Armistice Day 1918 - by an American Soldier.

This article entitled 'War is Over' a Memoir by an American Soldier,

“I was fully awake long before reveille, sleepy and unrefreshed, and when reveille came we received orders to move within two hours.

Four of us and one N.C.O. were left behind to load a lorry. And then we too packed up and set out to follow the unit.

Thinking to take a short cut across country, we ascended the hill-slope, jumping and clambering across shell-holes and striding through long grass An Australian soldier lay on a lom and weeds. Now and again we would chance upon some narrow winding track that soon lost itself again amid the tangled growth. Low clouds burdened the sky and a fine rain began to fall. The top of the hill was hidden in grey mist.

We passed a heap of broken concrete blocks from which the twisted ends of iron rods projected. A little farther on a concrete shelter stood intact except for deep vertical fissures. I peered into the narrow entrance that sloped steeply down. I slipped in the soft mud, but by stretching out my arms and clasping the outer wall I just saved myself from falling flat on to a rotting corpse that lay half-immersed in greenish-black water. I drew slowly back, sick with horror.

The devastation increased with every mile and the shell-holes came closer and closer together. Dead horses, shattered guns, wagons, and limbers lay overturned in the ditches. At one spot on the roadside the legs and buttocks of a man, all brown and shrivelled, slanted upwards from a deep, wide rut, many heavy wheels having passed across the small of his back.

Gradually the houses, trees and bushes disappeared entirely. We reached the site of a village that before the war had sheltered several thousands of people. Nothing remained except small bits of brick mingling with the bare soil, piled up and scooped and churned and tossed by shell fire.

Here, too, there were many dead. A little way off the road lay an Englishman who could not have fallen more than a few days before. His hands were clenched, his mouth wide open, his eyes fixed and staring. Near him was a tall German. He lay at full length with arms outstretched and legs crossed. His left hand, immersed in a pool, was white and puffy. His right hand was half closed and only slightly wrinkled. His side had been ripped open and fragments of entrail projected from the rent. The water beneath and around him was stained with blood. His pockets were turned inside out and papers and postcards lay scattered around in the usual manner. His cloak had been thrown across his face.

Other bodies had lain unburied for several months; others for several years, and of these only the mud-stained bones were left.

We marched in silence through this dismal land of ruin and desolation. At length, in the distance, we saw a solitary fragment of a brick wall standing in a wide hollow, a sign that we were nearing a habitable region once again.

We passed by riddled German sign-boards, and came to a litter of wreckage that had once been a village, and then we left the main road and entered a little wood, or rather an assembly of scarred tree-trunks leaning at all angles. It was crossed by a zigzag trench and all the refuse of battle lay scattered about.

An Australian soldier lay on a low mound. His head had dropped off and rolled backwards down the slope. The lower jaw had parted from the skull. His hands had been devoured by rats and two little heaps of clean bones were all that remained of them. The body was fully clothed and the legs encased in boots and puttees. One thigh-bone projected through a rent in the trousers and the rats had gnawed white grooves along it. A mouldy pocket-book lay by his side and several postcards and a soiled photograph of a woman and a child.

An attempt had been made to bury some of the dead, and several lay beneath heaps of loose earth with their boots projecting. But the rats had reached them all, and black, circular tunnels led down into the fetid depths of the rotting bodies. The stench that filled the air was so intolerable that we hastened to get out of this dreadful place.

As we walked on, the scattered houses drew closer and closer together until they formed continuous rows. A civilian passed by, pushing a wheelbarrow that clattered over the cobbles. Then there followed a woman with a bundle on her back.

We turned a corner and entered another street in which the houses had not been rifled. Several were occupied by civilians.

Before us, in an open field, lay our camp. Scribbled in chalk on a piece of board nailed across a broken window were the words:

"Der Friede wird stundlich erwartet"-Peace is expected every hour.

Ever since we had received news of the German peace offers and President Wilson's replies, rumours had multiplied enormously - the Kaiser had been assassinated, the German Fleet had surrendered, German troops were deserting in masses, German submarines were floating on the surface and flying white flags, a German Republic had been proclaimed with Liebknecht as President. One evening after a day of unusually hard labour, we were laying exhausted in our tent. Suddenly the flap was thrown open, a man pushed his head in and shouted excitedly:

"I say, you chaps, the Armistice has been signed-it's official!"

" Who says so? Did you see it in print?"

"No, I just heard it from a despatch-rider. He got it from his C.O. it's official."

"Don't believe it. We've heard that tale too often."

"All right, then, don't!" the man shouted angrily, and walked off.

No sooner had he gone when our Corporal said:

"It wouldn't surprise me if he were right. In any case, even if the Germans haven't signed yet, they'll have to do so soon. Bulgaria, Turkey, and Austria have collapsed. The Germans have decreasing resources and no reserves. The Allies have increasing resources and unlimited reserves. The longer the war goes on, the more desperate is Germany's position. She must accept our terms, she can't help herself."

"I do not think they will sign," I replied. "I think we can expect at least another year of war. I know Germany is in a bad way, but our terms mean unconditional surrender. The Germans will not be silly enough to imagine that, once they are disarmed and helpless, we shall stick to the Fourteen points or be bound by any promises of any kind. No, the Germans will fight on, they will shorten their front, and they will at least keep the Allies off German territory for an indefinite period until they can secure better terms."

"You overrate the strength of the Germans. I think the German army is becoming completely demoralized. I also think that the blockade has done its work amongst the civilian population. We shall have an armistice within the next few days. Perhaps rumour is correct for once and the war is already over. We haven't heard any guns for a long time-the front is extraordinarily quiet."

"Yes, but we would have heard officially - news like that would never be kept from us."
"That's true enough - I expect the thing is being discussed and a decision will be reached before long."

We all agreed that as soon as the fighting ceased, we would be informed. The news of the Armistice would be telegraphed to every unit and it would reach us within a few minutes from the actual signature. And then, what would we do then? How would our feelings find an outlet? It was impossible to say. Shouting, singing, dancing, would they give us relief? Speculation was useless, painfully useless. And yet what else could we think about?

It was Sunday, the 10th of November. We had no work to do and wandered restlessly round the town. An official communiqué was posted up outside the Mairie, but it contained nothing new. There was a crowd of soldiers round a Belgian boy who was selling English papers. We bought the last copies, but they were of the previous Thursday and did not add to our knowledge. The suspense was becoming unbearable. My conviction that the Germans would reject the terms of the Allies was shaken-not by any further evidence, but by the general atmosphere of excitement and hopeful expectation which communicated itself to me. I kept on repeating to myself, "They will not sign, they will not sign," and intellectually I believed my own words. And yet I was continually imagining the war already over and what I merely thought seemed unessential and irrelevant. The stress of wild hopes and mental agitation became almost a physical pain.

Darkness came on and we retired to our tents. I gradually became aware of a faint noise, so faint that I hardly knew whether it was real or not. As soon as I listened intently I could hear nothing. Then one of us said: "What's that funny noise?" There it was again, a low, hollow sound like that of a distant sea. It grew louder and then ceased. Then it became audible once more and grew louder and still louder. Suddenly we realized what it was-it was the sound of cheering. It came nearer and nearer, gathering speed. It flooded the whole town with a great rush, paused a moment, and then burst over our camp.

Everybody went mad. The men rushed out of the tents and shouted: "It's over - it's over - it's over!" I could hear one shrill voice screaming wildly: "No more bombs-no more shells-no more misery." The deafening clamor from innumerable throats was topped by the piercing blasts of whistles and the howling of cat calls. A huge bonfire was fit in the camp and sheets of flame shot skyward. The brilliant stars of signal-rockets rose and fell in tall parabolae and lit up all the neighbourhood. The Sergeant- Major blew his whistle with the intention of restoring order. He was answered by a hullabaloo of derisive hoots and yells. He gave up the attempt and instead he headed a procession that marched into the town, banging empty tins and whirling french-rattles. An anti-aircraft battery opened fire with blank charges. Aeroplanes flew overhead with all lights on.

Many of us went back into our tents and sang with all the power of our lungs.

So the war was over! The fact was too big to grasp all at once, but nevertheless I felt an extraordinarily serene satisfaction. Then someone said: "The people who've lost their sons and husbands - now's the time they'll feel it." The truth of his remark struck me with a sudden violence. My serenity was broken and looked into the blackness beneath it. I knew what I was going to see, but, nevertheless, I looked, in spite of myself ' and saw innumerable rotting dead that lay unburied in all postures on the bare, shell-tossed earth. A horror of death such as I had never known before came upon me - a crushing, annihilating horror that seemed to impart a fiendish character to the shouting and singing in the camp, as though millions of demonic spirits were howling and dancing with devilish glee over the accomplishment of the greatest iniquity every known. At the same time I felt ashamed of not joining in the general jubilation, and bitterly disappointed that my own thoughts should obsess me at this supreme hour. But I knew that the war had lasted too long and that the world's misery had been too great ever to be shaken off, I also knew that all the dead had died in vain. In order to escape from my intolerable meditations I sat up and began to talk to my neighbour: "I suppose it'll be read out officially tomorrow morning?"

