A quarter to eleven!
Suddenly the whole thing seemed impossible—that
the noise at the foot of the street was really guns;
that I should be there; that these two young women
should live there day and night in the midst of such
horrors. For the whole town is a graveyard.
Bodies in numbers have been buried in shell-holes
and hastily covered, or float in the stagnant water
of the canal. Every heavy rain uncovers shallow
graves in the fields, allowing a dead arm, part of
a rotting trunk, to show.
And now, after this lapse of time, it still seems
incredible. Are they still there? Report
has it that the Germans captured this town and held
it for a time, only to lose it later. What happened
to the little “sick and sorry” house during
those fearful days? Did the German officers sit
about that pine table and throw a nut to summon an
orderly? Did they fill the lamp while it was lighted,
and play on the cracked piano, and pick up shrapnel
cases as they landed on the doorstep and set them
on the mantel?
Ten minutes to eleven!
The chauffeur came to the door and stuck his head
in.
“I have found petrol in a can in an empty shed,”
he explained. “It is now possible to go.”
We went. We lost no time on the order of our
going. The rain was over, but the fog had descended
again. We lighted our lamps, and were curtly
ordered by a sentry to put them out. In the moment
that they remained alight, carefully turned away from
the trenches, it was possible to see the hopeless
condition of the street.
At last we reached a compromise. One lamp we
might have, but covered with heavy paper. It
was very little. The car bumped ominously, sagged
into shell-holes.
I turned and looked back at the house. Faint
rays of light shone through its boarded windows.
A wounded soldier had been brought up the street and
stood, leaning heavily on his companion, at the doorstep.
The door opened, and he was taken in.
Good-bye, little “sick and sorry” house,
with your laughter and tears, your friendly hands,
your open door! Good-bye!
Five minutes later, as we reached the top of the Street,
the bombardment began.
VOLUNTEERS AND PATRIOTS
I hold a strong brief for the English: For the
English at home, restrained, earnest, determined and
unassuming; for the English in the field, equally
all of these things.
The British Army has borne attacks at La Bassee and
Ypres, positions so strategically difficult to hold
that the Germans have concentrated their assaults
at these points. It has borne the horrors of the
retreat from Mons, when what the Kaiser called “General
French’s contemptible little army” was
forced back by oncoming hosts of many times its number.
It has fought, as the English will always fight, with
unequalled heroism but without heroics.
