Land now—a grey-white line that is the
sand dunes at Ambleteuse, north of Boulogne.
I knew Ambleteuse. It gave a sense of strangeness
to see the old tower at the water’s edge loom
up out of the sea. The sight of land was comforting,
but vigilance was not relaxed. The attacks of
submarines have been mostly made not far outside the
harbours, and only a few days later that very boat
was to make a sensational escape just outside the
harbour of Boulogne.
All at once it was twilight, the swift dusk of the
sea. The boat warped in slowly. I showed
my passport, and at last I was on French soil.
North and east, beyond the horizon, lay the thing I
had come to see.
“Somewhere in France”
Many people have seen Boulogne and have written of
what they have seen: the great hotels that are
now English hospitals; the crowding of transport wagons;
the French signs, which now have English signs added
to them; the mixture of uniforms—English
khaki and French blue; the white steamer waiting at
the quay, with great Red Crosses on her snowy funnels.
Over everything, that first winter of the war, hung
the damp chill of the Continental winter, that chill
that sinks in and never leaves, that penetrates fur
and wool and eats into the spirit like an acid.
I got through the customs without much difficulty.
I had a large package of cigarettes for the soldiers,
for given his choice, food or a smoke, the soldier
will choose the latter. At last after much talk
I got them in free of duty. And then I was footfree.
Here again I realise that I should have encountered
great difficulties. I should at least have had
to walk to Calais, or to have slept, as did one titled
Englishwoman I know, in a bathtub. I did neither.
I took a first-class ticket to Calais, and waited round
the station until a train should go.
And then I happened on one of the pictures that will
stand out always in my mind. Perhaps it was because
I was not yet inured to suffering; certainly I was
to see many similar scenes, much more of the flotsam
and jetsam of the human tide that was sweeping back
and forward over the flat fields of France and Flanders.
A hospital train had come in, a British train.
The twilight had deepened into night. Under the
flickering arc lamps, in that cold and dismal place,
the train came to a quiet stop. Almost immediately
it began to unload. A door opened and a British
nurse alighted. Then slowly and painfully a man
in a sitting position slid forward, pushing himself
with his hands, his two bandaged feet held in the air.
He sat at the edge of the doorway and lowered his
feet carefully until they hung free.
“Frozen feet from the trenches,” said
a man standing beside me.
