A Journal of Impressions in Belgium Part 12

But though the guns had been pounding away before we started, they ceased firing as we went through.

That, however, was sheer luck. And presently it was brought home to me that we were not the only persons involved in the risk of this joyous adventure. Just outside the bombarded hamlet ahead of us we were stopped by some Belgian [? French] soldiers hidden in the cover of a ditch by the roadside, which if it was not a trench might very easily have been one. They were talking in whispers for fear of being overheard by the Germans, who must have been at least a mile off, across the fields on the other side of the river. A mile seemed a pretty safe distance; but Mr. L. said it wouldn't help us much, considering that the range of their guns was twenty-four miles. The soldiers told us we couldn't possibly get through to Zele. That was true. The road was blocked--by the ruins of the hamlet--not twenty yards from where we were pulled up.

We got out of the car; and while Mr. L. and the Belgian lady conversed with the soldiers, Mr. M. and I walked on to investigate the road.

At the abrupt end of a short row of houses it stopped where it should have turned suddenly, and became a rubbish-heap lying in a waste place.

Just at first I thought we must have gone out of our course somehow and missed the road to Zele. It was difficult to realize that this rubbish-heap lying in a waste place ever _had_ been a road. But for the sh.e.l.l of a house that stood next to it, the last of the row, and the piles of lath and plaster, and the shattered gla.s.s on the sidewalk and the blown dust everywhere, it might have pa.s.sed for the ordinary no-thoroughfare of an abandoned brick-field.

Mr. M. made me keep close under the wall of a barn or something on the other side of the street, the only thing that stood between us and the German batteries. Beyond the barn were the green fields bare to the guns that had sh.e.l.led this end of the village. At first we hugged our shelter tight, only looking out now and then round the corner of the barn into the open country.

A flat field, a low line of willows at the bottom, and somewhere behind the willows the German batteries. Grey puffs were still curling about the stems and clinging to the tops of the willows. They might have been mist from the river or smoke from the guns we had heard. I hadn't time to watch them, for suddenly Mr. M. darted from his cover and made an alarming sally into the open field.

He said he wanted to find some pieces of nice hot sh.e.l.l for me.

So I had to run out after Mr. M. and tell him I didn't want any pieces of hot sh.e.l.l, and pull him back into safety.

All for nothing. Not a gun fired.

We strolled across what was left of the narrow street and looked through the window-frames of a shattered house. It had been a little inn. The roof and walls of the parlour had been wrecked, so had most of the furniture. But on a table against the inner wall a row of clean gla.s.ses still stood in their order as the landlord had left them; and not one of them was broken.

I suppose it must have been about time for the guns to begin firing again, for Mr. L. called to us to come back and to look sharp too. So we ran for it. And as we leaped into the car Mr. L. reproved Mr. M. gravely and virtuously for "taking a lady into danger."

The car rushed back into Baerlaere if anything faster than it had rushed out, Mr. L. sitting bolt upright with an air of great majesty and integrity. I remember thinking that it would never, never do to duck if the sh.e.l.ls came, for if we did Mr. L.'s head would stand out like a n.o.ble monument and he would be hit as infallibly as any cathedral in Belgium.

It seems that the soldiers were not particularly pleased at our blundering up against their trench in our noisy car, which, they said, might draw down the German fire at any minute on the Belgian lines.

We got into Ghent after dark by the way we came.

[_Evening._]

Called at the "Flandria." Ursula Dearmer and two Belgian nurses have been sent to the convent at Zele to work there to-night.

Mr. ---- is here. But you wouldn't know him. I have just been introduced to him without knowing him. Before the War he was a Quaker,[19] a teetotaller, and a pacifist at any price. And I suppose he wore clothes that conformed more or less to his principles. Now he is wearing the uniform of a British naval officer. He is drinking long whiskies-and-sodas in the restaurant, in the society of Major R. And the Major's khaki doesn't give a point to the Quaker's uniform. As for the Quaker, they say he could give points to any able seaman when it comes to swear words (but this may be sheer affectionate exaggeration). His face and his high, hatchet nose, whatever colour they used to be, are now the colour of copper--not an ordinary, Dutch kettle and coal-scuttle, pacifist, arts-and-crafts copper, but a fine old, truculent, d.a.m.n-disarmament, Krupp-&-Co., b.l.o.o.d.y, ammunition copper, and battered by the wars of all the world. He is the commander and the owner of an armoured car, one of the unit of five volunteer armoured cars. I do not know whether he was happy or unhappy when there wasn't a war. No man, and certainly no Quaker, could possibly be happier than this Quaker is now. He and the Major have been out potting Germans all the afternoon. (They have accounted for nine.) A schoolboy who has. .h.i.t the mark nine times running with his first toy rifle is not merrier than, if as merry as, these more than mature men with their armoured car. They do not say much, but you gather that it is more fun being a volunteer than a regular; it is to enjoy delight with liberty, the maximum of risk with the minimum of responsibility.

And their armoured car--if it is the one I saw standing to-day in the Place d'Armes--it is, as far as you can make out through its disguises, an ordinary open touring car, with a wooden h.o.a.rding (mere matchboard) stuck all round it, the whole painted grey to simulate, armoured painting. Through four holes, fore and aft and on either side of her, their machine-guns rake the horizon. The Major and Mr. ---- sit inside, hidden behind the matchboard plating. They scour the country. When they see any Germans they fire and bring them down. It is quite simple. When you inquire how they can regard that old wooden rabbit-hutch as an armoured cover, they reply that their car isn't for defence, it's for attack. The Germans have only to see their guns and they're off. And really it looks like it, since the two are actually here before your eyes, drinking whiskies-and-sodas, and the rest of the armoured car corps are alive somewhere in Ghent.

