That afternoon, she told Maude of her plan, and getting her agreement, made herself as immaculate as she could under the circumstances, and drove in a horse-drawn carriage to the centre of Ghent, where the Germans had set up their Headquarters. Striding between two astonished sentries, Grace approached the Corporal of the Guard, and demanded to be conducted immediately to the General Commanding. It was pure theatre. There is no doubt that her success as an amateur Thespian, her love of dressing up, her highly developed sense of the dramatic, was the driving force behind this display of audacity, and enabled her to carry off the entire charade so successfully.

The Corporal, utterly out of his depth, just threw open the massive entrance doors' to the spacious ante-room within. The usual hubbub ceased, A dead silence descended on the Officers and men congregated there. All heads swung round to stare at her. One or two, possibly mistaking her for a man, saluted without thinking. "I saluted gravely back" she wrote later, " and looked round for a likely interpreter."

She goes on to record "A very dapper ADC asked my business. I stated it quietly. 'I am English. The officer I have been nursing is dead. I want to return to England.'

A small group of officers gathered round her. All spoke perfect English, and made plain that they would not permit her to return to England.

She would have to go to Brussels and from there she would be sent to Germany.

This was just the sort of Establishment confrontation that Grace revelled in, and excelled at. She continued to press her point. She was a nurse, she would go to England to nurse English, not to Germany to nurse Germans. This sort of logic obviously puzzled them, they couldn't understand it. The discussion was brought to an end by a senior Colonel ordering her to present herself at the HQ at 9 o'clock next morning, when her papers to Brussels would be ready for her.

Always one to go for the last word, Grace replied that if they wished her to go to Brussels they would have to send her, but it was her intention to go to England.

Savouring the drama of the situation to the end, Grace records , "So, with many salutes we parted, and I swanked out through the courtyard filled with Germans, as if khaki had never before been so fittingly worn."

The whole episode had an air of fantasy about it, and it was some little time before the sheer folly and danger in it began to sink in. Going back into enemy territory in British uniform; hiding a British Officer from the Germans; disguising herself in civilian clothes, in the streets of an enemy occupied town. All this was almost an invitation to be shot as a spy.

She acknowledged later, the Germans were not the devils incarnate that wartime propaganda had made them out to be. Prior to her impulsive decision to make the journey back to Ghent, when she still believed them to be heartless killers of men, women and children, her personal fear must have been strong. The fact that she faced up to it, and all the possible consequences, were an indication of her strength of character and courage.

Having met them face-to-face, talked with them, she wrote in her final despatch from Ghent, "The Germans are friendly on the whole. Up to now (they are) very civil, and not arrogant or brutal. I hold no brief for the Germans. I have seen such sorrow and suffering as I never dreamt of, for which I hold them responsible, but one must give the Devil his due."

There is little doubt that at some point the adventure became almost surreal; she was acting a part, floating across a vast open stage, calmly, coolly, her lively actor's mind making up the script as she went. It was this, along with inner determination and confidence, that finally carried her through to the Last Act.

Instead of 'presenting herself' at German HQ next morning, as ordered, in a characteristic act of defiance Grace recorded "At 9 o'clock next morning I breakfasted in bed!" It was a sort of throwback gesture from her early days of tomboy-ism, growing up with her two fearless brothers. A 'put that in your pipe and smoke it' message to the Germans.

The rest of that day was spent in a buzz of activity. Play-acting she may have been on one level , but she was no fool, and knew that, busy as they were with more important matters, the Germans would sooner or later come looking for her. The final stage in her odyssey was to ensure her escape back to England, no easy matter in all the circumstances.

Grace was fortunate in her past contacts. While in Belgium before the war, at various horse trials and Gymkhanas, she had become good friends with a rich and influential Belgian lady, Baroness de Crumbrugge, and went to see her now, to see if she would be willing to help in any way. The Baroness was delighted. A Town Councillor she knew well, a M. de Weert, was involved in smuggling much needed supplies of food across the border from Holland, to help the more vulnerable folk in the already occupied areas. She would contact him immediately.

Grace had other plans while the contacts were being made. Still dressed as a Belgian woman, she visited the town's major cemetery and with the help of the Graves Superintendent, recorded the details of any British military personnel who were buried there. Then, with time still to spare, she headed for the military hospital, and managed to get the names of most of the British wounded. On her return to England this was a very effective tool indeed in getting the attention of the War Office.

After some persuasion de Weert agreed to take Grace with him, but warned her of the possible consequences if they were caught. As far as he knew, he was not yet under suspicion, but there would always be a risk.

