My War Experiences in Two Continents Part 14

I am going to take a week's rest before going home, in the hope that I won't arrive looking as ill as I usually do. I hardly know how to celebrate my holiday, as it is the first time since I came out here that I haven't gone to the station except on Sundays.

[Page Heading: SUNDAY]

_23 May, Sunday._--I went to Morning Service at the "Ocean" to-day, then walked back with Prince Alexander. In the evening we drove to the Hoogstadt hospital. The King of the Belgians was just saying good-bye to the staff, after paying a surprise visit. He has a splendid face, and the simplicity of his plain dark uniform makes the strength and goodness of it all the more striking.

As I was waiting at the hospital the Germans began firing at a little village a mile off. It is always strange to hear the sh.e.l.ls whizzing over the fields. We drove out to see the Yser and the floods, which have protected us all the winter. With gla.s.ses one could have seen the German lines.

Spring is coming late, and with a marvel of green. A wind blows in from the sea, and the lilacs nod from over the hedge. The tender corn rustles its soft little chimes, and all across it the wind sends arpeggio chords of delicate music, like a harp played on silver strings. A great big horse-chestnut tree, carrying its flowers proudly like a bouquet, showers the road with petals, and the shy hedges put up a screen all laced and decorated with white may. It just seems as if Mother Earth had become young again, and was tossing her babies up to the summer sky, and the wind played hide-and-seek, or peep-bo, or some other ridiculous game, with them, and made the summer babies as glad and as mischievous as himself. Only the guns boom all the time, and my poor little French Marines, who drink far too much, and have the manners of princes, come in on ambulances in the evening, or at the "poste" a hole is dug for them in the ground, and they are laid down gently in their dirty coats.

Mother Earth, with her new-born babies, stops laughing for a moment, and says to me, "It's all right, my dear; they have to come back to me, as all my children and all their works must do. Why make any complaint? For a time they are happy, playing and building their little castles, and making their little books, and weaving stories and wreaths of flowers; but the stories, the castles, the flowers I gave them, and they themselves, all come back to me at last--the leaves next autumn, and the boy you love perhaps to-morrow."

Oh, Father G.o.d, Mother Earth, as it was in the beginning will it be in the end? Will you give us and them a good time again, and will the spring burst into singing in some other country? I don't know. I don't know.

Only I do know this--I am sure of it now for the first time, and it is worth while spending a long, long winter within the sound of guns in order to know it--that death brings release, not release from mere suffering or pain, but in some strange and unknown way it brings freedom. Soldiers realise it: they have been more terrified than their own mothers will ever know, and their very spines have melted under the shrieking sound of sh.e.l.ls, and then comes the day when they "don't mind." Death stalks just as near as ever, but his face is suddenly quite kind. A stray bullet or a piece of sh.e.l.l may come, but what does it matter? This is the day when the soldier learns to stroll when the shrapnel is falling, and to look up and laugh when the murderous bullet pings close by.

[Page Heading: SOUVENIRS]

War souvenirs! There are heaps of them, and I hate them all; pieces of jagged sh.e.l.l, helmets with bullets through them, pieces of burnt aeroplanes, sc.r.a.ps of clothing rent by a bayonet. Yesterday, at the station, I saw a sick Zouave nursing a German summer casquette. He said quietly, being very sick: "The burgomaster chez moi wanted one. Yes, I had to kill a German officer for it--ce n'est rien de quoi--I got a ball in my leg too, mais mon burgomaster sera tres content d'avoir une casquette d'un boche." Our own men leave their trenches and go out into the open to get these horrible things, with their battered exterior and the suggestion of pomade inside.

Yesterday, by chance, I went to the "Ierlinck" to see Mr. Clegg. I met Mr. Hubert Walter, lately arrived from England, and asked him to dine, so both he and Mr. Clegg came, and Madame van der Gienst. It was _so_ like England to talk to Mr. Walter again, and to learn news of everyone, and we actually sat up till 10.30, and had a great pow-wow.

