A Woman's Experiences in the Great War — Context and Discussion

CHAPTER I. CROSSING THE CHANNEL II. ON THE WAY TO ANTWERP III. GERMANS ON THE LINE IV. IN THE TRACK OF THE HUNS V. AERSCHOT VI. RETRIBUTION VII. THEY WOULD NOT KILL THE COOK VIII. "YOU'LL NEVER GET THERE" IX. SETTING OUT ON THE GREAT ADVENTURE X. FROM GHENT TO GRAMMONT XI. BRABANT XII. DRIVING EXTRAORDINARY XIII. THE LUNCH AT ENGHIEN XIV. WE MEET THE GREY-COATS XV. FACE TO FACE WITH THE HUNS XVI. A PRAYER FOR HIS SOUL XVII. BRUSSELS XVIII. BURGOMASTER MAX XIX. HIS ARREST XX. GENERAL THYS XXI. HOW MAX HAS INFLUENCED BRUSSELS XXII. UNDER GERMAN OCCUPATION XXIII. CHANSON TRISTE XXIV. THE CULT OF THE BRUTE XXV. DEATH IN LIFE XXVI. THE RETURN FROM BRUSSELS XXVII. "THE ENGLISH ARE COMING" XXVIII. MONDAY XXIX. TUESDAY XXX. WEDNESDAY XXXI. THE CITY IS SHELLED XXXII. THURSDAY XXXIII. THE ENDLESS DAY XXXIV. I DECIDE TO STAY XXXV. THE CITY SURRENDERS XXXVI. A SOLITARY WALK XXXVII. ENTER LES ALLEMANDS XXXVIII. "MY SON!" XXXIX. THE RECEPTION XL. THE LAUGHTER OF BRUTES XLI. TRAITORS XLII. WHAT THE WAITING MAID SAW XLIII. SATURDAY XLIV. CAN I TRUST THEM? XLV. A SAFE SHELTER XLVI. THE FLIGHT INTO HOLLAND XLVII. FRIENDLY HOLLAND XLVIII. FRENCH COOKING IN WAR TIME XLIX. THE FIGHT IN THE AIR L. THE WAR BRIDE LI. A LUCKY MEETING LII. THE RAVENING WOLF LIII. BACK TO LONDON

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE AUTHOR _Frontispiece_ AN ORDER FROM THE BELGIAN WAR OFFICE A FRIENDLY CHAT PASSPORT FROM THE AUSTRALIAN HIGH COMMISSIONER THE AMERICAN SAFEGUARD A SPECIAL PERMIT BELGIAN REFUGEES IN HOLLAND THE DANISH DOCTOR'S NOTE MY HOSTS IN HOLLAND SOUP FOR THE REFUGEES PERMIT TO DUNKIRK SKETCH MAP OF BELGIUM

A WOMAN'S EXPERIENCES IN THE GREAT WAR

"What do you do for mines?"

I put the question to the dear old salt at Folkestone quay, as I am waiting to go on board the boat for Belgium, this burning August night.

The dear old salt thinks hard for an answer, very hard indeed.

Then he scratches his head.

"There ain't none!" he makes reply.

All the same, in spite of the dear old salt, I feel rather creepy as the boat starts off that hot summer night, and through the pitch-black darkness we begin to plough our way to Ostend.

Over the dark waters the old English battleships send their vivid flashes unceasingly, but it is not a comfortable feeling to think you may be blown up at any minute, and I spend the hours on deck.

I notice our little fair-bearded Belgian captain is looking very sad and dejected.

"They're saying in Belgium now that our poor soldiers are getting all the brunt of it," he says despondently to a group of sympathetic War-Correspondents gathered round him on deck, chattering, and trying to pick up bits of news.

"But that will all be made up," says Mr. Martin Donohue, the Australian War-Correspondent, who is among the crowd. "All that you lose will be given back to Belgium before long."

"_But they cannot give us back our dead_," the little captain answers dully.

And no one makes reply to that.

There is no reply to make.

It is four o'clock in the morning, instead of nine at night, when we get to Ostend at last, and the first red gleams of sunrise are already flashing in the east.

We leave the boat, cross the Customs, and, after much ringing, wake up the Belgian page-boy at the Hotel. In we troop, two English nurses, twenty War-Correspondents, and an "Australian Girl in Belgium."

Rooms are distributed to us, great white lofty rooms with private bathrooms attached, very magnificent indeed.

Then, for a few hours we sleep, to be awakened by a gorgeous morning, golden and glittering, that shews the sea a lovely blue, but a very sad deserted town.

