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. What we
were to do with the wounded wasn't clear, even in our own minds. We
bought funny little tents and had tent practice in a vacant yard. The
motor drive from Ostend to Ghent was through autumn sunshine and beauty
of field flowers. It was like a dream, and the dream continued in Ghent,
where we were tumbled into the Flandria Palace Hotel with a suite of
rooms and bath, and two convalescing soldiers to care for us. We looked
at ourselves and smiled and wondered if this was war. My first work was
the commissariat for our corps.

Then came the English Naval Reserves and Marines _en route_ to Antwerp.
They had been herded into the cars for twelve hours. They were happy to
have great hunks of hot meat, bread, and cigarettes. Just across the
platform, a Belgian Red Cross train pulled in--nine hundred wounded men,
bandaged heads with only the eyes showing, stumps of arms flapping a
welcome. The Belgians had been shot to pieces, holding the line. And,
now, here were the English come to save them.

This looked more like war to us. From the Palace windows we hung out
over the balcony to see the Taubes. I knew that at last we were on the
fringes of war. Later, we were to be at the heart of it. It was at Melle
that I learned I was on the front lines.

We went up the road from Ghent to Melle in blithe ignorance, we three
women. The day before, the enemy had held the corner with a machine gun.