Eighteen months in the war zone

Let me describe the scene as we entered to find a long queue of shivering Tommies waiting. The long "hut," at the end of which, on a platform, the piano tinkles incessantly, seemed smaller by reason of the many chairs and forms.

The counter, on the clearing of which our attention was turned first, like the tables, is covered with red-and-white check oilcloth, which facilitates the swabbing up of the ever crowded place.

Behind the counter are tables, on which, in between serving the men, we busy ourselves with the preparation of cocoa, the cutting up of cakes and bread, an occupation which I discover to be as much a science as an art.

In the little kitchen the great struggle is to get water boiling in time, and to keep it boiling, in response to the demand. The difficulty at the counter is to keep tea and coffee hot without letting them stew. At one end we take it in turns to take money and to dole out tickets, which are exchanged for goods at the counter. The advantages of the ticket system are mostly noticeable during a "rush," when it diverts the stream of men and obviates the necessity of serving food with coin-soiled hands.

One must, it seems, keep as little as possible on the counter, for fear of tempting Providence and the impecunious! But a wonderful medley of tobacco, soap, bootlaces, chocolate, etc., is displayed on shelves at the back.

Here the men can write home on paper supplied free by the Y.M.C.A. (A big notice on the wall reminds them to "Write home now.") They can read (a small library, which my fingers are itching to catalogue, lies at the end of the building); they can bank here, and play games, and get advice on all problems, mental and moral.

The value of the work can best be estimated by the men's appreciation of it in their letters home, their continual inquiries after similar institutions "up the line," their sorrow when they hear: "No, we're not up there yet—but shall be soon."

The workers consist of Y.M.C.A. secretaries, mostly Nonconformist ministers, and volunteer ladies who wander on duty when the spirit moves them, which sometimes necessitates one shift going without its meals.

A pleasant little music teacher, who is spending her holiday out here, and is useful for organising concerts, accompanying the men, etc., initiated me into the work. The rest of the "staff" consists of a French girl, to cook the secretaries' meals, and a half-witted man, supposed to tend the fires, help with the washing up, etc., but who is invariably inspired to play hymns just when most needed.

January 25th. A naval battle off the Dogger Bank is reported, which reminds me of the letters I receive from a naval friend, whose life on board the —— is spent patrolling the North Sea and longing for action. How different from the fighting friends one runs into occasionally! The other day I came across one who was down with a touch of tonsilitis, having passed through Mons and every big battle that succeeded it unscathed. "I shouldn't at all mind going home with a smashed arm!" he remarked with an almost involuntary sigh, gazing wistfully at the hospital ship as she sailed majestically out of harbour, her gleaming red cross casting weird lights on the dark water.

January 28th. There are times when one is unkind enough to wish one's co-workers the discipline of three months as junior probationer in a large hospital. Last night I arrived to find myself the only worker, and although I enjoyed the rush right enough, it was impossible to get things done to time, and many of the men had to go away unserved.

The methylated spirit ran out, and so demobilised the services of the Primus stoves. The secretary had a bad headache, and was therefore only able to sit at the till, and the odd man was inspired to make night hideous with his discordant hymns, and, having had a tiff with one of the ladies earlier in the day, refused to do a stroke of work. It was a particularly busy night, never less than a hundred men in the hut, I should say, and ten o'clock found me still washing up cups with the aid of a little chauffeur whose vehicle had gone wrong! Faute de mieux he accompanied me along the roughest part of the quay, where one is apt to be molested by the drunken navvies who reel about at night.

January 30th. Wish hard enough and it shall be given unto you! Yesterday was a day of joy, for in it I found a real girl friend of my own age and kind.

She appeared on the scene one morning like a breath of fresh air, this young American.

"What are you doing over here?" I asked. "Come to see the war?"

"Guess you're about right," she replied, with an accent you could cut with a knife. "Nothing else would have dragged me away from God's own country!"

January 31st. The old order changeth—even in Boulogne! In less than a week the Red Cross will be installed at the C——, where once was the Allied Forces Base Hospital. In less than a week all Red Cross cars come under direct supervision of the A.S.C.

To-day the Red Cross sisters at the Gare Maritime (No. —— Stationary Hospital) have received their congé, even those "original six" who built it up, being superseded by Army nurses.

Most of the nurses I know have dispersed, many to St. Omer, where in a big monastery hospital they are stamping out enteric amongst the civilian population in order to safeguard our men. Miss A—— has gone to L——, where, from Dr. Le Page's hospital, she writes of wonderful surgical work.

