A few days later she escaped, by going in
a peasant's cart full of market vegetables, and rejoined us at Furnes.
Sally Macnaughtan is a gray-haired gentlewoman of independent means who
writes admirable fiction. She has laid aside her art and for months
conducted a soup kitchen in the railway station at Furnes. She has fed
thousands of weakened wounded men, working till midnight night after
night. She remained until the town was thoroughly shelled.
The order is strict that no officer's wife must be near the front. The
idea is that she will divert her husband's mind from the work in hand.
He will worry about her safety. But Mrs. B----, a Belgian, joined our
women in Pervyse, and did useful work, while her husband, a doctor with
the rank of officer, continued his work along the front. She is a girl
of twenty-one years.
Recently the Queen of the Belgians went into the trenches at a time when
there was danger of artillery and rifle fire breaking loose from the
enemy. She had to be besought to keep back where the air was quieter, as
her life was of more value to the Belgian troops and the nation than
even a gallant death.
One afternoon most of the corps were out on the road searching for
wounded. Mairi Chisholm, a Scotch girl eighteen years old, and a young
American woman had been left behind in the Furnes Hospital. With them
was a stretcher bearer, a man of twenty-eight.
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