Woman's Experiences in the Great War — Chapters 32-35

THURSDAY

Thursday is a queer day, a day of no beginning and no ending.

It is haunted by such immense noise that it loses all likeness to what we know in ordinary life as "a day"--the thing that comes in between two nights.

It is, in fact, nothing but one cataclysmal bang and shriek of shells and shrapnel.

The earth seems to break open from its centre every five minutes or so, and my brain begins to formulate to itself a tremendous sense of height and space, as well as of noise, until I feel as though I am in touch with the highest skies as well as with the lowest earth, because things that seem to belong essentially to earth are now happening in the skies.

The roof of the world is now enacting a rôle that is just as strange and just as surprising as if the roof of a theatre had suddenly begun to take part in a drama.

One looks above as often as one looks below or around one.

Flinging themselves forward with thin whinging cries like millions of mosquitoes on the attack, the shrapnel rushes perpetually overhead, and the high-explosive shells pour down upon the city, deafening, stupefying, until at last, by the very immensity of their noise, they gradually lose their power to affect one, even though they break all round.

Instead of listening to the bombardment I find myself listening crossly to the creaking of our lift, which makes noises exactly like those of the shrapnel outside.

In fact, when I am in my bedroom, and the lift is going up and down, I really don't know which is lift and which is shrapnel.

* * * * * Seven o'clock on Thursday morning.

The bombardment goes on fiercely, but I forget about it here in the big, bare, smoky café, because I cannot hear the lift.

A waiter brings me some coffee and I stand and drink it and look about me.

The café is surrounded with glass doors, and through these doors I see thousands and thousands of people hurrying for dear life along the roads.

As time goes on their numbers increase, until they are flowing by as steadily as some ceaseless black stream moving Holland-wards.

Men, women, children, nuns, priests, motor cars, carriages, cabs, carts, drays, trolleys, perambulators, every species of human being and of vehicle goes hurrying past the windows, and always the vehicles are laden to the very utmost with their freight of human life.

One's brain reels before the immensity of this thing that is happening here; a city is being evacuated by a million inhabitants; the city is in flames and shells are raining down on it; yet the cook is making soup in the kitchen....

Among the human beings struggling onwards towards the Breda Gate which will lead them to Holland, making strange little notes in the middle of the human beings, I see every now and then some poor pathetic animal, moving along in timid bewilderment--a sheep--a dog--a donkey--a cow--a horse--more cows perhaps than anything, big, simple, wondering cows, trudging along behind desolate little groups of peasants with all their little worldly belongings tied up in a big blue-and-white check handkerchief, while crash over their heads goes on the cannonading from the forts, and with each fresh shock the vast concourse of fleeing people starts and hurries forward.

It seems to me as though the End of the World will be very like to-day.

A huge gun-carriage, crowded with people, is passing.

It is twenty feet long, and drawn by two great, bulky Flemish horses.

Sitting all along the middle, with great wood stakes fixed along the edges to keep them from falling out, are different families getting away into Holland.

Fathers, mothers, children.

Two men go by with a clothes-basket covered with a blanket.

Dozens of beautiful dogs, bereft of their collars in this final parting with their masters, run wildly back and forth along the roads.

A boy with a bicycle is wheeling an old man on it.

Three wounded blue and scarlet soldiers march along desolately, carrying brown paper parcels.

Belgian Boy Scouts in khaki, with yellow handkerchiefs round their necks, flash past on bicycles.

A man pushes a dog-cart with his three children and his wife in it, while the yellow dog trots along underneath, his tongue out.

A black-robed priest rides by, mounted on a great chestnut mare, with a scarlet saddle cloth.

All the dramas of Æschylus pale into insignificance before this scene....

It is more than a procession of human beings.

It is a procession of broken hearts, of torn, bleeding souls, and ruined homes, of desolate lives, of blighted hopes, and grim, grey despair--grim, grey despair in a thousand shapes and forms; and ever It hurries along the roads, ever It blocks the hotel windows, casting its thick shadows as the sun rises in the heavens, defying the black smoke palls that hang athwart the skies.

Sometimes I find tears streaming down my cheeks, and as they splash on my hands I look at them stupidly, and wonder what they are, and why they come, for no one can think clearly now.

