The story was just beginning. How would the plot
come out?
Those pictures of troops and guns, grouping and dissolving, during all
the twelve months in Flanders, never failed to grip. But rarely again
did I see that display of fine feathers. For the fighting men with whom
I lived became mud-covered. Theirs was a dug-in and blown-out existence,
with the spatterings of storm and black nights on them. Their clothing
took on the soberer colors and weather-worn aspect of the life itself
which was no sunny boulevard affair, but an enduring of wet trenches and
slimy roads. Those people in Paris needed that high key to send them
out, and the early brilliance lifted them to a level which was able to
endure the monotony.
I went to the war because those whom I loved were in the war. I wished
to go where they were.
Finally, there was real appeal in that a little unprotected lot of
people were being trampled.
I crossed in late September to Ostend as a member of the Hector Munro
Ambulance Corps. With us were two women, Elsie Knocker, an English
trained nurse, and Mairi Chisholm Gooden-Chisholm, a Scotch girl. There
were a round dozen of us, doctors, chauffeurs, stretcher bearers. Our
idea of what was to be required of women at the front was vague. We
thought that we ought to know how to ride horseback, so that we could
catch the first loose horse that galloped by and climb on him.
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