"Sure - and we'll get a day off at least."

We continued to talk of commonplace things. It was several hours after midnight and the uproar was dying down a little. I felt sleepy and something like contentment was beginning to steal over me once again.

Reveille did not sound until nine o'clock on the Monday morning. The whistle blew for parade. There would, of course, be an official announcement that the Armistice had been signed, and perhaps a letter of thanks to the "splendid troops who had won the war" (which would bore us extremely) and a holiday (which would be welcomed with loud cheers).

We paraded. The Sergeant-Major addressed us:

"I'm sorry, boys, but nothing official's come through. You must go to work as usual. It's a damned shame, I know, but I can't help it. I expect the message'll come during the day and you're sure to get to-morrow off."

There was a murmur in the ranks, but bewilderment deprived us of the power of taking concerted action. A sudden fear seized me-could last night's celebration have been the result of a false alarm? We marched off. But no one did a stroke of work the whole day. All discipline had gone. The N.C.O.'s had no vestige of authority left. Men from other units whom we met knew no more than we did. They said the Armistice had been signed, but there had been no official announcement.

We got back to the camp in the afternoon. No official news.

In the evening the celebrations were renewed. I was troubled by an intense anxiety which began to spread to the others. Still, there would certainly be an announcement the following morning.

We paraded on Tuesday. No announcement of any kind. We marched off to work as usual, but again no work was done. Suddenly I caught sight of a soldier walking along the road a long way off with a newspaper in his hand. I ran after him and caught him up.

"Any news?" I asked.

He gave me the paper. It was dated Monday, the 11th November - only a day old. The headline ran: "No Armistice yet."

So Sunday's demonstration had been a sham and a fraud!

I rejoined the others. They, too, had heard that no Armistice had been signed by Sunday midnight from a despatch-rider, who had, however, added that signature was expected every minute.

We were back in camp. Many new rumours were circulating - the Germans had rejected the terms, the Italians had renewed the offensive. In the evening some of us thought they could hear distinct gunfire. We listened carefully, but our mental tension destroyed our power of hearing very faint sounds.

Wednesday morning, and still no definite news. The suspense was becoming unbearable. No work was done. I questioned men from five other units, but none of them were any better informed than we were.

The expectation of peace had made us forget our bitterness towards the army, but it began to show itself again : "They don't want us to know!"

"They're damned sorry it's all over!"

"There's too many of 'em wi' soft jobs what wants the war to go on for ever!"

"What are you grumbling about? What has the Armistice got to do with us? The Armistice concerns the Staff, not us. It's not our business - we're only common soldiers."
When we got back to camp a boy was selling papers at the entrance.

I bought a Times. It was Tuesday's. The Armistice had been signed on the Monday morning! I went to my tent and sat down and thought it over. The terms were ominous. There was no doubt about it this time - the war had come to an end. I thought of home and of freedom. It almost seemed as though army life had been a dream. I was still in the army, but a few months more or less would make no difference, for my thoughts would be all in the future. In the evening the celebrations were resumed. They lacked the spontaneity of those that were held on the Sunday night. Nevertheless, the rejoicing was genuine, for our suspense had been followed by an immense relief.

As I lay in my tent amid the shouting and singing I again felt that bitter thoughts were gathering, but I was distracted by a man sitting two places from me, who said: "It's a bloody shame we can't get any wine or spirits and get bloody well drunk tonight."

A man lying near him, who had kept very quiet all the evening suddenly sat up erect, glaring with fury, and shouted:

"That's all you think about, getting drunk-you dirty little blackguard! You don't deserve to have peace, you don't! Bloody lot of fools-all shouting and singing and wanting to get drunk! They ought to have more respect for the dead! The war's over, and we're bloody lucky to get out of it unharmed, but it's nothing to shout about when there's hundreds of thousands of our mates dead or maimed for life."

"Don't talk bloody sentimental rot - call yourself a soldier? You ought to be a bloody parson!"

"I don't call myself a soldier - it's a bloody insult to be called a soldier. I'm not a bloody patriot either - I reckon patriotism's a bloody curse. I kept out of the army as long as I could, but they combed me out (that's their polite way of putting it), and shoved me into khaki, but they never made a soldier of me! I've never been any use to them! I only worked when they forced me to. I've been more expense and trouble to them than I'm worth. I haven’t helped to win this wicked war, and I'm proud of it too! Sentimental rot be damned - if everyone had been my way of thinking there wouldn't have been a war, no, not in any country. The war's won, I know, and I'm sorry for it. But Fritz has come off best, not us. He's lost the war, but he's found his bloody soul! I'll tell the civvies something about war when I get home - I'll tell 'em we rob the dead, I'll tell 'em
"For God's sake chuck it. . . ."

"All right, I'll chuck it - I know it's no bloody good talking to fellows like you. Go and get drunk, then, do as you bloody well please. That's all you're fit for. . . ."

He flung himself back into bed, wrapped himself up in his blanket and did not say another word.”

The Cellar House of Pervyse - Chapter 7 - A Hideous Nights Drive

'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 VII - A Hideous Night Drive

Dixmude was in a terrible state, suffering from a blasting and withering shell-fire, yet there the ambulances went on, hearing that wounded men needed them. They did not stop short of the town itself this time, but went right in. "We worked there all day and all night."

The streets were heaps of débris. Whole walls had fallen flat; others were cracked by great diagonal fissures, and were ready to fall at any moment and bury the party, who crashed along anyhow over huge upturned paving-stones and masses of brick rubble. Every now and again a shell landed somewhere, hitting a house fair and square, and reducing it to the same condition as hundreds of others, which had already lost all semblance of houses; when this occurred a Gargantuan puff of black smoke rose, and on its evaporation, behold, the house was no more!

At one place the whole of such a house had slid across the street, and when the first car arrived at the obstacle the chauffeur looked at the eager for instructions. "Go over it," he said, and the man, with wonderful pluck, did so, landing with a tremendous jolt and crash on the other side. At first the place seemed deserted, but as they advanced hasty figures diving round corners and disappearing in by-streets showed more and more frequently, and at last the first impression was completely wiped out—the place seemed alive with Belgian and French soldiers. The wounded had been collected at the splendid Town Hall, the building which means so much more to Continental nations than it does to us. The mighty pillars at the entrance had fallen this way and that, and one standing grandly upright recalled the majesty of a ruined Egyptian temple.

It was not the wounded only that were to be saved; there were still some few miserable inhabitants living in the haunted desolation, and by peeping down into gaping cellars, and calling softly to see if any living thing would respond, at last four or five old women of ages between eighty and ninety were discovered huddled together, waiting for death. One of these poor old things had had her hand badly hurt; it had been roughly bandaged some four days before, and had remained un-cleansed and unchanged since, so that the wound was in a horrible state. But she did not seem to mind the pain; only as Gipsy attended to her gently she started jabbering hard and very fiercely, as if she was angry about something. As it was a stream of Flemish, nothing was intelligible. Gipsy called to a Flemish soldier outside to come in and interpret, and when he had asked a few questions of the excited old crone he laughed carelessly, and explained in French: "It's all right, Sister; she is only upset because a wisp of her hair is hanging down and she can't get her hands up to tidy it, and she doesn't think she's fit for you to see." So the long wisp of lanky grey hair had to be tenderly fastened back before the dressing proceeded.

The dash into Dixmude was followed by a terrible discovery—M. de B roque ville, who had been in charge, was missing. He had given the order to start back, and then, when the cars had got clear of the town, it was found that he was not with them. After the wounded had been safely landed attempts were unsuccessfully made to find him, but it was not until the next day he turned up smiling, walking quietly in among his comrades, mercifully unhurt. It appeared he had made a dash down a cellar to help someone at the last minute, and when he came up found the cars had gone. He had actually walked back along the shell-torn road and escaped without a scratch-It was nearly the end of October when the first warnings came that Furnes in its turn might have to be evacuated. The great grey host, like a swarm of locusts, was advancing on the unhappy country; thousands had been killed, but there seemed always to be thousands more to take their places. The gallant defenders had nobly played their part, and it must be remembered that they were really more like a trained civil force than an army, for Belgium had had no reason to expect war. They had performed prodigies of valour, nobly backed up by the plucky little French marines and Senegalese. Further to the south, at Ypres, the British had come to the rescue, but the Belgians themselves must have the credit for holding the most western extremity of the line, helped by the British naval guns as the enemy came within range. Some of their feats are worthy of the best traditions of a military nation. They had dashed with armoured cars right into the heart of the enemy's host, spurting leaden death, and retiring unharmed themselves; some of these tales read like the stories of knights in armour attacking dragons in the old days.

