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Title: Canada in war-paint

Author: Ralph W. Bell

Release date: July 31, 2022 [eBook #68654]

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd

Credits: David E. Brown and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CANADA IN WAR-PAINT ***





CANADA IN WAR-PAINT


_All rights reserved_




[Illustration: MULES
            (see page 26)       _From a drawing by Bert Thomas._]




  CANADA
  IN WAR-PAINT

  BY CAPT.
  RALPH W. BELL

  [Illustration]


  LONDON AND TORONTO
  J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
  PARIS: J. M. DENT ET FILS
  NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.


  _First Published in 1917_




PREFACE


There is no attempt made in the little sketches which this book
contains to deal historically with events of the war. It is but a small
_Souvenir de la guerre_--a series of vignettes of things as they struck
me at the time, and later. I have written of types, not of individuals,
and less of action than of rest. The horror of war at its worst is fit
subject for a master hand alone.

I have to thank the proprietors of _The Globe_ for their courtesy in
allowing the reproduction of “Canvas and Mud” and “Tent Music,” and of
the _Canadian Magazine_ for the reproduction of “Martha of Dranvoorde.”

Finally, I feel that I can have no greater honour than humbly to
dedicate this book to the officers, N.C.O.’s and men of the First
Canadian Infantry Battalion, Ontario Regiment, with whom I have spent
some of the happiest, as well as some of the hardest, days of my life.

                                                          RALPH W. BELL.

  _December 11th, 1916._




CONTENTS

                               PAGE

  CANVAS AND MUD!                 9

  TENT MUSIC                     15

  RATTLE-SNAKE PETE              21

  MULES                          26

  “OFFICE”                       31

  OUR FARM                       37

  AEROPLANES AND “ARCHIE”        41

  STIRRING TIMES                 47

  SICK PARADE                    53

  BATMEN                         60

  RATIONS                        67

  OUR SCOUT OFFICER              73

  MARTHA OF DRANVOORDE           78

  COURCELETTE                    89

  CARNAGE                       101

  “A” COMPANY RUSTLES           106

  “MINNIE AND ‘FAMILY’”         113

  AN OFFICER AND GENTLEMAN      118

  “S.R.D.”                      123

  BEDS                          128

  MARCHING                      134

  THE NATIVES                   140

  “OTHER INHABITANTS”           147

  BOMBS                         153

  SOFT JOBS                     158

  “GROUSE”                      163

  PANSIES                       169

  GOING BACK                    174

  THREE RED ROSES               181

  ADJUTANTS                     187

  HOME                          193

  ACTION                        198




CANADA IN WAR-PAINT




CANVAS AND MUD!


To those men who, in days of peace, have trained on the swelling,
lightly-wooded plains round about Salisbury, no doubt this portion
of Old England may seem a very pleasant land. But they have not been
there in November under canvas. When the old soldiers of the Canadian
contingent heard that we were to go to “the Plains,” some of them said,
“S’elp me!” and some a great deal more! It was an ideal day when we
arrived. The trees were russet brown and beautiful under the October
sun, the grass still green, and the winding road through picturesque
little Amesbury white and hard, conveying no hint of that mud for which
we have come to feel a positive awe.

At first we all liked our camp; it was high and dry, the tents had
floor-boards, that traitorous grass was green and firm withal, and
a balmy breeze, follower of the Indian summer, blew pleasantly over
the wide-rolling land. We liked it after the somewhat arid climate of
Valcartier, the sand and dust. Then it began to rain. It rained one
day, two days, three days. During that time the camp named after the
fabulous bird became a very quagmire. The sullen black mud was three
inches deep between the tent lines, on the parade ground, on the road,
where it was pounded and ridged and rolling-pinned by transports,
troops, and general traffic; it introduced itself into the tents in
slimy blodges, ruined the flawless shine of every “New Guard’s” boots,
spattered men from head to foot stickily and persistently. The mud
entered into our minds, our thoughts were turbid. Some enterprising
passer-by called us mud-larks, and mud-larks we have remained.

Canadians think Salisbury Plains a hideous spot. Those who have been
there before know better, but it were suicide to say so, for we have
reached the rubber-boot stage. When the rain “lets up” we go forth with
picks and spades and clean the highways and byways. Canadians do it
with a settled gloom. If the Kaiser tries to land forces in England
they hope he will come to Salisbury with his hordes. There they will
stick fast. In the fine intervals we train squelchily and yearn for
the trenches. What matters the mire when one is at the front, but to
slide gracefully into a pool of turgid water, in heavy marching order,
for practice only, is hardly good enough. Most Canadians think the
concentration camp might preferably have been at the North Pole, if
Amundsen would lend it, and we could occupy it without committing a
breach of neutrality.

