The Captives' Homecoming

The crowd at the station gates is generally awed and silent when the Red Cross cars and ambulances emerge, carrying their sad load towards the hospital, but on this night - the night of Thursday, October 7th - the silence was not maintained. Cheer upon cheer arose as each car glided out into the street; shrill, rather shaky cheers, inasmuch as many throats were husky and eyes were dim. For our new arrivals were exchanged British prisoners, straight from Germany - our countrymen who had been captives, some for many months, some for as long as a year, in circumstances of the utmost bodily suffering and sometimes of wretched squalor as well.

Down on the station platform, in the dim illumination of the cowled lamps, one saw a Lancashire and Yorkshire train. Its brown coaches, themselves oddly unfamiliar so far south, were made only too natural here by the great red crosses which had been painted on their sides. From the train had alighted a strange company of travellers in all sorts of garb; men in tattered khaki, men in grey uniforms unrecognisable in England, men in blue or drab overcoats splashed with startling hues, which had been sewn upon them for identification purposes at their concentration camps. Ushering them up the stairs, carrying their nondescript baggage of brown-paper parcels, cardboard boxes tied with string, old handbags and the like, our trim orderlies were a poignant contrast. Many of the travellers hd to be assisted by a friendly arm; some had to be carried; but all were cheerful. And each - it was a graceful thought - received a little gift; a rose to put in buttonhole or hat.

Batch by batch the pathetic yet happy arrivals were helped into automobiles more luxurious, perhaps, than thy had ever ridden in before. The unkempt and the ragged costumes often looked incongruous enough against the rich cushions of those sumptuously-upholstered interiors. But the thought which must have occurred to everybody's mind was that nothing was too good for these lost sons of England who had been regained. We want to give them of our best; a Royal welcome would not have been too much.
Up at the hospital the Receiving Ward was crammed and busy. Some day a great author or poet must come and see our Receiving Ward when wounded arrive, and must describe that scene fitly. We, who know it well, need to have it shown to us afresh, lest we cease to comprehend it significance. And on this particular night, when, as it seemed, every member of the staff was concentrated here to lend a hand, and when the word Welcome seemed to be the keynote of the place even more definitely than usual, the sight was one which even the weariest toiler could not fail to appreciate. Official distinctions - never very noticeable at the 3rd L.G.H.! - had utterly vanished. Officers and orderlies mingled everywhere, some questioning the returned prisoners, others serving them with cocoa, others helping them to undress or to make ready their kits for the pack-store. Presently a procession of wheeled chairs and stretchers began to make its way down the corridors and distribute its human freight amongst the wards - where again a welcome was met with, this time a tangible (and edible) one; for the kitchen staff, labouring late, had cooked countless chops. English chops and English greens therewith, and English potatoes; it was a fine feast for folk fresh from the dubious prison diet of the Boche.

And so to bed, between clean sheets, with a soft pillow and a spring mattress. No wonder there were sighs of contentment; and we can understand even the cryptic allusion of one who, snuggling down and closing his eyes, was heard to murmur fervently; "Home again; NOT 'ARF!"