Christmas 1914 was also spent in the makeshift capital of the Belgians, Furnes. Sarah Macnaughtan spent a very different 1914 Christmas Day to those involved in the Christmas Truce and those encamped in the sands of Egypt.
Sarah Macnaughtan was a remarkable woman, before the war she was a well known published novelist. At the outbreak of war she volunteered with the Red Cross and joined a band of nurses led by Mrs. Stobart. She endured shelling just before the fall of Antwerp and when her fellow nurses returned to England, she stayed on in Belgium at the newly made ‘capital’ Furnes. Subsequently, in the later part of 1914 she started a Soup Kitchen for the Belgian troops.
He amazing story can be found online in ‘MY WAR EXPERIENCES IN
TWO CONTINENTS’ , also you can read about the shelling in the Antwerp Hospital here.
This is her diary of Christmas 1914, in Furnes, Belgium:-
23 December.— Yesterday I motored into Dunkirk, and did a lot of shopping. By accident our motor-car went back to Furnes without me, and there was not a bed to be had in Dunkirk! After many vicissitudes I met Captain Whiting, who gave up his room in his own house to me, and slept at the club. I was in clover for once, and nearly wept when I found my boots brushed and hot water at my door. It was so like home again.
I was leaving the station to-day when shelling began again. One shell dropped not far behind the bridge, which I had just crossed, and wrecked a house. Another fell into a boat on the canal and wounded the occupants badly. I went to tell the Belgian Sisters not to go down to the station, and I lunched at their house, and then went home till the evening work began. People are always telling one that danger is now over—a hidden gun has been discovered and captured, and there will be no more shelling. Quel blague! The shelling goes on just the same whether hidden guns are captured or not.
I can't say at present when I shall get home, because no one ever knows what is going to happen. I don't quite know who would take my place at the soup-kitchen if I were to leave.
25 December. — My Christmas Day began at midnight, when I walked home through the moonlit empty streets of Furnes. At 2 a.m. the guns began to roar, and roared all night. They say the Allies are making an attack.
I got up early and went to church in the untidy school-room at the hospital, which is called the nurses' sitting-room. Mr. Streatfield had arranged a little altar, which was quite nice, and had set some chairs in an orderly row. As much as in him lay—from the altar linen to the white artificial flowers in the vases—all was as decent as could be and there were candles and a cross. We were quite a small congregation, but another service had been held earlier, and the wounded heard Mass in their ward at 6 a.m. The priests put up an altar there, and I believe the singing was excellent. Inside we prayed for peace, and outside the guns went on firing. Prince Alexander of Teck came to our service—a big soldierly figure in the bare room.
After breakfast I went to the soup-kitchen at the station, as usual, then home—i.e., to the hospital to lunch. At 3.15 came a sort of evensong with hymns, and then we went to the civil hospital, where there was a Christmas-tree for all the Belgian refugee children. Anything more touching I never saw, and to be with them made one blind with tears. One tiny mite, with her head in bandages, and a little black shawl on, was introduced to me as "une blessée, madame." Another little boy in the hospital is always spoken of gravely as "the civilian."
Every man, woman, and child got a treat or a present or a good dinner. The wounded had turkey, and all they could eat, and the children got toys and sweets off the tree. I suppose these children are not much accustomed to presents, for their delight was almost too much for them. I have never seen such excitement! Poor mites! without homes or money, and with their relations often lost—yet little boys were gibbering over their toys, and little girls clung to big parcels, and squeaked dolls or blew trumpets. The bigger children had rather good voices, and all sang our National Anthem in English. "God save our nobbler King"—the accent was quaint, but the children sang lustily.
We had finished, and were waiting for our own Christmas dinner when shells began to fly. One came whizzing past Mr. Streatfield's store-room as I stood there with him. The next minute a little child in floods of tears came in, grasping her mother's bag, to say "Maman" had had her arm blown off. The child herself was covered with dust and dirt, and in the streets people were sheltering in doorways, and taking little runs for safety as soon as a shell had finished bursting. The bombardment lasted about an hour, and we all waited in the kitchen and listened to it. At such times, when everyone is rather strung up, someone always and continually lets things fall. A nun clattered down a pail, and Maurice the cook seemed to fling saucepan-lids on the floor.
About 8.15 the bombardment ceased, and we went in to a cheery dinner—soup, turkey, and plum-pudding, with crackers and speeches. I believe no one would have guessed we had been a bit "on the stretch."
At 9.30 I went to the station. It was very melancholy. No one was there but myself. The fires were out, or smoking badly. Everyone had been scared to death by the shells, and talked of nothing else, whereas shells should be forgotten directly. I got things in order as soon as I could and the wounded in the train got their hot soup and coffee as usual, which was a satisfaction. Then I came home alone at midnight—keeping as near the houses as I could because of possible shells—and so to bed, very cold, and rather too inclined to think about home.
26 December.— Went to the station. Oddly enough, very few wounded were there, so I came away, and had my first day at home. I got a little oil stove put in my room, wrote letters, tidied up, and thoroughly enjoyed myself.
A Taube came over and hovered above Furnes, and dropped bombs. I was at the Villa, and the family of Joos and I stood and watched it, and a nasty dangerous moth it looked away up in the sky. Presently it came over our house, so we went down to the kitchen. A few shots were fired, but the Taube was far too high up to be hit. Max, the Joos' cousin, went out and "tirait," to the admiration of the women-kind, and then, of course, "Papa" had to have a try. The two men, with their little gun and their talk and gesticulations, lent a queer touch of comic opera to the scene. The garden was so small, the men in their little hats were so suggestive of the "broken English" scene on the stage, that one could only stand and laugh.
The Joos family are quite a study, and so kind. On Christmas Eve I dined with them, and they gave me the best of all they had. There was a pheasant, which someone had given the doctor (I fancy he is a very small practitioner amongst the poor people); surely, never did a bird give more pleasure. I had known of its arrival days before by seeing Fernande, the little girl, decorated with feathers from its tail. Then the good papa must be decorated also, and these small jokes delighted the whole family to the point of ecstasy.
On Christmas Eve Monsieur Max conceived the splendid joke, carefully arranged, of presenting Madame Joos—who is young and pretty—and the doctor with two parcels, which on being opened contained the child's umbrella and a toy gun. There wasn't even a comic address on the parcels; but Yrma, the servant, carefully trained for the part, brought them in in fits of delight, and all the family laughed with joy till the tears ran down their cheeks. As they wiped their eyes, they admitted they were sick with laughter. After supper we had the pianola, played by papa; and I must say that, when one can get nothing else, this instrument gives a great deal of pleasure. One gets a sort of ache for music which is just as bad as being hungry.
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