our Commandant to go out to Belgium and send in a report.
At Ostend the commission of inquiry whittled itself down to the one
energetic person who had taken it out. And before we knew where we were
our Ambulance Corps was accepted by the Belgian Red Cross.

Only we had not got the ambulances.

And though we had got some money, we had not got enough. This was really
our good luck, for it saved us from buying the wrong kind of motor
ambulance car. But at first the blow staggered us. Then, by some abrupt,
incalculable turn of destiny, the British Red Cross, which had kicked us
so persistently, came to our help and gave us all the ambulances we
wanted.

And we are off.

There are thirteen of us: The Commandant, and Dr. Haynes and Dr. Bird
under him; and Mrs. Torrence, a trained nurse and midwife, who can drive
a motor car through anything, and take it to bits and put it together
again; Janet McNeil, also an expert motorist, and Ursula Dearmer and
Mrs. Lambert, Red Cross emergency nurses; Mr. Grierson, Mr. Foster and
Mr. Riley, stretcher-bearers, and two chauffeurs and me. I don't know
where I come in. But they've called me the Secretary and Reporter, which
sounds very fine, and I am to keep the accounts (Heaven help them!) and
write the Commandant's reports, and toss off articles for the daily
papers, to make a little money for the Corps. We've got some already,
raised by the Commandant's Report and Appeal that we published in the
_Daily Telegraph_ and _Daily Chronicle_. I shall never forget how I
sprinted down Fleet Street to get it in in time, four days before we
started.

And we have landed at Ostend.

I'll confess now that I dreaded Ostend more than anything. We had been
told that there were horrors upon horrors in Ostend. Children were being
born in the streets, and the state of the bathing-machines where the
refugees lived was unspeakable. I imagined the streets of Ostend crowded
with refugee women bearing children, and the Digue covered with the
horrific bathing-machines. On the other hand, Ostend was said to be the
safest spot in Europe. No Germans there. No Zeppelins. No bombs.

And we found the bathing-machines planted out several miles from the
town, almost invisible specks on a vanishing shore-line. The refugees we
met walking about the streets of Ostend were in fairly good case and
bore themselves bravely. But the town had been bombarded the night
before and our hotel had been the object of very specia