My War Experiences in Two Continents Part 1

My War Experiences in Two Continents.

by Sarah Macnaughtan.

PREFACE

In presenting these extracts from the diaries of my aunt, the late Miss Macnaughtan, I feel it necessary to explain how they come to be published, and the circ.u.mstances under which I have undertaken to edit them.

After Miss Macnaughtan's death, her executors found among her papers a great number of diaries. There were twenty-five closely written volumes, which extended over a period of as many years, and formed an almost complete record of every incident of her life during that time.

It is amazing that the journal was kept so regularly, as Miss Macnaughtan suffered from writer's cramp, and the entries could only have been written with great difficulty. Frequently a pa.s.sage is begun in the writing of her right, and finished in that of her left hand, and I have seen her obliged to grasp her pencil in her clenched fist before she was able to indite a line. In only one volume, however, do we find that she availed herself of the services of her secretary to dictate the entries and have them typed.

The executors found it extremely difficult to know how to deal with such a vast ma.s.s of material. Miss Macnaughtan was a very reserved woman.{1} She lived much alone, and the diary was her only confidante. In one of her books she says that expression is the most insistent of human needs, and that the inarticulate man or woman who finds no outlet in speech or in the affections, will often keep a little locked volume in which self can be safely revealed. Her diary occupied just such a place in her own inner life, and for that reason one hesitates to submit its pages even to the most loving and sympathetic scrutiny.

But Miss Macnaughtan's diary fulfilled a double purpose. She used it largely as material for her books. Ideas for stories, fragments of plays and novels, are sketched in on spare sheets, and the pages are full of the original theories and ideas of a woman who never allowed anyone else to do her thinking for her. A striking sermon or book may be criticised or discussed, the pros and cons of some measure of social reform weighed in the balance; and the actual daily chronicle of her busy life, of her travels, her various experiences and adventures, makes a most interesting and fascinating tale.

So much of the material was obviously intended to form the basis for an autobiography that the executors came to the conclusion that it would be a thousand pities to withhold it from the public, and at some future date it is very much hoped to produce a complete life of Miss Macnaughtan as narrated in her diaries. Meanwhile, however, the publisher considers that Miss Macnaughtan's war experiences are of immediate interest to her many friends and admirers, and I have been asked to edit those volumes which refer to her work in Belgium, at home, in Russia, and on the Persian front.

Except for an occasional word where the meaning was obscure, I have added nothing to the diaries. I have, of course, omitted such pa.s.sages as appeared to be private or of family interest only; but otherwise I have contented myself with a slight rearrangement of some of the paragraphs, and I have inserted a few letters and extracts from letters, which give a more interesting or detailed account of some incident than is found in the corresponding entry in the diary. With these exceptions the book is published as Miss Macnaughtan wrote it. I feel sure that her own story of her experiences would lose much of its charm if I interfered with it, and for this reason I have preserved the actual diary form in which it was written.

To many readers of Miss Macnaughtan's books her diaries of the war may come as a slight surprise. There is a note of depression and sadness, and perhaps even of criticism, running through them, which is lacking in all her earlier writings. I would remind people that this book is the work of a dying woman; during the whole of the period covered by it, the author was seriously ill, and the horror and misery of the war, and the burden of a great deal of personal sorrow, have left their mark on her account of her experiences.

I should like to thank those relations and friends of Miss Macnaughtan who have allowed me to read and publish the letters incorporated in this book, and I gratefully acknowledge the help and advice I have received in my task from my mother, from my husband, and from Miss Hilda Powell, Mr. Stenning, and Mr. R. Sommerville. I desire also to express my grat.i.tude to Mr. John Murray for many valuable hints and suggestions about the book, and for the trouble he has so kindly taken to help me to prepare it for the press.

BETTY SALMON.

ZILLEBEKE, WALTHAM ST. LAWRENCE, TWYFORD, BERKSHIRE, _October, 1918._

MY WAR EXPERIENCES IN TWO CONTINENTS

PART I

BELGIUM

CHAPTER I

ANTWERP

On September 20th, 1914, I left London for Antwerp. At the station I found I had forgotten my pa.s.sport and Mary had to tear back for it.

Great perturbation, but kept this dark from the rest of the staff, for they are all rather serious and I am head of the orderlies. We got under way at 4 a.m. next morning. All instantly began to be sick. I think I was the worst and alarmed everybody within hearing distance. One more voyage I hope--home--then dry land for me.

We arrived at Antwerp on the 22nd, twenty-four hours late. The British Consul sent carriages, etc., to meet us. Drove to the large Philharmonic Hall, which has been given us as a hospital. Immediately after breakfast we began to unpack beds, etc., and our enormous store of medical things; all feeling remarkably empty and queer, but put on heroic smiles and worked like mad. Some of the staff is housed in a convent and the rest in rooms over the Philharmonic Hall.

