"St. Pol; but, really, you must go to sleep now."
I went to sleep, wondering how the d.i.c.kens I happened to be in St.
Paul, which was what I understood her to say. (The French spell it differently but p.r.o.nounce it about the same.)
From that time on, scarcely an hour pa.s.sed that one of the kindly nurses or sisters did not come in and look to see if I was awake, and if so, could they get me something to eat or drink. It was heaven, all right; or at least, my idea of what heaven should be.
I learned that, although I was disabled on the night of the tenth, I was not picked up until the twelfth and then had been relayed through several dressing stations and hospitals until I landed in Number Twelve General Hospital, at the town of St. Pol. It was a B. R. C.
(British Red Cross) inst.i.tution and was altogether different from my preconceived ideas of hospitals. The day when I first "woke up" was the fifteenth of October, my birthday.
After several days I was put aboard a hospital train and taken to LeTreport, where I was a.s.signed to Lady Murray"s Hospital, another B. R. C. place. It had been, before the war, The Golf Hotel, one of the many splendid seaside hotels that have been converted into hospitals.
Here, again, I was royally treated. Every wish appeared to be antic.i.p.ated by the indefatigable and ever-cheerful women and girls, many of them volunteers, members of prominent and even t.i.tled families. Lady Murray personally visited every patient at least once a day.
All these ambulances at LeTreport are driven by girls belonging to the V. A. D. I"m not sure whether it means Volunteer Ambulance Department or Volunteer Aid Department, but that is immaterial; they are wonders, whatever name they sail under.
They work all hours, day or night, transferring patients to and from trains and hospitals. They furnished their own uniforms and paid all their own expenses, and for a long time served without any compensation, but I have heard that a small allowance has been made them recently.
The girl who took us down to the train told me that she had been over there two years. I asked her if it was not pretty hard work and she replied: "Oh, sometimes it is hard, when the weather is bad, but we know it is nothing to what the men are doing up in front, so we are glad to be able to do our little bit, wherever we can."
Going down the hill, we pa.s.sed a big ambulance, filled with wounded, standing alongside the road. A little slip of a girl, who looked as though she weighed about ninety pounds, was changing a tire and I honestly believe that that tire and rim weighed as much as she did.
Our driver stopped and proffered a.s.sistance but the little one declined, remarking that we"d better hurry or she would beat us to the train. As a matter of fact, she was not five minutes after us.
I was in pretty bad shape; could see very little and had an attack of trench fever. As soon as I was able to travel I was sent, with several others, by hospital train to Le Havre, where we went aboard the hospital ship _Carisbrook Castle_, landing at Southampton, and so on to London, where I was lucky enough to draw an a.s.signment to another B. R. C. hospital--Mrs. Pollock"s, at 50 Weymouth Street. And here I remained until, pa.s.sed on by numerous "boards" and subjected to many examinations, I found myself again on the way to France, where I reported the fifth of December--still able to "carry on."