My War Experiences in Two Continents | Page 7

all the time one listens to the cries of men in pain. To-night I meant to go out for a little, but a nurse stopped me and asked me to sit by a dying man. Poor fellow, he was twenty-one, and looked like some brigand chief, and he smiled as he was dying. The horror of these two days will last always, and there are many more such days to come. Everyone is behaving well, and that is all I care about.
7 October.--It is a glorious morning: they will see well to kill each other to-day.
The guns go all day and all night. They are so close that the earth shakes with them. Last night in the infernal darkness we were turning wounded men away from the door. There was no room for them even on the floor. The Belgians scream terribly. Our own men suffer quite quietly. One of them died to-day.
Day and night a stream of vehicles passes the gate. It never ceases. Nearly all are motors, driven at a furious pace, and they sound horns all the time. These are met by a stream of carts and old-fashioned vehicles bringing in country people, who are flying to the coast. In Antwerp to-day it was "sauve qui peut"! Nearly all the men are going--Mr. ----, who has helped us, and Mr. ----, they are going to bicycle into Holland. A surgeon (Belgian) has fled from his hospital, leaving seven hundred beds, and there seem to be a great many deserters from the trenches.
[Page Heading: THE SITUATION GETS WORSE]
The news is still the same--"very bad"; sometimes I walk to the gate and ask returning soldiers how the battle goes, but the answer never varies. At lunch-time to-day firing ceased, and I heard it was because the German guns were coming up. We got orders to send away all the wounded who could possibly go, and we prepared beds in the cellars for those who cannot be moved. The military authorities beg us to remain as so many hospitals have been evacuated.
The wounded continue to come in. One sees one car in the endless stream moving slowly (most of them fly with their officers sitting upright, or with aeroplanes on long carriages), and one knows by the pace that more wounded are coming. Inside one sees the horrible six shelves behind the canvas curtain, and here and there a bound-up limb or head. One of our men had his leg taken off to-day, and is doing well. Nothing goes on much behind the scenes. The yells of the men are plainly heard, and to-day, as I sat beside the lung man who was taking so long to die, someone brought a sack to me, and said, "This is for the leg." All the orderlies are on duty in the hospital now. We can spare no one for rougher work. We can all bandage and wash patients. There are wounded everywhere, even on straw beds on the platform of the hall.
Darkness seems to fall early, and it is the darkness that is so baffling. At 5 p.m. we have to feed everyone while there is a little light, then the groping about begins, and everyone falls over things. There is a clatter of basins on the floor or an over-turned chair. Any sudden noise is rather trying at present because of the booming of the guns. At 7 last night they were much louder than before, with a sort of strange double sound, and we were told that these were our "Long Toms," so we hope that our Naval Brigade has come up.
We know very little of what is going on except when we run out and ask some returning English soldiers for news. Yesterday it was always the same reply "Very bad." One of the Marines told me that Winston Churchill was "up and down the road amongst the shells," and I was also told that he had given orders that Antwerp was not to be taken till the last man in it was dead.
The Marines are getting horribly knocked about. Yesterday Mrs. O'Gormon went out in her own motor-car and picked wounded out of the trenches. She said that no one knew why they were in the trenches or where they were to fire--they just lay there and were shot and then left.
[Page Heading: HOW WE KEPT UP OUR COURAGE]
I think I have seen too much pain lately. At Walworth one saw women every day in utter pain, and now one lives in an atmosphere of bandages and blood. I asked some of the orderlies to-day what it was that supported them most at a crisis of this sort. The answers varied, and were interesting. I myself am surprised to find that religion is not my best support. When