By now it was into October. As the small convoy headed for Ghent, Grace realized to her amazement that so hectic and busy had she been, she had lost count of time and dates. Winter struck early and hard that year. Temperatures dropped, night came more quickly, Grace sat perched on a small, narrow seat, in one of the buses, wrapped in a thin blanket, precious little protection against the creeping chill.
From time to time one or other of the buses would get stuck in the almost freezing mud. All who were able would force themselves out into the cold to push it free. Then seemingly endlessly onwards, jolting and bumping over rutted roads, every jerk a stab of agony to the shattered and broken bodies hunched in the darkness.
In Nursing Adventures, Grace makes clear, on a note almost of despair, of how wrong she had been about war. "To me, in the past, war had meant romance and heroic deeds, not the awful hell of agony it is." This was to be a recurring theme in the bleak years ahead.
The heavily laden buses with their grim cargoes, rolled into Ghent in the chill of another October dawn, rattling "along the endless streets of tall, narrow houses" she recalled. At the Hotel Flandria, commandeered as an auxiliary hospital, the first of the wounded were unloaded. While this was going on, Grace and a nurse from a London hospital, found the hotel kitchens. Here they heated a huge pan of milk, the only thing available, carrying trays of hot cupfuls to cold, tired and suffering men waiting in the remaining coaches.
The last of these was occupied by the worst cases, again making an indelible impression on Grace's memory, still taking in the ghastliness of total war. She recorded these impressions later. "Every man was livid, with a drawn face, and lines of agony stamped on every mouth." She remembers one of the first to be offered the hot milk, a young 18 year old English lad, who "twisted his lips into a smile, and said ' give it to that chap there, Sister, he needs it more.'"
"That boy's smile" she wrote, "broke through my calm, and I was crying bitterly while we finished our round. It was the saddest moment of my life so far."
Then the convoy moved on to a big convent, the Maison Saint Pierre, run by nuns from l'Ordre des Dames Christiennes. Grace writes with great feeling about the "gentle, kindly nuns". They were already waiting at the entrance with hot coffee and English tea, a great comfort to the wounded and the medical staff alike. Here 32 wounded were unloaded and taken in, 6 or 8 of them English.
The Mother Superior approached the doctor in charge, asking if it would be possible to leave an English nurse at the Convent, as the nuns spoke little English, and had no nursing experience. Looking back to her happy year spent before the war in a Belgian Convent, Grace was eager, almost desperate to accept, but it was not her decision. She waited with bated breath. It appeared that none of the English nurses were happy at the idea, and Grace waited no longer. She rushed to the Mother Superior and begged to be the one allowed to stay. Her offer was welcomed delightedly and "with great joy in my heart" she wrote later.
The buses moved on once again, with more wounded to distribute, finally stopping at the Hospitale Civile, where all the remaining men were unloaded. Grace, like the others, already worn out through lack of sleep, found this additional task both saddening and wearying. She remembered the hospital as a grim, forbidding place, and her heart went out to the badly wounded men who were to be left there.
At last the transfers were complete, and the buses moved on to rendezvous at a local café. Here there was a disorganized rush by tired and hungry nurses, orderlies and helpers. There was no way Grace could get any information about what was going on.
Instead, she took a taxicab to the home of a Belgian doctor whose address she had been given before leaving Antwerp. To her relief she found that Dr Hoyle was expected that morning. The Belgian doctor's wife made her most welcome, she was able to wash and freshen up, and was given breakfast.
Dr Hoyle arrived as planned for a brief visit. He tried hard before he left, to get Grace to go with him and his group of medics back to England, but Grace wouldn't consider it. After he had departed, the Belgian doctor's wife and daughter offered to take her back to the Convent. They called at the British Consul's office on the way, to inform him where she was, and that there were English wounded at the Convent. The Consul's daughter was interested to hear this, and promised to follow up to see what she could do to help in any way.
Grace was weary beyond words, and almost half asleep by the time they reached the Convent. It had been a long walk, and coming on top of two days and nights of frenetic activity, excitement, and occasionally fear for her life, she wrote in her diary "I felt very much near the end of my tether. Above all things I longed for a hot bath, but though this was impossible, it was a luxury to get my clothes off and tumble into bed."
