EIGHTEEN MONTHS IN THE WAR ZONE

EIGHTEEN MONTHS IN
THE WAR ZONE

THE RECORD OF A WOMAN'S WORK ON
THE WESTERN FRONT

BY
KATE JOHN FINZI

With an Introduction by
Major-General Sir Alfred Turner, K.C.B.

With Sixteen Plates

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1916

Dedicated

To the Memory of those
whom I have lost

FOREWORD

When the great history of this almost untellable War comes to be told, historians will find themselves faced with a collection of evidence so devious, so at variance, that their task will be well-nigh stupendous. Whether, when they come to sift their data, they will have time to cast more than a passing glance at the great military bases that sprung up in an allied country, where once an invading army had stood, remains to be seen. That these bases, and in especial the largest and nearest to the firing line, Boulogne, have played a large rôle in the scheme of things cannot be denied.

Yet, of all the many thousands who lived and passed through Boulogne, there remains not one who can tell of the gradual development of that once insignificant fishing town into one of the greatest bases in the War Zone.

Surely, therefore, it behoves those of us who love every inch of her harassing cobblestones; to whom her picturesque squalor is a thing of everlasting joy; those of us who see in the sun-bathed masts, half-hidden in grey mists, pictures whose Turneresqueness vies with Turner; who can clasp fisherfolk, peasants and townsmen by the hand and be proud to claim them friends—it behoves us to recapture what can never be recaptured again, because there is none left to tell the tale—a picture of Anglicised Boulogne in war-time.

True, our Boulognese coast is not riddled with fortifications like the approaches to an English naval port, nor are our fields honeycombed with trenches (though go past Calais, northward, towards Dunkirk, and you shall see what you shall see!). Yet there were days in 1914 when Boulogne promised to play a larger rôle in the history of England than she had ever played before—days when hospitals stood empty and all were prepared to evacuate the town at a moment's notice, in reply to the mayor's already printed mandates—days when, had the enemy but known how efficiently he had pierced the British lines, he might have realised his dream of devastating our island home and sweeping the coast with his long-range guns from Calais to Boulogne.

Those days will never return. Between us at the base and our enemies are a myriad valiant lives and countless guns of every size and device, a force, in fact, which no German strategy in the world, scrupulous or unscrupulous, can overcome; and still the little temporary British city grows and grows, a city of tents and red crosses and corrugated iron huts; and still stalwart British forms, marching along the winding white roads, cast longing glances at the dim coast of distant Albion.

But it is not for those who heard the call in the later months so much as in memory of those early heroes of Mons, who knew the bitterness of a valiant retreat, the horror of forced marches along parched roads, with only the prod of the next man's bayonet to keep him awake, and only a flap cut from the tail of his shirt between the pitiless sun and the dreaded delirium that would leave him a prey to the Huns' barbarities; in memory of these it is that I take up the pen to run the gauntlet of a thousand critical eyes on a way fraught with difficulties.

My acknowledgments are due to Mr. A. M. James for permission to use his photograph of the cemetery, and to my brother Edgar, whose patience in putting together what is of necessity a piecy document has made the publication of this diary possible.

CONTENTS

LIST OF PLATES

INTRODUCTION

By Major-Gen. Sir ALFRED TURNER, K.C.B.

In the following pages Miss Kate Finzi gives in a plain, unvarnished style a terrible and graphic picture of the horrors of war, which have been intensified, as never before, owing to the ferocious savagery of the German troops, as systematically ordered by their officers and commanded by the Kaiser himself, the greatest criminal in the world's record; for this war, planned and prepared deliberately by him, is the greatest crime ever committed against civilisation and humanity. It is charitable to designate him a criminal lunatic, or, as his prototype Caligula was described, an epileptic, with highly developed criminal instincts.

When one reads of such sufferings as those described by Miss Finzi, one wonders for what end Providence can have allowed such an inhuman monster to exist and cause such sorrow, such suffering, such death and destruction to be inflicted on mankind.

The books written upon the vast conflict are already legion, but I think this is the first record—a most pathetic and interesting record—of what happened at the base hospitals at Boulogne, where tens of thousands of wounded, maimed and mutilated incessantly arrived, to be passed on to England, or to linger there till death came as a happy release from their sufferings.