But the huge soulless machine in opposition was only scratched by such episodes, not injured. The immensity of it was past all calculation. Its efficiency was the result of years of concentration, and the discipline of the units was such that they were merged in one welded mass; no man had a soul of his own. Stories of the irresistible momentum of this compact mass, of its appliances for continuing and enduring and filling up gaps, its horrible persistency when beaten back again and again, had swelled and gathered, and terror grew. Small wonder was it then, when a few shells fell in Fumes, that imagination quickened its approach. The few people who had not already gone began to go post-haste. It had come within the range of possibility that the hideous cruelties and loathsome brutalities enacted at Louvain and Dinant, Aerschot and other towns, might even be the fate of Furnes. All night long the streets rumbled with departing vehicles, mingled with the clatter of advancing cavalry hoofs, and as a background the roll of the guns gathered force and sounded ominously nearer. Even the ambulance people warned to leave, but they determined to "stick it out" so long as they could be useful.

On the morning of October 29, Gipsy and Mairi got up as usual at six. They washed in that "half-teaspoonful" of water to which they had grown accustomed. Water was very scarce in Furnes and Gipsy remarks casually, "I am so dirty, I feel I shall soon walk without legs!"

The British field hospital had taken a different view of the situation from the members of the ambulance corps, and had gone south at the sound of the alarm. The leaders had already once experienced what it meant to wait to the last minute, and knew what it had cost them, and so were determined not to be caught again. There was an atmosphere of horrible uncertainty everywhere, the confusion of a war seen from the middle instead of from the end.

Yet the cars ran out to Oudecappelle as usual among the dead bodies of horses and cows that lined that road. Some of these had been cut up, and the joints taken for food; others had reached the stage of being pestilential. Gipsy was driving, and rifle-bullets, always a sign of an advance, had begun to hum. She sheltered beside the wall of a house, which does form some protection from this form of attack, though none from shell-fire, and she amused herself by remarking the different notes of the bullets. When one struck anything it made a little smack like the crack of a well- manipulated whip, because the displaced air cracks at the sharp end of the flight.

Most of the day was given over to a vague running about hither and thither without much result, and the atmosphere was full of a maddening suspense. At last a message came for someone to go out to an outlying post to fetch in wounded men. This could only be done under cover of darkness. So as soon as the dusk came down in a kindly veil several of the party started. Tom was driving the first car, and had Mairi with him, among others; whilst Gipsy drove the second, the big Napier ambulance. This still retained its glass screen, and as it was raining the screen became blurred and added to the difficulty of seeing ahead. It was a matter of crawling along foot by foot in the grease of the pavé. Thus they went to Claeskerke, close to Dixmude, where the Germans might break through at any moment according to reports.

When they came to the cross-roads Gipsy received orders to turn to the left, while the first car went to the right. The first party picked up a number of Senegalese very quickly and took them back to Furnes. Gipsy crawled over the ground at a walking pace toward a lonely farm, where she had been told she would find cases to bring back. The surface was so greasy that the wheels would hardly hold the road at all, but there was a fair light from a village in flames some way off. The farm-house had been used as a depot for the wounded, and they were being brought in thick and fast. When she arrived here the whole available space in the ambulance was quickly filled with stretcher cases. Mr. G------, an American who had done good work with the ambulance, climbed inside the car to help the men whose hold on life was slipping from them, and all alone on that front seat sat one frail woman to guide to safety that huge, heavy car which resembled a motor-bus.

The roads were abominable; never had she known them so bad. Sometimes the steering-wheel was jerked right out of her hands, which, for all their skill, had not the strength to hold up the weight so suddenly thrown upon the wrists. The skids were almost continuous, and jerked the living freight from side to side. At any moment the whole ambulance might topple right over. She had been driving off and on since seven that morning, and was already tired. Her back ached to agony, her eyeballs were strained with trying to pierce the grisly darkness.

The blaze of the burning village died down until only a red glow remained. All at once a shell burst as it seemed right overhead, and in the blinding light she saw something straight across the track, something big and black, which made her shut down the brakes and pull up. Then she could see nothing with that flashing light still repeating itself in her eyes and making the red dusk seem velvet- black; so, after waiting a minute, she clambered down from the seat and felt about with her hands, and ascertained that the body of a great cart-horse was lying across the way. It was far beyond her strength to move, so, groping in the mud, she measured the space left in which to pass, and found she could do it with six inches to spare, but the miscalculation of the six inches would land them all in an awful catastrophe! However, there was nothing else for it: these precious lives inside depended on her; so, bitterly cold and soaked to the skin, she crept back to the steering-wheel and essayed the difficult task. Inch by inch she crept past judging the distance, and as her pupils widened she was enabled to see a little, and then she breathed once more as she gained the pavé, which, compared with the mud at the side, seemed safety. But she was not by any means out of the wood, for not a quarter of a mile further her groping sight revealed another black mass, this time so big that it was visible without the aid of a shell-burst. Once more she had to get down and investigate; it proved to be a shell-hole quite large enough to swallow the whole ambulance and its contents. Once more she had to carry out unaided that manœuvring process with so little margin of safety.

When back again on the road she almost ran into a compact group of cavalry that was coming with uncanny silence toward Dixmude. The background of constant noise obliterated all lesser sounds. She warned the men of the shell-hole and passed on. But the end was not yet. According to agreement, she was to return to Furnes by way of Oudecappelle, where Gilbert was waiting. Numbed and trembling with the shocking strain, she felt a momentary relief when she alighted beside his dark figure. Her muscles were wrenched and her hands were shaking, but here was Gilbert without a car, and possibly he would take over the driver's job. She waited silently.

"How many have you got?" he asked in French.

"It is full inside; there is no room—except"—as an afterthought— "two sitting cases could come alongside me on the front.”

“Then you must go back at once and fetch two sitting cases. There are two waiting, slightly wounded, along that road you came. I will show you where."

"I felt as if my heart would burst," Gipsy says, when recounting this incident in her diary.

But what could she do? She was under orders, and her high spirit would have forced her on like a mettled horse until she dropped dead.

With a little choke, but without a word of protest, she turned the car and proceeded to re-traverse that awful road, with Gilbert sitting on the step beside her as a guide. They found the Wounded men and placed them in front, and then returned. The road was being shelled heavily now, doubtless because the Germans anticipated reinforcements coming along it. The whistling scream of the great shells, like the scream of a railway engine as it dashes through a station, got nearer and nearer, and even Gilbert himself ducked involuntarily as one burst within ten yards of them whereat the patient driver smiled a little in the dark. She was far past minding shells herself, voluntarily or involuntarily.

"To get the car along at all, I had to brace every muscle to breaking- point, and every nerve in my body was strung taut. My head ached from straining my eyes in that drizzle, my arms ached from clutching that heavy wheel. There were moments when I felt I could not go on, and yet I knew I must, and so I did."

On reaching Oudecappelle again, Gilbert alighted and rejoined his own car, which had come back, and for the fifteen miles or so homeward the whole burden of responsibility again fell on this indomitable woman.

How the miles were passed over she did not know. She almost reached the point of insensibility, working like an automaton without feeling before the end; but she came to life on reaching Furnes, and the coming alive was agony. At the entrance into the courtyard of the convent there is almost a right-angled turn up through the gates, a tricky task at the best of times. When she reached it her weak, strained wrist refused to do it. The car had to be stopped, backed, and the chauffeur tried again, failed; tried once more, yet more feebly, and failed again; and then, utterly done, she fell forward on the steering-wheel and for the first time in her life broke down. Faithful little Mairi, who had come home with Gilbert's car and not gone out again, was waiting and watching, and sprang to help her and take her indoors while others brought in the car. No wonder Gipsy says in her diary, "It was one of the most appalling experiences of my life!"

In going through these days of horror during the crisis at Dixmude one is struck with the miraculous way in which the party were preserved. Never shirking, hardly ever out of danger, yet not one of them was hit; they were certainly watched over by a Higher Power.

One time, when they were at Oudecappelle awaiting cases to take home, it seemed quite an ordinary thing to M. de Broqueville to suggest to Gipsy that they should walk up the shell-strewn road after having left the ambulances—just as natural as if he had asked her to go for a stroll in a country lane to wile away the time until the horse had had a feed at a country inn. And it seemed quite as natural to her to accept. She made no comment on the astounding proposition. She simply went.

They could see the shapeless observation balloons of the Germans floating ahead, and Gipsy airily chaffed her companion about the gold tassel on his cap, saying that as it bobbed up and down in the rare gleam of sunlight they were enjoying it made a beacon for the hostile fire. She had hardly said it, and they were about a hundred yards along the road, when a German shell burst in a field on the left; so their pleasant little stroll had to be abruptly curtailed, and they turned to go back. Then a shell sailed straight toward them. They heard it coming, and knew well from experience that the sound portended a very near thing. They stopped dead, waiting tensely through that second that might be the last scrap of time left to them, and the shell pitched not fifteen yards away, covering them both with a pall of dust.