Once she had been the very gayest of birds; but now her feathers are stripped, she is bare and shivery. Her big, white, beautiful hotels have dark blinds over all their windows. Her long line of blank, closed fronts of houses and hotels seems to go on for miles. Just here and there one is open. But for the most, everything is dead; and indeed, it is almost impossible to recognise in this haunted place the most brilliant seaside city in Europe.

It is only half-past seven; but all Ostend seems up and about as I enter the big salon and order coffee and rolls.

Suddenly a noise is heard,--shouts, wheels, something indescribable.

Everyone jumps up and runs down the long white restaurant.

Out on the station we run, and just then a motor dashes past us, coming right inside, under the station roof.

My blood turns suddenly cold. I have never seen a wounded soldier before. I remember quite well I said to myself, "Then it is true. I had never really believed before!"

Now they are lifting him out, oh, so tenderly, these four other big, burly Belgians, and they have laid him on a stretcher.

He lies there on his back. His face is quite red. He has a bald head. He doesn't look a bit like my idea of a wounded soldier, and his expression remains unchanged. It is still the quiet, stolid, patient Belgian look that one sees in scores, in hundreds, all around.

And now they are carrying him tenderly on to the Red Cross ship drawn up at the station pier, and after a while we all go back and try and finish our coffee.

Barely have we sat down again before more shouts are heard.

Immediately, everybody is up and out on to the station, and another motor car, full of soldiers, comes dashing in under the great glassed roofs.

Excitement rises to fever heat now.

Out of the car is dragged a _German_.

And one can never forget one's first German. Never shall I forget that wounded Uhlan! One of his hands is shot off, his face is black with smoke and dirt and powder, across his cheek is a dark, heavy mark where a Belgian had struck him for trying to throttle one of his captors in the car.

He is a wretch, a brute. He has been caught with the Red Cross on one arm, and a revolver in one pocket. But there is yet something cruelly magnificent about the fellow, as he puts on that tremendous swagger, and marches down the long platform between two lines of foes to meet his fate.

As he passes very close to me, I look right into his face, and it is imprinted on my memory for all time.

He is a big, typical Uhlan, with round close-cropped head, blue eyes, arrogant lips, large ears, big and heavy of build. But what impresses me is that he is no coward.

He knows his destiny. He will be shot for a certainty--shot for wearing the Red Cross while carrying weapons. But he really is a splendid devil as he goes strutting down the long platform between the gendarmes, all alone among his enemies, alone in the last moments of his life. Then a door opens. He passes in. The door shuts. He will be seen no more!

All is panic now. We know the truth. The Germans have made a sudden sortie, and are attacking just at the edge of Ostend.

The gendarmes are fighting them, and are keeping them back.

Then a boy scout rushes in on a motor cycle, and asks for the Red Cross to be sent out at once; and then and there it musters in the dining-room of the Hotel, and rushes off in motor cars to the scene of action.

Then another car dashes in with another Uhlan, who has been shot in the back.

And now I watch the Belgians lifting their enemy out. All look of fight goes out of their faces, as they raise him just as gently, just as tenderly as they have raised their own wounded man a few moments ago, and carry him on to their Red Cross ship, just as carefully and pitifully.

"Quick! Quick!" A War-Correspondent hastens up. "There's not a minute to lose. The Kaiser has given orders that all English War-Correspondents will be shot on sight. The Germans will be here any minute. They will cut the telegraph wires, stop the boats, and shoot everyone connected with a newspaper."

The prospect finally drives us, with a panic-stricken crowd, on to the boat. And so, exactly six hours after we landed, we rush back again to England. Among the crowd are Italians, Belgians, British and a couple of Americans. An old Franciscan priest sits down, and philosophically tucks into a hearty lunch. Belgian priests crouch about in attitudes of great depression.

They know how the Germans treat priests in this well-named "Holy War!"

ON THE WAY TO ANTWERP

A couple of days afterward, however, feeling thoroughly ashamed of having fled, and knowing that Ostend was now reinforced by English Marines, I gathered my courage together once more, and returned to Belgium.

This time, so that I should not run away again so easily, I took with me a suit-case, and a couple of trunks.

These trunks contained clothes enough to last a summer and a winter, the MS. of a novel--"Our Marriage," which had appeared serially, and all my chiffons.

In fact I took everything I had in my wardrobe. I thought it was the simplest thing to do. So it was. But it afterwards proved an equally simple way of losing all I had.

