We looked, fascinated. We expected to see the building knocked to bits
and flying in all directions. The bomb fell. And nothing happened.
Nothing at all.

It was soon after the bomb that my attention was directed to the lady.
She was a British Red Cross nurse, stranded with a hold-all and a green
canvas trunk, and most particularly forlorn. She had lost her friends,
she had lost her equanimity, she had lost everything except her luggage.
How she attached herself to us I do not know. The Commandant says it was
I who made myself responsible for her safety. We couldn't leave her to
the Germans with her green canvas trunk and her hold-all.

So I heaved up one end of the canvas trunk, and the Commandant tore it
from me and flung it to the chauffeurs, who got it and the hold-all into
Bert's ambulance. I grasped the British Red Cross lady firmly by the
arm, lest she should get adrift again, and hustled her along to the
Hotel, where the yellow tin box and the suit-case and the kit-bag
waited. Somebody got them into the ambulance somehow.

It was at this point that Ursula Dearmer appeared. (She had put up at
some other hotel with Mrs. Lambert.)

My British Red Cross lady was explaining to me that she had by no means
abandoned her post, but that she was doing the right thing in leaving
Ostend, seeing that she meant to apply for another post on a hospital
ship. She was sure, she said, she was doing the right thing. I said, as
I towed her securely along by one hand through a gathering crowd of
refugees (we were now making for the ambulance cars that were drawn up
along the street by the Digue), I said I was equally sure she was doing
the right thing and that nobody could possibly think otherwise.

And, as I say, Ursula Dearmer appeared.

The youngest but one was seated with Mr. Riley in the military
scouting-car that was to be our convoy to Dunkirk. I do not know how it
had happened, but in this hour, at any rate, she had taken over the
entire control and command of the Ambulance; and this with a coolness
and competence that suggested that it was no new thing. It suggested,
also, that without her we should not have got away from Ostend before
the Germans marched into it. In fact, it is hardly fair to say that she
had taken everything over. Everything had lapsed into her hands at the
supreme crisis by a sort of natural fitness.

We were all ready to go. The only one we yet waited for was the
Commandant, who presently emerged