Grace never hesitated. Getting home again was what she desperately wanted, so she could bring her FANY people across to run one of the hospitals she had been offered by the Belgians. So far she had sailed through everything safely, and was determined to continue. As a Town Councillor de Weert had access to a car and various papers, For this trip, he drove, while Grace sat behind as if a person of some importance.

They passed with varying degrees of ease through checkpoints on the way, set up by the Germans. De Weert had provided them both with some old Flemish parchment documents from the Town Hall, with large and impressive seals attached. It was only at the final checkpoint that the major hold up occurred. Grace sat with her heart in her mouth trying to look relaxed and disinterested, once again playing a role, lounging back in her seat an imperious look on her face, as discussions went on.

At this point in the proceedings a Dutch police officer strolled across to ask the Germans what the hold up was. Peering into the car, he gave a start of surprise at seeing Grace's khaki uniform , stepped back and saluted smartly. Whether the salute was a result of pure surprise, or planned by the Police Officer to impress the German sentries is not known, but it had the desired effect. The Germans handed the documents to de Weert and waved the car on across the border into Holland.

Grace wrote "What a blessed relief it was to leave the last German sentry behind, and be greeted by the friendly Dutch sentries with smiles of welcome, and to unfurl the Belgian flag on our car!"

She found herself in the small port of Ternhuisen, crammed with refugees from far and wide. A welcoming but curious Dutch Army officer was most intrigued with her uniform, told her she was the first woman in uniform he had ever seen, and asked to take her photograph. "He told me, that while the people supported the British, the Royal Family were for the Germans." He had a look of disgust on his face when he spoke of the Royals.

Grace made her way to the steamer offices, was given a ticket for a refugee boat leaving the following morning for Folkestone, and also a berth. Boarding the ship, she went in search of her cabin, and was dismayed to find she would she be sharing it with a mother and her fairly mature son. So she began to explore, and found a small single cabin, apparently unoccupied. Noting the number, she went back to the shipping office, and persuaded them to transfer her. Going back on board, she waylaid the steward when he came on duty in early evening, and got clean sheets from him. She wrote in her diary "Indeed, the sheets in use looked as if many a strange being had inhabited them!"

Despite all the danger and stress and strain she had been under since her defiant breakfast of the previous day, she was still prepared to tackle any problems – minor though they were by comparison – that circumstances put in her way.

Grace had supper at a small local hotel. Maybe it was her Aberdeen origins that caused her to record in Nursing Adventures, after all her extraordinary adventures, and the dangers she had encountered and surmounted: "A poor meal for an exorbitant charge!" Then it was back to the boat through the ever-present ''crowds of homeless wanderers.' She felt such sorrow for them, but, almost a refugee herself, there was little she could do but listen to some of their tragic stories.

Early next morning the ship pulled away from the quay and headed across the North Sea to England. As so often happens at the closing of a dreadful experience, on the last bit of a journey home, time almost stands still. It was the same for Grace. She wrote: "Never shall I forget the interminable weariness of that crossing. I suppose it was the reaction after the constant work, but as the hours went by, I felt almost sick with the endless monotony of it all." Halfway across there was a long, exasperating delay "whilst someone on a little minesweeper harangued the bridge through a megaphone."

At last the boat arrived at Folkestone, followed by the train journey to Victoria 'in a fever of impatience.' She recalls: "None of my people were in England, only friends, to whose flat I hastened; and as I ran out of Earls Court station, I wondered wildly if I would find them out, but that blow was spared me."

She was greeted as one returned from the dead. Her family, her friends, nobody knew what had happened to her, where she had been, whether she was alive or dead. For Grace, an enormous feeling of relief. She was home! She was safe! Soon she would be with her family again. Her first great wartime adventure was at an end. In so many ways she was a changed woman. No longer the girl who only a few weeks before, her head full of romantic notions of war - glory, honour, heroism - who had sailed so excitedly across the sea to France. Now she had experienced reality, seen for herself the random and senseless death and destruction; shared the horror and fear and feelings of loss; witnessed the carnage, the personal hell of innocent people caught up in the maelstrom of conflict.

Suddenly she had matured, learned so much from her experiences, so far removed from the comfortable, self-indulgent life-style she had enjoyed before the war. She ended her account of her short stay, with a subdued, flat statement:

"And that was the first chapter of the War for me; and the second is, perhaps, stranger still, for Providence led my comrades and myself into as strange places as ever women went before. This at least the Great War has done – it has proved to men that women can share men's dangers and privations and hardships and yet remain women."