Mr. Walter attaches great importance to the fact that the Germans are courageous in victory, but their spirits go down at once under defeat, and he thinks that even one decisive defeat would do wonders in the way of bringing the war to an end. The Russians are preparing for a winter campaign. I look at all my "woollies," and wonder if I had better save some for 1916. What new horrors will have been invented by that time? I hear the Germans are throwing vitriol now! In their results I hate hand grenades more than anything. The poor burnt faces which have been wounded by them are hardly human sometimes, and in their bandages they have a suggestion of something tragically grotesque.

_26 May._--We had a great day--rather, a glorious day--at the station yesterday. In the morning I heard that "les anglais" were arriving there, and, although the news was a little startling, I couldn't go early to Ad.i.n.kerke because I felt so seedy. However, I got off at last in a "camion," and when I arrived I found the little station hospital and salle and Lady Bagot's hospital crowded with men in khaki.

We don't know yet all that it means. The fighting has been fierce and awful at Ypres. Are the hospitals at the base all crowded? Is there no more room for our men? What numbers of them have fallen? Who is killed, and who is left?

All questions are idle for the moment. Only I have a postcard to say that Colin is at the front, so I suppose until the war is over I shall go on being very sick with anxiety. At night I say to myself, as the guns boom on, "Is he lying out in the open with a bullet through his heart?" and in the morning I say, "Is he safe in hospital, and wounded, or is he still with his men, making them follow him (in the way he has) wherever he likes to lead them?" G.o.d knows, and the War Office, and neither tells us much.

[Page Heading: GAS-POISONING]

The men at the station were nearly all cases of asphyxiation by gas.

Unless one had actually seen the immediate results one could hardly have credited it. In a day or two the soldiers may leave off twitching and shuddering as they breathe, and may be able to draw a breath fairly, but an hour or two after they have inhaled the deadly German gas is an awful time to see one's men. Most of them yesterday were in bed, but a few sat on canvas chairs round the empty stove in the salle, and all slept, even those in deadly pain. Sleep comes to these tired soldiers like a death.

They succ.u.mb to it. They are difficult to rouse. They are oblivious, and want nothing else. They are able to sleep anywhere and in any position, but even in sleep they twitch and shudder, and their sides heave like those of spent horses.

It struck me very forcibly that what was immediately wanted was a long draught for each of them of some clean, simple stimulant. I went and bought them red wine, and I could see that this seemed to do good, and I went to the barge and got bottles of whisky and a quant.i.ty of distilled water, and we dosed the men. It seemed to do them a wonderful lot of good, and in some way acted as an antidote to the poison. Also, it pulled them together, and they got some quieter sleep afterwards.

Towards the afternoon, indeed, all but one Irishman seemed to be better, and then we began to be cheery, and the scene at the station took colour and became intensely alive. The khaki-clad forms roused themselves, and (of course) wanted a wash. Also, they sat on their beds and produced pocket-combs, and ran them through their hair. In their dirt and rags these poor battered, breathless men began to try to be smart again. It was a tragedy and a comedy all in one. A Highlander, in a shrunk kilt and with long bare legs, had his head bound about with bandages till it looked like a great melon, and his sleeve dangled empty from his great-coat. Others of the Seaforths, and mere boys of the Highland Territorials, wore khaki shirts over their tartan, and these were bullet-torn and hanging in great rents. And some boys still wore their caps with the wee dambrod pattern jauntily, and some had no caps to wear, and some were all daubed about with white bandages stained crimson, and none had hose, and few had brogues. They had breathed poison and received shrapnel, and none of them had slept since Sunday night. They had had an "awful doing," and no one knew how the battle at Ypres had gone, but these were men yet--walking upright when they could, always civil, undismayed, intelligent, and about as like giving in as a piece of granite.

Only the young Scottish boys--the children of seventeen who had sworn in as nineteen--were longing for Loch Lomond's side and the falls of Inversnaid. I believe the Loch Lomond lads believed that the white burn that falls over the rocks near the pier has no rival (although they have heard of Niagara and the Victoria Falls), and it's "oor glen" and "oor country" wi' them all. And one boy wanted his mother badly, and said so.

