A Journal of Impressions in Belgium Part 28

[Footnote 23: I record these details (March 11th, 1915) because the Commandant accused me subsequently of a total lack of "balance" upon this occasion.]

[Footnote 24: This is no reflection on Tom's courage. His chief objection was to driving three women so near the German lines. The same consideration probably weighed with the Commandant and M. ----.]

[Footnote 25: The whole thing was a piece of rank insubordination. The Commandant was entirely right to forbid the expedition, and we were entirely wrong in disobeying him. But it was one of those wrong things that I would do again to-morrow.]

[Footnote 26: Antwerp had surrendered on Friday, the 9th.]

[Footnote 27: All the same it was splendidly equipped and managed.]

[Footnote 28: Even now, when I am asked if I did any nursing when I was in Belgium I have to think before I answer: "Only for one morning and one night"--it would still be much truer to say, "I was nursing all the time."]

[Footnote 29: My Day-Book ends abruptly here; and I have no note of the events that followed.]

[Footnote 30: Incorrect. It was, I believe, the uniform of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry Corps.]

[Footnote 31: It was so bad that it made me forget to pack the Commandant's Burberry and his Gillette razors and his pipe.]

[Footnote 32: The Commandant had had an adventure. The Belgian guide mistook the road and brought the car straight into the German lines instead of the British lines where it had been sent. If the Germans hadn't been preoccupied with firing at that moment, the Commandant and Ascot and the Belgian would all have been taken prisoner.]

[Footnote 33: Even now, five months after, I cannot tell whether it was or was not insanity.]

[Footnote 34: It is really dreadful to think of the nuisance we must have been to these dear people on the eve of their own flight.]

[Footnote 35: The Commandant had his own scheme for going back to Ghent, which fortunately he did not carry out.]

[Footnote 36: This girl's courage and self-devotion were enough to establish our innocence--they needed no persuasion. But I still hold myself responsible for her going, since it was my failure to control my obsession that first of all put the idea in her head.]

[Footnote 37: I saw nothing sinister about this arrangement at the time.

It seemed incredible to me that I should not return.]

[Footnote 38: Having saved the suit-case, I guarded it as a sacred thing. But Dr. Hanson's best clothes and her surgical instruments were in the tin box after all.]