Part 19 (1/2)

All of the officers were united in thinking khaki an excellent all-round colour.

”The Turcos have been put into khaki,” said the Commandant. ”They disliked it at first; but their other costumes were too conspicuous.

Now they are satisfied.”

The Englishman offered the statement that England was supplying all of the Allies, including Russia, with cloth.

Sitting round the table under the lamp, the Commandant read a postcard taken from the body of a dead German in the attack the night before.

There was a photograph with it, autographed. The photograph was of the woman who had written the card. It began ”Beloved Otto,” and was signed ”Your loving wife, Hedwig.”

This is the postcard:

”_Beloved Otto_: To-day your dear cards came, so full of anxiety for us. So that now at last I know that you have received my letters. I was convinced you had not. We have sent you so many packages of things you may need. Have you got any of them? To-day I have sent you my photograph. I wished to send a letter also instead of this card, but I have no writing paper. All week I have been busy with the children's clothing. We think of you always, dear Otto. Write to us often. Greetings from your Hedwig and the children.”

So she was making clothing for the children and sending him little packages. And Otto lay dead under the stars that night--dead of an ideal, which is that a man must leave his family and all that he loves and follow the beckoning finger of empire.

”For king and country!”

The Commandant said that when a German soldier surrenders he throws down his gun, takes off his helmet and jerks off his shoulder straps, saying over and over, ”_Pater familias_.” Sometimes, by way of emphasising that he is a family man, he holds up his fingers--two children or three children, whatever it may be. Even boys in their teens will claim huge families.

I did not find it amusing after the postcard and the photograph. I found it all very tragic and sad and disheartening.

It was growing late and the General was impatient to be off. We had still a long journey ahead of us, and riding at night was not particularly safe.

I got into the car and they bundled in after me the damaged pictures, the horseshoe, the piece of gargoyle from the Cloth Hall and the nose of the sh.e.l.l.

The orderly reported that a Zeppelin had just pa.s.sed overhead; but the General shrugged his shoulders.

”They are always seeing Zeppelins,” he said. ”Me, I do not believe there is such a thing!”

That night in my hotel, after dinner, Gertrude, Lady Decies, told me the following story:

”I had only twelve hours' notice to start for the front. I am not a hospital nurse, but I have taken for several years three months each summer of special training. So I felt that I would be useful if I could get over.

”It was November and very cold. When I got to Calais there was not a room to be had anywhere. But at the Hotel Centrale they told me I might have a bathroom to sleep in.

”At the last moment a gentleman volunteered to exchange with me. But the next day he left, so that night I slept in a bathtub with a mattress in it!

”The following day I got a train for Dunkirk. On the way the train was wrecked. Several coaches left the track, and there was nothing to do but to wait until they were put back on.

”I went to the British Consul at Dunkirk and asked him where I could be most useful. He said to go to the railroad station at once.

”I went to the station. The situation there was horrible. Three doctors and seven dressers were working on four-hour s.h.i.+fts.

”As the wounded came in only at night, that was when we were needed. I worked all night from that time on. My first night we had eleven hundred men. Some of them were dead when they were lifted out onto the stone floor of the station shed. One boy flung himself out of the door. I caught him as he fell and he died in my arms. He had diphtheria, as well as being wounded.

”The station was frightfully cold, and the men had to be laid on the stone floors with just room for moving about between them. There was no heat of any sort. The dead were laid in rows, one on top of another, on cattle trucks. As fast as a man died they took his body away and brought in another wounded man.