Once it is the sight of a little, young, childlike nun, guarding an old, tottering, white-bearded man who is dumb as well as deaf, and who can only walk with short, little, halting steps.

Is she really going to try and get him to Holland, I wonder?

CHAPTER XXXIII THE ENDLESS DAY

Years seem to have passed.

Yet it is still Thursday morning, ten o'clock.

The horror darkens.

We know the worst now.

Antwerp is doomed.

Nothing can save her, poor, beautiful, stately city that has seemed to us all so utterly impregnable all these months.

The evacuation goes on desperately, but the crowds fleeing northwards are diminishing visibly, because some five hundred thousands have already gone.

The great avenues, with their autumn-yellow trees and white, tall, splendid houses, grow bare and deserted.

Over the city creeps a terrible look, an aspect so poignant, so pathetic, that it reminds me of a dying soldier passing away in the flower of his youth.

The very walls of the high white houses, the very flags of the stony grey streets seem to know that Antwerp has fallen victim to a tragic fate; her men, women, and children must desert her; her homes must stand silent, cold and lonely, waiting for the enemy; her great hotels must be emptied; her shops and factories must put up their shutters; all the bright, gay, cheerful, optimistic life of this city that I have grown to love with an indescribable tenderness during the long weeks that I have spent within her fortified area is darkened now with despair.

Of the ultimate arrival of the Germans there is no longer any doubt, whether they take the town on a surrender, or by bombardment, or by assault.

I put on my hat and gloves, and go out into the streets.

Oh, God!

What a golden day!

Unbearable is the glitter of this sunlight shining over the agony of a nation!

CHAPTER XXXIV I DECIDE TO STAY

For the moment the bombardment has ceased entirely.

These little pauses are almost quaint in their preciseness.

One can count on them quite confidently not to be broken by stray shells.

And in the pause I am rushing along the Avenue de Commerce, trying to get round to the hotel where all my belongings are, when I run into three Englishmen with their arms full of bags, and overcoats, and umbrellas, and for a moment or two we stand there at the corner opposite the Gare Central all talking together breathlessly.

It was only last night at seven o'clock that we all dined together at the Terminus; but since then a million years have rolled over us; we have been snatched into one of History's most terrific pages; and we all have a burning breathless Saga of our own hanging on our lips, crying to be told aloud before the world.

We all fling out disjointed remarks, and I hear of the awful night in that quarter of the city.

"How are you going to get away?"

"And you, how are you going to get away?"

The tall, slight young man with the little dark moustache is Mr. Jeffries of the _Daily Mail_, who has been staying at the Hotel de l'Europe.

With him is the popular Mr. Perry Robinson of the _Times_.

The third is Mr. P.

Phillips of the _Daily News_.

"I have just come from the État Majeur," Mr. Jeffries tells me hurriedly.

"There is not a ghost of a hope now!

Everyone has gone.

We must get away at once."

"I am not going," I say.

For suddenly the knowledge has come to me that I cannot leave the greatest of my dramas before the curtain rolls up in the last scene.

In vain they argue, tell me I am mad.

I am not going.

So they say good-bye and leave me.

CHAPTER XXXV THE CITY SURRENDERS

Antwerp has surrendered!

It is Friday morning.

All hope is over.

The Germans are coming in at half-past one.

"Well," Says Mr. Lucien Arthur Jones at last, at the end of a long discussion between him and Mr. Frank Fox and myself, "if you have really decided to stay, I'm going to give you this key!

It belongs to the house of some wealthy Belgians who have fled to England.

There is plenty of food and stores of all kind in the house.

If need be, you might take shelter there!"

And he gave me the key and the address, and I,--luckily for myself,--I remembered it afterwards.

With a queer little choke in my throat, I stood on the hotel door-step, watching those two Englishmen on their bicycles whirling away down the Avenue de Commerce.

In a moment they were swallowed up from my sight in the black pall of cloud and smoke that hung above the city, dropping from the leaden skies like long black fringes, and hovering over the streets like thick funeral veils.

So they were gone!

The die was cast.

I was alone now, all alone in the fated city.

At first, the thought was a little sickening.

But after a minute it gave me a certain amount of relief, as I realised that I could go ahead with my plans without causing anyone distress.