How many officers and men of those glorious "first seven divisions" which left these shores in August, 1914—a tiny but, for its size, an incomparable army, which stemmed the seemingly irresistibly flowing tide of von Kluck's legions against Paris—the "contemptible little army of General French," as it was described by the imperial braggart of Germany, lie buried near the spot where stands the memorial pillar in honour of Napoleon's army of invasion in 1804. After the war it will be incumbent on us, with the approval of our firm and faithful Allies, whose spirit, bravery and skill in fighting has astounded the world, to raise another monument especially to the memory of our heroic countrymen who withstood the hordes of the Hun and thwarted his advance both on Paris and Calais.

Miss Finzi's book is quite unpretentious, and is a simple record of facts which brings home vividly to our minds the sickening horrors of war and the awful sufferings that our gallant defenders have had to undergo in doing their duty, in the service of their King and country, for the honour and integrity of the Empire, and for the safety and protection of the people in this country in this great war of liberation. What they have been protected from can well be gathered from the openly expressed threats of the Germans—soldiers, military writers, professors and ministers of German religion—that the crimes and outrages which they committed in Belgium and France, Poland and Serbia, should be as nothing to those which they would make our people suffer. It is well that these things should be brought home to our people, who, owing to our insular position, have experienced nothing of the horrors of war and are apt to make too light of them from want of power to realise them.

Naturally there was great confusion at the base, owing to the suddenness with which war broke out upon nations entirely unprepared for it and taken by surprise, for, although dark suspicions of the evil designs of Germany lurked in many men's minds, the extent of the infamy of the Kaiser and his pan-German parasites did not enter into the minds of many people, not even in the case of those who, like myself, thought they knew Germans well. The latter veiled their innate brutality, their blood lust, and their intention to acquire world domination through brute force, with consummate craftiness.

Miss Finzi gives a graphic account of the troubles that had to be surmounted, owing to insufficiency of hospital requisites, beds, medicines, doctors and nurses; but this was inseparable from the nature of things, and has long since been righted. We may indeed be proud of our services of mercy; nothing can exceed their value and efficiency, namely the R.A.M.C and our nurses. If our gallant soldiers and sailors engaged, through political blunder, in the "Gallipoli gamble" and Kut disaster had been as well tended and supplied as those in France, how many lives, thrown away through political ineptitude, would now have been spared to us!

Miss Finzi writes most modestly of her own work, but we know that she and all the genuine nurses and helpers worked devotedly and well, and that the deepest debt of gratitude is due from the nation to them, who softened the horrors of war to our soldiers, who ministered aid to them when they were sore stricken by wounds or diseases, and mitigated their tortures. It must not be forgotten that for many months the capture of Calais seemed not improbable; the Huns had no doubts upon the subject, and time after time, as in the case of Paris and Verdun, the bloodthirsty Kaiser gave his vain and arrogant orders: "To be taken at all cost, no matter at what sacrifice!" A truly beneficent ruler and father of his people! The R.A.M.C. and nurses, therefore, were working at terrible disadvantage, with no certainty that the bestial and brutish enemy would not shortly appear, to wreak upon them his savage instincts of murder and lust, signs of which were constantly brought in to them: terrible wounds caused by expanding bullets, and, worst of all, accounts by eye-witnesses and victims of the perpetual and designed firing upon hospitals, dressing stations, stretcher-bearers, it being, apparently, a craze of the Germans to kill and ill-treat what is helpless and cannot resist them. Tales also were related of civil population—men, women and children—being butchered, and Red Cross nurses outraged in the most fiendish manner, and then mutilated and murdered. With such possible prospects and fate at the hands of men compared to whom the Huns of Attila, the Goths of Alaric, the Tartars of Timur and the Mongols of Genghis Khan deserved a crown of mercy. Imagine what our nurses are and what blessings they have brought to our soldiers and sailors. At the commencement of the Crimean War there were no Army nurses and no civil nurses, except those dreadful creatures described by Charles Dickens in "Martin Chuzzlewit," such as Sairey Gamp and Betsy Prig—fat, waddling, coarse, ignorant, unclean and unkempt, and usually smelling of gin; they attended births, sick-beds, and laying out of corpses, in which they took great pride, as it brought them in touch with the undertaker, to their mutual advantage. Contrast such so-called nurses, in their poke bonnets, smelly robes and clogs, with their huge, bulging umbrellas, their noisiness and heavy hands, with those of to-day, with their neat and serviceable uniform, their gentleness, their light hands, their kindness and sympathy with their suffering patients. As the late Dean Hole wrote in his "Now and Then," they might be compared to a beautiful yacht scudding along in a light breeze, under a blue sky and shining sun, while the ancient apologies for nurses rolled along, a water-(or gin and water) logged barge in the Thames in a thick, yellow November fog. (Dean Hole.)