I too would be glad of a new sphere of action, for I am lost in amazement at the sea of petty jealousies. Where is the unity of purpose that bound us all together in the beginning? Is disunion the outcome of overwrought nerves? Even at the hut discord reigns.

The lady in charge dislikes both the music teacher and the American girl, who in turn live at daggers drawn with the respective people of their respective parties and are envious of each other. And yet they one and all are extremely nice folk. One must attribute it to some especially puissant sprite and to Pandora's carelessness!

CHAPTER V
February, 1915

February 2nd. This morning, in company with our chief, Mr. H——, I went over to prospect in the new sphere of action. The lower part of the hotel that the Association has taken is devoted to a canteen, whilst on the first floor there is a library and writing-room, and above, seven spacious rooms lie empty until such a time as the hostel is started. The hostel is a grand scheme for billeting gratis the relatives of badly wounded men, who could otherwise not afford the journey.

My heart sank at sight of the minute kitchen, the range of which seemed literally hidden by pots and pans; but no doubt one day we shall get it in order.

The secretary—a Scottish padre—is full of enthusiasm for football, with which he hopes to keep the men at the base well amused.

In the afternoon, on exploring for myself, I discovered that the most interesting feature of the place is the isolation compound that lies alongside the enteric hospital. Here all infectious illnesses are treated in bathing-boxes rigged out as wards; here are patients indulging in every conceivable disease, from mumps and measles to diphtheria, typhoid and the dreaded spinal meningitis.

Farther along, attached to the Casino, whose spacious gaming rooms make wonderfully cheerful wards, is a smaller hotel, where the men suffering from skin diseases are treated. One's heart goes out to these men, especially the wounded ones, who through no fault of their own are afflicted with the foul diseases that follow in the train of war.

The main road is lined with hospitals—the "British," the "Anglo-American," the "Rawal Pindi" (so called because the unit was mobilised in that far-away Indian station), and others.

The great objection to the converted hotels is the smallness of the well-appointed rooms, which gives one the desire to knock down intervening walls and form them into one spacious room to save the sisters' feet and the patients' voices!

One is lost in admiration now at the organisation of things, just as two months ago one was appalled by the state of unreadiness. Nothing that can be done for our men is omitted.

February 3rd. For the last time I watch the moon wane, the sun rise over the mist-bathed harbour. Will the picture I have learned to love so well ever fade? The countless masts rising to the sky, the water dashing over the distant breakwater, the clock at the Gare Maritime, now visible, now obscured by smoke from the packet-boat's funnel.

The incoming destroyers, the sister hospital ships lying abreast, the distant windmill on the hill, round which many corrugated iron buildings are springing up (bakeries, they say), the weather-beaten tars, the women, their backs bent with the weight of their sacks of mussels and cockles, tramping along barefooted or in sabots, the ceaseless stream of ambulances.

February 8th. Laden with parting gifts and consoled by parting regrets (strangest among them those of our padre, who will miss having someone to darn his socks!), we found ourselves at our new domain—the American girl and I.

Certainly the circumstances of our arrival were far from favourable, for my colleague fell very ill the day we arrived, and after a night spent on the floor of her ten-by-eight-feet-long room (oh, those boards!—my bones still ache, my head swims in memory of them), we installed her in a military hospital, and set to work to "carry on."

Two other workers have arrived from England; neither of them having done hard manual labour before, they are apt to find this somewhat strenuous, though to our more veteran hands it is child's play. Footsoreness, too, that bane of all amateur workers, is their portion.

There are times when one wonders if all new things are horrid!

This morning, at Mattins in the little tin church, for instance, when the convalescent soldier organist, with the angelic face and absolute lack of any musical instinct, crashed out his last discordant notes, when the congregation, consisting of three nurses, the old, old man who took round the plate, and two maiden ladies who acted as choir, trooped into the sunshine, I could not but cast a longing thought at St. John's, with its dim religious glow and mellow organ and congregation of muddy soldiers.

February 12th. Besides getting the place in order, we are busily employed in thinking out new dishes for the men. To the ordinary store of cakes and drinks we have already added custard, stewed fruits, and bread puddings.

In spare moments I catalogue the library, and have evolved a good system by which the men fill in the register themselves on taking out a book, thus dispensing with a librarian. The library book is like this:

February 16th. Yesterday, a train being derailed close by here on its way up to the front, and the men left stranded, we took them up a supply of cigarettes and chocolates that good friends at home had sent out.