"Ne bougez pas," M. de Broqueville counselled, in his wise, kind, unalarmed tones. So Gipsy stood waiting quietly. Just ahead of them was an old, old peasant man whom they had passed pushing along a barrow full of turnips, and as the "Ne bougez pas" rang out he, too, stopped where he was and raised his withered hand to wipe his forehead. The third shell flew screeching overhead, and burst in the ditch by the side of the road, sending up a great spout of water like a geyser. The splinters flew far and wide. One pierced Gipsy's coat, but left her uninjured; and when the smoke died away they saw that the old peasant had fallen forward across his barrow. They sprang forward to help him, and found a splinter had caught him in the back, and it was all over with him.

Having once started, the two ran back toward the cottages where the ambulances were, and as they ran two more shells broke close to them, one smashing an empty cottage into a heap. It had occurred to them both that with the deadly missiles bursting around like this the precious ambulances must be in danger, and must be secured at any cost; so they backed them off three hundred yards along the road, and returned with stretchers to pick up the wounded, for one of the doctors was injured, and a sergeant had had an arm blown off.

After this episode Gipsy remarks severely: "Shells are not things one likes at all. Anyone who says he likes them is certainly not speaking the truth."

The Cellar House of Pervyse - Chapter 6 - Gipsy and the Major

'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 VI - Gipsy and the Major

BY this time the resources of food at the hospital had run out—even porridge was not available—but fortunately one small butcher's shop in the town was discovered open, and at the back was a kind of little café where the workers could get something to eat. Through the streets of Fumes they went night by night in the pitch darkness, occasionally brightened by an odd gleam that seemed to come from nowhere until you were right on the top of it and looked down into a cellar opening off the pavement, where some of the few inhabitants who had not fled were crouching together talking in awestruck tones by the gleam of a candle or a few sticks. All lights were strictly suppressed of course, and at first, when there was still a certain amount of meat in the butcher's shop, they had to grope their way out, knocking their faces against the cold, still carcasses that hung suspended stiffly from their hooks.

As for the provender they got, Mairi remarks caustically of the soup: "One tomato in fifteen pints of water, but it was hot."

In desperation she and Gipsy at last descended to the cellars of the house they were in, and found some potatoes, jam, beer, and bottled waters, and carried them back for all to share alike. They had certainly earned their keep by the work they were doing for the Belgians.

Dixmude was being steadily shelled, and day by day they went on that long, dangerous road to bring in all the survivors they could. But the day's work was not unrelieved tragedy; a note of high comedy was struck the day Gipsy happened to be out in Oostkerke, about four miles west of Dixmude, just off the more direct and northerly road between that place and Furnes. She had made friends with a very odd-looking Belgian Major who, if he had been a little larger, would have done, without any making-up, for the figure of the giant in the old nursery tales, for he had a rubicund face, brilliant red hair, and a flaming moustache and bristly eyebrows of the same hue — therefore the word that fitly describes him is "scarlet." He was on observation duty. The only possible places in this flat country from which any extent of ground can be surveyed are the tall steeples of the churches, or, rather, perhaps they were the only places, for as both sides made the same discovery, and used them for the identical purpose whenever they came across them, they were naturally shelled persistently, and few indeed survive. The stout Major knew no English, but he was greatly impressed by this good- looking, fearless Englishwoman in her war-stained khaki suit, and so, with expressive gestures, he invited her to climb up the church steeple and see for herself where it was that he spent his days surveying. Gipsy never refused an offer like that, especially when the church tower might any moment be crumpled up by a shell. As Miss May Sinclair has said, "she had an irresistible inclination toward the greatest possible danger."

Up they climbed, and as they mounted each ladder became steeper and narrower than the last. When they gained the summit and peered out of the tiny observation hole, shells were bursting around in a way to satisfy the most ardent lover of danger! As they descended, in a very steep and narrow place, the Major stopped, completely barring the way, and drawing from his pocket a little crumpled French-English dictionary, laboriously turned the pages with his thick moistened thumb until he had found what he wanted. Then, looking up, he spluttered out: "Si je n'étais pas marié. Je voudrais dire, 'I luv you.' "

A sense of her own appalling loss must have made Gipsy nearly fall from her perch; it certainly required every bit of her self-control to enable her to keep her countenance and insist on his proceeding. But she had plenty of dignity, and the descent, perilous in more ways than one, was safely accomplished. They descended again, to find at the church door a sight which straightway sent the matter flying from her head. A French officer lay there with his foot in "a lovely mess." He had been scouting along the railway line which runs through Oostkerke, between Furnes and Dixmude, and a bullet had gone clean through his leg low down. He dropped on the ground to apply his first-aid bandage, and suddenly a "Black Maria" burst within ten yards of him, throwing earth all over his bleeding wound. He knew the great danger of the microbes in the soil getting into an open wound, and, having nothing else handy, he used the contents of his flask, which happened to be coffee, to wash it out. But as he told the story he was concerned, not with the pain of the wound, or with the terribly narrow escape he had had of his life, but with indignation that the shell should have dared to spatter him and make him waste his precious coffee! Such is human naturel He had dragged himself back to shelter with his mind full of this detestable outrage, and he poured it forth to a most sympathetic listener. Gipsy attended to him skilfully, and helped him into the little dug-out occupied by the Major. But directly she had entered it she was filled with anxiety to get out in a hurry; such a smell of stale tobacco, burnt fat, and other worse odours, permeated the place that it might be imagined even a shell would rebound harmlessly off the solidity of the atmosphere! However, nothing would satisfy the Major but that she must sit down and have a plate of soup. In whatever circumstances, soup did sound inviting on this bitter day to someone chronically under-fed and over-tired, so she assented.

A plate was promptly produced containing soup of a pale yellow colour, with a layer of grease about half an inch thick on the top. It was accompanied by a spoon which had most obviously been used to "sup soup" by someone else a very short time before. However, Gipsy philosophically remarks, "It looked a little cleaner when it had been in my soup!"

While she was struggling with the mess heroically, unwilling to hurt the feelings of her well-meaning host, his face lit as a happy thought struck him, and, fumbling in his pocket, he produced a little silver- paper pill, which he crushed between his fingers, burying it gaily and firmly in the midst of the plate of soup. The awful thought that it might be some sort of love-potion—nothing seemed too weird for belief in the strange life she now led—seized on Gipsy, and her quick mind visioned a sort of "Midsummer Night's Dream," with the Major in the part of Bottom! Seeing that he was delighted with his own performance, and totally unaware of the feelings he was arousing in her, even while she watched the soup grow darker under the influence of the pill, she nobly swallowed more of the nauseous compound. The taste assured her that the addition must have been some sort of Liebig, and the worst consequences would not result!

In came just then a doctor belonging to the corps, and he was straightway supplied with a similar plate; and as he looked at it wonderingly, and Gipsy thrust hers from her, having had all that human nature could endure, the little Major thereupon crowned his achievements by snatching at the spoon and picking up by its aid what was left of the silver pill—mainly paper by this time— and conveying it and the spoon together into the soup of the new-comer!

The second course of this appetizing meal was a stale and decrepit- looking piece of steak that had evidently won through with its life after a fierce assault by someone. This was too much; good intention carries far, but beyond a point flesh revolts. Gipsy shook her head as pleasantly as she could, but with a decision that was unmistakable, whereupon, the little man, dancing round her in the confined space, hauled out his precious dictionary, and after a mad hunt found the elusive words he was searching for, and with flaming face and eyes thrust them under her nose:

"I am stung to the quick!"

The Cellar House of Pervyse - Chapter 5 - On The Road

'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 V - On The Road

There was no question about the amount of work waiting to be done at Furnes. Calls from Dixmude, where hot fighting was going on, were incessant, and the ambulances were kept hard at it. Dixmude is about eight miles south-east of Furnes as the crow flies, but much more by road; and the way along the scattered and smashed pavé was rolled out many times in a day by the coming and going of the motors. Chauffeurs were difficult to get, and there were many cars requiring drivers now; so early next morning Gipsy had hardly had time to get on her clothes before there was a shout, and she ran down to find Gilbert waiting outside with the heavy 40 h.p. Napier. There was no one else to take it, and he ordered her to do so. Put upon her mettle, she obeyed at once, but as she climbed into the seat she realized that she did not even know which were the levers for the various gears, for she had never driven that sort of car before. A trifle like that was soon rectified by a few little experiments, and she managed all right. Before she had been in Belgium long she had driven an extraordinary number of different makes of car, including a Daimler, Wolseley, Mercedes, Napier, Pipe, Sunbeam, and Fiat, and she had had to take a great many of them at a moment's notice too.

It was not like driving on an English road, for here the pavé in the centre is made of cobbles, and just wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other with care; it slopes down a little at each side, and is usually, in the winter at all events, greasy with a thin layer of mud, whereas, if you fail to hold on, you land in unfathomable depths of mud like thick porridge which borders the sides. Beyond this again there is usually a ditch filled to the brim with water, and with no sort of guard to protect the sides, so that a plunge into icy water is not outside the bounds of possibility. With a top-heavy ambulance the joys of getting off into the mud are enhanced by knowing that it is quite as likely as not that if your wheel goes deep into that quagmire the whole thing may turn right over, a particularly cheerful prospect if it happens to be full of wounded men! At the very best, the feat of regaining the pavé entails a tearing strain on a woman's hand and arm. There is a choice of two roads between Furnes and Dixmude. The northern one is more direct, but it was not considered feasible at this time, so the party went by the southern one, turning up by Oudecappelle within sight of Dixmude.

