Part 10 (1/2)
I shall never forget with what fear and trepidation I drove my first lot of wounded. I was on evening duty when the message came up about seven that there were eight bad cases, too bad to stay on the barge till next morning, which were to be removed to hospital immediately. Renny and I set off, each driving a Napier ambulance. We backed into position on the sloping s.h.i.+ngly ground near the side of the ca.n.a.l, and waited for the barge to come in.
Presently we espied it slipping silently along under the bridge. The cases were placed on lifts and slung gently up from the inside of the barge, which was beautifully fitted up like a hospital ward.
It is not an easy matter when you are on a slope to start off smoothly without jerking the patients within; and I held my breath as I declutched and took off the brake, accelerating gently the meanwhile.
Thank heaven! We were moving slowly forward and there had been no jerk.
They were all bad cases and an occasional groan would escape their lips in spite of themselves. I dreaded a certain dip in the road--a sort of open drain known in France as a _canivet_--but fortunately I had practised crossing it when out one day trying a Napier, and we manoeuvred it pretty fairly. My relief on getting to hospital was tremendous. My back was aching, so was my knee (from constant clutch-slipping over the b.u.mps and cobbles), and my eyes felt as if they were popping out of my head. In fact I had a pretty complete ”stretcher face!” I had often ragged the others about their ”stretcher faces,”
which was a special sort of strained expression I had noticed as I skimmed past them in the little lorry, but now I knew just what it felt like.
The new huts were going apace, and were finished about the end of April, just as the weather was getting warmer. We were each to have one to ourselves, and they led off on each side of a long corridor running down the centre. These huts were built almost in a horse-shoe shape and--joy of joys! there were to be two bathrooms at the end! We also had a telephone fixed up--a great boon. The furniture in the huts consisted of a bed and two shelves, and that was all. There was an immediate slump in car cleaning. The rush on carpentering was tremendous. It was by no means safe for a workman to leave his tools and bag anywhere in the vicinity; his saw the next morning was a thing to weep over if he did.
(It's jolly hard to saw properly, anyway, and it really looks such an easy pastime.)
The wooden cases that the petrol was sent over in from England, large enough to hold two tins, were in great demand. These we made into settees and stools, etc., and when stained and polished they looked quite imposing. The contractor kindly offered to paint the interiors of the huts for us as a present, but we were a little startled to see the brilliant green that appeared. Someone unkindly suggested that he could get rid of it in no other way.
When at last they were finished we received orders to take up our new quarters, but, funnily enough, we had become so attached to our tents by that time that we were very loath to do so. A fatigue party however arrived one day to take the tents down, so there was nothing for it.
Many of the workmen were most obliging and did a lot of odd jobs for us.
I rescued one of the Red Cross beds instead of the camp one I had had heretofore--the advantage was that it had springs--but there was only the mattress part, and so it had to be supported on two petrol cases for legs! The disadvantage of this was that as often as not one end slipped off in the night and you were propelled on to the floor, or else two opposite corners held and the other two see-sawed in mid-air. Both great aids to nightmares.
”Tuppence” did not take at all kindly to the new order of things; he missed chasing the mice that used to live under the tent boards and other minor attractions of the sort.
The draughtiness and civilization of the new huts compared with the ”fug” of the tents all combined to give us chills! I had a specially bad one, and managed with great skill to w.a.n.gle a fortnight's sick leave in Paris.
The journey had not increased much in speed since my last visit, but everything in Paris itself had a.s.sumed a much more normal aspect. The bridge over the Oise had long since been repaired, and hardly a shop remained closed. I went to see my old friend M. Jollivet at Neuilly, and had the same little English mare to ride in the Bois, and also visited many of the friends I had made during my first leave there.
I got some wonderful French grey Ripolin sort of stuff from a little shop in the ”Boul' Mich” with which to tone down the violent green in my hut, that had almost driven me mad while I lay ill in bed.
The Convoy was gradually being enlarged, and a great many new drivers came out from England just after I got back. McLaughlan gave me a great welcome when I went for the was.h.i.+ng that afternoon. ”It's good to see you back, Miss,” he said, ”the driver they put on the lorry was very slow and cautious--you know the 'en we always try to catch? Would you believe it we slowed down to walking pace so as to _miss_ 'er!” and he sniffed disgustedly.