The canteen is growing like wildfire, and we are heart and soul in our work, which we estimate by the material return in the till each evening. We have trebled the receipts in two weeks, which shows how the men are flocking to it.

February 18th. The day—the great day of the German blockade. We are wondering how far the enemy will really carry out his scheme. Certainly no mail boat has come in to-day, and we are without letters or newspapers. The suspension of communication with England is nothing new, but we are speculating if this time it will be a matter of weeks instead of days.

Being hors de combat with a sore throat—the toll exacted apparently by this germ-filled place from every worker who comes to stay—I have leisure to note our surroundings. The walls of the large, airy room, which though devoid of all save the necessities of life is luxury embodied by reason of its cleanliness, are bare except for a few unpaid bills held together by a file, a few hastily scrawled quotations from favourite authors to remind us that we once had time to indulge in beautiful pictures, to roam into the realms of beautiful books.

By the window, acting as a couch, are two large wooden cases in which gramophones for the men had been sent out, and which prove a great attraction to the friendly little mice who come out and hold long confabulations, not only under cover of night, but frequently, when things are quiet, by day. They are welcome enough to the wooden boxes, but when they take to running over our beds, our clothing as it lies on the chairs, and finally even over our faces, they can hardly expect to be well received!

The view from the window is superb. Before us, in front of the little grey church, the river runs down to the sea, now gently, now turbulently. To the right a peep of the ocean. To the left the bridge, through the arches of which is a glimpse of landscape as peaceful as any Tuscan village, and over which the trains pass intermittently up to the front by day and by night. They rush past with a whistle that is more of a shriek and a groan, as if they themselves realised the value of their burden—the guns, the ammunition wagons, the trainloads of men in khaki or in blue clustered along the edge of the overcrowded trucks designed to carry "eighteen horses or thirty-six men."

In contrast with the rushing up-trains the loaded ambulances crawl creakingly down at a snail's pace.

God! That such things should be! If the heart of the world were big enough, surely it would break at so much misery, so much destruction. For what have all previous generations laboured, legislating, studying to salve human ills? For this! Wanton destruction, rapine, murder.

February 21st. These are exciting times. Last night there was the sound of guns at sea. An engagement off Dover is recounted, but papers no longer get through to us. A sudden explosion about five o'clock the same day, and the subsequent report of a sunken hospital ship, afterwards said to have been a neutral (Dutch?) liner, leaves us with but the vaguest idea of what really happened.

Just as the doctor, a kindly little man, who was invalided down some weeks ago from his field ambulance at B——, had appeared, stethoscope in hand, all attention was riveted on a funeral that passed by—that of a nursing sister who has just died of the fatal spotted fever. The flower-bedecked coffin, the whole available hospital unit marching slowly with arms reversed, made an impressive sight. One wondered if she had ever received so much attention in her lifetime as at her death. The doctor told me that in India, where the intense heat is sometimes conducive to suicide, the fear of not having a military funeral often acts as a deterrent.

No sooner was the cortège past than a broken aeroplane rolled by on a heavy trolley, and left us wondering if that was the crash we heard yesterday.

An air raid on Calais, packet-boat nearly sunk, torpedoes off Boulogne—it almost seems as if we are going to see the real thing.

Martial law here has become very strict. The roads are guarded so that one cannot move an inch without showing passports. Lights have to be out by 9 P.M., and even my diary has to be penned behind a screen of bedclothes with the aid of a candle stump. Seeing that we only finish work at 9 P.M., have to get home, eat our supper, and go to bed in the dark, it is rather tiresome, and we are now engaged in rigging up light-proof curtains.

On returning to work after my first committee meeting—the very existence of which proves the method that is creeping into the erstwhile chaos—I was greeted by the news of our Dardanelles Expedition which is now occupying all our attention.

CHAPTER VI
March, 1915

March 5th. March was inaugurated by an amusing incident. At about midnight the alarm was given—a Taube or Zeppelin signalled from Calais—bells rang, guns boomed, the whole of the French population turned out, and the police raided a nurse's room because a light was visible—and, after all, nothing happened.

That the Germans still have hopes of getting to Calais is obvious from their Press comments on the range of their coast guns.

"The chief point of which lies in the suggestion that from Calais the harbour defences of Dover can be bombarded over a front of five and a half miles!" (See extract from Daily Mail.) Their preparations for billeting a number of troops in Belgium are large: "At Liége 20,000 men are expected." The order has been given for the Wimereux hospitals to be cleared.

