At last after much talk I
got them in free of duty. And then I was footfree.
Here again I realise that I should have encountered great
difficulties. I should at least have had to walk to Calais, or to have
slept, as did one titled Englishwoman I know, in a bathtub. I did
neither. I took a first-class ticket to Calais, and waited round the
station until a train should go.
And then I happened on one of the pictures that will stand out always
in my mind. Perhaps it was because I was not yet inured to suffering;
certainly I was to see many similar scenes, much more of the flotsam
and jetsam of the human tide that was sweeping back and forward over
the flat fields of France and Flanders.
A hospital train had come in, a British train. The twilight had
deepened into night. Under the flickering arc lamps, in that cold and
dismal place, the train came to a quiet stop. Almost immediately it
began to unload. A door opened and a British nurse alighted. Then
slowly and painfully a man in a sitting position slid forward, pushing
himself with his hands, his two bandaged feet held in the air. He sat
at the edge of the doorway and lowered his feet carefully until they
hung free.
"Frozen feet from the trenches," said a man standing beside me.
The first man was lifted down and placed on a truck, and his place was
filled immediately by another.
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