Alas, there was to be little rest for her after all. Only an hour later she was awakened by one of the nuns, to tell her that another bus was at the door to evacuate the English wounded.
Slowed down by weariness, Grace dressed and stumbled down the stairs, to find that the bus had taken away all but three of the English patients. At that moment the Belgian doctor arrived, and at once called upon Grace to get the dressings-trolley out and do the rounds with him. Apart from the three Englishmen, there were now about 50 Belgian soldiers being looked after, most of them severely wounded, their suffering made worse by the sleepless night of the bombardment in Antwerp, followed by another crammed into buses.
Fortunately there were other helpers, the nuns and a few young women, who did what they could to ease the men's discomfort. The rounds took a long time, as Grace was the only one the doctor allowed to undo the old dressings, syringe the wounds, and apply the new. Much later, the nuns provided them with lunch, which Grace ate with a young Belgian girl, whose relatives had all been killed at Louvain earlier in the war. Although still only a couple of months old, the war was already beginning to feel like forever.
There was to be no respite for Grace. During lunch the doctor had asked her to do the rounds of all the patients, taking their temperatures, and making what extra notes she could about their condition. He would return at 3 o/c. In the event it was 5 o/c before he got back, and time for most of the dressings to be done again. It was a measure of her stamina and dedication that she accepted this without demur.
At last her day was done, she had supper at around 7.30, and fell gratefully into bed, after writing up her diary. She remembered: 'the tiny cubicle amongst a dozen others, was a haven of peace…."
Two hours later she was awakened by the sound of loud yells and cries. Springing out of bed and slipping on a coat, she groped her way towards the commotion, "her brain a mass of chaotic thoughts!" A big figure in white suddenly erupted from a nearby cubicle, stamping and shouting. Half awake, completely disorientated, all kinds of things crossed her mind. A demented patient, perhaps, - not for the first time? Or a thief? Or a German? She wrote later, "I seized the figure and pushed it back onto the bed, and wondered vaguely if I could overcome it, or if I would be killed; and suddenly the mists of sleep cleared away, and I realized it was a woman with cramp in her leg!"
Grace knelt down and rubbed the leg until the woman's companion turned up. Then, thankfully, Grace headed back to her bed again. A nun came to her with a message delivered for her from the Chief Medical Officer of the English Division in the town. He asked Grace to call in the next day, and let them know how the English wounded were getting on.
At a quarter to six next morning Grace was called by a nun, and another long day began. All dressings had to be inspected and changed. An English sailor from the Marine Division kept calling for her to 'come and look at him, now that he'd lost an eye'. "Poor soul' wrote Grace "I remembered him from that last night of bombardment on the steps outside the hospital in Antwerp, suffering pain and thirst."
That afternoon, after a hurried lunch, Grace was able to get to the English Division HQ and report. In spite of her great respect and regard for the Belgian troops, Grace always reserved her highest praise for British soldiers. After this visit to the Divisional HQ she recorded in her diary some of her feelings. "There I saw lots of our own men – big and strong and confident; it is wonderful the moral (sic) effect conveyed by a big Englishman in khaki."
She felt like this about our own troops throughout her service. A Highland Scot herself, and rightly proud of it, the word "English' was largely a generic term universally used in those days for the British soldier. The sight of the khaki uniform always made her proud to be wearing one herself.
When she got back to the Convent, she was told that their only erysipelas patient was to be moved out at 8 o/c that evening. As the doctor had previously issued strict instructions that only Grace was allowed to touch him, she now had to get him ready, and then settled down to wait. By 10.30 nobody had come for him, and Grace got a First Aid helper to go into the town HQ and make enquiries. As a result, a one-horse ambulance-van eventually arrived to pick the poor man up. The driver flatly refused to go near the stretcher, or help in any way for fear of infection, so Grace and the First Aider had to manhandle it aboard by themselves. It was a bitterly cold night, the wretched chap had a temperature of 105 degrees, but - orders had to be obeyed. The driver cracked his whip and the contraption moved away.
