My War Experiences in Two Continents Part 12

Sometimes at home I have felt a little embarra.s.sed by the love people have shown me--as if I have somehow deceived them into thinking I was nicer than I really am. Out here I have to try to remember that I have a few friends! In London I couldn't understand it when people praised me or said kind things.

There is only one straight tip for Belgium--have a car, and understand it yourself. Never did I feel so helpless without one. But the roads are too bad and too crowded to begin to learn to drive, and there are difficulties about a garage.

[Page Heading: MY CAR]

This evening Mr. Wood and I went to Hoogstadt, and towed that _corpse_--my car--up to La Panne for ---- to inspect. The whole Belgian army seemed to gather round us as we proceeded on our toilsome journey, with breaking tow-ropes (for the "corpse" is heavy) and defective steering-gear. _They_ were amused. I was just cracking with fatigue.

Needless to say, ---- didn't come. As the car was a present I can't send it back without the authority of a chauffeur. If I keep it any longer they will say I used it and broke it....

There were some fearful bad cases at Hoogstadt to-day, and we were touched to see an old man sitting beside his unconscious son and keeping the flies off him, while he sobbed in great gusts. One Belgian officer told us that the hardest thing he had to do in the war was to give the order to fire on a German regiment which was advancing with Belgian women and children in front of it. He gave the order, and saw these helpless creatures shot down before his eyes.

At the Yser the other night two German regiments got across the river and found themselves surrounded. One regiment surrendered, and the men of the other coolly turned their guns on it and shot their comrades down.

Some of our corps were evacuating women and children the other day. One man, seeing his wife and daughter stretched out on the ground, went mad, and ran up and down the field screaming. We see a lot of madness.

_8 May._--The guns sound rather near this morning, and the windows shake. One never knows what is happening till the wounded come in. I sat with my watch in my hand and counted the sound of bursting sh.e.l.ls. There were 32 in one minute. The firing is continuous, and very loud, and living men are under this fire at this moment, "mown down," "wiped out,"

as the horrible terms go. I loathe even the sound of a bugle now. This carnage is too horrible. If people can't "realise" let them come near the guns.

They were sh.e.l.ling Furnes again when I was at Steenkerke the other day, and it was a strange sound to hear the sh.e.l.ls whizzing over the peaceful fields. One heard them coming, and they pa.s.sed overhead to fall on the old town. Under them the brown cattle fed unheeding, and old women hoed undisturbed, and the sinking sun threw long shadows on the gra.s.s. And then a busy ambulance would fly past on the road; one caught a glimpse of blood-covered forms. "Yes, a few wounded, and two or three killed."

Old women are the most courageous creatures on this earth. When everyone else has fled from a place you can see them sitting by their cottage doors or hoeing turnips in the line of fire.

It was touching to see a little family of terrified children sheltering with their mother in a roadside Calvary when the sh.e.l.ls were coming over. The poor young mother was holding up her baby to Christ on His cross.

[Page Heading: THE CRUCIFIX UNDAMAGED]

There is a matter which seems almost more than a coincidence, and one which has been too often remarked to be ignored, and that is, that in the midst of ruins which are almost totally destroyed the figure of Christ in some niche often remains untouched. I have seen it myself, and many writers have commented on the fact. Sometimes it is only a crucifix on some humble wall, or it may be a shrine in a church. The solitary figure remains and stands--often with arms raised to bless. At Neuve Chapelle one learns that, although the havoc is like that wrought by an earthquake, and the very dead have been uprooted there, a crucifix stands at the cross-roads at the north end of the village, and the pitiful Christ still stretches out His hands. At His feet lie the dead bodies of young soldiers. At Nieuport I noticed a shrine over a doorway in the church standing peacefully among the ruins, and at Pervyse also one remained, until the tower reeled and fell with an explosion from beneath, which was deliberately ordered to prevent accidents from falling masonry.

I had to go to Dunkirk this afternoon and while I was there I heard that the _Lusitania_ had been torpedoed and sunk with 1,600 souls on board her. What change will this make in the situation? Is America any use to us except in the matter of supplies, and are we not getting these through as it is? A nation like that ought to have an army or a navy.

Dunkirk was nearly deserted owing to the bombardment, and it was difficult to find a shop open to buy vegetables for my soup-kitchen.