"It is our duty to keep the men here and feed the front," said one of the C.O.s to-day. "And when we are told to clear it means a big move."

March 10th. In spite of the fact that a great battle is raging at Neuve Chapelle, where the British have made a great push, the "all star" concert party, sent over by the Y.M.C.A. in London, gave a performance in the large gaming room of the Casino (once the haunt of so much frivolity). The worst cases lay in beds in the centre, whilst the blue-jacketed lesser cases clustered behind, and the sisters flitted to and fro in their grey dresses and red capes attending to the more serious.

"Messieurs, faites vos jeux, le jeu est fait!" Over and over again the suave voice of the croupier seemed to ring in my ears—as it had so often rung in this very room in peace time. "Faites vos jeux." What an awful thing this new game of War is, only those who have seen can grasp.

"Le jeu est fait!"—and here in this gilded hall, that once witnessed such a different game, we see the results.

Stretchers were brought in all through the performance. As I glanced up during the cheerful chorus of "Here we are—here we are—here we are again!" a man was borne in with his eyes blown out. He lay very still, as if the unaccustomedness of it was yet upon him. The tears blinded me. Then he too began to sing.

The spirits of the men are wonderful. "It's worth losing a limb to live through a victory!" they say.

When our work was over we left the close, smoke-choked room (and it is wonderful how soldiers who have had a sufficiency of open-air life seem to revel in closed doors and windows!) for a short stroll. It was a still, foreboding night. The barriers were well guarded, darkness reigned over the town, and as we strolled along the rough road our path was lighted only by the passing ambulances, whilst across the lowering heavy heavens played the searchlights.

Ambulance after ambulance passed, a few going fast, most, alas! at the slow, cautious speed that betokens the worst.

What untold misery these crushed bits of humanity mean, borne swiftly to the silent city of suffering! How gladly we would suffer for them! Yet not a moan, not a groan, in those great wards whilst mind and will have power to cope with the agonies of the flesh.

March 12th. We heard interesting anecdotes of our fighters at Christmas-time from an important man on the court martial. One private, under cover of festivities, slipped down to the base, where for some months he has lived in style on French bounty as an officer of the Guards! Another man, an N.C.O. employed in office work, was told off to write out notices forbidding the men overburdened with Christmas gifts to return things home, as they have been doing. He handed in the documents, and with them a big parcel to be censored, which when opened was found to contain a quantity of socks, bearing the legend: "These may come in useful."

March 13th. Soup is the latest addition to our bill of fare for the men, who greatly appreciate it as being more nourishing than tea.

Our battle with Primus stoves is never-ending. The roar of these little indispensable instruments of torture haunts us, and an effigy of one will assuredly be engraven on some of our tombstones! Apropos of food, we have grown almost into vegetarians, the meat we get being mostly horse—which, dressed in the delightfully piquant French style, is tasty but not nourishing—or the eternal pork that occurs and recurs with clockwork regularity alternately disguised as veal, lamb or mutton.

There are days when we envy the men—whose rations of good bully beef they affect to scorn—with all our hearts.

The spring push continues. The rapidity with which the Neuve Chapelle men were brought down to the base, often finding themselves in hospital twelve hours after they fell, is incredible.

Last night a Red Cross ambulance driver, who had passed through before, came in for some coffee. As he counted his change I noted his eyes were dim with unshed tears. When he confessed that the strain of many sleepless nights is beginning to tell on him, I could find few words of comfort.

The awful groans, the prayers for release as he drives along the jolting roads, petrify him. And these last days have been pregnant with work for the ambulances. The culminating point was reached to-night, when, the car breaking down on a lonely road, he stepped round to find out how his men were, and discovered that of four only one still lived.

March 18th. To-day the news came that the hostel is to be officially opened. From the batch of War Office correspondence with which I am now inundated I glean:

1. "Arrangements have now been made to send to France at the public expense a limited number of relatives of soldiers reported to be in a very serious condition in the Base Hospitals."

2. "The number will be limited to six persons at each of the Bases and to one relative in the case of each soldier, the accommodation being provided by the Y.M.C.A., and visits will only be allowed in cases in which the Medical Officer considers that the patient would benefit by the presence of a relation."

The rest of the documents relate to the laws that govern the free passage, and the certificates to the effect that the relative is unable to pay necessary expenses required before passage is granted, every emergency being admirably prepared for.

