Grace was tough, resilient. She was used to moving fast when she had to. Baxter-Ellis had checked, there was a train leaving for Ostend at 6 a.m. and Grace was dressed in her uniform, packed and on that train.

There was a long lonely journey ahead, no way of making contact with those at home, her thoughts running riot, hoping for the best, fearing the worst.

At Ostend she went straight to the Commodore in command of shipping, and he got her onto the first available boat. Even so, it was 8 o/c that night when she reached Dover. Seething with impatience she managed to hire a taxi, but only as far as Folkestone. Her mother had been moved to Worthing a month before. At Folkestone she had to organise another taxi to Worthing.

It was 4 a.m. by the time she arrived at the house. She rushed to the door: "I rang and rang and there was no reply." By then, after nearly 24 hours of travelling, scared of what she might find, weary and hungry, she was beside herself with worry.

"I called and got no answer. I ran round the house demented and saw lights in a ground floor room." One can only imagine her state of mind, maybe a bit unhinged. Desperate. She wrote: "I tried to get in, knocked on the window, my heart was thumping."

She could see light through the drawn blinds, but could hear nothing from inside the house. "At last, half crazed, I got a knife from the driver and forced a front window and climbed in."

Everything was horribly quiet, she remembered, and she could hear her heart beating. It was then that she began to accept her worst fears. A door in the passageway had light shining through the edges, a key in the lock. She opened it gently. It was a moment she would always remember. 'My mother, my dear, dear mother, and the candles burning round her and flowers on her breast."

She could not remember how long she knelt there, before dragging herself to her feet and going in search of others. At last she found her sister and nephew and a nurse upstairs, could never understand how it was they had not heard her at the door.

The next few days passed in a haze, the local minister, visitors, undertakers. It was a sad and sombre time for them. Then, from Worthing, a long, slow, melancholy train journey up to Aberdeen, and the service and burial.

Grace recalls" "a cold, grey day up there when we laid her to rest, - and that night I took the train back to London."

She was physically and mentally worn out. The stress of command through four years of war had left its mark, pulled her right down. It was a month before she returned to Brussels. On the surface she was back to her old confident, ebullient self, but her physical health beneath it all was seriously undermined.

A month later, in June 1919, after discussions with the girls of Unit 5, they decided to ask for demobilization. The decision was taken largely because of the number of ex-servicemen now looking for jobs to support themselves and their families. All the girls felt the same. Here they were, thirty of them, holding jobs that could and should be for the demobbed Belgian soldiers. After clearing it with FANY HQ, Grace sent in an official demand for demobilization.

It was accepted with reluctance.

But it was not quite the end.

The Grande Finale organised by the Belgian Government was about to follow, and FANY Unit 5, Corps de Transporte Belgique, was an essential part of it.