When we drove the cases to the hospital ships the long quay along which we took them barely allowed two cars to pass abreast.  Turning when the car was empty was therefore a ticklish business, and there was only one place where it could be done.  If you made a slip, there was nothing between you and the sea 50 feet below.  There was a dip in the platform at one point, and by backing carefully on to this, it was just possible to turn, but to do so necessitated running forward in the direction of the quay, where there was barely the space of a foot left between the front wheel and the edge.  I know, sitting in the car, I never could see any edge at all.  If by any chance you misjudged this dip and backed against the edge of the platform by mistake the car, unable to mount it, rebounded and slid forward!  It was always rather a breathless performance at first; and beginners, rather than risk it, backed the whole length of the quay.  I did so myself the first time, but it was such a necktwisting performance I felt I’d rather risk a ducking.  With practice we were able to judge to a fraction just how near the edge we could risk going, and the men on the hospital ships would hold their breath at the (I hope pardonable) swank of some of the more daring spirits who went just as near as they could and then looked up and laughed as they drove down the quay.  After I was in hospital in England, I heard that a new hand lost her head completely, and in Eva’s newly painted ’bus executed a spinning nose-dive right over the quay.  A sight I wouldn’t have missed for worlds.  As she “touched water,” however, the F.A.N.Y. spirit predominated.  She was washed through the back of the ambulance (luckily the front canvas was up), and as it sank she gallantly kicked off from the roof of the fast disappearing car.  She was an excellent swimmer, but two R.A.M.C. men sprang overboard to her rescue, and I believe almost succeeded in drowning her in their efforts!  This serves to show what an extremely touchy job it was, and one we had to perform in fogs or the early hours of a winter’s morning when it was almost too dark to see anything.  Some Red Cross men drivers from Havre watched us once, and declared their quay down there was wider by several feet, but no one ever turned on it.  It seemed odd at home to see two girls on army ambulances.  We went distances of sixty miles or more alone, only taking an orderly when the cases were of a very serious nature and likely to require attention en route.

Once I remember I was returning from taking a new medical officer (a cheerful individual, whose only remark during the whole of that fifteen-mile run was, “I’m perished!”) to an outlying camp.  I wondered at first if that was his name and he was introducing himself, but one glance was sufficient to prove otherwise!  On the way back alone, I paused to ask the way, as I had to return by another route.  The man I had stopped (whom at first I had taken to be a Frenchman) was a German prisoner, so I started on again; but wherever I looked there were nothing but Germans, busily working at these quarries.  No guards were in sight, as far as I could see, and I wondered idly if they would take it into their heads to hold up the car, brain me, and escape.  It was only a momentary idea though, for looking at these men, they seemed to be quite incapable of thinking of anything so original.