Walking out after some necessary shopping, I noticed how the Wimereux road has changed—is changing. Often during the winter months we tramped along in the blinding rain wondering at the loneliness of it all, meeting none but pickets at the barricades, the storm-swept roads lighted every twenty minutes by a passing tram!

And now? Spring is beginning to show in every cranny. The few trees are bursting with buds. The road is one incessant rush of cars. The once sleepy-looking fort, with its visible guns facing the sea, booms an occasional shot across the bows of a defaulting vessel, and French soldiers manœuvre on the cliffs.

It seems as if spring had put life into everything. To the left a camp hospital is springing up, and khaki figures toil away with ropes and canvas. To the right, by the sea, walls of earth are being thrown up that look like trenches, but are in reality drains.

Even the men from the trenches are full of the dramatic contrasts of warfare in spring—the song of the lark or nightingale interrupted by the bursting of the "Jack Johnsons"; the burned trees and sprouting buds. They tell us, too, most extraordinary tales of women being found in the German trenches we have recently gained: some maintain they were French civilian prisoners; others that they were the wives of some of the front-trench Huns. At any rate, the extraordinary fact remains that they really were there.

March 19th. With the aid of a fatigue party of R.A.M.C. men I succeeded in getting the upstairs rooms of our place into a semblance of order. The French staff, too, were invaluable, nothing being too much trouble for the pauvres blessés. Anxieties never come singly, and to-day proved our heaviest day owing to an influx of Canadians and an army of navvies in Government employment. No sooner were things straight than in came our first two "wounded relatives"—as we have decided to dub our guests. Weary, dazed, helpless as children, there was nothing to do but find them some hot supper and get them to bed, with promises of conducting them to the hospital the first thing in the morning.

There being no cupboards in the hostel, we have set to work to make them out of old packing-cases, and with the remnants of our curtains and old tablecloths we find them to be, if not beautiful, quite as serviceable as could be expected.

One difficulty we cannot overcome is the odour from the cesspool that forms our drainage system, and makes one of the valuable rooms quite untenantable and another hardly aromatic!

March 21st. On our way home last night we paused a moment to look at the sky.

Gazing from the bridge into the water, it seemed a very Paradise. Every little star was reflected in the river, and a yellow crescent moon rode low in the heavens. No sound save the murmur of the sea. Suddenly there fell upon our ears the strains of a mandoline in the distance that transported us of a sudden to the sunny shores of the Adriatic.

Our delay might have cost us dear, for on our arrival home my attic was on fire, some clothing that my companion had put on the stove pipes to air having caught, smouldered, and set light to linoleum and woodwork. Another ten minutes and nothing could have saved this jerry-built wooden villa. It was dawn before we slept, and, needless to remark, I feel like a kipper to-day, the smell of the smoke is so strong; or some amphibious animal, for the floor is inundated with water.

March 23rd. The news of victories and losses in the outside world affects us greatly, and the fall of Przemysl to the Russians has had a very good effect on our spirits.

For ourselves, we are growing accustomed to alarms. We have so many Zeppelin scares that they begin to be of no interest. A horn is sounded. The French sentries on the bridge grow seemingly agitated; the French guard turn out. Groups of people stand gazing Calais-wards into the sky. An aeroplane comes over—scouting—and that is all.

Apparently, however, the biplane that passed so close that it seemed almost on top of our balcony yesterday, was one of those which dropped bombs on Dover! Our first conscious sight of hostile craft, this, though we saw something strangely resembling a periscope on the glassy waters.

March 26th. A strange little tragedy is being enacted in our kitchen. Our landlady's husband was reported "missing," and whilst she was gone in search of further information a neighbour, who had been fighting by his side, came in to confirm the worst fears. He was killed by a sniper, we were told, after only one month in the trenches; and but yesterday the poor little woman was spending one franc fifty to send him a fourpenny piece of sausage.

She came in happily content, having learned no particulars, talking cheerfully of the now fashionable khaki uniforms the women are adopting, and the weeping figures in the kitchen pulled themselves together and pretended nothing had occurred.

March 29th. When the news was broken they feared for her reason. For the last three days she has lain foodless and sleepless, hugging the portrait of her husband to her heart, sorting out his old letters, whilst groups of weeping, crêpe-swathed friends throng the stuffy, unventilated room.

The Boulogne regiment, it seems, has had a bad cutting-up. Hardly a woman who is not a widow now. "Mort pour la patrie!" they cry sadly—"et après la guerre?"

To us any condition of "après la guerre" has become unthinkable. Sometimes it seems it must be the end of the world.

