Kings, Queens and Pawns: An American Woman at the Front Part 19

All of the officers were united in thinking khaki an excellent all-round colour.

"The Turcos have been put into khaki," said the Commandant. "They disliked it at first; but their other costumes were too conspicuous.

Now they are satisfied."

The Englishman offered the statement that England was supplying all of the Allies, including Russia, with cloth.

Sitting round the table under the lamp, the Commandant read a postcard taken from the body of a dead German in the attack the night before.

There was a photograph with it, autographed. The photograph was of the woman who had written the card. It began "Beloved Otto," and was signed "Your loving wife, Hedwig."

This is the postcard:

"_Beloved Otto_: To-day your dear cards came, so full of anxiety for us. So that now at last I know that you have received my letters. I was convinced you had not. We have sent you so many packages of things you may need. Have you got any of them? To-day I have sent you my photograph. I wished to send a letter also instead of this card, but I have no writing paper. All week I have been busy with the children's clothing. We think of you always, dear Otto. Write to us often. Greetings from your Hedwig and the children."

So she was making clothing for the children and sending him little packages. And Otto lay dead under the stars that night--dead of an ideal, which is that a man must leave his family and all that he loves and follow the beckoning finger of empire.

"For king and country!"

The Commandant said that when a German soldier surrenders he throws down his gun, takes off his helmet and jerks off his shoulder straps, saying over and over, "_Pater familias_." Sometimes, by way of emphasising that he is a family man, he holds up his fingers--two children or three children, whatever it may be. Even boys in their teens will claim huge families.

I did not find it amusing after the postcard and the photograph. I found it all very tragic and sad and disheartening.

It was growing late and the General was impatient to be off. We had still a long journey ahead of us, and riding at night was not particularly safe.

I got into the car and they bundled in after me the damaged pictures, the horseshoe, the piece of gargoyle from the Cloth Hall and the nose of the sh.e.l.l.

The orderly reported that a Zeppelin had just pa.s.sed overhead; but the General shrugged his shoulders.

"They are always seeing Zeppelins," he said. "Me, I do not believe there is such a thing!"

That night in my hotel, after dinner, Gertrude, Lady Decies, told me the following story:

"I had only twelve hours' notice to start for the front. I am not a hospital nurse, but I have taken for several years three months each summer of special training. So I felt that I would be useful if I could get over.

"It was November and very cold. When I got to Calais there was not a room to be had anywhere. But at the Hotel Centrale they told me I might have a bathroom to sleep in.

"At the last moment a gentleman volunteered to exchange with me. But the next day he left, so that night I slept in a bathtub with a mattress in it!

"The following day I got a train for Dunkirk. On the way the train was wrecked. Several coaches left the track, and there was nothing to do but to wait until they were put back on.

"I went to the British Consul at Dunkirk and asked him where I could be most useful. He said to go to the railroad station at once.

"I went to the station. The situation there was horrible. Three doctors and seven dressers were working on four-hour s.h.i.+fts.

"As the wounded came in only at night, that was when we were needed. I worked all night from that time on. My first night we had eleven hundred men. Some of them were dead when they were lifted out onto the stone floor of the station shed. One boy flung himself out of the door. I caught him as he fell and he died in my arms. He had diphtheria, as well as being wounded.

"The station was frightfully cold, and the men had to be laid on the stone floors with just room for moving about between them. There was no heat of any sort. The dead were laid in rows, one on top of another, on cattle trucks. As fast as a man died they took his body away and brought in another wounded man.

"Every now and then the electric lights would go out and leave us there in black darkness. Finally we got candles and lamps for emergencies.

"We had no surgical dressings, but we had some iodine. The odours were fearful. Some of the men had not had their clothes off for five weeks.

Their garments were like boards. It was almost impossible to cut through them. And underneath they were coated with vermin. Their bodies were black with them frequently.

"In many cases the wounds were green through lack of attention. One man, I remember, had fifteen. The first two nights I was there we had no water, which made it terrible. There was a pump outside, but the water was bad. At last we had a little stove set up, and I got some kettles and jugs and boiled the water.

"We were obliged to throw the bandages in a heap on the floor, and night after night we walked about in blood. My clothing and stockings were stained with blood to my knees.

"After the first five nights I kept no record of the number of wounded; but the first night we had eleven hundred; the second night, nine hundred; the third night, seven hundred and fifty; the fourth night, two thousand; the fifth night, fifteen hundred.

"The men who were working at the station were English Quakers. They were splendid men. I have never known more heroic work than they did, and the cure was a splendid fellow. There was nothing too menial for him to do. He was everywhere."

This is the story she told me that night, in her own words. I have not revised it. Better than anything I know it tells of conditions as they actually existed during the hard fighting of the first autumn of the war, and as in the very nature of things they must exist again whenever either side undertakes an offensive.

It becomes a little wearying, sometimes, this constant cry of horrors, the ever-recurring demands on America's pocketbook for supplies, for dressings, for money to buy the thousands of things that are needed.

Read Lady Decies' account again, and try to place your own son on that stone floor on the station platform. Think of that wounded boy, sitting for hours in a train, and choking to death with diphtheria.

This is the thing we call war.

CHAPTER XV

RUNNING THE BLOCKADE

From my journal written during an attack of influenza at the Gare Maritime in Calais:

Last night I left England on the first boat to cross the Channel after the blockade. I left London at midnight, with the usual formality of being searched by Scotland Yard detectives. The train was empty and very cold.

"At half-past two in the morning we reached Folkestone. I was quite alone, and as I stood s.h.i.+vering on the quay waiting to have my papers examined a cold wind from the harbour and a thin spray of rain made the situation wretched. At last I confronted the inspector, and was told that under the new regulations I should have had my Red Cross card viseed in Paris. It was given back to me with a shrug, but my pa.s.sport was stamped.

"There were four men round the table. My papers and I were inspected by each of the four in turn. At last I was through. But to my disgust I found I was not to be allowed on the Calais boat. There was one going to Boulogne and carrying pa.s.sengers, but Calais was closed up tight, except to troops and officers.

"I looked at the Boulogne boat. It was well lighted and cheerful.

Those few people who had come down from London on the train were already settling themselves for the crossing. They were on their way to Paris and peace.

"I did not want Paris and certainly I did not want peace. I had telegraphed to Dunkirk and expected a military car to meet me at Calais. Once across, I knew I could neither telegraph nor telephone to Dunkirk, all lines of communication being closed to the public. I felt that I might be going to be ill. I would not be ill in Boulogne.

"At the end of the quay, dark and sinister, loomed the Calais boat. I had one moment of indecision. Then I picked up my suitcase and started toward it in the rain. Luckily the gangway was out. I boarded the boat with as much a.s.surance as I could muster, and was at once accosted by the chief officer.

"I produced my papers. Some of them were very impressive. There were letters from the French Amba.s.sador in London, Monsieur Cambon, to leading French generals. There was a letter to Sir John French and another letter expediting me through the customs, but unluckily the customs at Boulogne.

"They left him cold. I threw myself on his mercy. He apologised, but continued firm. The Boulogne boat drew in its gangway. I mentioned this, and that, so to speak, I had burned my Boulogne gangway behind me. I said I had just had an interview with Mr. Winston Churchill, and that I felt sure the First Lord of the Admiralty would not approve of my standing there arguing when I was threatened with influenza. He acted as though he had never heard of the First Lord.