A Journal of Impressions in Belgium Part 16

"I _want_ to go on" (placably, almost pathetically). "_Je veux continuer._ Do you by any chance imagine we're _afraid_?"

At this, M. C----, the Belgian guide, smiled too, under a moustache not quite so ferocious as the Army Medical Officer's. They shrugged their shoulders. They had done their duty. Anyhow, they had lost the battle.

The guide and the reporter jumped back into the car; I didn't hear anybody give the order, but the chauffeur Newlands turned her round in no time, and we dashed past the barrier and into Melle.

The village street, that had been raked by mitrailleuses from the field beyond it, was quiet when we came in, and almost deserted. Up a side street, propped against the wall of a stable, four wounded Frenchmen waited for the ambulance. A fifth, shot through the back of his head by a dum-dum bullet, lay in front of them on a stretcher that dripped blood.

I found Mr. Grierson in the village, left behind by the last ambulance.

He was immensely astonished at my arrival with the new car. He had with him an eager little Englishman, one of the sort that tracks an ambulance everywhere on the off-chance of being useful.

And the Cure of the village was there. He wore the Red Cross bra.s.sard on the sleeve of his ca.s.sock and he carried the Host in a little bag of purple silk.

They told me that the village had been fired on by shrapnel a few minutes before we came into it. They said we were only a hundred [?]

yards from the German trenches. We could see the edge of the field from the village street. The trenches [?] were at the bottom of it.

It was Baerlaere all over again. The firing stopped as soon as I came within range of it, and didn't begin again until we had got away.

You couldn't take any interest in the firing or the German trenches, or the eager little Englishman, or anything. You couldn't see anything but those five wounded men, or think of anything but how to get them into the ambulance as painlessly and in as short a time as possible.

The man on the dripping stretcher was mortally wounded. He was lifted in first, very slowly and gently.

The Cure climbed in after him, carrying the Host.

He kneeled there while the blood from the wounded head oozed through the bandages and through the canvas of the stretcher to the floor and to the skirts of his ca.s.sock.

We waited.

There was no ugly haste in the Supreme Act; the three mortal moments that it lasted (it could not have lasted more) were charged with immortality, while the Cure remained kneeling in the pool of blood.

I shall never become a Catholic. But if I do, it will be because of the Cure of Melle, who turned our new motor ambulance into a sanctuary after the French soldier had baptized it with his blood. I have never seen, I never shall see, anything more beautiful, more gracious than the Soul that appeared in his lean, dark face and in the straight, slender body under the black _soutane_. In his simple, inevitable gestures you saw adoration of G.o.d, contempt for death, and uttermost compa.s.sion.

It was all over. I received his missal and his bag of purple silk as he gathered his ca.s.sock about him and came down.

I asked him if anything could be done. His eyes smiled as he answered.

But his lips quivered as he took again his missal and his purple bag.

M. C---- is now glad that we went on to Melle.

We helped the four other wounded men in. They sat in a row alongside the stretcher.

I sat on the edge of the ambulance, at the feet of the dying man, by the handles of the stretcher.

At the last minute the Chaplain jumped on to the step. So did the little eager Englishman. Hanging on to the hood and swaying with the rush of the car, he talked continually. He talked from the moment we left Melle to the moment when we landed him at his street in Ghent; explaining over and over again the qualifications that justified him in attaching himself to ambulances. He had lived fourteen years in Ghent. He could speak French and Flemish.

I longed for the eager little Englishman to stop. I longed for his street to come and swallow him up. He had lived in Ghent fourteen years.

He could speak Flemish and French. I felt that I couldn't bear it if he went on a minute longer. I wanted to think. The dying man lay close behind me, very straight and stiff; his poor feet stuck out close under my hand.

But I couldn't think. The little eager Englishman went on swaying and talking.

He had lived fourteen years in Ghent.

He could speak French and Flemish.

The dying man was still alive when he was lifted out of the ambulance.

He died that evening.

