icken peasants fleeing from their
homes, some on foot, some more fortunate ones with their bits of
furniture in a rough cart drawn by a skeleton horse or a large dog. All
had babies, aged parents, or invalids with them. I realized then for the
first time what war meant. We do not know in England. God grant we never
may. It was not merely rival armies fighting battles, it was
civilians--men, women, and children--losing their homes, their
possessions, their country, even their lives. This invasion of
unfortunates seemed to wake Brussels up to the fact that the German army
was indeed at her gate. Hordes of people rushed to the Gare du Nord in
the early dawn to find it entirely closed, no trains either entering or
leaving it. It was said that as much rolling-stock as was possible had
been sent to France to prevent it being taken by the Germans. There was
then a stampede to the Gare du Midi, from whence a few trains were still
leaving the city crammed to their utmost capacity.

In the middle of the morning I got a telephone message from the Belgian
Red Cross that the Germans were at the barriers, and would probably
occupy Brussels in half an hour, and that all my nurses must be in their
respective posts before that time.

Oh dear, what a stampede it was. I told the nurses they must leave their
luggage for the present and be ready in five minutes, and in less than
that time we left the hotel, looking more like a set of rag-and-bone men
than respectable British nursing sisters. One had seized a large
portmanteau, another a bundle of clean aprons, another soap and toilet
articles; yet another provident soul had a tea-basket. I am glad that
the funny side of it did not strike me then, but in the middle of the
next night I had helpless hysterics at the thought of the spectacle we
must have presented. Mercifully no one took much notice of us--the
streets were crowded and we had difficulty in getting on in some
places--just at one corner there was a little cheer and a cry of "Vive
les Anglais!"

It took a long time before my flock was entirely disposed of. It had
been arranged that several of them should work at one of the large
hospitals in Brussels where 150 beds had been set apart for the wounded,
five in another hospital at the end of the city, two in an ambulance
station in the centre of Brussels, nine were taken over to a large
fire-station that was converted into a temporary hospital with 130 beds,
and two had been promis