One day I was detailed to drive the Matron and our section leader to a fete of sorts for Belgian refugee orphans.  On the way back, crossing the swing bridge, we met Betty driving the sisters to their billets.  I thought Matron wanted to speak to them and luckily, as it turned out, I slowed down.  She changed her mind, however, and I was just picking up again as we came abreast, when from behind Betty’s car sprang a woman right in front of mine (after her hat it appeared later, which the wind had just blown across the road).  The apparition was so utterly unforeseen and unexpected that she was bowled over like a rabbit in two shakes.  I jammed on the brakes and we sprang out, and saw she was under the car in between the wheel and the chassis.  Luckily she was a small thin woman, and as Gaspard has so eloquently expressed it on another occasion, platte comme une punaise (flat as a drawing-pin).  I was horrified, the whole thing had happened so suddenly.  A crowd of French and Belgian soldiers collected, and I rapidly directed them to lift the front of the car up by the springs, as it seemed the only way of getting her out without further injury.  I turned away, not daring to look, and as I did so my eye caught sight of some hair near one of the back wheels!  That finished me up!  I did not stop to reason that of course the back wheels had not touched her, and thought, “My God, I’ve scalped her!” and I leant over the railings feeling exceedingly sick.  A friendly M.P. who had seen the whole thing, patted me on the arm and said, “Now, then, Miss, don’t you take on, that’s only her false ’air,” as indeed it proved to be!  The woman was yelling and groaning, “Mon Dieu, je suis tuee,” but according to the “red hat” she was as “right as rain, nothing but ’ysteria.”  I blessed that M.P. and hoped we would meet again.  We helped her on to the front seat, where Thompson supported her, while I drove to hospital to see if any damage had been done.  Singularly enough, she was only suffering from bruises and a torn skirt, and of course the loss of her “false ’air” (which I had refused to touch, it had given me such a turn).  I can only hope her husband, who was with her at the time, picked it up.  He followed to hospital and gave her a most frightful scolding, adding that of course the “Mees” could not do otherwise than knock her down if she so foolishly sprang in front of cars without warning; and she might think herself lucky that the “Mees” would not run her in for being in the way!  It has always struck me as being so humorous that in England if you knock a pedestrian over they can have you up, while in France the law is just the reverse.  She sobbed violently, and I had to tell him that what she wanted was sympathy and not scolding.

It took me a day or two to get over that scalping expedition (of course the story was all round the camp within the hour!) and for some time after I slowed down crossing the bridge.  This was the one and only time anything of the sort ever happened to me, thank goodness!