Getting their hospital into shape, cleaned, tidied and fit for their patients, was just one of Grace's worries. Finding accommodation for her team proved to be an even greater headache. Leaving the running of the hospital in the safe hands of Franklin, day after day she spent hours badgering the Council Offices for billets for her girls, then trudging through the streets in bitter cold to find them and make arrangements with the owners. Only too often she was met with blank refusals from the householders, or found the house unoccupied and locked up. Then it was back to the Council Offices to try again to fix something up.
Many Calaisians had developed an unbelievable approach to the English in their midst. Perhaps it was a throwback to some old folk memory of the past when the English occupied much of that part of the French Coast, but the feeling was that if the English gained a footing in the town, they would never leave. This extraordinary attitude was even supported by Councillors and some Civil Authorities. In Calais it fell to Grace to do all the negotiating, as she was the only FANY officer who spoke French.
In "Nursing Adventures", Grace expresses her feelings at the time with some intensity. It meant going to the Mairie (Council) to get new billets, then going round the billets to inspect them, and very often returning to the Mairie to report empty houses, or inhabitants who flatly refused a room. Taciturn and almost insolent clerks had to be propitiated, and personal feelings had to go to the wall when one was confronted with the possibility of seventeen or eighteen English girls being left homeless and without beds for the night!"
Grace hated this part of her duties. She would far rather have been working on the wards, or driving her ambulance collecting patients and delivering them to the hospital ships going to England: so many of the jobs they were all involved in.
Time and again Grace came up against rudeness and insulting remarks from officials as well as proprietors of the places allocated as billets. She had great difficulty in keeping her temper. Grudging permission was given for the team, in ones and twos, to stay over with registered guest houses, but only for two, or at most, three nights at a time. The excuse used by many authorities at the time was 'the fear of spies getting in'!
After doing these seemingly interminable rounds day after day, week after week, Grace wrote, with feeling and passion, never one to mince her words. "The French civilians hated the English people and resented our presence; they hated the Belgians, and were furious with the English for coming to nurse them." To write like this about a people she had liked and admired, Grace must have been near the end of her tether.
Whatever reasons the French may have had, perhaps a deeply ingrained distrust of anyone foreign to France, it was an unfortunate fact that they constantly put difficulties in the way of British and Belgian military and civil organizations.
Once the hospital really came under FANY control, the Belgians made sure it was well supplied with patients. The wards began to fill up, and more FANYs came over from England to staff it. The patients were not all wounded soldiers. The Belgian Army had been hit by a particularly virulent form of typhoid fever. Lamarck's two blocks of wards were divided into 'wounded' – blesses - and typhoid patients - 'les typhiques, - and the latter was soon filled to capacity, with over 100 patients. None of the other hospitals in the town, French or British, would take them.
But as usual the FANY coped. The redoubtable Sister Wicks made them her special charges. With her small but committed staff she grappled day and night with disease and death. It was a terrible time for them all, the survival rate of the patients was frighteningly low, but they battled on.
Attached to the hospital was a horse-drawn hearse, known as the Coffin Cart, and daily, - frequently hourly in those early days, - it rolled in, collected the dead, and rattled out again. The long, hard struggle went on. None of the FANYs – apart from Sister-Sergeant Wicks – was a trained nurse, but it seemed there was nobody else prepared to come to look after 'les typhiques'. The girls gave it everything they had, pulling these emaciated men back from death. Gradually the Coffin Cart came less often, and the battle was almost won.
Throughout this time the girls worked tirelessly during the day and every two or three nights they would find themselves taken to a different 'home', more often than not with suspicious, unwelcoming landladies offering them little in the way comfort or cheer.
At last, Grace's luck changed. Constantly on the lookout for somewhere permanent they could call their own, and after countless stormy scenes, she was sent to see the owner of an abandoned corner shop. This was indeed an oasis of hope as far as she was concerned. Previously offered to the Authorities by its owner as an overflow hospital, and refused, it was called Le Bon Genie. And such it turned out to be. Grace noted, it had "bare rooms, dirty walls, one table, five chairs and 20 beds, but it was rent free and available at once. A little flattery and coaxing soon brought good-humoured assent from the owner." Once again her single-minded commitment had won through. Her FANYs had somewhere to call their own. They lost no time moving in.
Ever resourceful and never afraid of hard work, the girls got down to creating a home from home. Impressive shop windows, full size, extended round the side as well as the front. The girls covered these with brown paper, to ensure some privacy, leaving the top parts to let in light. The shop floor was cleared of almost everything, and beds reorganized. A small room leading off the main shop was allocated to Sister-Sergeant Wicks. Of course, much cleaning and scrubbing was needed, but this was now almost second nature to the FANYs. It was to be their home, and they would make it something to be proud of. The best thing for Grace was no more endless worry about billets for her girls.
As more and more reinforcements arrived from England, there were not enough beds to go round. The girls accepted the situation with their usual aplomb and good humour. Night staff arriving back from the Hospital, usually exhausted, tumbled into the beds the day staff had just vacated. There was no bathroom at that time, only a washstand, jug and basin, but at least running water was laid on. To the great delight of all, a bath was installed later, something sorely missed and longed-for by everyone.
They repainted the walls, brought in chairs and cushions for an upstairs 'common room', put up pictures, made the very best of it. And of course, many of the girls couldn't resist writing home to their horrified families, telling them with great glee, that they were 'sleeping in a shop window'! It was a splendid release for them all, getting away from the tasks most of them were having to carry out at the hospital. They could relax, be themselves, and somehow keep cheerful.
As the weeks rolled by, they became more organised, more established and accepted. Grace was able to acquire another home from home in the shape of a flat above a sort of rather risqué night club, called Le Bijou. Every night there was music and singing from downstairs. The FANYs would gather in the rooms above, listening to the catchy tunes and the choruses as the audiences joined in. They loved it, at one point considering disguising themselves as civilians and going down to join in the fun. However, discretion won the day, as it really wasn't 'done' for well-bred young ladies to visit that sort of establishment, certainly not without a male escort. Despite the huge changes to their life styles as FANYs , especially where their work was concerned, the Corps imposed a strong unwritten set of rules governing their behaviour off duty. These were seldom broken.