As we drew up and the policeman saw the crutches, he said: "I"m sorry, sir, I didn"t see your crutches, or I wouldn"t have pulled you up." The friend, who happened to be wearing his leg, said, "Oh, they aren"t mine, they belong to this lady." The good policeman was temporarily speechless. When at last he got his wind he was full of concern. "You don"t say, sir? Well, I _never_ did. Don"t you take on, _we_ won"t run you in, Miss," he added consolingly, turning to me. "I"ll fix the stop-watch man." I was beginning to enjoy myself immensely. He regarded us for some minutes and made a round of the car. "Well," he said at last, "_I_ call you a couple o" sports!" We were convulsed!
At that moment the stop-watch man hurried up, looking very serious, and I watched the expression on his face change to one of concern as the policeman told him the tale.
"We won"t run you in, not us," he declared stoutly, in concert with the policeman.
"What were we doing?" I asked, as he looked at his stop-watch.
"Thirty and a fraction over," he replied. "Only thirty!" I exclaimed, in a disappointed voice, "I thought we were doing _at least_ forty!"
"First time anyone"s ever said that to _me_, Miss," he said; "it"s usual for them to swear it wasn"t a mile above twenty!"
"A couple o" sports," the policeman murmured again.
"I think _you"re_ the couple of sports," I said laughing.
"Well," said the stop-watch man, lifting his cap, "we won"t keep you any longer, Miss, a pleasant afternoon to you, and (with a knowing look) there"s _nothing_ on the road from here to Cobham!"
Of course the Morgan broke all records after that!
Unfortunately, in July, I was obliged to undergo an operation on my right foot, where it had been injured. By great good luck it was arranged to be done in the sister"s sick ward at the hospital. It was not successful though, and at the end of August a second was performed, bringing the total up to six, by which time I loathed chloroform more than anything else on earth.
Before I returned to the convent again, the King and Queen with Princess Mary came down to inspect the hospital.
It was an imposing picture. The sisters and nurses in their white caps and ap.r.o.ns lined the steps of the old red-brick, Georgian House, while on the lawn six to seven hundred limbless Tommies were grouped, forming a wonderful picture in their hospital blue against the green.
I was placed with the officers under the beautiful cedar trees and had a splendid view, while on the left the different limb makers had models of their legs and arms. The King and Queen were immensely interested and watched several demonstrations, after which they came and shook each one of us by hand, speaking a few words. I was immensely struck by the King"s voice and its deep resonant qualities. It is wonderful, in view of the many thousands he interviews, that to each individual he gives the impression of a real personal interest.
I soon returned to the convent, and there in the beautiful gardens diligently practised walking with the help of two sticks. The joy of being able to get about again was such that I could have wept. The Tommies at the hospital took a tremendous interest in my progress.
"Which one is it?" they would call as I went there each morning. "Pick it up, Miss, pick it up!" (one trails it at first). The fitter was a man of most wonderful patience and absolutely untiring in his efforts to do any little thing to ease the fitting. I often wonder he did not brain his more fussy patients with their wooden legs and have done with it!
"Got your knee, Miss?" the men would call sometimes. "You"re lucky."
When I saw men who had lost an arm and sometimes both legs, from above the knee too, I realised just how lucky I was. They were all so splendidly cheerful. I knew too well from my own experience what they must have gone through; and again I could only pray that something good would come out of all this untold suffering, and that these men would not be forgotten by a grateful country when peace reigned once more.
I often watched them playing bowls on the lawn with a marvellous dexterity--a one-armed man holding the chair steady for a double amputation while the latter took his aim.
I remember seeing a man struggling painfully along with an above-the-knee leg, obviously his first day out. A group of men watched his efforts. "Pick it up, Charlie!" they called, "we"ll race you to the cedars!" but Charlie only smiled, not a bit offended, and patiently continued along the terrace.
At last I was officially "pa.s.sed out" by the surgeon, and after eighteen months was free from hospitals. What a relief! No longer anyone to reproach me because I wasn"t a man! It was my great wish to go out to the F.A.N.Y.s again when I had got thoroughly accustomed to my leg. I tried riding a bicycle, and after falling off once or twice "coped"
quite well, but it was not till November that I had the chance to try a horse. I was down at Broadstairs and soon discovered a job-master and arranged to go out the next day. I hardly slept at all that night I was so excited at the prospect. The horse I had was a grey, rather a coincidence, and not at all unlike my beloved grey in France. Oh the joy of being in a saddle again! A lugubrious individual with a bottle nose (whom I promptly christened "Dundreary" because of his long whiskers) came out with me. He was by way of being a riding master, but for all the attention he paid I might have been alone.
