Chapter 14 Behind the German Lines

The cold was bitter and sharp, frost glittered on the road. The small convoy had stopped in the village of Ecloo, outside a large house. It was 5.30 in the morning. Grace climbed unsteadily out into the freezing dark, joined the others entering the house, where a big fire burned in a large comfortable room.

Beds were offered to the ladies, but refused, and they all – drivers, doctors, nurses, and a clergyman – sat round the fire together, relaxing in its warmth. May Sinclair, however, appeared to be arguing fiercely with a tall elegant woman Grace had not seen before.

Listening closely, it appeared that the young English marine, Lieutenant Foote, had been left behind at the temporary hospital in Ghent, too ill to be moved. May had been keeping an eye on him for a day or two prior to the evacuation, although he was not her patient in any way, but she felt responsible. She wanted to go back to help him, but had no nursing experience at all. The Parson also spoke of returning, but he would be even less use than May.

In her typically impetuous fashion, Grace rose, and putting on her coat, left the house. May hurried after her, out into the icy road, as did the clergyman, and asked what they should do.

"Stay with the group, and help the wounded you have with you." said Grace, "I'm going back to Ghent." They tried to dissuade her, but once Grace had made up her mind, she could be very stubborn. May and the Parson walked with her to the railway Station, where, by one of those strange quirks of war, there was a train due shortly for Ghent, only just occupied by the Germans. Poor May was terribly upset and in tears because she was not a trained nurse and couldn't go.

The train was unheated and bitterly cold, and Grace walked up and down trying to keep warm. The Guard arrived, laughed cheerfully when Grace admitted she had no ticket. He told her that Ghent was full of Germans, telling her to "go back, Mademoiselle. The Boches are brutes. It is no place for an English lady there now." But when she explained about the English officer left on his own, and she had no choice, she recalls "tears came to his eyes; he pressed my hand, praising the doctors of the Red Cross.'

At Ghent Station there was much confusion, men and women loaded with trunks and cases, desperate to get away. At sight of her uniform, many rushed up to her, to ask if the English were coming back!

She managed to find a taxi driver prepared to take her to the makeshift hospital at the Hotel Flandria. She wrote in a letter a little later, while still holed up in Ghent, "The relief of the young Englishman when I entered, repaid me tenfold for the terrors I had undergone." He couldn't understand why he had been left alone, why nobody had come to wash him or give him anything to eat for so long, or dress his wounds.

There was disorder and chaos everywhere. Grace had difficulty finding clean water, basins, jugs, cups, almost anything. Eventually she was able to boil water on a small gas ring, wash him, and change his dressings. Then she went to check the adjacent rooms, all of which were dirty and untidy, beds unmade, sheets and blankets tossed about. A young Belgian girl came into the room, in a kind of nursing uniform. She stopped abruptly when she saw Grace with the young Englishman.

"Oh" she gasped, "you will stay with him? I am going. My father and mother are ready." Pulling off her cap and overall, she threw them to Grace, and disappeared out through the door.

Going in search of some help, and desperate to get word to the Convent that she was here, and ask if they would take this poor, suffering boy, she ran into a big, bearded man who looked as though he might be in charge, and asked how she might get a message delivered. "I am not a porter" he growled, and stumped off.

A short time later, and unsuccessful in her hunt for anybody who could help, she was back in Lieutenant Foote's room. The same big, bearded man clumped in, and stared at the two of them. "Are you a Doctor?" asked Grace. "I can find no charts or treatment book. What does he get?"

The man's expression didn't change. "I am not the Doctor" he said, and walked out. Grace was getting desperate, when some time later an elderly Belgian lady arrived. She turned out to be very deaf, but kind and helpful. After several attempts to speak to her, the lady produced an ear trumpet, and Grace was able to explain the situation. The old lady was a Godsend, knew of a Nursing Home not too far away, and rushed off to make arrangements. She returned with two rather surly porters who had agreed to carry the patient to the home. It was not a happy journey, the men knew nothing about lifting gently, and seemed to care less. Grace finally took the front handles herself, leaving the porters to take the rear ones.

They at last arrived at the Home, Grace was exhausted. In a letter she wrote to her mother while still there nursing the wounded man, she recalled "To my great surprise I found a lovely clean Nursing Home with English nurses – one is an Edinburgh girl trained at Guy's, a Miss Fletcher – and everything beautifully clean and comfortable". The relief was too much for her, she remembered, "after the long night, suspense and misery of it all, and realizing I was no longer a forlorn Scotchwoman waiting the arrival of wicked enemies; I had found friends, and my wounded officer was in good hands."

She was given a clean room, something she hadn't experienced for days, even weeks, and a comfortable bed. She slept for four solid hours, stretched out just as she was, still in tunic, belt and boots. Once again, though, war was to intervene. She woke to a vast explosion, said to be the Belgians blowing up a bridge not far away.

"Then a German Regiment marched by," she wrote, "little men, all of them, and I watched in a fury of despair from the window." Worryingly, no fewer than seven German soldiers were billeted on the Home that night, but to her surprise they were apparently quite civil, though Grace kept well out of sight, hidden in the attic with the Lieutenant. In fact, Maude Fletcher told her, the men went about on tiptoe when they knew there were malades in the Home. For obvious reasons they were not told about the wounded officer.