It was to Florence Nightingale, of ever-blessed memory, that we owe the foundation of our Army nursing system in 1854. When the news of the battle of the Alma came, and of many thousands of wounded men with no nurses and a totally insufficient medical staff, and not a single ambulance, she volunteered to take out a number of nurses. For a wonder her offer was accepted, for in those days every sort of change in Army matters was considered a pernicious innovation. She took out thirty-four nurses to the Crimea, and before long had 10,000 wounded in her charge. The work which she and her nurses did was marvellous, and they stuck to it till their health broke down, as our present nurses have done. After the war £50,000 was subscribed for the purpose of founding an institution for the training of nurses in connection with St. Thomas's and King's College Hospitals. From that time the Army nursing system has steadily developed under the practical and ever-ready patronage of Royalty, till it reached its present perfection. In the Soudan and South African Wars the services of the nurses were invaluable. When the present war showed itself to be one of such gigantic dimensions, and when our Army, due to the genius of Lord Kitchener, swelled to the size of millions, it was feared that a sufficient number of Army nurses could not be forthcoming; but then the women of England showed what they were made of. Hundreds and thousands devoted themselves at once to training as nurses, others to the less-skilled work required in hospitals for the victims of war; and now, owing to them and the admirable chiefs and subordinate officers of the R.A.M.C, and to the patriotic and self-sacrificing manner in which private medical practitioners have come forward with their services, little or nothing is wanted, considering the gigantic nature and scope of this terrible war.

Miss Finzi is to be congratulated upon having written a most interesting and readable book, full of facts and personal experiences, such experiences as, please God, no one will again have to relate; and this will be so when once the Hohenzollerns, the cause of all trouble in Europe and elsewhere for many decades, are exterminated or driven into obscurity.

The work shows forth in bright colours the universal devotion of our nurses—heroic women who face all dangers and hardships for the sake of doing good to others. Among these must ever stand forth the name of Edith Cavell, who spent her whole life in mitigating the sufferings of others, who nursed even German officers in her hospital who had probably committed unspeakable crimes and atrocities in Belgium. This weighed as nothing, as might have been expected, in the eyes of the barbarous Teutons, to whom mercy, justice and gratitude are unknown. She was done to death vilely and brutally, but her martyrdom will never be forgotten or forgiven; it will be one of the foulest of the many foul stains on the fame of the Kaiser and his accomplices, while it will ever shed a ray of glory upon the noble record of our British Nurses.

Alfred E. Turner.

BOOK I

1914

As It Was in the Beginning

CHAPTER I
October, 1914

October 21st, London. It was not without a sense of relief that we watched the hands of the station clock move on to the stroke of six, heard the train doors slam, and cast a last look at the anxious little group of friends who clustered round the carriage doors to bid us farewell and God-speed.

To be quite frank, their cheering savoured somewhat of mourning and much of admonition.

Were we not the tattered remnants of a once-flourishing Red Cross detachment, whose energies and equipment alike had been left behind at the enforced evacuation of Ostend? Were we not about to face all kinds of undreamed-of perils?

So they whispered to us; but as we relapsed into our seats, to the accompaniment of a cheery chorus of rag-times from the extensive répertoire of the recruits in a neighbouring carriage, our hearts beat hard with trepidation and anticipation of the Great Unknown. After all, who were we amongst the countless thousands clamouring to "get out" to the scene of action?

