamp, and through it there defiled a procession of weird figures that might be the vision of a nightmare or a page from Dante's "Inferno." Many of them came straight from the trenches wearing their torn and motley clothes, and they were bandaged so that their outlines were distorted or their faces were invisible, while many lacked limbs. The humped-up look of the stretcher cases added a depressing touch of its own. And there was a curious silence pervading the waiting train. Gipsy walked down beside it, saying a quiet word of encouragement here and there, and suddenly from among the disguised crowd one stepped out, and grasping her hand in his left, the only one available, poured out on her a stammering tale of recognition, reminding her she had tended him at Dixmude. Since then he had been back again to the front, and a second time been wounded. By the light of this it seemed more miraculous than ever that she, who had been under continual firing, should have escaped. Among the men was one German, white and terrified, expecting nothing less than torture or death; wild-eyed, he refused even a cigarette, lest it should be poisoned! 

The weather was bitterly cold; mud and rain all the way—a horrid crossing. 

What a contrast to be awakened on Christmas morning by the glad cries of her little son, who had discovered the joys of his full stocking! She could hardly realize where she was. The softness of the yielding bed, the white sheets, the perfect stillness and comfort and cleanliness of everything, seemed to sink into her very bones. How little people who took these things as a matter of course every day of their lives knew of the hell out there! 

Meantime, Mairi was helped by Lady Dorothie Feilding, who was fully seasoned to danger by many a ghastly experience. These two girls, for there were not very many years between them, carried on the work successfully. In one of her private letters home Gipsy says of Mairi: "She has never shirked a day or night; always cheerful and bright, and absolutely to be depended on." 

In spite of all her wisdom, she was youthful enough to feel the glamour of Christmas. "Only one Christmas card and a bunch of mistletoe," she remarks. 

She began her day by the good "tidy-up" which her soul loved, and after having washed up the dishes, she and her companion began to give out some socks which had been sent for the soldiers, when "Crash came a shell! Crash! Crash! Crash! Nothing but falling bricks and the whistle of arriving shells for half an hour. One hit the house opposite us, brought all the tiles down; two hit our house and came through the wall; shrapnel burst just at our door, hitting the soldiers sheltering in our passage. The clock-dial standing against the door was riddled with holes, and all the smoke and smell of powder blew in at the door! A nice Christmas present to send us!" 

She attended to the slightly wounded men, talked to the old priest who had turned up to beg a shirt for himself, and then, helped by the Lady Dorothie, hung up little flags to make the room gay for the Christmas dinner. Even the candle had a paper lantern round it. 

The dinner itself was a triumph. Ox-tail soup, cold fowl, fried potatoes, plum pudding, mince pies, sweets, chocolate biscuits, nuts, and even crackers! The guests at this feast were Dr. Munro, Captain Robert de Wilde, and another man, and one of them supplied champagne. 

A raging gale the next day blew down everything that hung tottering in Pervyse; the floods rose, streams of water came through the roof of the génie house where the shrapnel had burst it, and in the midst of all this Mairi received distinguished callers—the Colonel of the Chasseurs and General Melis, Chief of the Belgian Army Medical Service. The fame of the poste was growing! 

On the last day of 1914 Gipsy returned.