A brilliant inspiration came to me.  As there were British troops in Poperinghe, there must also be British rations, and I had glorious visions of Maconochie and army biscuits.  Out into the dark streets again I went with my little car, and after wayside conversations with British soldiers who knew nothing but their own job, found at last the officer in charge of the commissariat.  He was a tall fellow and rather haughty in the style of a British officer confronted abruptly with an unusual request.  He wanted to know who the devil I was, not liking my civilian clothes and suspecting a German spy.  But he became sympathetic when I told him, quite dishonestly, that I was in charge of a British field ambulance under the Belgian Government, which had been forced to evacuate Fumes as the enemy had broken through the Belgian lines.  I expressed my gratitude for his kindness, which I was sure he would show, in providing fifty-five army rations for fifty-five doctors and nurses devilishly hungry and utterly destitute.  After some hesitation he consented to give me a “chit,” and turning to a sergeant who had been my guide down a dark street, said:  “Take this officer to the depot and see that he gets everything he wants.”  It was a little triumph not to be appreciated by readers who do not know the humiliations experienced by correspondents in time of war.

A few minutes later the officer came padding down the street after me, and I expected instant arrest and solitary confinement to the end of the war.  But he was out for information.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, very politely, “but would you mind giving me a sketch of the military situation round your part?”

I gave him an outline of the affair which had caused the Belgian headquarters staff to shift from Furnes, and though it was, I fancy, slightly over-coloured, he was very much obliged...  So, gloriously, I drove back to the beer-tavern with the fifty-five army rations which were enough to feed fifty-five starving people for a week, and was received with cheers.  That night, conscious of good deeds, I laid down in the straw of a school-house which had been turned into a barracks, and by the light of several candle-ends, scribbled a long dispatch, which became a very short one when the British censor had worked his will with it.

22

After all, the ambulance column did not have to stay in Poperinghe, but went back to their old quarters, with doctors, nurses and nuns, and all their properties.  The enemy had not followed up its advantages, and the Belgian troops, aided by French marines and other French troops who now arrived in greater numbers, thrust them back and barred the way to Dunkirk.  The waters of the Yser had helped to turn the tide of war.  The sluice-gates were opened and flooded the surrounding fields, so that the enemy’s artillery was bogged and could not move.