It was easy to see what had happened during those days and nights of terror some weeks ago. I looked into the blown-out fronts of little shops and houses, and saw how everything had been abandoned in that rush of women and children to the cellars. In spite of the wreckage of the upper stories and of the walls about them, some of the rooms were intact. Here were the remains of an estaminet, with its cash-box on the bar counter, and games such as soldiers love--dominoes and darts, and quoits and bagatelle, set out as though for an evening's entertainment. Here was a chemist's shop, with many bottles unbroken on the shelves, though most of the house was blown across the street. I looked through a hole in the wall to a drawing-room, with a piano, standing amid a litter of broken furniture, as though some madman had wreaked his fury on the sofa and chairs.
But it was in the cellars that the pitiful drama had been--in those cellars down which I peered wondering whether any poor bodies lay there still. The shells had pierced down to some of the women hiding in them. Poison-gas came to choke some of them. Rescue parties of our R.A.M.C. went into Armentières immediately to get the poor creatures away, and risked their lives a score of times on each journey they made. It is an amazing thing that even then, in spite of their terror and their agony and their wounds, many of the old women could hardly be made to leave the town, and clung desperately to their homes, though these had fallen down on top of them.
Outside Armentières yesterday I met one of the R.A.M.C. lads who had helped in this rescue work--he has been given a Military Medal for it--and he told me of his trouble with two old ladies when things were at their worst. Neither had a rag of clothing on except the blankets he wrapped round them as they lay on stretchers; but when his attention wandered from them, owing to shells which burst close to the ambulance, one of these old dames scrambled up and ran off naked down the street. He went after her, and on his return found that the other old lady had given him the slip.
He had astounding experiences, this Wessex boy who is an expert in bandaging wounds, and through many days of dreadfulness and many nights he worked in Armentières under heavy fire, and did not turn a hair. He was such a Mark Tapley that when everything was falling about him and Hell was let loose he became more and more cheerful and refused to take things seriously.