It was the last part of the straight, open road, when they were well within range of the German guns, that strained the nerves most. Mairi was beside her friend on the front of the ambulance, and they were the last of the whole cavalcade, so that if anything had happened to them none of the others would have seen it. Gilbert, who was leading, always went "hell for leather," with a disregard of adverse conditions little less than miraculous, and he never went faster than when he was heading straight for danger. The vile road was broken and pitted with the huge, irregular craters where the shells had fallen. Far ahead was the little bunch of houses, of which some were already burning. Shoved to one side of the route by someone who had had to get off his car to do it was a dead horse on his back, with all his legs in the air in a grotesque parody of a comfortable back-scratching roll.

Not far off him was an "awful warning " in the shape of a big car smashed to pieces by a. shell which must have landed plump into the middle of it and wiped out of time and space any occupants it contained. Ahead the firing was like a tropical thunderstorm, with ominous flashes and a deep, menacing growl, and instead of fleeing from it, as would be man's natural instinct, they were steering straight into the heart of it. They could not get actually into Dixmude itself, but reached Caeskerke, where Gilbert, who was in charge of the party, told them to reverse the cars, facing them homewards, ready to plunge off any second. They were up against some small cottages, and about them some of the French soldiers were entrenched, while others lay along the sloping sides of the road along which they had just come. They were there for half an hour watching with a kind of fascination the sharp, stabbing flame, followed by a cloud of white smoke, or a red roar as a shell caught one of the remaining cottages out in the open and sent it up in a furnace of fire. Nearer and nearer came the warning hiss and scream, until at last they could actually see the pieces flying as the shells burst, exactly as sometimes represented in an illustration, a thing pooh-poohed by those who have never been under shell-fire. Then with a roar and a deafening noise a farm-house not more than fifty yards from them received a shell full upon it, and Gilbert waved a commanding arm ordering them to begone.

It required more than common nerve to get the engine started in such conditions, but it was achieved at last, and they went back the way they had come, out into the open, passing by a huge new pit that had been made in the last half-hour, a pit which yawned across the way and would easily have swallowed up the whole car.

They drew up near a church about a mile out, and waited here for further orders; they had not been there ten minutes when an armoured car came bumping painfully along with a burst back tyre. Some Belgian officers jumped down, and after standing round for a few minutes in discussion together, one of them advanced, with the fascinating little tassel swinging from his cap as he saluted, and asked if the ladies would take back to Furnes some German prisoners he had in the armoured car, otherwise he did not know what to do with them. It certainly was a strange request to make to a woman not of his own nationality, and the trust implied in her skill and courage was unbounded. Gipsy rose to the occasion at once.

"I think it was the proudest moment of my life," she says in her diary.

The five Germans, well set up, fair, hard-eyed striplings, were transferred to the ambulance without delay, and as they were installed and the order given to start the two friends saw with a sort of terrified glee that the Belgian officers did not think it necessary to provide an escort; they had too much to do elsewhere. They seemed to take the whole abnormal proceeding very much as a matter of course, and stood in a row and saluted while the two women drove off with the very strangest carload it had ever been woman's fate to convoy.

Eight miles lay between them and safety, and at any moment, if those unemotional, ruthless young brutes inside had taken it into their heads, they could have got out and knocked the amateur chauffeurs on the head, and escaped with the car. As they went cautiously along this aspect of it was naturally very much to the fore in the minds of the Two on the front seat, and they spoke of it in whispers; but possibly the Germans themselves were glad enough to get safely out of that hell of shot and shell, for they made no attempt at an escape.

The job was accomplished safely, the men handed over to authority, and the car went on to take a load of wounded soldiers to the station. Then, conscious of having accomplished an excellent day's work, the Two returned to their quarters and supped off bully beef and soldier's biscuit. "It was a great day," they said.

In the days that followed they were constantly backwards and forwards on that long and dangerous road, and recognized without difficulty each new shell-hole along the way. The road was so broken in parts that men were sent out with great faggots of wood on their shoulders to throw into the holes and fill them up, and constant repairing was necessary to keep the route open for the heavy military transport. All this work in the open air, with hard physical lifting and driving, took it out of the Two so much that they were always thankful, when the day's work was done, to get back and drop into bed—a real bed, too, a great luxury in those times. A few other members of the party were installed in the same house, but Mairi and Gipsy retained their bedroom to themselves. They were usually able to obtain food at the hospital, where they fared very simply. Porridge for breakfast was acceptable, and occasionally fried potatoes were added, if they had time to cook them and they did not get spoiled just as they were ready, which is the way of potatoes in the hands of amateur cooks all the world over.

 "These" porridge must have felt gratified at its appreciation; even in Scotland, where it is ennobled by the use of the plural number, it can rarely have been referred to as "a joyful basin of porridge!"

The night work was perhaps the greatest strain, for there could of course be no lights, and the way was lit up grimly by the sudden flare of the exploding shells, or the dim light of distant buildings which they had set on fire. It was a curious sight to see the roof of one of these huge torches collapse suddenly, apparently in absolute silence, for the ceaseless cannonade drowned all lesser sounds; then the flames would shoot up like a great cascade of fireworks, brightening everything for hundreds of yards around, and illuminating the great holes cut in the road till they appeared like an irregular procession of monstrous tortoises who had eaten the "Food of the Gods."

Sometimes so many of these devil's fires were alight at once that they brought back a reminiscence of bonfires on Coronation night. "Farmhouses burning, trees burning, everything burning. It was a grand sight, and one I shall never forget," says Mairi enthusiastically. And in the midst of that great amphitheatre set for a life and death drama Luck and Fate stalking alongside, determined that these particular actors should live to play a great part.

The effect of the shells, even on the presumably tough chauffeurs, was eloquent of the nerve-racking strain. One man was perfectly ill with it, and yet he had the right sort of pluck, for he owned up to the cause of his malady, but set his teeth and went on in grim determination. He stuck to his wheel one day, when he was driving Mrs. Knocker, until he became fairly paralyzed, and was manifestly unable to go on, so she changed places with him and took the driving-wheel herself. They were carrying four wounded men, and she brought them into safety, and then said she must go back, as she had left Mairi at Oudecappelle, but that as he was feeling ill he had better stay at Furnes. He looked at her with a face that was like the face of one of the dead in the convent wards, and said doggedly through stiff lips: "Can't drive, but I ain't going to give in to it. I'm coming back right alongside of you this very minute." She could not but admire this heroic triumph of mind over matter.

"Poor fellow! When we turned the corner of the road and got within range of those big guns, and each flash could be clearly seen, he turned suddenly sick, and I had to stop and give him brandy and cover him with a rug. I begged him not to look. It is a sight which requires a peculiar kind of nerves." She does not add that it requires a kind of courage so peculiar that it is rare indeed!

It was getting dusk, and those great bulbs of flame were horribly vivid, and everywhere the masses of farm-buildings or haystacks showed their effect. The continuous deafening noise was killing, and always above the deep bass of the guns the high alto of the screaming shells never ceased for one instant. It seemed as if it were too frightful to continue for another second, yet if it stopped suddenly one's skull would fall to pieces!

It was no wonder that some of the chauffeurs, who were mostly very young and raw, could hardly face it. They did not do badly considering. It was the custom for the heavy ambulances to be left outside the worst firing, in what might be called the penumbra of the danger-zone, and then the light scout cars were run up into the hotter places to retrieve the wounded. No one was forced to go on this service; volunteers were called for, and among these volunteers were always the women of the party. Just at first of course, they, like the men, were quite ignorant of the fearful danger, and went forward with the excited interest of children into the battle-field; but soon, very soon, their eyes were opened, and they knew what it meant. It was then, when the danger was fully recognized, that the pull came! One young Cockney chauffeur, called Tom, was among the bravest of the brave, and did more than his share, because, besides going fearlessly and light-heartedly into the very mouth of the inferno, he exercised a dry turn of humour, which helped the others through better, possibly, than anything else could have done. It often just tipped the balance the right way when it was swinging dangerously. After all, risky as the fire-zone was, it was quite a question among them whether it was not more risky in another way to stay in the ill-ventilated, over-crowded hospital, with its primitive lack of sanitary arrangements.

The Furnes folk were still in that happy state of simplicity when anything out of sight is considered harmless. It was Tom who expressed the British view when, on coming suddenly one day into the poisonous atmosphere after the freshness of a rush through the air, he exclaimed: "My, but them drines is just crude! Give me busting shells all the time-o."