March 30th. According to the local customs, Madame will not leave the house until the news of her husband's death has been officially announced by the Mayor. Thus any shopping expeditions in quest of the mourning which engrosses her whole attention have to be made surreptitiously.

The official news may be a long time in coming—weeks, perhaps months—nevertheless, until she has, with the calm resignation demanded by the occasion, received the official confirmation of the news, she will not show her face out of doors. We all pray the ceremony may be soon over, for surely nothing could be worse for a mourner than an uninterrupted brooding over pots and pans in a hot or crowded kitchen.

CHAPTER VII
April, 1915

April 1st. In spite of the difficulties of getting teams together, the football league has flourished, and to-day we had the great final match between Australians and the A.S.C., for which, at a few hours' notice, aided by a solitary car, we managed to give a fairly successful tea.

Thanks to the football and the various other "tournaments," the canteen is becoming quite an important factor of the little colony out here. We find that draught, chess and billiard tournaments draw the men (who are apt to be "cliquy" and shy of each other) together more than anything else, whilst French lessons—held by a poor little Belgian soldier, himself far from fluent in the language—prove a tremendous attraction, and serve the additional purpose of adding a moiety to his minute income.

We have moved on to the premises in order to be better able to attend to our "relatives," as they have a way of turning up at ten at night, quite exhausted with the novelty of their experience. To be honest, the interest of their journey seems to a great extent to mitigate the bitterness of their loss or the sadness of their visit.

"Law bless us, Miss, what a lot we shall 'ave to tell 'em at 'ome, which we shouldn't 'ave 'ad if our dear Bill 'adn't died for 'is country!" said a Manchester washerwoman to-day.

We are a strange party at meals, for most of them have never seen a tablecloth nor slept between sheets before, and their wonderment can be well gauged.

It is surprising how often one comes across Nature's gentlemen; one is ashamed at not having had time to see them in ordinary life. A cab-driver from "Edinbury" is here to-day, who, in spite of the fact that he had never before been outside his native town, has manners that would grace a king.

April 8th. One is not always fortunate in one's companions out here, but, having no choice in the matter, is fain to make the best of them.

I don't think I have described our various workers. There is, for instance, the short, drab-looking type of woman who gives one the impression that she is capable only of practical things—a model housewife and cook—but who, on further acquaintance, affords some food for comment; for, alas! her distrait little brain is eternally going off at a tangent; she has neither method nor common sense. If there is a tactless thing to be said, she will say it. If there is a foolish thing to be done, she will do it. To-day, to our horror, one of these, for instance, turned to an old man from Derbyshire—who was out to see a son dying of spotted fever—just as he was taking his departure.

"By the way," she said, "if you find anyone at home whose son is dying out here, do tell them that it is such a pretty cemetery and so well cared for...."

I need say no more.

At every inconvenient moment she tells one anecdotes of her family history—how her daughters have bought a white rabbit, how her second husband committed suicide (we are not surprised!), how a third cousin has been mentioned in dispatches.

She alternately adopts a de haut en bas tone towards the men and informs them that she is an officer's widow and has never done any work before, or tries to claim kinship with the enlisted navvy because he is John Smith and she has a connection of the same name.

Is it to be wondered that there is sometimes friction? We have had a trying time recently, and have come to the conclusion that what one does not learn of petty jealousy and feminine hate out here is not worth learning! And the genus "official enemy"—unknown, hitherto, to me—is quite common. It consists of people who want one's job, or one's friends, or anything else one has; but, most of all, they want one out of the country and out of the way.

To keep our judgment unbiased we have conned Kipling's wonderful "If" and find some measure of comfort in murmuring, as we fall asleep:

We have had quite a number of minor worries, too, which culminated this evening, when, our last bucketful of coal, borrowed from a friendly hospital, having been exhausted, it was found impossible to obtain more than half a litre of methylated spirits (with which we had hoped to carry on our work by means of Primus stoves) from anywhere. For the first time not only hot dishes had to be abandoned, the pancakes and fried fish which the men like so well, but even the hot drinks, which we endeavoured to replace by lukewarm lemonade made from the remnants of our boiled water. Heaven alone knows from where we shall get our coal to-morrow, for the shortage seems to be getting worse. If only the people at home would realise what it means out here, and cease striking! When things had settled down and the place was closed, I felt a blow of fresh air was imperative, for the vitiated atmosphere of the rooms is choking and we have no time to walk by day.

As we slipped outside, Captain M—— passed. "What on earth are you doing here?" he asked. I replied that we had been breathing Woodbine fumes for twelve solid hours, and had come out to get some air.