That first day passed. A Belgian doctor was quietly brought in to examine the lieutenant. He just pursed his lips, shook his head and said he wouldn't live till sunrise. She wrote to her mother, "I sat up with him all night, and thank God, he is still alive. That awful night in the motor bus from Antwerp about finished him, - poor boy, he is so patient and suffers so.'

Grace was obviously a very worried woman, too, fearful and under great stress, not just for herself, but for her wounded and suffering charge. She mentions the seven Germans billeted downstairs, and says she sat by him "in terror at every sound - there are such awful tales of their barbarity." But in a sudden change of tack, she refers to the demeanour of those Germans at the Home being 'civil' and 'walking about on tiptoe', an indication, perhaps, of her inner turmoil at the ongoing and constant fluctuation of her fate and fortunes, with no idea of what the outcome would be.

She continued the long letter to her mother, more to settle her nerves and find solace, and to fill in the long hours alone with Lt. Foote. "It is heartrending to see German Regiments marching about, where English Tommies had been cheered and cheered only nights before………It seems very hard to see what England is doing. She sent men – too late – to Antwerp – and sent them defenceless to be shot down." She may not have understood, but she felt deeply for the soldiers. "Now the 7th Division and French troops were here (in Ghent), badly equipped – bad horses – torn tents, and what has happened? The English and French retire the night before the Germans enter, and poor little Belgium loses one town after another." The distress had obviously got to her.

At the same time there is a strong sense of anger or shame, as she writes of English Ambulances and hospitals leaving hurriedly, in a seeming panic, while English nurses outwith the military, stay on looking after the last two English wounded left behind. Lt. Foote is one, and she mentions for the first time a Marine Brant that she nursed at the Convent, who had been brought to this same nursing home for an operation, just before the evacuation. Of him she writes, "He is Royal Marine Light Infantry too, not an officer, but so plucky. He is shot in both legs and an arm."

During the day she washed all her clothes in her bath, mentioning that she only brought one uniform with her, and the blouse was filthy, and apologises to her mother for writing a very selfish letter, all about her. She looks ahead a bit, comments on how lucky she has been. "I have had the greatest chances in landing on my feet, so far. ……….I may, of course, be taken prisoner by the Germans. I hope they leave the prisoners alone, they have suffered enough."

Even in the dire circumstances she found herself in, she made a point of including nurse Maude Fletcher's home address, and asking her mother to write to Maude's parents saying that their daughter was alive and well; adding "she is an awfully nice girl."

Grace also had moments of madness. Towards the end of the letter she mentions a vague plan she has to try to blow up a German aerodrome on the outskirts of Ghent, with dynamite. It was, of course, a quite impossible plan under all the circumstances, but an indication, again, of the way she felt about the Germans, and her own adventurous, and slightly belligerent, leanings!

With an added touch of the dramatic, she ends that part of the letter with a far from reassuring comment. "I suppose, if this falls into their (the Germans) hands I shall be shot. Much love to you all. Gracie."

It was not the end of the letter, however. She went on "Poor Mr Foote. It will be all over in an hour or so. I have been with him all night. He is quite conscious, and I wrote his mother, but he doesn't know he is dying." Peritonitis had set in, and there was no hope left. Grace considered briefly getting away that night, but determined to stay on and see that he got a proper burial.

She finally finished her letter, which she hoped to get out through one of the Consulates. "Goodbye, mother – I feel very miserable – it is easy to be brave when there are horrid wounds to do up…….but to sit helpless hour after hour and just watch and be able to do nothing.

He is dead! I shall try and leave here tomorrow after the funeral"

Her long ordeal with the wounded and dying Lt. Foote had ended. It is obvious that the emotional drain on Grace had been considerable. She had seen it through to the end, the hurried and impetuous decision made on the freezing road in Ecloo But now she faced another series of equally important and fateful decisions, any and all of which bore down heavily on her immediate future.

She spoke with Maude Fletcher, discussed whether to go direct to the German HQ in the town, to ask - or even demand - a military funeral for Lt. Foote. Maude strongly advised her against such a step; it might well jeopardise the future of the Home itself, and its elderly and vulnerable patients.

For once, Grace accepted advice. Putting aside her uniform, she borrowed some civilian clothes, and set off to see the American Consul, and ask if he would attend the quiet funeral she and Maude were arranging with a local Undertaker, and also to ask if he could lay his hands on a Union Jack? Horrified, he told her there was no way he would meet either of her requests, and not to approach him again.

Disappointed, she returned to the Home, where she and Maude prepared for the funeral the next day. In a special despatch for the British Press in the event of her getting home, or being able to send it through one of the Consulates, Grace wrote…..

"So next day a gallant officer was buried by three Nurses – a Scotch nurse in Guy's Hospital uniform, a Belgian nurse, and I, in my khaki FANY uniform. We followed his hearse, - we passed through lines of German soldiers who eyed my khaki uniform with amazement, but did not molest us – and there, in a Foreign country, we came to the bit of ground set aside for soldiers. There were ten graves already, and into one we lowered our countryman's body, and I, a woman in my khaki British uniform, supported by two nurses, read the burial service over him. It was a sad, strange scene, on a dismal Autumn day, a group of poor Flemish people standing near in reverent silence, and German soldiers in their drab uniforms all around. So we left him at rest, no Union Jack, no 'Last Post' to mark his passing."