Once gone, Grace was left to clear the bed, soak the sheets in a powerful disinfectant, scrub and swab the bed itself, and all the floor space around it. Nobody else would help her, in case of infection. After scrubbing and disinfecting herself, it was after one o'clock when she finally fell into bed.
Next day was Sunday, and Grace, with her strongly religious background, rose at 5.30 to attend the Service. "It was a moving sight,' she recalled. "I knelt in the background, with the nuns, and the wounded who were able to get up and make their way to the Chapel."
The doctor had also attended Mass, and immediately commandeered Grace for the rounds again, ignoring the fact that she had not yet had any breakfast. In fact, he was quite annoyed that the temperatures had not been taken! While doing the rounds, Grace, to her great surprise and dismay, came upon the erysipelas patient, tucked away out of sight. He had been sent back to the Convent in the small hours of the morning, as the fever hospital refused to admit him, for reasons known only to themselves. Just another hapless victim caught up in the chaos of a retreating army.
Later that day, the Consul's daughter arrived to speak to Grace, offering to come back for night duty so that Grace could at last have an unbroken sleep. Her offer was gratefully accepted, as was an offer to give her a lift into town that afternoon to check on the patients at the Hotel Flandria, especially the seriously ill young Marine officer from Antwerp.
While there she met a very attractive woman, May Sinclair, a well-known novelist of the day, who was working for a detachment of the St. John's Ambulance Association as a voluntary helper, knowing nothing about nursing. The young Marine, Lieutenant Foote, was slightly worse. May and Grace got on well, and May agreed to visit the Convent later, to see the English wounded and help in any way she could.
As so often happens in war, the best laid plans fall apart. The Consul's daughter took Grace home with her to let her parents know what was happening. While there, a phone call from Ostend ordered the Consul and his family to leave Ghent immediately. So much for Grace's early night!
She hurried back to the Convent to tell the Mother Superior what had happened. All sorts of rumours had been flying about all day, and at last there was something official. There was news for her, too, which had come through from the Belgian HQ. All their wounded were to be evacuated at 8 o/clock the next morning.
In the middle of the preparations, May Sinclair arrived on foot, very late having walked alone through the darkened streets. She had come to warn Grace that her small party were leaving Ghent before dawn, and she had arranged for the remaining two English wounded, and Grace, to go with them. This was a kind and thoughtful gesture, under very difficult circumstances. Grace walked with May part of the way back, then returned to the Convent to bring the Rev. Mother up to date with her plans.
The idea of a peaceful night was just a distant dream by now, and much of that night was spent with the nuns, making up small parcels of clothing, to go with both the Belgian and English patients, which might be of some use in the hours or days ahead.
While all this was going on, Grace heard the tramp, tramp of marching feet in the road outside. Running through to an outer window and peering down, she could see rank after rank of British soldiers marching out of Ghent. Yet another city was to be taken by the Germans. Grace could hardly hold back her tears, as the last of the marching men faded into the freezing night. Her diary of that night records – "I still stood there; but of a sudden I felt desolate and very much alone." Quietly and sorrowfully closing the window on the now empty street, she went back to help the nuns.
She never did get any sleep. Two hours after the marching men had gone, May Sinclair arrived with her car and three ambulances. The two English wounded were loaded aboard, and one, Grace remembered, also a Marine, moved them all to laughter. Dressed in white flannel trousers, khaki tunic and cap, he put on an aggrieved expression. "I come 'ere a sailor" he remarked gruffly, "an' I'm goin' away a soldier. Funny, aint it?"
Grace was terribly saddened at having to say goodbye so soon, as were the nuns. "I, too, felt my heart heavy" she recorded in her diary, "for they had been the kindest of friends, and I loved them."
The small party settled into the cars and ambulances, and set off into the dark, frosty night, with little idea of what lay ahead, or where they would end up.
Worn out, Grace managed to fall asleep, her head on May's shoulder. She would awake to find herself on the threshold of perhaps the most bizarre, dangerous and exciting experience of her life.