But oh, how ready they were to be cheery! how they enjoyed their day!

And, indeed, we did our best for them.

[Page Heading: A GARDEN-PARTY]

Lady Bagot's hospital was full, and we called it her garden-party when we all had tea in the open air there. We fed them, we got them handkerchiefs, our good du Pont got them tubs, the cook heaped more coal on the fire, although it was very hot, and made soup in buckets, and then began a curious stage scene which I shall never forget. It was on the platform of the station. A band appeared from somewhere, and, out of compliment to the English, played "G.o.d Save the King." All the dirty bandaged men stood at attention. As they did so an armoured train backed slowly into the station and an aeroplane swooped overhead. At Drury Lane one would have said that the staging had been overdone, that the clothes were too ragged, the men too gaunt and too much wounded, and that by no stretch of imagination could a band be playing "G.o.d save the King" while a square painted train called "Lou-lou" steamed in, looking like a child's giant gaudy toy, and an aeroplane fussed overhead.

Everyone had stories to tell, but I think the best of them concerns the arrival of the wounded last night. All the beds in Lady Bagot's little hospital were full, and the Belgians who occupied them insisted on getting up and giving their places to the English. They lay on the floor or stood on their feet all night, and someone told me that even very sick men leapt from their beds to give them to their Allies.

G.o.d help us, what a mixture it all is! Here were men talking of the very _sound_ of bayonets on human flesh; here were men not only asphyxiated by gas, but blinded by the pepper that the Germans mix with it; and here were men determined to give no quarter--yet they were babbling of Loch Lomond's side and their mothers, and fighting as to who should give up their beds to each other.

Of course the day ended with the exchange of souvenirs, and the soldiers pulled b.u.t.tons off their coats and badges out of their caps. And when it was all over, every mother's son of them rolled round and went to sleep.

Most of them, I thought, had a curious air of innocence about them as they slept.

_27 May._--I took a great bundle of newspapers and magazines to the "Jellicoe" men to-day. English current literature isn't a waste out here, and I often wonder why people don't buy more. They all fall upon my tableful, and generally bear away much of it.

The war news, even in the ever optimistic English press, is _not_ good, but not nearly as bad as what seems to me the real condition of affairs.

The shortage of high explosives is very great. At Nieuport yesterday Mrs. Wynne said to a French officer, "Things seem quiet here to-day," at which he laughed, and said, "I suppose even Germans will stop firing when they know you have no ammunition."

[Page Heading: SLACKERS IN GLASGOW]

In France the armament works are going night and day, and the men work in shifts of 24 hours--even the women only get one day off in a week--while in Glasgow the men are sticking out for strict labour conditions, and are "slacking" from Friday night till late on Tuesday morning, and then demanding extra pay for overtime. And this in face of the bare facts that since October the Allies have lost ground in Russia; in Belgium they remain as they were; and in France they have advanced a few kilometres. At Ypres the Germans are now within a mile of us, and the losses there are terrible. Whom shall we ever see again?

Men come out to die now, not to fight. One order from a sergeant was, "You've got to take that trench. You can't do it. Get on!"

A captain was heard saying to a gunner subaltern: "We must go back and get that gun." The subaltern said, "We shall be killed, but it doesn't matter." The captain echoed heavily, "No, it doesn't matter," and they went back.

Sir William Ramsay, speaking about the war, says that half the adult male population of Europe will be killed before it is over. Those who are left will be the feeble ones, the slackers, the unfit, and the cowards. It is good to be left to breed from such stock!

It is odd to me how confusing is the want of difference that has come to pa.s.s between the living and the not living. Cottages and little towns seem to be part of nature. One regrets their destruction almost as one regrets the loss of life. They have a tragic look, with their dishevelled windows and stripped roofs and skeleton frames. Life has become so cheap that cottages seem almost as valuable. "It doesn't matter"--nothing matters. I rather dread going back to London, because there things may begin to seem important and one will be in bondage again. Here our men are going to their death laughing because it doesn't matter.