On the evening in question Mairi had been sitting on a wall in Oudecappelle, waiting for the return of the car, with a few soldiers and one or two peasants to keep her company. She, as well as Gipsy, always had a feeling that it was less dangerous to be out of doors under shell-fire, or, at any rate, that it was preferable to meet death, if it must be met, under the full sail of the sky, rather than the flat straitness of roof and walls. So Mairi sat there in charge of some wounded men who lay just inside the door of a cottage, and she watched the shells getting heavier and heavier. The French and Belgian batteries were quite near, and were answering the challenge of the foe madly, and altogether there was no lack of liveliness. Then some of the soldiers, hurrying up, told her that the Germans were coming—the same old cry—and that they themselves had been ordered further down the road; but the girl only smiled sweetly, and went to look at her charges to be sure that everything was ready for immediate transportation when the ambulance should arrive. And as she went out again to look for its coming another ambulance drove up from the opposite direction, and from it stepped out a man of medium height, with a keen, laughing face and those glinting eyes that carry a signal of personal fearlessness even to the least observant. No wonder he looked a little surprised to find this fair-haired girl, so very young and not over big, in charge by herself in the gathering dusk, at this place, which in a danger competition would have gained high marks. He had just come from Dixmude himself, which would certainly in such a competition have been more successful still. So he began to talk to Mairi with a warm degree of comradeship, and just then Gipsy drove up, with the exhausted chauffeur beside her, as miserable and ashamed as a man could be. Dr. Van der Ghinst thereupon introduced himself, bowing gracefully, and held out to the Two a rose apiece, telling them laughingly that they were the last roses in Dixmude, where he was working at the hospital of St. Jean, looking after the wounded. As Dixmude was then about the centre of the vortex, and most of the houses were either fallen or tottering, he did not lack exhilaration in his daily routine. Brave spirits all the world over have something in common, and these three fraternized at once. There was no need of introductions; they knew each other, for their hearts were set on the same thing.

The doctor was evacuating his wounded, who had to be taken over all the long road to Furnes, with the result that many died by the way, and, looking at them pitifully, an idea which had been germinating for some time in Gipsy's brain suddenly took form. Why should there not be a dressing-station close up to the lines at the front? Could not many lives be saved if the wounded could have immediate rest and care, so as to neutralize the effects of shock and fortify them for what they had to go through in the way of weary journeying and knocking about? At present, many a man died from a comparatively slight wound, because his system was utterly exhausted by shock and he had no strength left. While they were still discussing the project, from which extraordinary results were to spring, a French marine came in screaming with pain; two of his fingers had been severed, and he sobbed and groaned so heart- rendingly that, though they were getting a little hardened, it almost unstrung Mrs. Knocker.

It was still raining hard when, tired out, the two friends returned to their house. It was quite lonely, no other member of the party being there at the time. They found the back-door open and the glass panels smashed. As they stood for a second looking at one another in surprise, they could hear the distant rumble of the guns and the immediate drip and splutter of the rain running down in spouts from the roof. They slowly penetrated into the empty house, not knowing what they might not meet. The front-door also stood wide open, and it looked as if whoever had been there had hastily escaped that way on hearing their approach. However, they searched everywhere, and, having found no sign of anyone, at last literally dropped asleep as they undressed, tumbling into bed dead-beat.

The next morning they were still in bed when they heard a knock at the door, and when Mairi, huddling on a coat, opened it she was confronted by a burly French soldier, who looked uncommonly sheepish. He explained hurriedly and with his eyes anywhere but on her face that he wanted his revolver. "But I have not got your revolver," said Mairi, too surprised for words. "Gipsy, here's a man who wants his revolver—at least, I think that's what he wants, unless there is some other French word which sounds exactly like it."

But it was his revolver he inquired for steadily, and when they pressed him to say where it was, and why he thought they had got it, his eyes roved more wildly than before as he blurted out, "C’est dans votre lit, mesdemoiselles.'1''

Hastily they turned back to the bed, but the man slipped past them, and, putting his grimy hand beneath the pillow, drew forth his heavy revolver. Gipsy snatched it from him. "You shan't have it until you tell us how it came there," she cried, in mingled amusement and indignation; so he confessed that he and the other soldiers who were about the place, and had no regular quarters, used to come and sleep here in the daytime, because they knew the ladies were always out till late. "Ça ne fait rien, et c'est bien confortable," he ended, gripping the revolver and grinning as he rushed out.

French soldiers sleeping in the bed by daytime! Only those who have been among soldiers will understand what that means. It explained so many things!

The Cellar House of Pervyse - Chapter 4 - The Retreat

'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 IV - The Retreat

But Ghent did not long remain a refuge; well before the middle of the month earnest warnings to evacuate it were given. The way in which the final summons came was dramatic. Mairi was in bed, sleeping with her usual heart-whole earnestness, when she was awakened suddenly, and saw standing by her one of the doctors attached to the ambulance, telling her the Germans were upon them and they must fly. Then followed a scramble. The first thing was to save the wounded soldiers, who must not be left to fall into the hands of the foe. Alas! the order had come through the day before that all the kits belonging to these men were to be sent to Ostend as a measure of precaution. One of those "decisions in blinkers" which cause such infinite suffering. The patients were mostly in thin cotton pyjamas; the night was foggy and bitterly cold; the only conveyance was an open transport waggon with a scanty layer of straw on the boards. Gipsy and Mairi rummaged for all the blankets they could find, and wrapped the poor fellows up in them; but it must have been a terrible journey for many of them. They were drawn by horses, and could only go at a walking pace on account of the direful roads, the quantity of traffic already occupying them, and the darkness of the night. And they had to cover fifty miles to gain safety! When they were finally sent off the members of the corps had to think of themselves.

There was none too much room in the cars, and they had to pack in like sardines. As Gipsy had been sitting up with a wounded officer when the summons came, and since then, having been occupied with the soldiers, had not been able to change the cotton hospital dress she happened to be wearing, she suffered frightfully from the cold. The cars crawled along to Eccloo, where they stopped at the house of an Englishwoman, a friend of Dr. Munro's. Although this lady and her husband were themselves preparing to fly, they received the rather forlorn party with the utmost kindness, and spread abundance of blankets on the floor of the drawing-room, where they made up a-roaring fire. There they all waited till daybreak. A strangely assorted party they were, lying about in all directions, some on the window-seats, some on the floor, and the two chauffeurs betrayed their qualifications by falling sound asleep with their mouths open, sitting bolt upright on two stiff-backed chairs, a feat that filled some of the others with admiration.

After breakfast next morning they all followed the wounded, and reached Bruges in time to get them into the convent hospital by midday. The stiff cold men had been unpacked, and fed, and laid in comfortable beds, and were beginning to recover a little from their awful night, when like a thunderbolt came the news that the Germans had entered Ghent at seven that morning, and that twelve thousand of them, ruthless men, without pity or consideration for the fallen, were hastening forward to Bruges; so all the poor tired soldiers had to be carried down again, and sent onward once more. It was heart-rending work.

This time the objective was Ostend, and along that poplar-lined road, which had seemed so peaceful when they ran the other way in high hopes about three weeks ago, back the Munro ambulance people went with heavy hearts. The nearer they drew to Ostend, the greater grew the crush. It seemed as if the whole population of Belgium must be converging on the port, the last link of the chain which England held. Hospital ambulances, troops, refugees, guns, transport, carts, were surging together and every now and then jammed. There was much cursing and swearing in a variety of tongues. In the town, streets, shops, houses, were packed with people; it seemed as if they must all be welded into a jelly, and unable to extricate themselves until the Germans arrived. The mental harassment of seeing to the wounded added tenfold to the strain on those responsible, and the relief was great when, at last, they were got on to a boat going across to England, which carried no less than seven thousand wounded men!

With the lifting of this terrible load the personal troubles of the ambulance were by no means ended, only now they had time to think of themselves. So desperate was the situation considered that no baggage was allowed to be taken off the cars. Still in her cotton dress, now soiled and crushed in a way to depress the heart of the most careless of women, Gipsy had to pass another night; and all night long consciousness was beating at the back of her half-awake brain that any moment the summons to continue the weary flight might sound. Rumours flew fast. The advance of the Germans was at a terrible pace. They would be here before morning! Already they were here! Their numbers swelled to hundreds of thousands— all was over! Though the worst of these forebodings proved untrue, yet the situation was bad enough. The work seemed smashed across the middle, past possibility of recovery, and there was a horrid knell of defeat to deaden and depress energies already heavily overtaxed.

That evening in Ostend, Mairi came across an elderly man in civilian clothes, much too small for him, standing at a street-corner, with tears running down his cheeks. She remembered having noticed him a few hours earlier in a garde civique uniform, and greeting him in the informal way that necessity teaches, she learnt his tale of woe. It was poured out on her in a flood of mingled French and Flemish, in that half-whimsical, half-serious way that told her he was sorely hurt; and as her French had already improved, she gathered the gist of it even before she was helped out by a Cockney Tommy who stood beside him.