Merely two Englishwomen, of none too much experience and no too great age, whom it might please Fate to carry into the scene of action, there to play the smallest of parts and to be vouchsafed an insight into the vagaries of war.

Southampton. It was a clear, still, moonlight night when we reached Southampton, the docks silent and darkened. Outside many ambulance wagons awaited their turn to be loaded. The hotel to which we had been recommended had been commandeered as an embarkation office. Moreover, Mr. N——, the clergyman who was to have met us and finished the journey with us, failed to turn up. So, after passport formalities, we went straight on board.

All we carried by way of luggage was one small hand-valise apiece, containing, besides changes of underwear, the regulation Red Cross caps, aprons, dresses—that uniform so effective en masse, so unbecoming to the individual.

October 22nd, s.s. ——, 8 a.m. The cabins were nearly all taken for the officers of the Irish regiment crossing on the boat, so we passed a more or less restless night in the saloon. As the stewardess said: "We like to give the men the best of everything. Who knows when they will next sleep in a bed?" It makes one choke to see these fine strapping fellows going out so cheerfully to meet their fate. It is only then that one ceases to think of war as a great game, and sees it as a great slaughter!

When we set sail the mysterious blue, herald of dawn, was over all, but we are entering Havre harbour in a sea that is black and dreary and full of forebodings.

Le Hâvre. The post office here might be in Finsbury, the cablegram window in Leadenhall Street, for Havre is full of British Tommies in their smart new khaki and gilt numerals and badges, and they walk up and down the streets in twos and threes—very much at home, or separately—equally lost.

When we landed at Havre the Rev. E—— N——, our khaki-clad parson, joined us; and, having deposited our luggage at the station and lunched, we wended our way to the British Consulate, and British and French Red Cross offices, in the hope of gleaning some news of the rest of our party, who seemed to have vanished off the face of the globe.

Our Red Cross uniform carries with it a strange mixture of respect and suspicion—respect for the noble symbol we bear, suspicion on account of the many unlicensed people of somewhat doubtful repute who have flooded the country since the outbreak of war, perpetrating many indiscretions, opening many uncalled-for charities—all under the name of the Red Cross, with which, ten chances to one, they have no connection at all.

To us, however, everybody is so kind and courteous, and our parson, being a tall, white-haired man of military bearing, and in appearance much more like a general than a sky-pilot, commands universal respect and salutes.

We decided to spend a night at Havre and call early for news at the Consulate, and it was then that my modicum of French and savoir-faire in the ways of hotels and hotel proprietors stood us in good stead, for the rest of the party knew no word of French and appeared never before to have travelled abroad.

At the Consulate we came across Lady ——, one of the women we were seeking and who was supposed to be seeking us. As we entered the room a familiar voice rang out: "In the name of the Belgian Government you can do anything"—and we found ourselves face to face with the chic little woman who, charming though she may be at a London "at-home," is, we fear, liable to give our Allies a false impression of English women in war-time.

She has already courted notoriety quite successfully in Belgium, where she would appear at the most busy moment in the wards with a smile and a "May I see round your hospital?" only to be followed by her press-man with a camera. Seeing she has never, to our knowledge, done a day's work in the wards, we are growing tired of her portraits in the daily papers and weekly journals:

"Lady —— rendering valuable aid to a severely wounded Belgian," or:

"A war heroine who is giving her services at the front."

We retired early, but the incessant sounds of coming and going made sleep impossible to me. As the moon peeped through the open window on to the restless form of my companion, I crept out of bed and knelt by the embrasure. She looked very young with her halo of fair hair, and for the first time I realised how utterly alone we were. It is odd how quickly people come into one's life nowadays, become the most important factor of existence, and, meteor-like, pass out of one's ken, leaving nothing but a fast-dimming memory to prove how large they once loomed on the horizon. After all—war or no war—we are absolute strangers, of different interests, different education, different social standing. Yet for weal or woe our lot is cast together. Only for a moment these thoughts assailed me; then the bigness of the Great Game in which we are to play our parts drove all little personal feelings away.