The news of the battle of Jutland fell like a bombsh.e.l.l in the camp owing to the pessimistic reports first given of it in the papers. A witty Frenchman once remarked that in all our campaigns we had only won one battle, but that was the last, and we felt that however black things appeared at the moment we would come out on top in the end. The news of Kitchener's death five days later plunged the whole of the B.E.F. into mourning, and the French showed their sympathy in many touching ways.
One day to my sorrow I heard that the little Mors lorry was to be done away with, owing to the shortage of petrol that began to be felt about this time, and that horses and G.S. wagons were to draw rations, etc., instead. It had just been newly painted and was the joy of my heart--however mine was not to reason why, and in due course Red Cross drivers appeared with two more ambulances from the Boulogne _depot_, and they made the journey back in the little Mors.
It was then that ”Susan” came into being.
The two fresh ambulances were both Napiers, and I hastily consulted Brown (the second mechanic who had come to a.s.sist Kirkby as the work increased) which he thought was the best one. (It was generally felt I should have first choice to console me for the loss of the little Mors.)
I chose the speediest, naturally. She was a four cylinder Napier, given by a Mrs. Herbert Davies to the Red Cross at the beginning of the war (_vide_ small bra.s.s plate affixed), and converted from her private car into an ambulance. She had been in the famous old Dunkirk Convoy in 1914, and was battle-scarred, as her canvas testified, where the bullets and shrapnel had pierced it. She had a fat comfortable look about her, and after I had had her for some time I felt ”Susan” was the only name for her; and Susan she remained from that day onwards. She always came up to the scratch, that car, and saved my life more than once.
We s.n.a.t.c.hed what minutes we could from work to do our ”cues,” as we called our small huts. It was a great pastime to voyage from hut to hut and see what particular line the ”furnis.h.i.+ng” was taking. Mine was closed to all intruders on the score that I had the ”painters in.” It was to be _art nouveau_. I found it no easy matter to get the stuff on evenly, especially as I had rather advanced ideas as to mural decoration! With great difficulty I stencilled long lean-looking panthers stalking round the top as a sort of fresco. I cut one pattern out in cardboard and fixing it with drawing pins painted the Ripolin over it, with the result that I had a row of green panthers prowling round against a background of French grey! I found them very restful, but of course opinions differ on these subjects. Curtains and cus.h.i.+ons were of bright Reckitt's blue material, bought in the market, relieved by scrolls of dull pink wool embroidered (almost a st.i.tch at a time) in between jobs. The dark stained ”genuine antiques” or _veritables imitations_ (as I once saw them described in a French shop) looked rather well against this background; and a tremendous house-warming took place to celebrate the occasion.
No. 30 Field hospital arrived one day straight from Sicily, where it had apparently been sitting ever since the war, awaiting casualties.
As there seemed no prospect of any being sent, they were ordered to France, and took up their quarters on a sandy waste near the French coastal forts. The orderlies had picked up quite a lot of Italian during their sojourn and were never tired of describing the wonderful sights they had seen.
While waiting for patients there one day, a corporal informed me that on the return journey they had ”pa.s.sed the volcano Etna, in rupture!”
A great many troops came to a rest camp near us, and I always feel that ”Tuppence's” disappearance was due to them. He _would_ be friendly with complete strangers, and several times had come in minus his collar (stolen by French urchins, I supposed). I had just bought his fourth, and rather lost heart when he turned up the same evening without it once more. Work was pouring in just then, and I would sometimes be out all day. When last I saw him he was playing happily with Nellie, another terrier belonging to a man at the Casino, and that night I missed him from my hut. I advertised in the local rag (he was well known to all the French people as he was about the only pure bred dog they'd ever seen), but to no avail. I also made visits to the _Abattoir_, the French slaughter house where strays were taken, but he was not there, and I could only hope he had been taken by some Tommies, in which case I knew he would be well looked after. I missed him terribly.
Work came in spasms, in accordance with the fighting of course, and when there was no special push on we had tremendous car inspections. Boss walked round trying to spot empty grease caps and otherwise making herself thoroughly objectionable in the way of gear boxes and universals. On these occasions ”eye-wash” was extensively applied to the bra.s.s, the idea being to keep her attention fixed well to the front by the glare.
One day, when all manner of fatigues and other means of torture had been exhausted, d.i.c.ky and Freeth discovered they had a simultaneous birthday.