My War Experiences in Two Continents | Page 5

horns all the
time. Antwerp was thronged with these cars, and each one contained
soldiers. Sometimes one saw wounded in them lying on sacks stuffed
with straw.
I came down to breakfast half-an-hour late (8 o'clock) and we had our
usual fare--porridge, bread and margarine, and tea with tinned
milk--amazingly nasty, but quite wholesome and filling at the price.
We have reduced our housekeeping to ninepence per head per day.
After breakfast I cleaned the two houses, as I do every morning, made
nine beds, swept floors and dusted stairs, etc. When my rooms were
done and jugs filled, our nice little cook gave me a cup of soup in the
kitchen, as she generally does, and I went over to the hospital to help
prepare the men's dinner, my task to-day being to open bottles and pour
out beer for a hundred and twenty men; then, when the meat was served,
to procure from the kitchen and serve out gravy. Our own dinner is at
12.30.
Afterwards I went across to the hospital again and arranged a few
things with Mrs. Stobart. I began to correct the men's diagnosis sheets,
but was called off to help with wounded arriving, and to label and sort
their clothes. Just then the British Minister, Sir Francis Villiers, and the
Surgeon-General, Sir Cecil Herslet, came in to see the hospital, and we
proceeded to show them round, when the sound of firing began quite

close to us and we rushed out into the garden.
[Page Heading: A TAUBE OVERHEAD]
From out the blue, clear autumn sky came a great grey dove flying
serenely overhead. This was a German aeroplane of the class called the
Taube (dove). These aeroplanes are quite beautiful in design, and fly
with amazing rapidity. This one wafted over our hospital with all the
grace of a living creature "calm in the consciousness of wings," and
then, of course, we let fly at it. From all round us shells were sent up
into the vast blue of the sky, and still the grey dove went on in its
gentle-looking flight. Whoever was in it must have been a brave man!
All round him shells were flying--one touch and he must have dropped.
The smoke from the burst shells looked like little white clouds in the
sky as the dove sailed away into the blue again and was seen no more.
We returned to our work in hospital. The men's supper is at six o'clock,
and we began cutting up their bread-and-butter and cheese and filling
their bowls of beer. When that was over and visitors were going, an
order came for thirty patients to proceed to Ostend and make room for
worse cases. We were sorry to say good-bye to them, especially to a
nice fellow whom we call Alfred because he can speak English, and to
Sunny Jim, who positively refused to leave.
Poor boys! With each batch of the wounded, disabled creatures who are
carried in, one feels inclined to repeat in wonder, "Can one man be
responsible for all this? Is it for one man's lunatic vanity that men are
putting lumps of lead into each other's hearts and lungs, and boys are
lying with their heads blown off, or with their insides beside them on
the ground?" Yet there is a splendid freedom about being in the midst
of death--a certain glory in it, which one can't explain.
A piece of shell fell through the roof of the hospital to-day--evidently a
part of one that had been fired at the Taube. It fell close beside the bed
of one of our wounded, and he went as white as a ghost. It must be
pretty bad to be powerless and have shells falling around. The doctors
tell me that nothing moves them so much as the terror of the men. Their
nerves are simply shattered, and everything frightens them. Rather late

a man was brought in from the forts, terribly wounded. He was the only
survivor of twelve comrades who stood together, and a shell fell
amongst them, killing all but this man.
At seven o'clock we moved all the furniture from Mrs. Stobart's office
to the dispensary, where she will have more room, and the day's work
was then over and night work began for some. The Germans have
destroyed the reservoir and the water-supply has been cut off, so we
have to go and fetch all the water in buckets from a well. After supper
we go with our pails and carry it home. The shortage for washing,
cleaning, etc., is rather inconvenient, and adds to the danger in a large
hospital, and to the risk of typhoid.
[Page Heading: ORDERS TO EVACUATE THE HOSPITAL]
4 October.--Yesterday our work was hardly over when Mrs. Stobart
sent a