The Commandant is pleased with his new ambulances. He is not altogether displeased with me.

We must have been very quick. For it was the Commandant's car that we pa.s.sed at the fork of the road. And either he arrived a few minutes after we got back or we arrived just as he had got in. Anyhow, we met in the porch.

He and Ursula Dearmer and I went back to Melle again at once, in the new car. It was nearly dark when we got there.

We found Mrs. Torrence and little Janet in the village. They and Dr.

Wilson had been working all day long picking up wounded off the field outside it. The German lines are not far off--at the bottom of the field. I think only a small number of their guns could rake the main street of the village where we were. Their sh.e.l.l went over our heads and over the roofs of the houses towards the French batteries on this side of the village. There must have been a rush from the German lines across this field, and the French batteries have done their work well, for Mrs.

Torrence said the German dead are lying thick there among the turnips.

She and Janet and Dr. Wilson had been under fire for eight hours on end, lifting men and carrying stretchers. I don't know whether their figures (the two girls in khaki tunics and breeches) could be seen from the German lines, but they just trudged on between the furrows, and over the turnip-tops, serenely regardless of the enemy, carefully sorting the wounded from the dead, with the bullets whizzing past their noses.

Of bullets Mrs. Torrence said, indeed, that eight hours of them were rather more than she cared for; and of carrying stretchers over a turnip-field, that it was as much as she and Janet could do. But they came back from it without turning a hair. I have seen women more dishevelled after tramping a turnip-field in a day's partridge-shooting.

They went off somewhere to find Dr. Wilson; and we--Ursula Dearmer, the Commandant and I--hung about the village waiting for the wounded to be brought in. The village was crowded with French and Belgian troops when we came into it. Then they gathered together and went on towards the field, and we followed them up the street. They called to us to stay under cover, or, if we _must_ walk up the street, to keep close under the houses, as the bullets might come flying at us any minute.

No bullets came, however. It was like Baerlaere--it was like Lokeren--it was like every place I've been in, so far. Nothing came as long as there was a chance of its getting me.

After that we drove down to the station. While we were hanging about there, a sh.e.l.l was hurled over this side of the village from the German batteries. It careered over the roofs, with a track that was luminous in the dusk, like a curved sheet of lightning. I don't know where it fell and burst.

We were told to stand out from under the station building for fear it should be struck.

When we got back into the village we went into the inn and waited there in a long, narrow room, lit by a few small oil-lamps and crammed with soldiers. They were eating and drinking in vehement haste. Wherever the light from the lamps fell on them, you saw faces flushed and scarred under a blur of smoke and grime. Here and there a bandage showed up, violently white. On the tables enormous quant.i.ties of bread appeared and disappeared.

These soldiers, with all their vehemence and violence, were exceedingly lovable. One man brought me a chair; another brought bread and offered it. Charming smiles flashed through the grime.

At last, when we had found one man with a wounded hand, we got into the ambulance and went back to Ghent.

[_Sat.u.r.day, 10th._]

I have got something to do again--at last!

I am to help to look after Mr. ----. He has the pick of the Belgian Red Cross women to nurse him, and they are angelically kind and very skilful, but he is not very happy with them. He says: "These dear people are so good to me, but I can't make out what they say. I can't tell them what I want." He is pathetically glad to have any English people with him. (Even I am a little better than a Belgian whom he cannot understand.)

I sat with him all morning. The French boy has gone and he is alone in his room now. It seems that the kind Chaplain sat up with him all last night after his hard day at Melle. (I wish now I had stood by the Chaplain with his Matins. He has never tried to have them again--given us up as an unholy crew, all except Mr. Foster, whom he clings to.)

The morning went like half an hour, while it was going; but when it was over I felt as if I had been nursing for weeks on end. There were so many little things to be done, and so much that you mustn't do, and the anxiety was appalling. I don't suppose there is a worse case in the Hospital. He is perhaps a shade better to-day, but none of the medical staff think that he can live.