Still, I enjoyed my afternoon. There was a chance that sh.e.l.ling might begin again at any time, and a bitter wind blew up clouds of p.r.i.c.kly dust and sand; but it was a great relief to be out in the open and away from smells, and to have one's view no longer bounded by a line of rails. G.o.d help us! What a year this has been! It tires me even to think of being happy again, cheerfulness has become such an effort.

_10 May._--I went to see my Scottish gunner at the hospital to-day. He said, "I can't forget that night," and burst out crying. "That night" he had been wounded in seven places, and then had to crawl to a "dug-out"

by himself for shelter.

Strong healthy men lie inert in these hospitals. Many of them have face and head wounds. I saw one splendid young fellow, with a beautiful face, and straight clear eyes of a sort of forget-me-not blue. He won't be able to speak again, as his jaw is shot away. The man next him was being fed through the nose.

The matron told me to-day that last night a man came in from Nieuport with the base of a sh.e.l.l ("the bit they make into ash trays," she said) embedded in him. His clothing had been carried in with it. He died, of course.

One of our friends has been helping with stretcher work, removing civilians. He was carrying away a girl shot to pieces, and with her clothing in rags. He took her head, and a young Belgian took her feet, and the Belgian looked round and said quietly, "This is my fiancee."

[Page Heading: THE "LUSITANIA"]

_11 May._--To-day being madame's was.h.i.+ng day--we ring the changes on the "nettoyage," "le grand nettoyage," and "le lavage"--everything was late. The newspaper came in, and was full of such words as "horror,"

"resentment," "indignation," about the _Lusitania_, but that won't give us back our s.h.i.+p or our men. I wish we could do more and say less, but the Press must talk, and always does so "with its mouth." M. Rotsartz came to breakfast. The guns had been going all night long, there was a sense of something in the air, and I fretted against plat.i.tudes in French and madame's was.h.i.+ng. At last I got away, and went to the sea front, for the sound of bursting sh.e.l.ls had become tremendous.

It was a sort of British morning, with a fresh British breeze blowing our own blessed waves, and there, in its grey grandeur, stood off a British man-of-war, blazing away at the coast. The Germans answered by sh.e.l.ls, which fell a bit wide, and must have startled the fishes (but no one else) by the splash they made. There were long, swift torpedo-boats, with two great white wings of cloven foam at their bows, and a great flourish of it in their wake, moving along under a canopy of their own black smoke. It was the smoke of good British coal, from pits where grimy workmen dwell in the black country, and British sweat has to get it out of the ground. Our grey lady was burning plenty of it, and when she had done her work, she put up a banner of smoke, and steamed away with a splendid air of dignity across the white-flecked sea. One knew the men on board her! Probably not a heart beat quicker by a second for all the German sh.e.l.ls, probably dinner was served as usual, and men got their tubs and had their clothes brushed when it was all over.

I went down to my kitchen a little late, but I had seen something that Drake never saw--a bit of modern sea-fighting. And in the evening, when I returned, my grey mistress had come back again. The sun was westering now, and the sea had turned to gold, and the grey lady looked black against the glare, but the fire of her guns was brighter than the evening sunset, and she was a spit-fire, after all, this dignified queen, and she, "let 'em have it," too, while the long, lean torpedo-boats looked on.

I went to the kitchen; I gave out jam, I distributed socks, I heard the fussy importance of minor officials, but I had something to work on since I had seen the grey lady at work.

In the evening I dined quietly on the barge with Miss Close and Maxine Elliott. We had a game of bridge--a thing I had not seen for a year and more (the last time I played was down in Surrey at the Grange!), and the little gathering on the old timbered barge was pleasant.

Some terrible stories of the war are coming through from the front. An officer told us that when they take a trench, the only thing which describes what the place is like is strawberry jam. Another said that in one trench the sides were falling, and the Germans used corpses to make a wall, and kept them in with piles fixed into the ground. Hundreds of men remain unburied.

[Page Heading: GERMAN PRISONERS]

Some people say that the German gunners are chained to their guns. There were six Germans at the station to-day, two wounded and four prisoners.

Individually I always like them, and it is useless to say I don't. They are all polite and grateful, and I thought to-day, when the prisoners were surrounded by a gaping crowd, that they bore themselves very well.