That brings us to the cold weather, of which we have had a foretaste.
It was freezing a few days ago. The ground, the wash-taps, and we
ourselves, all were frozen. A cheerful Wiltshireman passed along
the highway. There was a bitter damp north wind; despite the frost
everything seemed to be clammy. “Nice weather for you Canadians,”
he shouted happily. Luckily we had no bayonets. It is quite natural
that in this country it should be thought that Canadians love cold
weather and welcome it. But there is cold and cold. The Salisbury
Plains type is of the “and cold” variety! It steals in through the
tent flaps with a “chilth” that damply clings. It rusts rifles, blues
noses, hoarsens the voice, wheezes into the lungs. It catches on to
the woollen filaments of blankets and runs into them, it seeks out
the hidden gaps in canvas walls and steals within, it crawls beneath
four blankets--when one has been able to steal an extra one--through
overcoats, sweaters, up the legs of trousers, into under-garments,
and at last finds gelid rest against the quivering flesh, eating its
way into the marrow-bones. Like the enemy, it advances in massed
formation, and though stoves may dissipate platoon after platoon it
never ceases to send up reinforcements until a whining gale has seized
on the tent-ropes, squeaks at the poles, draws in vain at the pegs,
tears open loose flaps, and veering round brings back sodden rain and
the perpetual, the everlasting mud. We know the hard, cold bite of “20
below,” the crisp snow, the echoing land, the crackling of splitting
trees, even frost-bite. But it is a dry cold, and it comes: “Whish!”
This cold of England’s creeps into the very heart. It takes mean
advantages. “Give me the Yukon any old time,” says the hard-bitten
shivering stalwart of the north-west. “This, this, it ain’t kinder
playin’ the game.”

It must not be thought that Canadians are complaining, for they are
not. But England’s climate is to them something unknown and unspeakably
vile! One must have been brought up in it to appreciate and to
anticipate its vagaries. Canadians feel they have been misled. They
expected English cold weather to be a “cinch.” But it’s the weather
puts the “cinch” on, not they! There will come a time when we shall be
in huts, and the leaky old canvas tents that are now our habitat will
have been folded and--we hope for the benefit of others--stolen away!
Those tents have seen so much service that they know just as well how
to leak as an old charger how to drill. They become animated--even
gay--when the wind-beaten rain darkens their grimy flanks, and with
fiendish ingenuity they drip, drip, drip down the nape of the neck,
well into the eye, even plumb down the throat of the open-mouthed,
snoring son of the maple-land.

No matter, we shall be old campaigners when the winter is over; old
mud-larkers, as impervious to wet earth as a worm. Even the mud is good
training for the time we shall have in the trenches!




TENT MUSIC


It is not often that Thomas Atkins of any nationality wears his heart
upon his sleeve, and it is quite certain that the British Tommy but
rarely does so, or his confrere of the Canadian Contingent. Perhaps he
best shows his thoughts and relieves his feelings in song.

Salisbury Plains must have seen and heard many things, yet few
stranger sounds can have been heard there than the chants which rise
from dimly-lighted canvas walls, when night has shrouded the earth,
and the stars gleam palely through the mist. It is the habit of the
Canadian Mr. Atkins, ere he prepares himself for rest, to set his
throat a-throbbing to many a tune both new and old. The result is
not invariably musical--sometimes far from it, but it is a species
of sound the male creature produces either to show his “gladness or
his sadness,” and by means of which he relieves a heavy heart, or
indicates that in his humble opinion “all’s well with the world.” On
every side, from almost every tent, there is harmony, melody, trio,
quartette, chorus, or--noise! It is a strange mixture of thoughts
and things, a peculiar vocal photograph of the men of the Maple, now
admirable, now discordant, here ribald, there rather tinged with the
pathetic.

No programme-maker in his wildest moments, in the throes of the most
conflicting emotions, could begin to evolve such a varied, such a
startling programme as may be heard in the space of a short half-hour
under canvas--in a rain-sodden, comfortless tent--anywhere on Salisbury
Plains. It does not matter who begins it; some one is “feeling good,”
and he lifts up his voice to declaim that “You made me love you; I
didn’t want to do it!” The rest join in, here a tenor, there a bass or
a baritone, and the impromptu concert has begun.

