Beschreibung
Excerpt:. if after an orgy, suffering in a dreadful communion of guilt. Wednesday, 7th. 7 A.M. Got up early and went to Mass in the Cathedral. Prepared report for British Red Cross. Wrote "Journal of Impressions" from September 25th to September 26th, 11 A.M. It's slow work. Haven't got out of Ostend yet! Fighting at Zele. Pg 142 Afternoon. Got very near the fighting this time. Mr. L. (Heaven bless him!) took me out with him in the War Correspondents' car to see what the Ambulance was doing at Zele, and, incidentally, to look at the bombardment of some evacuated villages near it (I have no desire to see the bombardment of any village that has not been evacuated first). Mr. M. came too, and they brought a Belgian lady with them, a charming and beautiful lady, whose name I forget. When Mr. L. told me to get up and come with him to Zele, I did get up with an energy and enthusiasm that amazed me; I got up like one who has been summoned at last, after long waiting, to a sure and certain enterprise. I can trust Mr. L. or any War Correspondent who means business, as I cannot (after Antwerp) trust the Commandant. So far, if the Commandant happens upon a bombardment it has been either in the way of duty, or by sheer luck, or both, as at Alost and Termonde, when duty took him to these places, and any bombardment or firing was, as it were, thrown in. He did not go out deliberately to seek it, for its own sake, and find it infallibly, which is the War Correspondent's way. So that if Mr. L. says there is going to be a bom Pg 143 bardment, we shall probably get somewhere nearer to it than thirty kilometres. We took the main road to Zele. I don't know whether it was really a continuation of the south-east road that runs under the Hospital windows; anyhow, we left it very soon, striking southwards to the right to find what Mr. L. believed to be a short cut. Thus we never got to Zele at all. We came out on a good straight road that would no doubt have led us there in time,.