After all, one can't expect a whole nation of mad dogs. A Scotchman said, "The ones opposite us (_i.e._, in the trenches) were a very respectable lot of men."

The German prisoners' letters contain news that battalions of British suffragettes have arrived at the front, and they warn officers not to be captured by these!

_12 May._--To-day, when I got to the station, I was asked to remove an old couple who sat there hand in hand, covered with blood. The old woman had her arm blown off, and the man's hand was badly injured. We took them to de Page's hospital.

The firing has been continuous for the last few days, and men coming in from Ypres and Dixmude and Nieuport say that the losses on both sides have been enormous. There were four Belgian officers who lived opposite my villa, whom one used to see going in and out. Last night all were killed.

At Dixmude the other day the Duke of Westminster went to the French bureau to get his pa.s.sport vise. The clerks were just leaving, but he begged them to remain a minute or two and to do his little business.

They did so, and came to the door to see him off, but a sh.e.l.l came hurtling in and killed them both, and of a woman who stood near there was literally nothing left.

Last night ---- and I were talking about the _gossip_, which would fill ten unpublishable volumes out here.... Why do these people come out to the front? Give me men for war, and no one else except nuns. Things may be all right, but the Belgians are horrified, and I hate them to "say things" of the English. The grim part of it is that I don't believe I personally hear one half of what goes on and what is being said. They are afraid of shocking me, I believe.

The craze for men baffles me. I see women, _dead tired_, perk up and begin to be sparkling as soon as a man appears; and when they are alone they just seem to sink back into apathy and fatigue. Why won't these mad creatures stop at home? They _are_ the exception, but war seems to bring them out. It really is intolerable, and I hate it for women's sake, and for England's.

The other day I heard some ladies having a rather forced discussion on moral questions, loud and frank.... Shades of my modest ancestresses! Is this war time, and in a room filled with men and smoke and drink, are women in knickerbockers discussing such things? I know I have got to "let out tucks," but surely not quite so far!

Beautiful women and fast women should be chained up. Let men meet their G.o.d with their conscience clear. Most of them will be killed before the war is over. Surely the least we can do is not to offer them temptation.

Death and destruction, and horror and wonderful heroism, seem so near and so transcendent, and then, quite close at hand, one finds evil doings.

[Page Heading: A TREASURE]

_14 May._--I heard two little stories to-day, one of a British soldier limping painfully through Poperinghe with a horrid wound in his arm and thigh.

"You seem badly wounded," a friend of mine said to him.

"Yus," said the soldier; "there were a German, and he wounded me in three places, but"--he drew from under his arm a treasure, and his poor dirty face was transformed by a delighted grin--"I got his b.l.o.o.d.y helmet."

Another story was of an English officer telephoning from a church-tower.

He gave all his directions clearly and distinctly, and never even hinted that the Germans had taken the town and were approaching the church. He just went on talking, till at last, as the tramp of footsteps sounded on the belfry stairs, he said, "Don't take any notice of any further information. I am going." He went--all the brave ones seem to go--and those were the last words he spoke.

Rhodes Moorhouse flew low over the German lines the other day, in order to bombard the German station at Courtrai. He planed down to 300 feet, and became the target for a hundred guns. In the murderous fire he was wounded, and might have descended, but he was determined not to let the Germans have his machine. He planed down to 100 feet in order to gather speed. At this elevation he was. .h.i.t again, and mortally wounded, but he flew on alone to the British lines--like a shot bird heading for its own nest. He didn't even stop at the first aerodrome he came to, but sailed on--always alone--to his base, made a good landing, handed over his machine, and died.

In the hospitals what heroism one finds! One splendid fellow of 6 feet 2 inches had both his legs and both his arms amputated. He turned round to the doctor and said, smiling, "I shan't have to complain of beds being too short now!" And when someone came and sat with him in his deadly pain, he remarked in his gentle way, "I am afraid I am taking up all your time." His old father and mother arrived after he was dead.

Ah! if one could hear more, surely one would do more! But this hole-and-corner way of doing warfare damps all enthusiasm and stifles recruiting. Why are we allowed to know nothing until the news is stale?

Yesterday I heard at first hand of the treatment of some civilians by Germans, and I visited a village to hear from the _people themselves_ what had happened.