A Journal of Impressions in Belgium. Sinclair May
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Little Janet McNeil and Mr. Riley and all the others who were left behind have gone to bed in hopeless gloom. Even the bullet hasn't roused them beyond the first tense moment.
I ask for ink, and dear Max has given me all his in his own ink-pot.
[Monday, 28th.]
We have been here a hundred years.
Car No. 1 went out at eight-thirty this morning, with the Commandant and Dr. Bird and Ursula Dearmer and Mr. Grierson and a Belgian Red Cross guide. With Tom, the chauffeur, that makes six. Tom's face, as he sees this party swarming on his car, is expressive of tumultuous passions. Disgust predominates.
Their clothes seem stranger than ever by contrast with the severe military khaki of the car. Dr. Bird has added to his civilian costume a Belgian forage cap with a red tassel that hangs over his forehead. It was given to him yesterday by way of homage to his courage and his personal charm. But it makes him horribly vulnerable. The Chaplain, standing out from the rest of the Corps in complete khaki, is an even more inevitable mark for bullets. Tom stares at everybody with eyes of violent inquiry. He still evidently wants to know whether we call ourselves a field ambulance. He starts his car with movements of exasperation and despair. We are to judge what his sense of discipline must be since he consents to drive the thing at all.
The Commandant affects not to see Tom. Perhaps he really doesn't see him.
It is just as well that he can't see Mrs. Torrence, or Janet McNeil or Mr. Riley or Dr. Haynes. They are overpowered by this tragedy of being left behind. Under it the discipline of the—— Hospital breaks down. The eighteen-year-old child is threatening to commit suicide or else go home. She regards the two acts as equivalent. Mr. Riley's gloom is now so awful that he will not speak when he is spoken to. He looks at me with dumb hostility, as if he thought that I had something to do with it. Dr. Haynes's melancholy is even more heart-rending, because it is gentle and unexpressed.
I try to console them. I point out that it is a question of arithmetic. There are only two cars and there are fourteen of us. Fourteen into two won't go, even if you don't count the wounded. And, after all, we haven't been here two days. But it is no good. We have been here a hundred years, and we have done nothing. There isn't anything to do. There are not enough wounded to go round. We turn our eyes with longing towards Antwerp, so soon to be battered by the siege-guns from Namur.
And Bert, poor Bert! he has crawled into Ambulance Car No. 2 where it stands outside in the hospital yard, and he has hidden himself under the hood.
Mrs. Lambert is a little sad, too. But we are none of us very sorry for Mrs. Lambert. We have gathered that her husband is a journalist, and that he is special correspondent at the front for some American paper. He has a motor-car which we assume rashly to be the property of his paper. He is always dashing off to the firing-line in it, and Mrs. Lambert is always at liberty to go with him. She is mistaken if she thinks that her sorrow is in any way comparable with ours.
But if there are not enough wounded to go round in Ghent, there are more refugees than Ghent can deal with. They are pouring in by all the roads from Alost and Termonde. Every train disgorges multitudes of them into the Place.
This morning I went to the Matron, Madame F., and told her I wasn't much good, but I'd be glad if she could give me some work. I said I supposed there was some to be done among the refugees.
Work? Among the refugees? They could employ whole armies of us. There are thousands of refugees at the Palais des Fêtes. I had better go there and see what is being done. Madame will give me an introduction to her sister-in-law, Madame F., the Présidente of the Comité des Dames, and to her niece, Mademoiselle F., who will take me to the Palais.
And Madame adds that there will soon be work for all of us in the Hospital. Yes: even for the untrained.
Life is once more bearable.
But the others won't believe it. They say there are three hundred nurses in the hospital.
And the fact remains that we have two young surgeons cooling their heels in the corridors, and a fully-trained nurse tearing her hair out, while the young girl, Ursula Dearmer, takes the field.
And I think of the poor little dreamy, guileless Commandant in his conspicuous car, and I smile at her in secret, thanking Heaven that it's Ursula Dearmer and not Mrs. Torrence who is at his side.
The ambulance has come back from Alost with two or three wounded and some refugees. The Commandant is visibly elated, elated out of all proportion to the work actually done. Ursula Dearmer is not elated in the very least, but she is wide-awake. Her docility has vanished with her torpor. She and the Commandant both look as if something extremely agreeable had happened to them at Alost. But they are reticent. We gather that Ursula Dearmer has been working with the nuns in the Convent at Alost, where the wounded were taken before the ambulance cars removed them to Ghent. It sounded very safe.
But the Commandant dashed into my room after luncheon. His face was radiant, almost ecstatic. He was like a child who has rushed in to tell you how ripping the pantomime was.
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