Getting back to Ostend, I left my luggage at the Maritime Hotel, and hurried to the railway station.

I had determined to go to Antwerp for the day and see if it would be possible to make my headquarters in that town.

"Pas de train!" said the ticket official.

"_C'est la guerre, Madame!_"

That was the answer one received to all one's queries in those days.

If you asked why the post had not come, or why the boat did not sail for England, or why your coffee was cold, or why your boots were not cleaned, or why your window was shut, or why the canary didn't sing,--you would always be sure to be told, "c'est la guerre!"

Next morning, however, the train condescended to start, and three hours after its proper time we steamed away from Ostend.

Slowly, painfully, through the hot summer day, our long, brown train went creeping towards Anvers!

The very name had grown into an emblem of hope in those sad days, when the Belgians were fleeing for their lives towards the safety of their great fortified city on the Scheldt.

Oh, to see them at every station, crushing in! In they crowd, and in they crowd, herding like dumb, driven cattle; and always the poor, white-faced women with their wide, innocent eyes, had babies in their arms, and little fair-haired Flemish children hanging to their skirts. Wherever we stopped, we found the platforms lined ten deep, and by the wildness with which these fugitives fought their way into the crowded carriages, one guessed at the pent-up terror in those poor hearts! They _must_, they _must_ get into that train! You could see it was a matter of life and death with them. And soon every compartment was packed, and on we went through the stifling, blinding August day--onwards towards Antwerp.

But when a soldier came along, how eager everyone was to find a place for him! Not one of us but would gladly give up our seat to any _soldat_! We would lean from the windows, and shout out loudly, almost imploringly, "Here, soldat! _Here!_" And when two wounded men from Malines appeared, we performed absolute miracles of compression in that long, brown train. We squeezed ourselves to nothing, we stood in back rows on the seats, while front rows sat on our toes, and the passage between the seats was packed so closely that one could scarcely insert a pin, and still we squeezed ourselves, and still fresh passengers came clambering in, and so wonderful was the spirit of goodwill abroad in these desperate days in Belgium, that we kept on making room for them, even when there was absolutely no more room to make!

Then a soldier began talking, and how we listened.

Never did priest, or orator, get such a hearing as that little blue-coated Belgian, white with dust, clotted with blood and mud, his yellow beard weeks old on his young face, with his poor feet in their broken boots, the original blue and red of his coat blackened with smoke, and hardened with earth where he had slept among the beet-roots and potatoes at Malines.

He told us in a faint voice: "I often saw King Albert when I was fighting near Malines. Yes, he was there, our King! He was fighting too, I saw him many times, I was quite near him. Ah, he has a bravery and magnificence about him! I saw a shell exploding just a bare yard from where he was. Over and over again I saw his face, always calm and resolute. I hope all is well with him," he ended falteringly, "but in battle one knows nothing!"

"Yes, yes, all is well," answered a dozen voices. "King Albert is back at Antwerp, and safe with the Queen!"

A look of radiant happiness flashed over the poor fellow's face as he heard that.

Then he made us all laugh.

He said: "For two days I slept out in the fields, at first among the potatoes and the beet-roots. And then I came to the asparagus." He drew himself up a bit. "_Savez-vous_? The asparagus of Malines! It is the best asparagus in the world? _C'est ça! AND I SLEPT ON IT, ON THE MALINES ASPARAGUS!_"

About noon that day we had arrived close to Ghent, when suddenly the train came to a standstill, and we were ordered to get out and told to wait on the platform.

"Two hours to wait!" the stationmaster told us.

The grey old city of Ghent, calm and massive among her monuments, looked as though war were a hundred miles away. The shops were all open. Business was being briskly done. Ladies were buying gloves and ribbons, old wide-bearded gentlemen were smoking their big cigars. Here and there was a Belgian officer. The shops were full of English papers.

I went into the Cathedral. It was Saturday morning, but great crowds of people, peasants, bourgeoisie and aristocracy, were there praying and telling their rosaries, and as I entered, a priest was finishing his sermon.

"Remember this, my children, remember this," said the little priest. "Only silence is great, the rest is weakness!"

It has often seemed to me since that those words hold the key-note to the Belgian character.

"_Seul la silence est grande; la reste est faiblesse._"

For never does one hear a Belgian complain!

At last, over the flat, green country, came a glimpse of Antwerp, a great city lying stretched out on the flat lands that border the river Scheldt.