"Take care not to be run in by the sentries," he said. "I will accompany you if I may, for safety's sake." It is true we are bounded by sentries north, south, east and west.

We walked briskly to the beach, where a full moon lit up the sea, forming what looked like a broad path straight up to heaven.

We were laughing over the tale of the immortal Dr. Spooner who concluded one of his sermons with the words: "And now, dear friends, I must draw to a close, for I see I am already addressing beery wenches!" when Captain M——, asking "May I smoke?" proceeded to light his pipe, or try to do so, for each time he lit a match the breeze put it out. Whilst he retired to light it by the rocks someone quoted another Spoonerism—when to a negligent student he said: "You have hissed all my mystery lessons and tasted half a worm!"

Laughing and all but forgetting our weariness, we turned to go home.

In the distance we discerned figures coming towards us—steadily and from all sides.

"Strange!" said someone. "The beach seemed deserted enough when we came."

"Why, it's gendarmes!" I cried.

And sure enough it was, and they were advancing, rifles cocked and loaded.

They came straight up to us and halted four paces away, just as we were debating whether to run away or trust to luck that our escort could protect us.

In a stentorian voice the leader exclaimed accusingly: "You lit three matches."

No one denied it, and on Captain M—— parleying with them, it transpired that under martial law the beach and cliffs are entirely forbidden precincts after sundown.

On discovering who we were they owned that they had seriously debated the advisability of shooting us from the cliffs, and would certainly have done so had we turned tail and fled!

Insignificant though the incident is, it serves to show how efficiently our Allies guard their coast, how thorough and quick they are in their methods, and how little they leave to chance, even at a hospital base.

April 22nd. It has been impossible to write. We have been working sixteen to eighteen, even twenty, hours per day. The rush of troops that preceded and succeeded the British success at Hill 60 has broken up most of the camp workers, so that we have taken to rising at 4 A.M., motoring to the camp in the car now devoted to the "relatives," and turning our hands at other people's jobs before it is time to begin our own.

Camp work is different from anything in the world. The crowd is such that it is impossible (with our limited number of workers and insufficient equipment) to keep supplies equal to demand.

After an hour spent in handing out field service post cards (which is all the men may send home from here) one is dizzy from the crowd. Twenty thousand cards disappear in less time than it takes to tell, although each man is in reality only allowed one.

They will come up time after time pleading for a second. "I've a wife and a mother," says one; while the wilier will ask: "Can I have a second for the company sergeant-major, who is outside the tent?"

"What, the same company sergeant-major?" I inquired, after the twentieth application of this kind.

If you are cutting up loaves or buttering bread you become breathless in your haste as the many hungry eyes gaze eagerly at the food.

Many of the men have gone foodless since they embarked, ten hours ago, and some, who have eaten, have been so sea-sick as to be quite collapsed. They are alternately full of anticipation and trepidation about the Great Unknown, and a quiet "It isn't nearly as bad as it was at the beginning" sends many of them away more reassured.

The turf inside the tent is an odd mixture of slush where the rain beats in, and almost concrete mud where the trampling is worst. It has been found necessary to put up a barrier by the "counter," which is made of empty packing-cases, but often, where the crowd is greatest, it literally gets rooted up.

It is hard to say which is the more impressive sight: to arrive at dawn and watch the shivering figures emerge from their tents, wrapped in those fine new blankets of theirs, and cluster round our quarters, held back by the stern arm of the military policeman until six o'clock announces that we are prepared—or nominally so—for the rush; or to watch them march off at night.

On Sunday there was a service. The men came running to the tents and called for their favourite hymns. There were two oil lamps in the centre, and someone secured a candle for my counter. Never can I forget that scene—averted eyes, tense set mouths, and rugged faces with the tears rolling down. Men who had never prayed before prayed then, for they had the Unknown to face and they knew it. They lifted the tent with their voices. Then, seeing I was the last English girl many of them would ever set eyes on, a number came up to shake hands and say good-bye and "Thank you." Heaven knows for what!

Then we watched them march off. The camp gleamed white in the moonlight. A crescent moon was over the silver sea, across which the lights of England were plainly discernible.

By the flare of one great lamp they came up out of the dark, and, company after company, like a phantom army, passed into the night.

It seemed like a dream. The receding tramp, tramp, tramp, the distant sound of drums, the deserted tents. And only the lazy flap of the canvas in the breeze remained to remind us of those heroes who have gone up to "carry on" the great game.