To feel that those two men had been worrying about my safety, and were worrying still, was a very wretched sensation.

They had enough to think of on their own account!

Somehow or other they had now to get to a telegraph wire and send their newspapers in England the story of Antwerp's fall, and the task before them was Herculean.

The nearest wires were in Holland, and they had nothing but their bicycles.

Turning back into the big, dim, deserted restaurant, I went to look for the old patronne, whose black eyes dilated in her sad, old yellow face at the sight of me in my dark blue suit, and white veil floating from my little black hat.

"What, Madame!

But they told me _les deux Anglais_ have departed.

You have not gone with them?"

"Listen, Madame!

I want you to help me.

I am writing a book about the War, and to see the Germans come into Antwerp is something I ought not to miss. I want to stay here!"

"_Mais, c'est dangereux, Madame!

Vous êtes Anglaise!

_" "Well, I'm going to change that; I'm going to be Belgian.

I want you to let me pretend I'm a servant in your hotel.

I'll put on a cap and apron, and I'll do anything you like; then I'll be able to see things for myself.

It'll only be for a few hours.

I'll get away this afternoon in the motor.

But I must see the incoming of the Germans first!"

The old woman seemed too bewildered to protest, and afterwards I doubted if she had really understood me from the way she acted later on.

Just at that moment Henri drove up in the motor, and came to a standstill in front of the hotel.

The poor fellow looked more dead than alive.

His pie-coloured face was hollow, his lips were dry, his eyes standing out of his head.

He was so exhausted that he could scarcely step out of the car.

"I am sorry I am late," he groaned, "but it was impossible, impossible."

"You needn't worry about me, Henri," I whispered to him reassuringly.

"I'm not going to try to get out of Antwerp for several hours.

In fact, I am going to wait to see the Germans come in!"

Henri showed no surprise.

There was no surprise left in him to show.

"Bon!"

he said.

"Because, to tell you the truth, Madame, I wouldn't go out of the city again just now.

I couldn't do it.

Getting to Holland, indeed," he went on, between gasps as he drank off one cup of coffee after another, "it's like trying to get through hell to get to Paradise I've been seven hours driving about four miles there and back.

It was horrible, it ...

was unbelievable ...

the roads are blocked so thick that there are no roads left.

A million people are out there, struggling, fighting, and trying to get onwards, lying down on the earth fainting, dying."

And he suddenly sat down upon a chair, and fell fast asleep.

The sharp crack, crack of rifle fire woke him about five minutes later, and we all rushed to the door to see what was happening.

Oh, nerve-racking sight!

Across the grey square, through the grey-black morning, dogs were rushing, their tongues out.

The gendarmes pursuing them were shooting them down to save them the worse horrors of starvation that might befall them if they were left alive in the deserted city at the mercy of the Germans.

Madame X, a sad, distinguished-looking woman, a refugee from Lierre, whose house had been shelled, and who was destined to play a strange part in my story later on, now came over to us, and implored Henri to take her old mother in his car round to the hospital.

"She is eighty-four, _ma pauvre mère_!

We tried to take her to Holland, but it was impossible.

But now that the bombardment has ceased and the worst is over, it seems wiser to remain.

In the hospital the mère will be surely safe!

As for us, my husband and I, truly, we have lost our all.

There is nothing left to fear!"

I offered to accompany the old lady to the hospital, and presently we started off.

Henri and I, and the old wrinkled Flemish woman, and the buxom young Flemish servant, Jeanette.

We drove along the Avenue de Commerce, down the Avenue de Kaiser, towards the hospital.

The town was dead.

Not a soul was to be seen.

The Marché aux Souliers was all ablaze; I saw the Taverne Royale lying on the ground.

Next to it was the Hotel de l'Europe, bomb-shattered and terrific in its ruins.

I thought of Mr. Jeffries of the _Daily Mail_ and shivered; that had been his hotel.

The air reeked with petroleum and smoke.

At last we got to the hospital.

The door-step was covered with blood, and red, wet blood was in drops and patches along the entrance.

As I went in, an unforgettable sight met my eyes.

I found myself in a great, dim ward, with the yellow, lurid skies looking in through its enormous windows, and its beds full of wounded and dying soldiers; and just as I entered, a white-robed Sister of Mercy was bending over a bed, giving the last unction to a dying man.