' 'E sys, lydy, that orders is froo for 'em to put off of them clothes; he ain't a soldier, and them Boches, if they cetch 'im, why, they'll 'eng him I seen 'im done it. 'E's pitched 'em in the sea, all them noo clothes. Gord! I wish I had had 'em on a Sunday morning in the East End! I'd 'ev got more'n a quid for 'em! 'E's right-down sore, 'e is, pore old blighter! And thet's what 'tis all about. Na, I not speak his lingo—for why? 'Tain't necessary; I can understand these chaps wifout, and that's for why."

Mairi left them with a mingled feeling of laughing and crying; it seemed so preposterous that the great stout citizen who had given up his spare time and trained in peace should now have this awful humiliation forced upon him, the knowledge that he was only a play- soldier and no use at all. To be held in disdain; to be forced, by his own action in throwing away his beloved uniform, to confess it was all make-believe and no use when real war came—this was worse than being wounded. And there were hundreds of his kind doing the same thing. In Ghent the canals were choked with the heavy coats and belts flung away at the fierce threat of a shameful and ignominious end. It seemed, after all, as if the plight of the Gardes Civiques was more pitiable than that of the ambulance corps.

By nine the next morning a greatly swelled procession was marshalled out of the town on the road to Dunkirk; everyone had to keep in position and go at one pace, which was necessarily a crawl. There were about three hundred and fifty cars in the line, including those of two Belgian Generals and others belonging to Ministers. Most depressing of all was the news—which turned out after all to be untrue—that the Diplomats accredited to Belgium had gone to England. That horrible morning left its mark on the Two. Each hour, spun to extremity by the tension within, had upon them the effect of three in power of exhaustion, and yet they really got to Dunkirk not much after midday. Here again was the inextricable confusion, the crush and push. In contemplating war one looks at it usually in the light of history, when events are clear-cut and told with precision. Of the horrible uncertainties, the dubious outlook, the impossibility of reliable information, the difficulty of correct judgment on the spot, only those who are in the midst of it are aware.

Even at Dunkirk there was no room; men were sleeping on the billiard-tables in the hotels. So the two friends went out to a little bathing-place on the coast called Malo-les-Bains. But they were now in Belgium no longer, and the feeling that they had been forced to leave the country they had come to help weighed heavily on them. "I think I never felt so truly miserable," says Gipsy, "as the moment when we passed the frontier line between Belgium and France. I have left my heart behind me in that brave, honest little country. I shall always think of Belgium as the first country in the world for bravery, honesty, chivalry, and patriotism, and it will be my fervent prayer that they may some day get their country back again. There is something about Belgium that no other country has. I think my heart will always feel more Belgian than British in future"—which embodied an unconscious prophecy.

It was probably the first time Malo-les-Bains had ever had any visitors so late in October, and it must have been puzzled and overwhelmed by this strange honour. Inexpressibly dreary was Malo, with its long level plage and straight sea-line, seen through a curtain of steadily pouring rain. The rows of empty bathing-sheds faced the sea like sentry-boxes, and the little, cold, inadequate fringes of foam crept hesitatingly to their doors as if they hardly knew what to make of it all. There were still a few fishing-boats about, and a few men shrimping, mostly very old men, who "must eat."

The whole of this place was transformed by war, and the overflow from Dunkirk more than sufficed to overcrowd it as it had never been overcrowded in its gayest season. It was here that the party were joined by the authoress, the late Miss Macnaughtan, who afterwards established a soup-kitchen in Furnes, and did excellent work there at the railway-station among the hungry and bewildered soldiers.

Malo was crammed with troops. There were the British with the strong unmistakable Manchester accent of self-confidence; the French in their heavy and clumsy-looking overcoats; Senegalese shivering and wilted by a climate which spoilt the delightful game of war; and, of course, plenty of Belgians. Now and again a Taube hovered overhead, fiercely hawk-like, and got well shot at; and once a British aeroplane descended hurriedly, emitting sulphurous language, because it had been unrecognized and included in the too cordial welcome. At night all lights were out save the great searchlights which, like the Flaming Swords of the Angel of Eden, pierced the flatness of the forsaken sands.

On October 20 began what resulted in the tremendous fight for Ypres, when the Germans were thrust back, and those who had thought Belgium all lost took heart again. The mixed population on the coast thinned down again. Those who had given up heart went on further into France, the soldiers were moved, the refugees absorbed elsewhere. The place in these circumstances looked more dreary than ever, and, to add to their woes, the friends had a personal grief.

Gilbert was missing—Gilbert, who had so endeared himself to the corps that they felt for him as for a lifelong friend. They had seen nothing of him after the hasty summons to leave Ghent, and they greatly feared he had fallen, and was lost in the great swathes of the nameless and unburied. Dr. Munro had gone over to England to get help to start the work anew, and Mairi and Gipsy spent the few uncertain days at Malo wandering about, walking into Dunkirk on the pretence of shopping, and trying to make the best of the contradictory news that filtered in. One day they suddenly saw a familiar green uniform on a straight, slim young figure, with the head held proudly and lightly as ever. There was no mistaking that gait and that gay insouciance; even before they had caught a glimpse of his face they had flown toward him with outstretched hands. Gilbert laughed and seemed pleased at their solicitude. Oh, he was all right. He had stayed with his regiment to hold up the German vanguard and allow time for the evacuation of Ghent; but he had got off all right, scot-free not even a wound. "You won't have the pleasure of nursing me; I believe you're really disappointed," he chaffed in his quick French, and Mairi's shrewd eyes saw the tender, quizzical look he gave her friend. Instantly it darted into her mind that there was something behind all this. Gipsy's white face and worried, preoccupied manner had not been only for a surface friend. Mairi was clever beyond her years, and a loyal little soul; she led the way to the sea-shore, indicating the road back to Malo, and then quietly absented herself, and they did not miss her!

As she turned rather sadly by herself to go back into the town she was hailed by one of the British naval officers she knew. He caught sight of her at once, for the streets were comparatively empty; every kind of vehicle had been requisitioned for the flight. There was a hideous, dead-alive look settling down on Dunkirk.

"Come along and have a joy-ride in the last taxi-cab left in Dunkirk," he cried out cheerily. "An experience to record!" She assented readily, feeling rather lost without her almost inseparable companion. Her mind, indeed, was busily at work as she sat there beside this clean frank boy, who looked like a Spaniard, so dark was his colouring. Of course, it was inevitable that Gipsy would marry again some time. She was so good-looking, so high-spirited, so charming, that many, many men would want to marry her; and oh, she did so love to be loved! Therein lay the danger! Was Gilbert good enough? After all, they knew very little about him. He was attractive enough personally, but he was not of their race. Mairi would, of course, never spoil sport; if Gipsy was glad to walk alone with him, walk alone with him she should Î If she wanted to marry him, marry him she must; only she could decide. But then she was impulsive, her enthusiasm could be caught at the high tide, and what if such a match were not for her happiness? In some ways Mairi often felt older than her friend. "The dear kid!" she said half aloud.

"The blue eyes are very clouded to-day," remarked Lieutenant N---, turning his own black ones on his companion.

He said it very nicely and not offensively, but Mairi sat up, on her dignity at once.

That sort of thing was all right for Gipsy, who had been married already and could put up with it; but as for her, she had other things to do than marry— at present, at all events. In the far future, of course, it would be all right, but when it came in her case it would be a very serious, for-ever-and-a-day business.

"Do you believe in mixed marriages?" she asked, refusing to respond to the personality.

"Depends what sort of 'mixed,' " the naval man replied briskly, making an opening for himself out of the most unpromising material, as is the way of the navy. "Old and young? Rich and poor? Fair and dark? Land and sea?" The last two very significantly, bending his own close-cropped, dark head down toward the girl's fair hair. "I believe in the last two all the time!"

Mairi looked at him quite candidly and fearlessly, without a trace of coquetry. "I haven't any use for that sort of thing," she announced simply; "I'm a Scot," and she wondered why he laughed so merrily.

Dr. Munro returned next day with the news that all was well, and that they were to have headquarters at Furnes, in Belgium, and continue the work. The party was to be reorganized, and M. de Broqueville, one of the sons of the Belgian War Minister, was to command one division of it. This was a great help, as naturally, with all the good-will in the world, an ambulance party, which has to go into the most secret places and which can't help poking into matters that must be kept secret, is on delicate ground when run entirely by another race, even though they be the closest of allies. This addition would put them on an unassailable footing. The British Field Hospital was also to be re-established at Furnes and work in connection with the corps.

Gilbert also was to be attached to the party, and was to drive one of the cars and take some sort of command.

Even in the three weeks that she had been with the corps Gipsy had already been dissatisfied with her own position; she felt that so much energy and usefulness was being run to waste for want of proper grip and organization. Nevertheless, she and Mairi knew one thing, for lack of which knowledge so many well-intentioned women fall by the way when they attempt to do hard public work. They knew how to wait. In all work of world importance there are dreary intervals of waiting, and, as Mairi said, "patience is necessary beyond everything." A great many women live on a kind of spurious excitement; they must be rushing from one thing to another, and if this stimulant fails them they collapse altogether. It is the woman who knows how to wait who can take the opportunity when it comes. Therefore, though the first start had not been auspicious, yet Gipsy was willing to wait, for with the additions to the party, and the knowledge born of experience, she was hopeful of better things for the future. It was a new start.