I suggested finding a place for a canter after we had trotted some distance and things felt all right. I was so excited to find I could ride again with comparatively little inconvenience I could hardly restrain myself from whooping aloud. I presently infected "Dundreary,"
who, in his melancholy way, became quite jovial. I rode "Bob" every day after that and felt that after all life was worth living again.
On November 11th came the news of the armistice. The flags and rejoicings in the town seemed to jar somehow. I was glad to be out of London. A drizzle set in about noon and the waves beat against the cliffs in a steady boom not unlike the guns now silent across the water.
Through the mist I seemed to see the ghosts of all I knew who had been sacrificed in the prime of their youth to the G.o.d of war. I saw the faces of the men in the typhoid wards and heard again the groans as the wounded and dying were lifted from the ambulance trains on to the stretchers. It did not seem a time for loud rejoicings, but rather a quiet thankfulness that we had ended on the right side and their lives had not been lost in vain.
The words of Robert Nichols" "Fulfilment," from _Ardours and Endurances_ (Chatto & Windus), rang through my brain. He has kindly given me permission to reproduce them:
Was there love once? I have forgotten her.
Was there grief once? Grief yet is mine.
Other loves I have, men rough, but men who stir More grief, more joy, than love of thee and mine.
Faces cheerful, full of whimsical mirth, Lined by the wind, burned by the sun; Bodies enraptured by the abounding earth, As whose children we are brethren: one.
And any moment may descend hot death To shatter limbs! pulp, tear, blast Beloved soldiers, who love rough life and breath Not less for dying faithful to the last.
O the fading eyes, the grimed face turned bony, Open mouth gushing, fallen head, Lessening pressure of a hand shrunk, clammed, and stony O sudden spasm, release of the dead!
Was there love once? I have forgotten her.
Was there grief once? Grief yet is mine.
O loved, living, dying, heroic soldier All, all, my joy, my grief, my love are thine!
CHAPTER XIX
AFTER TWO YEARS
My dream of going out to work again with the F.A.N.Y.s was never realised. Something always seemed to be going wrong with the leg; but I was determined to try and pay them a visit before they were demobilised.
On these occasions the word "impossible" must be cut out of one"s vocabulary (_vide_ Napoleon), and off I set one fine morning. Everything seemed strangely unaltered, the same old train down to Folkestone, the same porters there, the same old ship and lifebelts; and when I got to Boulogne nearly all the same old faces on the quay to meet the boat! I rubbed my eyes. Had I really been away two years or was it only a sort of lengthy nightmare? I walked down the gangway and there was the same old rogue of a porter in his blue smocking. Yet the town seemed strangely quiet without the incessant marching of feet as the troops came and went. "We never thought to see _you_ out here again, Miss,"
said the same man in the transport department at the Hotel Christol!
I went straight up to the convoy at St. Omer, and had tea in the camp from which they had been sh.e.l.led only a year before. This convoy of F.A.N.Y.s, to which many of my old friends had been transferred, was attached to the 2nd army, and had as its divisional sign a red herring.
The explanation being that one day a certain general visited the camp, and on leaving said: "Oh, by the way, are you people "army"?"
"No," replied the F.A.N.Y., "not exactly."
"Red Cross then?"
"Well, not exactly. It"s like this," she explained: "We work for the Red Cross and the cars are theirs, but we are attached to the second army; we draw our rations from the army and we"re called F.A.N.Y.S."
""Pon my soul," he cried, "you"re neither fish, flesh, nor fowl, but you"re thundering good red herrings!"
It was a foregone conclusion that a red herring should become their sign after that!
The next day I was taken over the battlefields through Arcques, where the famous "Belle" still manipulates the bridge, and along by the Nieppe Forest. We could still see the trenches and dug-outs used in the fierce fighting there last year. A cemetery in a little clearing by the side of the road, the graves surmounted by plain wooden crosses, was the first of many we were to pa.s.s. Vieux Berquin, a once pretty little village, was reduced to ruins and the road we followed was pitted with sh.e.l.l holes.
It was pathetic to see an old man and his wife, bent almost double with age and rheumatism, poking about among the ruins of their one-time home, in the hope of finding something undestroyed. They were living temporarily in a miserable little shanty roofed in by pieces of corrugated iron, the remains of former Nissen huts and dug-outs.
In Neuf Berquin several families were living in new wooden huts the size of Armstrongs with cheerful red-tiled roofs, that seemed if possible to intensify the utter desolation of the surroundings.
l.u.s.ty youths, still in the _bleu horizon_ of the French Army, were busy tilling the ground, which they had cleared of bricks and mortar, to make vegetable gardens.
My chief impression was that France, now that the war was over, had made up her mind to set to and get going again just as fast as she possibly could. There was not an idle person to be seen, even the children were collecting bricks and slates.
I wondered how these families got supplies and, as if in answer to my unspoken question, a baker"s cart full of fresh brown loaves came b.u.mping and jolting down the uneven village street.