October 24th, Rouen. We arrived yesterday in the wild-goose chase after the Mrs. C—— who wired for us and was to have given us employment, and are installed at a little hotel perched on the top of the hill, from the windows of which we can enjoy the old garden, gorgeous in its autumn tints of brown, gold and green.

There being an over-sufficient number of well-equipped hospitals here, as in Havre, we have not bothered to inquire after work, but the Rev. E—— N—— has gone on to Paris, and so we spent the day enjoying the sights of Rouen. Of the beauties of the Gothic Cathedral of St. Ouen, of the smartness of our Tommies, of the less solid but strikingly lithe and businesslike-looking French soldiers, in their historic and treasured red trousers and blue coats, there is much to be said. Yet it is the incongruity of the cosmopolitan crowd that is most noteworthy.

Dusky Zouaves, in wide pantaloons and brilliant coatees, are to be seen on all sides—mostly with bandaged limbs, be it noted—and alongside swarthy Indian Mussulmans, clad in khaki and topped with turbans. Side by side with them go interpreters in mufti, Scottish soldiers in tartans and covered kilts. Little French girls walk past with R.A.M.C. badges and numerals pinned across their shawls; Army nurses, in grey and red; the usual crowd of dark Frenchwomen in their sombre weeds.

Watching the seething mass of humanity on the quay, the marching soldiers, the footsore, homeless refugees, the motley crowd culled from every conceivable race and every quarter of the globe, it seems as if the Powers Above had decided to abolish the distinction between east and west, black and white, and weld together one race to combat the oncoming Germans. For surely we are pitted against a foe so strong in physique, and so brave and cunning, that many years of strenuous training and thrift will be required to fit the united races to withstand his onslaught.

October 25th. Mr. N—— returned last night from Paris armed with introductions to Lord ---- at Boulogne headquarters, where we are to go, and the information that the Paris hospitals are being steadily cleared.

All this time we have had very little news. Since the fall of Antwerp on October 9th, and the beginning of the Ypres-Armentières battle two days later, we have had nothing but rumours to subsist on, and these alternately wildly optimistic and disquieting.

It seems so strange to think, while wandering through the churches here, glorying in the leisure to enjoy the exquisite contour of the Gothic arches, the rich mediæval windows, the Renaissance chapels, that to those enemies, who are proving themselves such utter Vandals, we really owe so much of our knowledge of Art and Architecture. Can any cultured being who has at some time or another associated with his art-loving foe, studied his literature, perused Burckhardt, delved into the depths of Faust's philosophy and the heights of Zarathustra's madness; sat on Brunhilde's rock or felt the Valkyrie riding past in the furious sweep of the snowstorm; gazed from the heights of the Black Forest into the unknown stretch of sky beyond the blue hills with that yearning for beautiful things engendered by a land endowed by Nature with every gift; and, descending into the darkening forests, realised the milieu which inspired Grimm's "Fairy Tales" and Morgenstern, and even the translators of Ibsen and Jacobsen—can such a being fail to be nonplussed at this huge upheaval?

October 26th, Train militaire. We are passing through the lovely Norman country at a snail's pace in a military train bearing French soldiers to the front. Their distant "Marseillaise" sounds less hearty than our Tommies' "It's a long way to Tipperary," but then they already know the devastation War has wrought in their homes; they are the defenders of an invaded country.

The cost of our ticket to Abancour (military rate, for our uniform amongst the French receives the utmost consideration) is 1 franc 50 centimes. After Abancour, it appears, there are no trains to Boulogne, so how we are to get across the sixty intervening miles no man knows!

Abancour, 7.30 p.m. We reached the neat little model village of Abancour at dusk. It stands on a wind-swept plain, over which the lowering clouds are scurrying menacingly this evening. Just as at Havre market women offered us flowers "for the blessed Croix Rouge," so here the proprietor of the post-card shop insists on giving us pastilles de menthe to take on our journey.

Eu. This is the nearest point we can get to Boulogne, and having knocked up the sleepy hotel-keeper at 10 p.m. to obtain a night's lodging, having made bovril for us all out of the tablets some good friend had thrust into my travelling kit, and served out rations of horse-flesh sandwiches and nuts to make them savoury, I have at last tumbled into my damp bed, wrapped in a travelling rug.

