England's effort : $b Letters to an American friendWard, Humphry, Mrs.
History
England's effort : $b Letters to an American friend
Ward, Humphry, Mrs.
Great Britain. Army -- Ordnance facilities; World War, 1914-1918 -- Personal narratives, British; World War, 1914-1918 -- Women
Now we are only some forty miles from the line, and we presently reach
another town containing an important British Headquarters, where we are to
stop for luncheon. The inn at which we put up is like the song in "Twelfth
Night," "old and plain"--and when lunch is done, our Colonel goes to pay
an official call at Headquarters, and my daughter and I make our way to
the historic church of the town. The Colonel joins us here with another
officer, who brings the amazing news that "G.H.Q."--General
Headquarters--that mysterious centre and brain of all things--invites us
for two days! If we accept, an officer will come for us on the morning of
March 1st to our hotel in Boulogne and take us by motor, some forty miles,
to the guest-house where G.H.Q. puts up its visitors. "_Accept!"_ Ah, if
one could only forget for a moment the human facts behind the absorbing
interest and excitement of this journey, one might be content to feel only
the stir of quickened pulses, of gratitude for a further opportunity so
tremendous.
As it was, I saw all the journey henceforward with new eyes, because of
that to which it was bringing us. On we sped, through the French
countryside, past a great forest lying black on the edge of the white
horizon--I open my map and find it marked Bois de Crecy!--past another old
town, with Agincourt a few miles to the east, and so into a region of pine
and sand that borders the sea. Darkness comes down, and we miss our way.
What are these lines of light among the pine woods? Another military and
hospital camp, which we are to see on the morrow--so we discover at last.
But we have overshot our goal, and must grope our way back through the
pine woods to the sea-shore, where a little primitive hotel, built for the
summer, with walls that seem to be made of brown paper, receives us. But
we have motored far that day, and greet it joyfully.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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