Some brave _petit Belge_, who had shed his life-blood for his city, alas, in vain!

All the ordinary nurses had gone.

The Sisters of Mercy alone remained.

And suddenly it came to me like a strain of heavenly music that death held no terrors for these women; life had no fears.

Softly they moved about in their white robes, their benign faces shining with the look of the Cross.

In that supreme moment, after the hell of shot and shell, after the thousands of wounded and dead, after the endless agonies of attack and repulse and attack and defeat and surrender, something quite unexpected was here emerging, the essence of the Eternal Feminine, the woman supreme in her sheer womanhood; and like a bright bird rising from the ashes, the spirit of it went fluttering about that appalling ward.

The trained and untrained hospital nurses, devoted as they were, and splendid and useful beyond all words, had perforce fled from the city, either to accompany their escaping hospitals, or beset by quite natural fears of the Huns' brutality to their kind.

But the Sisters of Mercy had no fears.

The Cross stood between them and anything that might come to them.

And that was written in their faces, their shining gentle faces....

Ah yes, the Priests and the half-forgotten Sisters of Mercy have indeed come back to their own in this greatest of all Wars!

Moving between the long lines of soldiers' beds I paused at the side of a little bomb-broken Belgian boy whose dark eyes opened suddenly to meet mine.

I think he must have been wandering, poor little child, and had come back with a start to life.

And seeing a face at his bedside he thought, perhaps, that I was German.

In a hoarse voice he gasped out, raising himself in terror: "_Je suis civil!

_" Poor child, poor child!

The fright in his voice was heart-breaking.

It said that if the "_Alboches_" took him for a _soldat_, they would shoot him, or carry him away into Germany....

I bent and kissed him.

"_Je suis civil!

_" He was not more than six years old.

* * * * * In another room of the hospital I found about forty children, little children varying from six months to five years.

Some gentle nuns were playing with them.

"Les pauvres petites!"

said one of the sisters compassionately.

"They've all been lost, or left behind; there's no one to claim them, so we have brought them here to look after them."

And the baby gurgled and laughed, and gave a sudden leap in the sweet nun's arms.

Out of the hospital again, over the blood-stained doorstep, and back into the car.

There were a few devoted doctors and priests standing about in silence in the flower-wreathed passage entrance to the hospital.

They were waiting for The End, waiting for the Germans to come in.

I can see them still, standing there in their white coats, or long black cassocks, staring down the passage.

A great hush hung over everything, and through the hush we slid into the awful streets again, with the houses lying on the ground.

Before we had gone far, we heard shouts, and turning my head I discovered some wounded soldiers, limping along a side-road, who were begging us to give them a lift towards the boat.

We filled the car so full that we all had to stand up, except those who could not stand.

Bandaged heads and faces were all around me, while bandaged soldiers rode on the foot-board, clinging to whatever they could get hold of, and then we moved towards the quay.

It was heart-breaking to have to deny the scores of limping, broken men who shouted to us to stop, but as soon as we had deposited one load we went back and picked up others and ran them back to the quay, and that we did time after time.

A few of the men were our own Tommies, but most were Belgians.

Backwards and forwards we rushed, backwards and forwards, and now that dear Henri's eyes were shining, his sallow, pie-coloured face was lit up, he no longer looked tired and dull and heavy, he was on fire with excitement.

And the car raced like mad backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, venturing right out towards the forts and back again to the quay, until at last reaction set in with Henri and he was obliged to take the car back to the hotel, where he fell in a crumpled heap in a corner of the restaurant.

As we came in the patronne handed me a note.

"While you were out," she said, looking at me sorrowfully, "M. Fox and M.

Jones returned on their bicycles to look for you."

Then I read Mr. Fox's kind message.

"We have managed to secure passages on a special military boat for Flushing that leaves at half-past eleven and of course we have got one for you.

We have come back for you, but you are not here.

Your car has arrived, so you will be all right, I hope.

You have seen the bombardment through, bravo!"

I was glad they had got away.

But for myself some absolutely irresistible force held me to Antwerp, and I now slipped quietly out of the hotel and started off on a solitary walk.

CHAPTER XXXVI