Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them by Arthur Ruhl
page 61 of 258 (23%)
page 61 of 258 (23%)
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Belgian officers, parks of Belgian military automobiles; up-country a little way the Germans going down in tens of thousands to win their "gate to England"--yet we came across on the Channel boat last evening as usual and had little trouble finding a room. There were tons of Red Cross supplies on board--cotton, chloroform, peroxide; Belgian soldiers patched up and going back to fight; and various volunteer nurses, including two handsome young Englishwomen of the very modern aviatrix type--coming over to drive motor-cycle ambulances--and so smartly gotten up in boots and khaki that a little way off you might have taken them for British officers. At the wharf were other nurses, some of whom I had last seen that Thursday afternoon in Antwerp as they and their wounded rolled away in London buses from the hospital in the Boulevard Leopold. This morning, strolling round the town, I ran into a couple of English correspondents. There were yet several hours before they need address themselves to the arduous task of describing fighting they had not seen, and they talked, with a good humor one sometimes misses in their correspondence, of German collectivism and similar things. One had spent a good deal of time in Germany. "They're the only people who have solved the problem of industrial cities without slums--you must say that for them. Of course, in those model towns of theirs, you've got to brush your teeth at six minutes past eight and sleep on your left side if the police say so--they're astonishing people for doing what they're told. "One day in Dresden I walked across a bit of grass the public weren't supposed to cross. An old gentleman fairly roared the instant he saw |
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