At Dunkirk the question of the Secretary's transport again arose. It
contended feebly with the larger problem of where and when and how the
Corps was to lunch, things being further complicated by the Commandant's
impending interview with Baron de Broqueville, the Belgian Minister of
War. I began to feel like a large and useless parcel which the
Commandant had brought with him in sheer absence of mind, and was now
anxious to lose or otherwise get rid of. At the same time the Ambulance
could not go on for more than three days without further funds, and, as
the courier to be despatched to fetch them, I was, for the moment, the
most important person in the Corps; and my transport was not a question
to be lightly set aside.
I was about to solve the problem for myself by lugging my lady to the
railway station, when Ursula Dearmer took us over too, in her stride, as
inconsiderable items of the business before her. I have nothing but
admiration for her handling of it.
We halted in the main street of Dunkirk while Mr. Riley and the
chauffeurs unearthed from the baggage-car my hold-all and suit-case and
the British Red Cross lady's hold-all and trunk and Mr. Foster's
kit-bag and Dr. Hanson's suit-case with her best clothes and her
surgical instruments and the tin--No, not the tin box, for the
Commandant, now possessed by a violent demon of hurry, resisted our
efforts to drag it from its lair.[38]
All these things were piled on Ursula Dearmer's military scouting-car.
The British Red Cross lady (almost incredulous of her good luck) and I
got inside it, and Ursula Dearmer and Mr. Riley drove us to the railway
station.
By the mercy of Heaven a train was to leave for Boulogne either a little
before or a little after one, and we had time to catch it.
There was a long line of refugee _bourgeois_ drawn up before the station
doors, and I noticed that every one of them carried in his hand a slip
of paper.
Ursula Dearmer hailed a porter, who, she said, would look after us like
a father. With a matchless celerity he and Mr. Riley tore down the pile
of luggage. The porter put them on a barrow and disappeared with them
very swiftly through the station doors.
At least I suppose it was through the doors. All we knew was that he
disappeared.
Then Ursula Dearmer handed over to me three cables to be sent from
Dunkirk. I said good-bye to her and Mr. Riley. They got back into the
motor-car, and they, too, very swiftly disappeared.
Mr. Riley went away bearing with him the baffling mystery of his
personality. After nearly three weeks' association with him I know that
Mr. Riley's whole heart is in his job of carrying the wounded. Beyond
that I know no more of him than on the day when he first turned up
before our Committee.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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