She and Mairi went through their clothes, and discovered that many things that had been considered absolute necessities on leaving were merely encumbrances; so they sent back to England all but the strictest minimum, or what they now considered so. They had passed one milestone on the way, but there were others ahead! Three of the ladies of the party were to work with the forward ambulances in future, collecting the wounded, and the other two, at first, were to remain at the hospital. Naturally there was great competition for the danger-line. Mrs. Knocker, it was unanimously acknowledged, must be a "forward" as, owing to her expert knowledge of cars, she was invaluable. "My driving was much more use than my nursing," she remarked, in speaking of these days; but there were difficulties in placing the rest of the party. It eventually fell to Mairi and the American lady to toss for the last place at the front, and Mairi, to her great joy, won.

Furnes is south of Nieuport, about a third of the way between it and Dunkirk, but further inland than either. It is not a coast town, and is a meeting-place for many canals. Like all these quiet old Belgian towns, it has a Grand Place, and to this day Furnes still embodies something of the restful Sunday-afternoon feeling which was a characteristic of so many of these little towns before they were rudely awakened out of their sleep to be mutilated and smashed. There are two great churches in the Place, and a beautiful Hôtel de Ville with a verandah or balcony in front.

In one corner of the Square are some quaint old Spanish houses with crow-stepped gables and red roofs, in contrast with the grey stone of the other buildings. As the cars rolled in on October 21 the red light of the autumn sun caught these roofs and showed up between the flying buttresses of St. Walburga. The little groups of soldiery standing about gave the impression of terriers with their ears pricked. They wore an air of expectancy; yet Dixmude was held, and while Dixmude remained Furnes was safe.

Year by year on the last Sunday in July the inhabitants of Furnes have turned out in holiday garb to watch, with mingled awe and excitement, the strange procession organized by the “Confrérie de la Sodalité". Weird men covered by dark brown robes which came over their heads like palls, leaving only two slits for their bright narrowed eyes to peep out, walked solemnly through the streets; they bent beneath burdens of heavy crosses, and their bare feet struck the uneven stones. Yes, and there were women too, thus disguised, doing penance for sins of which their own consciences accused them. They were followed by other oddly dressed characters, which seemed to the startled children, who kept one hand on their mother's gown, to have marched straight out of the Bible. There was Abraham flourishing the very sword with which he prepared to kill Isaac, and Aaron with his snaky rod. Then the hot grip relaxed a little, for there came next a real babe, one that they knew was like themselves. But the awe and the mystery gathered again as they saw Jesus crowned with thorns, stately though in agony, with the sharp points actually pressing into his flesh, and the same Christ bending beneath the cross. Then, as the evening darkened, and the serious mummers, doing their part with intense earnestness and solemnity, paraded round the Square, there appeared the Host, most mysterious of all, with flaming torches and shadowy figures beside it. All these sights were of the nature of a mystery-play, and were reverently carried out by the people themselves: they were not done for purposes of gain or to attract tourists, for very few tourists ever discovered Furnes. With this annual ceremony and the remembrance of the Inquisition in their midst, of which dread stories were whispered, while the very house where those awful torturers sat in conclave is still standing in their sight, the people of Furnes grew up with more of seriousness in their nature than their fellow-subjects.

And now reality had come upon them. What need any more to represent these things in mummery when the via crucis was on every high-road in Belgium; when strings of weary men and women, parched with thirst and nearly dead with fear, bowed beneath their loads, trudged solemnly along they knew not whither; when these very churches, so sacred and so grand, St. Walburga with its high steeple and St. Nicholas with its tall, blunt tower, were packed with dying and agonized men suffering from tortures as real as any dealt by the Inquisition? The remembrance of those garbed figures peeping through the slits in their hoods became almost friendly in comparison with the ruddy-faced, brutal German soldier in the hated grey-green uniform. When Furnes revives her Passion-play, it will seem a play indeed against the background of reality.

The convent close up against St. Nicholas is now a hospital, and it was into this courtyard that the cars of the ambulance party turned when they reached their destination. The battle of Dixmude had filled the little rooms with wounded, and even the reading-rooms and the chapel were requisitioned. The courtyard was crowded with the ambulances, and every ten minutes a fresh load of wounded was brought in.

No words can describe the horror of the scene that unrolled before them in the wards. There was so much to be done and so few to do it. The great influx of the wounded had swamped all attempts at order. Those who had just been attended to were lying side by side with the dead, and all the loathsome sights and smells of an operating-theatre were mingled with those of a charnel-house. Some men lay dying silently, the perspiration standing in beads on their foreheads as they gasped for each difficult breath that might be the last; others were hideous spectacles, with smashed faces or lack of limbs. They twisted and groaned in irrepressible agony, uttering low, heartrending moans that would not be suppressed. Valiantly the whole party of the new-comers set to work to separate the living from the dead, and carry out the bodies to the room set apart for them opposite.

"Twice we were called into the operating-room with our stretcher, and twice I received the full weight of a man off the operating-table. I supported the head-end of the stretcher, as I was the stronger," said Mairi. The doctors had not a second to lose, or life might be wasted; if a man died, he must be tumbled off hastily to make way for one for whom there might be a chance. The dead were laid out in rows together, some wrapped in winding-sheets; but here and there the uniformity of the still lines was broken by a homely, mud-stained uniform, just as if a soldier had lain down to sleep among them.

For five hours these noble women worked at this terrible task. As fast as the beds in the wards were emptied of their inert burdens they were re-occupied by others, for the ambulances brought in fresh cases continually, and it might be that the next man also died, and was in his turn carried out within the next few moments. Meantime, two small boys with a hand-cart were all the transport available for transferring the bodies from the ever-filling mortuary to the place of burial. The lads took hold of the stretcher, tilted it up a little, slid the dead man into the cart, and when they had as many bodies as they could manage they went off with their load. Thus the men who had stood up for honour and right against an overwhelming foe, who had preferred that their country might for a while be overrun in order that her soul might live for ever, were huddled into nameless graves.

There was no room in the already overflowing convent for any of the party to lodge, and so they were told to hunt up quarters for themselves anywhere in the town. Many of the houses were empty, as the inhabitants had fled. A Belgian gentleman who had lost everything he possessed by the war had attached himself to the ambulance corps as chauffeur, and when at last Gipsy and Mairi, feeling as if they had been bruised all over, body and soul, with the body-breaking and heartrending work, were free to think of themselves, they found him waiting.

"You will want somewhere to live; I can show you a house that belonged to my cousin," he said in French. "It has, at all events, a good pianola and is clean."

They followed him gratefully, for to start house-hunting in an unknown town at that hour of the night was a pastime that had no attractions to offer. When they reached the house, he gave them the key and told them to go in and take possession, and himself vanished.

It might have been one of those houses in Pompeii where everyone was eating and drinking and going on with their ordinary avocations when swift death descended on them from the sky. On the table in the dining-room was the horrible débris of what had been the last meal, scraps of food lying on the dirty plates where the dust had hardly had time to settle. Flowers still unwilted were in the vases, and the promised pianola was open. As the two tired women penetrated from one room to another they became very silent, and ceased to remark on the familiar evidences of life. It was as if the house were tenanted with ghosts; it was almost impossible to believe that these people who had lived and loved in that place were not there silently resenting the intrusion. The evacuation must have been in the night, for the beds had obviously been used, and the coverings were hastily flung aside as by those who rise in haste. In the largest bedroom, that of the lady of the house, clothes were lying about on chair-backs and on the floor—dainty delicate garments, in accordance with the dressing-table appointments, and the violet-scented sachet carelessly dropped among them. It was horrible to think of the occupant of that room as a homeless wanderer, possibly dependent on charity!

They could picture the scene. The scepticism as the tale of the oncoming Germans became more insistent; the refusal to go. "They will never come to Fumes," and then the cry ringing through the silence of the night: "Dixmude is fallen; the Germans are almost here." No matter whether the cry were true or false, it pierced like truth into those startled ears, and almost stopped the beating of the heart for an agonized second. Then the thoughts of husband and wife simultaneously leapt to the nursery. "The children!"

This was on the next storey, and the toys of the children proved their presence. They lay on the floor in a pathetic little row. Near the door were a furry bear, a doll without a head, and a cart. It was as if the little ones had snatched up their treasures, and had had them pulled away from them one by one by the frightened nurse. Would they ever return? And what would be their future, torn up by the roots like this? Lucky for them, indeed, if their parents clung tightly to them in that modern Exodus, for if not, it might be that those very children, whose soft little fingers had clung so determinedly to the beloved bear, might be hopelessly lost, as thousands of Belgian children have been, to be brought up in one great group, not knowing their own names or the names of their forbears, forlorn waifs, in spite of all that human kindness could do.