FURNES.
_November._ That's where we are now. I simply can't describe the retreat. It
was too awful, and I don't want to think about it. We've
"settled" down in a house we've commandeered and I suppose we
shall stick here till we're shelled out of it.
Talking of shelling, Queenie is funny. She's quite annoyed if
anybody besides herself gets anywhere near a shell. We picked up
two more stretcher-bearers in Ostend and a queer little
middle-aged lady out for a job at the front. Cutler took her on
as a sort of secretary. At first Queenie was so frantic that she
wouldn't speak to her, and swore she'd make the Corps too hot to
hold her. But when she found that the little lady wasn't for the
danger zone and only proposed to cook and keep our accounts for
us, she calmed down and was quite decent. Then the other day
Miss Mullins came and told us that a bit of shell had chipped
off the corner of her kitchen. The poor old thing was ever so
proud and pleased about it, and Queenie snubbed her frightfully,
and said she wasn't in any danger at all, and asked her how
she'd enjoy it if she was out all day under fire, like us.
And she was furious with me because I had the luck to get into
the bombardment at Dixmude and she hadn't. She talked as if I'd
done her out of her shelling on purpose, whereas it only meant
that I happened to be on the spot when the ambulances were sent
out and she was away somewhere with her own car. She really is
rather vulgar about shells. Dicky says it's a form of war
snobbishness (he hasn't got a scrap of it), but I think it
really is because all the time she's afraid of one of us being
killed. It must be that. Even Dicky owns that she's splendid,
though he doesn't like her....
The Manor, Wyck-on-the-Hill, Gloucestershire.
_May 30th, 1915._ My darling Anne,--Queenie will have told you about Colin. He was
through all that frightful shelling at Ypres in April. He's been
three weeks in the hospital at Boulogne with shell-shock--had it
twice--and now he's back and in that Officers' Hospital in
Kensington, not a bit better. I really think Queenie ought to
get leave and come over and see him.
Eliot was perfectly right. He ought never to have gone out. Of
course he was as plucky as they make them--went back into the
trenches after his first shell-shock--but his nerves couldn't
stand it. Whether they're treating him right or not, they don't
seem to be able to do anything for him.
I'm writing to Queenie. But tell her she must come and see him.
Your loving Adeline Fielding.