My War Experiences in Two Continents   By: S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan (1864-1916)

by

S. MACNAUGHTAN

Edited by Her Niece, Mrs. Lionel Salmon (Betty Keays Young)

With a Portrait

[Illustration: Camera Portrait by E. O. Hoppé.]

London John Murray, Albemarle Street, W. 1919

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED, IN ACCORDANCE WITH A WISH EXPRESSED BY MISS MACNAUGHTAN BEFORE HER DEATH,

TO

THOSE WHO ARE FIGHTING AND THOSE WHO HAVE FALLEN,

WITH ADMIRATION AND RESPECT, AND TO

HER NEPHEWS,

CAPTAIN LIONEL SALMON, 1st Bn. the Welch Regt. CAPTAIN HELIER PERCIVAL, M.C., 9th Bn. the Welch Regt. CAPTAIN ALAN YOUNG, 2nd Bn. the Welch Regt. CAPTAIN COLIN MACNAUGHTAN, 2nd Dragoon Guards. LIEUTENANT RICHARD YOUNG, 9th Bn. the Welch Regt.

CONTENTS

PAGE PREFACE ix

PART I BELGIUM

CHAPTER I ANTWERP 1

CHAPTER II WITH DR. HECTOR MUNRO'S FLYING AMBULANCE CORPS 24

CHAPTER III AT FURNES RAILWAY STATION 60

CHAPTER IV WORKING UNDER DIFFICULTIES 85

CHAPTER V THE SPRING OFFENSIVE 111

CHAPTER VI LAST DAYS IN FLANDERS 135

PART II AT HOME

HOW THE MESSAGE WAS DELIVERED 159

PART III RUSSIA AND THE PERSIAN FRONT

CHAPTER I PETROGRAD 179

CHAPTER II WAITING FOR WORK 204

CHAPTER III SOME IMPRESSIONS OF TIFLIS AND ARMENIA 219

CHAPTER IV ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 237

CHAPTER V THE LAST JOURNEY 258

CONCLUSION 272

INDEX 281

PREFACE

In presenting these extracts from the diaries of my aunt, the late Miss Macnaughtan, I feel it necessary to explain how they come to be published, and the circumstances under which I have undertaken to edit them.

After Miss Macnaughtan's death, her executors found among her papers a great number of diaries. There were twenty five closely written volumes, which extended over a period of as many years, and formed an almost complete record of every incident of her life during that time.

It is amazing that the journal was kept so regularly, as Miss Macnaughtan suffered from writer's cramp, and the entries could only have been written with great difficulty. Frequently a passage is begun in the writing of her right, and finished in that of her left hand, and I have seen her obliged to grasp her pencil in her clenched fist before she was able to indite a line. In only one volume, however, do we find that she availed herself of the services of her secretary to dictate the entries and have them typed.

The executors found it extremely difficult to know how to deal with such a vast mass of material. Miss Macnaughtan was a very reserved woman.{1} She lived much alone, and the diary was her only confidante. In one of her books she says that expression is the most insistent of human needs, and that the inarticulate man or woman who finds no outlet in speech or in the affections, will often keep a little locked volume in which self can be safely revealed. Her diary occupied just such a place in her own inner life, and for that reason one hesitates to submit its pages even to the most loving and sympathetic scrutiny.