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Updated: June 17, 2025
Alan had one story of how he was told to wait at a certain spot with 130 men. "So I waited," he said, "but the fire was awful." His regiment had, it seems, gone round another way. "I got thirty of the men away," Alan said, "the rest were killed." It means something to be an officer and a gentleman. Every day the list of casualties grows longer, and I wonder who will be left. 19 November. Furnes.
A motor-car was the only method of travelling. After two days of careful enquiries, I at last found a man to take me. He was in the transport department, taking meat to the trenches. I was to meet him that evening on the outskirts of Calais. And I met him that night at an appointed rendezvous, and started on our journey. Eventually we entered Furnes.
James was surrounded; and, in despair of saving himself by flight, he boldly assumed the character of a French officer; rode at the head of twenty troopers toward the right of their army; and, carefully threading the different corps, arrived without exciting suspicion at the bank of the canal, by which he speedily effected his escape to Furnes. The victory on the part of the allies was complete.
It was the port of entry for English wool and Russian furs: the port of departure for Flemish broadcloths, laces, tapestries, and linens. Canals soon connected it with Ghent, Dunkirk, Sluys, Furnes and Ypres.
I arranged, as far as possible, to get through from Calais to Furnes, and with the greatest of good luck I managed it, arriving at my destination at eleven o'clock at night. As usual, it was raining hard. Starting out next day for the front line, I reached the district where a battalion was resting I was allowed in their quarters. Addressing one of the men, I asked if he could speak English.
I helped to pack up one of the ambulances and went back to Furnes sitting next to the driver, but twisted round so that I could hold one of the stretcher poles which wanted to jolt out of its strap so that the man lying with a dead weight on the canvas would come down with a smash upon the body of the man beneath. "Ca y est," said my driver friend, very cheerfully.
It nosed its way in, crawled heavily a few inches up the coverlet, and turned its legs up. Two more came, alighted, sniffed and died. "You see," he said. Next day, the head of the Coxyde Poste motored over to Furnes for a call on his wounded helper. "Where does all that chatter come from?" he asked. Sister Teresa smiled. "It's your silent friend," she said.
Some people said they came from the sea, but the houses I saw hadn't been hit from the sea, which lies north, but from the east. Others talked of an armoured train, but armoured trains don't carry 15-inch shells. So all anyone could do was to gape with sheer astonishment. Dunkirk, that safest of places, the haven to which we were all to fly when Furnes or La Panne were bombarded!
Furnes, in short, is an epitome, and I think a very charming one, of all that is most characteristic in Flanders; and not the less charming because here the strong currents of modern life that throb through Ghent and Antwerp extend only to its threshold in the faintest of dying ripples, and because you do not need to be told that in its town hall may still be seen hangings of old Spanish leather, and that the members of the Inquisition used to meet in the ante-chamber of the first floor of its Palais de Justice, in order to throw yourself back in memory to those old days of Lowland greatness from whose struggles Holland emerged victorious, but into which Belgium, for the time, sank back oppressed.
One only wonders at the frightfulness of the crime which makes men kill each other without a purpose of their own, but at the dictate of powers far removed from their own knowledge and interests in life. That courtyard in the convent at Furnes will always haunt my mind as the scene of a grim drama.
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