From the train-windows one saw a bewildering mass of taxi-cabs all gathered together in the middle of the green fields at the city's outskirts, for all the taxi-cabs had been commandeered by the Government. And near them was a field covered with monoplanes and biplanes, a magnificent array of aircraft of every kind, with the sunlight glittering over them like silver; they were all ready there to chase the Zeppelin when it came over from Cologne, and in the air-field a ceaseless activity went on.

Slowly and painfully our train crept into Antwerp station. The pomp and spaciousness of this building, with its immense dome-like roof, was very striking. It was the second largest station in the world. And in those days it had need to be large, for the crowds that poured out of the trains were appalling. All the world seemed to be rushing into the fortified town. Soldiers were everywhere, and for the first time I saw men armed to the teeth, with bayonets drawn, looking stern and implacable, and I soon found it was a very terrible affair to get inside the city. I had to wait and wait in a dense crowd for quite an hour before I could get to the first line of Sentinels. Then I shewed my passport and papers, while two Belgian sentinels stood on each side of me, their bayonets horribly near my head.

Out in the flagged square I got a fiacre, and started off for a drive.

My first impression of Antwerp, as I drove through it that golden day, was something never, never to be forgotten.

As long as I live I shall see that great city, walled in all round with magnificent fortifications, standing ready for the siege. Along the curbstones armed guards were stationed, bayonets fixed, while dense crowds seethed up and down continually. In the golden sunlight thousands of banners were floating in the wind, enormous banners of a size such as I had never seen before, hanging out of these great, white stately houses along the avenues lined with acacias. There were banners fluttering out of the shops along the Chaussée de Malines, banners floating from the beautiful cathedral, banners, banners, everywhere. Hour after hour I drove, and everywhere there were banners, golden, red and black, floating on the breeze. It seemed to me that that black struck a curiously sombre note--almost a note of warning, and I confess that I did not quite like it, and I even thought to myself that if I were a Belgian, I would raise heaven and earth to have the black taken out of my national flag. Alas, one little dreamed, that golden summer day, of the tragic fate that lay in wait for Antwerp! In those days we all believed her utterly impregnable.

After a long drive, I drove to the Hotel Terminus to get a cup of tea and arrange for my stay.

It gave me a feeling of surprise to walk into a beautiful, palm-lined corridor, and see people sitting about drinking cool drinks and eating ices. There were high-spirited dauntless Belgian officers, in their picturesque uniforms, French and English business men, and a sprinkling of French and English War-Correspondents. A tall, charming grey-haired American lady with the Red Cross on her black chiffon sleeve was having tea with her husband, a grey-moustached American Army Doctor. These were Major and Mrs. Livingstone Seaman, a wealthy philanthropic American couple, who were devoting their lives and their substance to helping Red Cross work.

Suddenly a man came towards me.

"You don't remember me," he said. "You are from Australia! I met you fifteen years ago in Sydney."

It was a strange meeting that, of two Australians, who were destined later on to face such terrific odds in that city on the Scheldt.

"My orders are," Mr. Frank Fox told me as we chatted away, "to stick it out. Whatever happens, I've got to see it through for the _Morning Post_."

"And I'm going to see it through, too," I said.

"Oh no!" said Mr. Fox. "You'll have to go as soon as trouble threatens!"

"Shall I?" I thought.

But as he was a man and an Australian, I did not think it was worth while arguing the matter with him. Instead, we talked of Sydney, and old friends across the seas, the Blue mountains, and the Bush, and our poets and writers and painters and politicians, friends of long ago, forgetting for the moment that we were chatting as it were on the edge of a crater.

I was coming back with my luggage from Ostend next day when the train, which had been running along at a beautiful speed, came to a standstill somewhere near Bruges.

There was a long wait, and at last it became evident that something was wrong.

A brilliant-looking Belgian General, accompanied by an equally brilliant Belgian Captain, who had travelled up in the train with me from Ostend, informed me courteously, that it was doubtful if the train would go on to-day.

"What has happened?" I asked.

"_Les Allemands sont sur la ligne!_" was the graphic answer.

With the Belgians' courteous assistance, I got down my suit-case, and a large brown paper parcel, for of course in those day, no one thought anything of a brown paper parcel; in fact it was quite the correct thing to be seen carrying one, no matter who you were, king, queen, general, prince, or War-Correspondent.

"Do you see that station over there?" Le Capitaine said. "Well, in a few hours' time, a train _may_ start from there, and run to Antwerp But it will not arrive at the ordinary station. It will go as far as the river, and then we shall get on board a steamer, and cross the river, and shall arrive at Antwerp from the quay."