A dismal rain has set in, which brings to mind the words of the secretary at the Rouen Consulate: "When winter sets in the fighting must temporarily cease. I know every inch of Belgium; know, too, that no attack can be made on country so sodden that every wheel sinks at least a yard into the ground. Believe me, what the Germans have they will hold—at least this winter. For Belgium will be impregnable!"

October 27th. We arose at 5 a.m. to catch a train bound towards Abbeville, and, after a refreshing draught of black coffee in glasses, found ourselves installed in the train, with the prospect of staying there till 5 p.m. If we had wondered at finding Eu well guarded on all sides, we no longer did so when we learned that only a few weeks back it was in enemy hands, and formed, in fact, the German headquarters on the march on Paris.

Shortly before reaching Abbeville a young Belgian soldier in the carriage next door put his head in to inquire politely whether we were some of the infirmières anglaises who had tended the Belgian wounded in Ostend.

It appeared he recognised Miss A——, as soon as she doffed her ugly felt uniform hat, as the nurse who had dressed his wounded back the day he was carried into the Casino hospital after the Battle of Termonde.

His career, which he sketched delightedly for our edification, perched on the arm of the window seat, had been eventful, to say the least of it.

Aged 17, Fernand L——, of Brussels, together with fifteen others of his school class of twenty, joined the ranks as volontaires and served through Namur. Captured by the Germans in a farmhouse where he was scouting, he contrived to escape and reach his native town, where the now famous burgomaster, the valiant M. Max, got his papers viséd. By asserting that he was only fifteen years old, and therefore not liable to military service, he finally reached Cherbourg, and is now on his way back to the front, hoping to join some regiment at Calais.

A charming boy, full of enthusiasm for the war and the conviction that we shall soon be marching into Berlin, his one regret, when he heard how the hospital equipment had had to be abandoned to the enemy, was that he had not helped himself to a much-needed blanket.

"Had I but known," he exclaimed, "I would have taken four!"

Fernand L—— was clad in a wonderful combination of garments that he seemed to have gleaned on his journeyings; most remarkable amongst them were the green knitted socks and pair of canvas shoes which some Good Samaritan had given him at Ostend, in those days when even the supply of anæsthetics was apt to run low. Proudest of all was he of the fact that he had once spent a few days in Liverpool to play in a football match, which fact, he felt, bound him to his allies more than any of the forced ties of war. His companion, a few years his senior, who spoke seven languages, was a good-looking youth with a radiant smile. They had been together through various escapades, and were full of the atrocities of the Germans, which, alas! seem authentic enough.

Once when they were fleeing they had come to a deserted village where a farmer gave them shelter. His only daughter had been brutally mutilated and murdered before her own parents because, in resisting the embraces of an officer, she scratched out one of his eyes.

"They cut off her breasts and carried away a foot as a trophy," was the tale they told.

As they got out, the Belgians, in token of gratitude, pressed into our hands the little paper flags of the Allies that they were wearing and buttons from their coats. Then, seizing a notebook from my pocket, Fernand L—— inscribed their names and addresses at Bruges, exacting at the same time promises that we would call and see them, or their families, on our way "to the Rhine in a few months"!

The well-guarded lines, the ammunition trains, the big guns and horses and other paraphernalia of war—how real it all begins to seem!

At Abbeville, where we explored the shops and camps and churches, a nasty rumour came through, via two cavalry officers, that the Germans are at Calais, and many of the townsfolk appeared at their doors to bewail their fate.

On leaving every place of beauty one wonders how long it will remain safe from the Vandals—one leaves it with a sentimental longing to linger for "one last look."

October 27th, Boulogne. The sky was a lurid red as our train steamed into Boulogne, and an evening mist hung over the town. On all sides high masts rose into the sky; hospital ships, ambulance trains, little fishing-smacks, one does not know to which to give most attention. Everywhere the population of picturesque fisherfolk in their brown blouses gives way admiringly to the Red Cross ambulances and officials who carry on their work on such an enormous scale.