d fight for your own. We all
of us would go for a Belgian first, and tend to a Belgian first. We
would take one of our own by the roadside in preference, if there was
room only for one. But if you brought in a German, wounded, he became an
individual in need of help. There was a high pride in doing well by him.
We would show them of what stuff the Allies were made. Clear of hate and
bitterness, we had nothing but good will for the gallant little German
boys, who smiled at us from their cots in Furnes hospital. And who could
be anything but kindly for the patient German fathers of middle age, who
lay in pain and showed pictures of "Frau" and the home country, where
some of them would never return. Two or three times, the Queen of the
Belgians stopped at our base hospital. She talked with the wounded
Germans exactly as she talked to her own Belgians--the same modest
courtesy and gift of personal caring.

I think the key to our experience was the mother instinct in the three
women. What we tried to do was to make a home out of an emergency
station at the heart of war. We took hold of a room knee-high with
battered furniture and wet plaster, cleaned it, spread army blankets on
springs, found a bowl and jug, and made a den for the chauffeur. In our
own room, we arranged an old lamp, then a shade to soften the light. On
a mantel, were puttees, cold cream and a couple of books; in the wall,
nails for coats and scarfs. The soldiers, entering, said it was
homelike. It was a rest after the dreariness of the trench. We brought
glass from Furnes, and patched the windows. We dined, slept, lived, and
tended wounded men in the one room. In another room, a shell had sprayed
the ceiling, so we had to pull the plaster down to the bare lathing. We
commandeered a stove from a ruined house. Night after night, we carried
a sick man there and had a fire for him. We treated him for a bad
throat, and put him to bed. A man dripping from the inundations, we
dried out. For a soldier with bruised feet, we prepared a pail of hot
water, and gave a thorough soaking.

In the early morning we took down the shutters, carried our own coal,
built our own fires, brought water from a ditch, scrubbed table tops
and swept the floor, prepared tincture of iodine, the bandages, and
cotton wool. We went up the road around 8.30, for the Germans had a
habit of shelling at 9 o'clock. Sometimes they broke their rule, and
began lopping them in at half-past eight. Then