Dear Major R. and Mr. ---- (whom I never met before), unless they read this Journal, which isn't likely, they will never know how my heart warmed towards them, nor how happy I count myself in being allowed to see them. They showed me how good it is to be alive; how excellent, above all things, to be a man and to be young for ever, and to go out into the most gigantic war in history, sitting in an armoured car which is as a rabbit-hutch for safety, and to have been a pacifist, that is to say a sinner, like Mr. ----, so that on the top of it you feel the whole glamour and glory of conversion. Others may have known the agony and the fear and sordid filth and horror and the waste, but they know nothing but the clean and fiery pa.s.sion and the contagious ecstasy of war.

If you were to tell Mr. ---- about the mystic fascination of the south-east road, the road that leads eventually to Waterloo, he would most certainly understand you, but it is very doubtful whether he would let you venture very far down it. Whereas the Commandant, sooner or later, will.

[_Thursday, 8th._]

Had breakfast with Mr. L.

Went down to the "Flandria." They say Zele has been taken. There has been terrific anxiety here for Ursula Dearmer and the two Belgian nurses (Madame F.'s daughter and niece), who were left there all night in the convent, which may very well be in the hands of the Germans by now. An Ambulance car went off very early this morning to their rescue and has brought them back safe.

We are told that the Germans are really advancing on Ghent. We have orders to prepare to leave it at a minute's notice. This time it looks as if there might be something in it.

I attend to the Commandant's correspondence. Wired Mr. Hastings. Wired Miss F. definitely accepting the Field Ambulance Corps and nurses she has raised in Glasgow. Her idea is that her Ambulance should be an independent unit attached to our corps but bearing her name. (Seems rather a pity to bring the poor lady out just now when things are beginning to be risky and our habitations uncertain.)

The British troops are pouring into Ghent. There is a whole crowd of them in the _Place_ in front of the Station. And some British wounded from Antwerp are in our Hospital.

Heavy fighting at Lokeren, between Ghent and Saint Nicolas. Car 1 has been sent there with the Commandant, Ursula Dearmer, Janet McNeil and the Chaplain (Mr. Foster has been hurt in lifting a stretcher; he is out of it, poor man). Mrs. Torrence, Dr. Wilson and Mr. Riley have been sent to Nazareth. Mrs. Lambert has gone to Lokeren with her husband in his car.

I was sent for this morning by somebody who desired to see the English Field Ambulance. Drawn up before the Hospital I found all that was left of a Hendon bus, in the charge of two British Red Cross volunteers in khaki and a British tar. The three were smiling in full enjoyment of the high comedy of disaster. They said they were looking for a job, and they wanted to know if our Ambulance would take them on. They were keen. They had every qualification under the sun.

"Only," they said, "there's one thing we bar. And that's the firing-line. We've been under sh.e.l.l-fire for fifteen hours--and look at our bus!"

The bus was a thing of heroism and gorgeous ruin. The nose of its engine looked as if it had nuzzled its way through a thousand _debacles_; its dark-blue sides were coated with dust and mud to the colour of an armoured car. The letters M. E. T. were barely discernible through the grey. Its windows were shattered to mere jags and spikes and splinters of gla.s.s that adhered marvellously to their frames.

I don't know how I managed to convey to the three volunteers that such a bus would be about as much use to our Field Ambulance as an old greenhouse that had come through an earthquake. It was one of the saddest things I ever had to do.

Unperturbed, and still credulous of adventure, they climbed on to their bus, turned her nose round, and went, smiling, away.

Who they were, and what corps they belonged to, and how they acquired that Metropolitan bus I shall never know, and do not want to know. I would far rather think of them as the heroes of some fantastic enterprise, careering in gladness and in mystery from one besieged city to another.

Saw Madame F., who looks worried. She suggested that I should come back to the Hospital. She says it must be inconvenient for the Commandant not to have his secretary always at hand. At the same time, we are told that the Hospital is filling up so fast that our rooms will be wanted.

And anyhow, Dr. ---- has got mine.

I have found an absurd little hotel, the Hotel Cecil in the _Place_, opposite the Hospital, where I can have a room. Then I can be on duty all day.

Went down to the "Poste." Gave up my room, packed and took leave of the nice fat _proprietaire_ and his wife.

Driving through the town, I meet French troops pouring through the streets. There was very little cheering.

Settled into the Hotel Cecil; if it could be called settling when my things have to stay packed, in case the Germans come before the evening.

The Hotel Cecil is a thin slice of a house with three rooms on each little floor, and a staircase like a ladder. There is something very sinister about this smallness and narrowness and steepness. You say to yourself: Supposing the Germans really do come into Ghent; there will be some Uhlans among them; and the Uhlans will certainly come into the Hotel Cecil, and they will get very drunk in the restaurant below; and you might as well be in a trap as in this den at the top of the slice up all these abominable little steep stairs. And you are very glad that your room has a balcony.

But though your room has a balcony it hasn't got a table, or any s.p.a.ce where a table could stand. There is hardly anything in it but a big double bed and a tall hat-stand. I have never seen a room more inappropriate to a secretary and reporter.

The proprietor and his wife are very amiable. He is a Red Cross man; and they have taken two refugee women into their house. They have promised faithfully that by noon there shall be a table.

Noon has come; and there is no table.

The cars have come back from Lokeren and Nazareth, full of wounded.

Mrs. Lambert and her husband have come back from Lokeren. They drove right into the German lines to fetch two wounded. They were promptly arrested and as promptly released when their pa.s.sports had shown them to be good American citizens. They brought back their two wounded.

Altogether, ten or fifteen wounded have been brought back from Lokeren this morning.

[_Afternoon._]

The Commandant has taken me out with the Ambulance for the first time.

We were to go to Lokeren.