April 24th, Sick Ward 21. What a very beautiful place hospital can be, viewed from the standpoint of a patient! What matter that legs are too weak to walk or heads to think? What matter that one's old vulcanite pen feels like cast iron and runs on by itself?

Here are ministering angels who were once mere nurses. Here are friends armed with many good things, with irises and kingcups from the fields and carnations from the south—and newspapers. Yet, alas! the news is not good. In spite of the Allied landing in Gallipoli that raises our expectation of a speedy termination of things, the situation on the Western front is bad. We are now falling back, and the Germans have started an effective offensive at Ypres. It is dreadful to be able to do nothing but listen all night long to the tramp of the newly arrived troops, the sickening sound of the creeping "stretcher cases," to listen and to pray that all will be well.

April 29th, Hardelot. If one were asked to award the palm for good work during the war, one would not hesitate to say that it was due to those whose energies are devoted to the sick nurses.

There is none of the glory, none of the kudos, none of the laurel-wreath interest that rewards those working amongst the men.

Just the steady, dullish daily duties of caring for and tending an ever-changing stream of weary women! Yet what work can have more far-reaching influence on the wounded and sick than the fact that the nursing sisters are strong and fit to cope with their strenuous work?

Here, in the far-away forest of Hardelot, in the beautiful yet simple house lent by the Duke of Argyll, that, with its distempered white walls, old oak furniture and bright chintzes, seems a veritable bit of England, the Red Cross have opened a home where worn-out nurses may rest and recuperate.

It is like an oasis in this arid land. Lying in the woods on a bank of luscious pine-needles and green moss, while the birds sing, it seems to unaccustomed ears almost perfect; and the calm pines lift their stately heads to the clear blue sky, swaying rhythmically, contentedly, in the breeze. It is intoxicating.

CHAPTER VIII
May, 1915

May 2nd. This morning we attended Church Parade at the veterinary camp hard by. The chaplain, who had brought out a recently formed brass band, conducted the service in a large sand-pit from which most of the horses had been removed to the sides. A few tents were dotted about, a few sick animals still rolled in the sand as the men came on parade, whilst a narrow path winding up to the dark pine woods above made us feel for all the world like part of a Wild West Buffalo Bill show.

How the French peasants stared, open-mouthed, as the service proceeded, wondering at our madness as we stood there in the sand-pit, with a misty rain enveloping everything, singing at the top of our voices. Many of the men recognised nurses who had been at clearing stations, as we wended our way amongst the sick and wounded horses, the foals, the "prisoner" animals, and glanced at the well-equipped but insufficiently stocked dispensary.

The now famous Pré Catalan farm supplied us with tea, and I could not help recalling how just a year ago we had been lounging in a punt on the Ranelagh lake listening to a band—under somewhat different circumstances! No doubt, somewhere at home, people are still punting on the river, or enjoying a Sunday afternoon nap under the trees, or, being energetically inclined, a round of golf or game of tennis, in surroundings very similar to these. Only as we wandered home past the famous Hill 243, through woods blue with hyacinths, fragrant with wild orchids, primroses, kingcups, violets and every perfect flower one could desire or dream of, and every perfect woodland perfume one could experience, and every perfect colour the eye could imagine, the sound of guns booming heavily and not very far away greeted us ominously.

May 4th. In an erstwhile hotel facing the sea the Secunderabad General Hospital is situated. Not only are the wards often overcrowded, but rows and rows of beds in the spacious hall, neighbouring villas and auxiliary tents help to cope with the numbers. An all-pervading smell of "ghi," or melted butter, makes one think that Little Black Sambo and all the tigers must have been put in the melting-pot.

Odd black figures, with unfathomable eyes and strange turbans, move about their business stealthily, whilst in the little duty-room two kindly theatre sisters dispense tea to any visitors who call on an uneventful day between the fashionable hours of four and five.

Such is Hardelot. For, apart from the hospital, the Claims Commission, the one shop, hotel and post office, every building is shut up and barred.

A convoy of some fifty ambulances on the road tells its own tale. Sauntering into the one and only shop, I secured the last bottle of ink (which proved to be red), and betaking myself to the sand-dunes, set to work on my diary. Across the vast, untrodden expanse of sand the sun cast long shadows; little fishing boats, bathed in the glow, glided slowly homewards.

Hardelot is said to be an inspiring place. Was not the "Tale of Two Cities" penned here? Was not many an historical drama enacted, verse inspired, music created?