_23 September._--Began to get things into order and to allot each person her task. Our unit consists of Mrs. St. Clair Stobart, its head; Doctors Rose Turner, F. Stoney, Watts, Morris, Hanson and Ramsey (all women); orderlies--me, Miss Randell (interpreter), Miss Perry, d.i.c.k, Stanley, Benjamin, G.o.dfrey,{2} Donnisthorpe, Cunliffe, and Mr. Glade. Everyone very zealous and inclined to do anybody's work except their own. Keen compet.i.tion for everyone else's tools, brooms, dusters, etc. Great roaming about. All mean well.

_25 September._--Forty wounded men were brought into our hospital yesterday. Fortunately we had everything ready, but it took a bit of doing. We are all dead tired, and not so keen as we were about doing other people's work.

The wounded are not very bad, and have been sent on here from another hospital. They are enchanted with their quarters, which indeed do look uncommonly nice. One hundred and thirty beds are ranged in rows, and we have a bright counterpane on each and clean sheets. The floor is scrubbed, and the bathrooms, store, office, kitchens, and receiving-rooms have been made out of nothing, and look splendid. I never saw a hospital spring up like magic in this way before. There is a wide verandah where the men play cards, and a garden to stump about in.

The grat.i.tude of our patients is boundless, and they have presented Mrs.

Stobart with a beautiful basket of growing flowers. I do not think Englishmen would have thought of such a thing. They say they never tasted such cooking as ours outside Paris, and they are rioting in good food, papers, nice beds, etc. Nearly all of them are able to get out a little, so it is quite cheery nursing them. There is a lot to do, and we all fly about in white caps. The keenest compet.i.tion is for sweeping out the ward with a long-handled hair brush!

[Page Heading: THE DEFENCES OF THE TOWN]

I went into the town to-day. It is very like every other foreign town, with broad streets and tram-lines and shops and squares, but to-day I had an interesting drive. I took a car and went out to the second line of forts. The whole place was a ma.s.s of wire entanglements, mined at every point, and the fields were studded with strong wooden spikes.

There were guns everywhere, and in one place a whole wood and a village had been laid level with the ground to prevent the enemy taking cover.

We heard the sound of firing last night!

_To Mrs. Keays-Young._

RUE DE L'HARMONIE 68, ANTWERP, _25 September._

DEAREST BABE,

It was delightful getting your letter. Our wounded are all French or Belgians, but there is a bureau of enquiry in the town where I will go to try to hear tidings of your poor friends.

We heard the guns firing last night, and fifty wounded were sent in during the afternoon. In one day 2,500 wounded reached Antwerp. I can write this sort of thing to-day as I know my letter will be all right.

To show you that the fighting is pretty near, two doctors went for a short motor drive to-day and they found two wounded men. One was just dying, the other they brought back in the car, but he died also. In the town itself everything seems much as usual except for crowds of refugees. Do not believe people when they say German barbarity is exaggerated. It is hideously true.

We are fearfully busy, and it seems a queer side of war to cook and race around and make doctors as comfortable as possible. We have a capital staff, who are made up of zeal and muscle. I do not know how long it can last. We breakfast at 7.30, which means that most of the orderlies are up at 5.45 to prepare and do everything. The fare is very plain and terribly wholesome, but hardly anyone grumbles. I am trying to get girls to take two hours off duty in the day, but they won't do it.

Have you any friends who would send us a good big lot of nice jam? It is for the staff. If you could send some cases of it at once to Miss Stear, 39, St. James's Street, London, and put my name on it, and say it is for our hospital, she will bring it here herself with some other things.

Some of your country friends might like to help in a definite little way like this.

Your loving SARAH.

---- is going to England to-night and will take this.

_27 September._--Yesterday, when we were in the town, a German airship flew overhead and dropped bombs. A lot of guns fired at it, but it was too high up to hit. The incident caused some excitement in the streets.

[Page Heading: ARRIVAL OF WOUNDED]

Last night we heard that more wounded were coming in from the fighting-line near Ghent. We got sixty more beds ready, and sat up late, boiling water, sterilising instruments, preparing operating-tables and beds, etc., etc. As it got later all the lights in the huge ward were put out, and we went about with little torches amongst the sleeping men, putting things in order and moving on tip-toe in the dark. Later we heard that the wounded might not get in till Monday.

The work of this place goes on unceasingly. We all get on well, but I have not got the communal spirit, and the fact of being a unit of women is not the side of it that I find most interesting. The communal food is my despair. I can _not_ eat it. All the same this is a fine experience, and I hope we'll come well out of it. There is boundless opportunity, and we are in luck to have a chance of doing our darndest.

_28 September._--Last night I and two orderlies slept over at the hospital as more wounded were expected. At 11 p.m. word came that "les blesses" were at the gate. Men were on duty with stretchers, and we went out to the tram-way cars in which the wounded are brought from the station, twelve patients in each. The transit is as little painful as possible, and the stretchers are placed in iron brackets, and are simply unhooked when the men arrive. Each stretcher was brought in and laid on a bed in the ward, and the nurses and doctors undressed the men.