Eventually Grace returned to Antwerp, and after helping out in the hospital for a few hours, settled down for the night in a cellar she had been offered in a nearby house. It was a night she remembered. She wrote, "I washed in the kitchen sink, got into bed and wrote up my diary. That took some time, and as midnight was striking I closed it, and was snuggling down in my pillows, when….whiz-zz-zz - boom, came the opening salvoes of the German final attack on the city."

It was the beginning of the end. Her days in Antwerp were numbered. The Germans at the gates were determined to seize it with all possible speed. Bringing their massive superiority in guns to bear, they began an unceasing 12 day bombardment of the city. Defended to the death by the tiny Belgian Army, aided by the British marines sent in by Churchill, it was a forlorn hope, the German Army was just too powerful. Antwerp could not hold out.

Preparations for evacuating the wounded commenced, a task which made a deep impression on Grace, one she never, ever forgot. It tore her apart emotionally, being part of it first in Antwerp, then, not long after, in Ghent. She wrote in her diary "That was a terrible night. For two and a half hours we worked carrying men downstairs – top floor first with its 69 beds to clear (for by that night there were extra set up in the corridor), then the 2nd floor, and lastly the fracture wards on the first floor, though to me that seemed a mistake. It was down slowly with a heavy stretcher, and up rapidly with an empty one. My wrists and legs ached after the first ten men." But it was just a start.

She was to feel a lot worse, helping one 'Dresser' to carry down no fewer than 30 cases. In Nursing Adventures' , she described the chaos. "Down below, the scene was horrible, a mass of helpless men, some on rugs, some on mattresses, - all exhausted with suffering and want of rest, racked by the pain of their wounds, but brave as the gods of old."

The long night wore on. Transport for the wounded had been organised – 4 motor coaches – but there had been the inevitable delays. Doctors and nurses worked as best they could in the flickering light to relieve the suffering. In the background the roar and crash of German shells. With all patients now downstairs, it became a waiting game. Staff huddled together on the front steps, watching and listening – and responding to the occasional cries for help, or water, or just comfort.

Upstairs, someone had somehow managed to organise coffee and bread and treacle, a feast for the gods indeed. The thundering bombardment continued, random shelling spreading death and destruction. On and on, whizzz-boooom, the whistle of shrapnel. Some fell very close, one hit the upper floor of the darkened building. Still they waited, still no coaches. By this time Grace, and others, had been on duty continuously for more than 24 hours. Outside, the air was clean, the moon bright. She found a wooden bench, dragged it away from the wall of the building, and lay down to snatch some rest. A doctor kindly brought her a blanket from one of the wards, but she refused it with a shudder at the blood and filth on it. Someone covered her with a coat. There was to be no sleep.

She lay counting the explosions. She wrote, "One shrapnel….. two….. three……….. eight… nine… ten. I began to feel proud of myself when number eleven arrived. Its hissing seemed to go through my brain. In wild unreasoning terror I bolted to the wall and crouched there, holding my breath, praying madly. The great BOOM was followed by an appalling crash – part of the house next door had gone."

Grace and two or three doctors and Sisters headed for the top floor of the building, climbing a ladder, to see out across the city as the first flush of dawn lightened the sky. Everywhere the orange glow of fires burned among heaps of masonry visible through gaps in the skyline. More shells flew overhead on their deadly errands. With a degree of understatement, Grace recorded: "I wasn't sorry to climb down and return to my bench in the yard!"

As dawn broke, men, women and children passed along the road, clutching whatever possessions they could carry, desperate to get away before the hated Boche marched in.

The Belgian Red Cross had promised Grace that she would be picked up by ambulance–car at the hospital. By now it was long overdue, as were the coaches for the wounded. She decided to walk through the almost deserted streets to their HQ in Place du Meir. "Once I passed some weeping women beside their house, of which two storeys had fallen in, and I had to whistle to myself and hum snatches of song as I walked, to keep my spirits up."

It was a wasted journey – none of those still at the HQ knew anything about any transport, and themselves were busy packing up before leaving. "Two passing English doctors caught sight of my uniform" wrote Grace, and they gave her a lift to the English Medical HQ, where she was told 3 buses were definitely going to collect the wounded from the Field Hospital and evacuate them. She walked back to the hospital, and passed on the good news to the patiently waiting staff. Then she took it on herself to go back into the building, as she obviously wasn't going to be picked up by the Red Cross, and collect bandages, dressings, scissors, and anything else that was easily portable and might be useful on the journey.

The dawn gloom gave way to daylight before the first detachment of wounded were loaded onto buses and ready to leave, under the command of an American doctor from Red Cross HQ, Dr Hoyle. To him, Grace entrusted her small personal suitcase, as she was staying behind with the remaining casualties, and helping to nurse the new wounded arriving all the time. She never saw it again, lost in all the confusion. They were to be evacuated as soon as transport was available. Les Boches were expected hourly, and when they came it was generally thought that sauve qui peut would be the watchword.

As the morning wore on, more buses arrived to take the remaining wounded to safety, and again Grace experienced the long, painful, heart-wrenching process of packing wounded men, some in awful agony, and desperately ill, into every available space.

Then it was down to the quay and into the ghastly confusion of terrified humanity, women and children weeping, crying out, many lost, hopeless. In the evening sun, some of the buses rolled across the pontoon bridge, bound for Ghent, and yet another motley collection of temporary and makeshift hospitals.