There is a proud humility about my countrymen which few people have yet realised. It is the outcome of nursery days and public schools. No one is allowed to think much of himself in either place, so when he dies, "It doesn't matter."

G.o.d help the boys! If they only knew how much it mattered to _us_! Life is over for them. We don't even know for certain that they will live again. But their _spirit_, as I know it, can never die. I am not sure about the survival of personality. I care, but I do not know. But I do know that by these simple, glorious, uncomplaining deaths, some higher, purer, more splendid place is reached, some release is found from the heavy weight of foolish, sticky, burdensome, contemptible things. These heroes do "rise," and we "rise" with them. Could Christ himself desire a better resurrection?

[Page Heading: LARKS]

_28 May._--I am busy getting things prepared for going home--my lecture, two articles, etc. I did not go to the station to-day, but worked till 3 o'clock, and then walked over to St. Idesbald. How I wish I could have been out-of-doors more since I came here. It is such a wonderful country, all sky. No wonder there are painters in Belgium. During the winter it was too wet to see much, and I was always in the kitchen, but now I could kiss the very ground with the little roses on it amongst the Dunes. Larks sing at St. Idesbald, and nightingales. Some fine night I mean to walk out there and listen.

_29 May._--To-day, according to promise, Mr. Bevan took me into Nieuport. It was very difficult to get permission to go there, but Mr.

Bevan got it from the British Mission on the plea that I was going to give lectures at home.

"The worst of going to Nieuport," said Major Tyrell, "is that you won't be likely to see home again."

Mr. Bevan called at 10 o'clock with the faithful MacEwan, and we went first to the Cabour hospital, which I always like so much, and where the large pleasure-grounds make things healthy and quiet for the patients.

Then we had a tyre out of order, so had to go on to Dunkirk, where I met Mr. Sarrel and his friend Mr. Hanson--Vice-Consul at Constantinople--and they lunched with us while the car was being doctored.

At last we started towards Nieuport, but before we got there we found a motor-car in a ditch, and its owner with a cut on his head and his arm broken, so we had to pick him up and take him to c.o.xide. It was a clear, bright day, with all the trees swishing the sky, and Mr. Bevan and MacEwan did nothing all the time but tell me how dangerous it was, and they pointed out every place on the road where they had picked up dead men or found people blown to pieces. This was lively for me, and the amusing part of it was that I think they did it from a belated sense of responsibility.

It is as difficult to find words to describe Nieuport as it is to talk of metaphysics in slang. The words don't seem invented that will convey that haunting sense of desolation, that supreme quiet under the shock of continually firing guns. Hardly anything is left now of the little homely bits that, when I saw the place last autumn, reminded one that this was once a city of living human beings. _Then_ one saw a few interiors--exposed, it is true, and damaged, but still of this world.

Now it is one big grave, the grave of a city, and the grave of many of its inhabitants. Here, at a corner house, nine ladies lie under the piled-up debris that once made their home. There some soldiers met their death, and some crumbling bricks are heaped over them too. The houses are all fallen--some outer walls remain, but I hardly saw a roof left--and everywhere there are empty window-frames and skeleton rafters.

[Page Heading: NIEUPORT]

I never knew so surely that a town can live and can die, and it set one wondering whether Life means a thing as a whole and Death simply disintegration. A perfect crystal, chemists tell us, has the elements of life in it and may be said to live. Destruction and decay mean death; separation and disintegration mean death. In this way we die, a crystal dies, a flower or a city dies. Nieuport is dead. There isn't a heart-beat left to throb in it. Thousands and thousands of sh.e.l.ls have fallen into it, and at night the nightingale sings there, and by day the river flows gently under the ruined bridge. Every tree in a wood near by is torn and beheaded; hardly one has the top remaining. The new green pushes out amongst the blackened trunks.

One speaks low in Nieuport, the place is so horribly dead.