Never have the writers of songs, the composers of music, grave and
gay, come more into their own than among the incorrigibly cheerful
warriors of the Plains. The relative merits of composers are not
discussed. They are all good enough for Jock Canuck as long as there is
that nameless something in the song or the music which appeals to him.
It is curious that we who hope to slay, and expect to be slain--many
of us--should sing with preference of Killarney’s lakes and fells,
“Sunnybrook Farm,” “Silver Threads Among the Gold,” rather than some
War Chant or Patriotic Ode, something visionary of battle-fields, guns,
the crash of shells. Is not this alone sufficient to show that beneath
his tunic, and in spite of his martial spirit, Tommy “has a heart,” and
a very warm one?

Picture to yourself a tent with grimy, sodden sides, lighted by three
or four guttering candle-ends, stuck wherever space or ingenuity
permits. An atmosphere tobacco laden, but not stuffy, rifles piled
round the tent-pole, haversacks, “dunnage” bags, blankets, and
oil-sheets spread about, and their owners, some of them lying on the
floor wrapped in blankets, some seated, one or two perhaps reading
or writing in cramped positions, yet quite content. Yonder is a
lusty Yorkshireman, big, blue-eyed, and fair, who for some reason
best known to himself _will_ call himself an Irishman. We know him
as “the man with three voices,” for he has a rich, tuneful, though
uncultivated tenor, a wonderful falsetto, and a good alto. His tricks
are remarkable, but his ear is fine. He loves to lie sprawled on his
great back, and lift up his voice to the skies. All the words of half
the old and new songs of two peoples, British and American, he has
committed to memory. He is our “leading man,” a shining light in the
concert firmament. We have heard and helped him to sing in the course
of one crowded period of thirty minutes the following varied programme:
“Tipperary,” “Silver Threads Among the Gold,” “My Old Kentucky Home,”
“Fight the Good Fight,” “A Wee Deoch an’ Doris,” “When the Midnight
Choochoo Leaves for Alabam,” “The Maple Leaf,” “Cock Robin,” “Get Out
and Get Under,” “Where is My Wandering Boy To-Night,” “Nearer, My God,
to Thee,” and “I Stand in a Land of Roses, though I Dream of a Land of
Snow.” But there is one song we never sing, “Home, Sweet Home.” Home is
too sacred a subject with us; it touches the deeper, aye, the deepest,
chords, and we dare not risk it, exiles that we are.

Very often there are strange paradoxes in the words we sing, when
compared with reality.... “I stand in a land of roses!” Well, not
exactly, although Salisbury Plains in the summer time are, like the
curate’s egg, “good in parts.” But the following line is true enough
of many of us. We do “dream of a land of snow”; of the land, and those
far, far away in it. Sometimes we sing “rag-time melodee,” but that is
only _pour passer le temps_. There is something which prompts us to
other songs, and to sacred music. It often happens that in our tent
there are three or four men with voices above the average who take a
real delight in singing. One of the most beautiful things of the kind
the writer has ever heard was a quartette’s singing of “Nearer, My God,
to Thee.” Fine, well-trained voices they possessed, blending truly and
harmoniously, which rang out almost triumphal in the frosty night.
They sang it once, and then again, and as the last notes died away the
bugles sounded the “Last Post.”

Taa-Taa, Taa-Taa, Ta-ta-ti-ti-ti-ti-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta.
Ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ta-ta-ta-ta-taa, Taa-Taa, Taa-Taa, Taaa, Tiii!

Verily, even under canvas music _hath_ charms to soothe the savage
breast.




RATTLE-SNAKE PETE


Very tall, thin, and cadaverous, with a strong aquiline nose, deep-set,
piercing black eyes, bushy eyebrows matching them in colour, and a
heavy, fiercely waxed moustache, streaked with grey, he was a man who
commanded respect, if not fear.

In spite of his sixty years he was as straight as the proverbial poker,
and as “nippy on his pins” as a boy a third of his age. Two ribbons
rested on his left breast--the long service ribbon and that of the
North-West Rebellion. His voice was not harsh, nor was it melodious,
but it could be heard a mile off and struck pure terror into the heart
of the evil-doer when he heard it! Rattle-Snake Pete was, as a matter
of fact, our Company Sergeant-Major.

Withering was the scorn with which he surveyed a delinquent “rooky,”
while his eyes shot flame, and in the terrified imagination of
the unfortunate being on whom that fierce gaze was bent his ears
seemed to curve upwards into horns, until he recalled the popular
conception of Mephistopheles! We called him--when he was safely beyond
hearing--Rattle-Snake Pete, but that worthy bravo was far less feared
than was his namesake.

First of all, the Sergeant-Major was a real soldier, from the nails in
his boots to the crown of his hat. Secondly, he was a man of strong
prejudices, and keen dislikes, and, lastly, a very human, unselfish,
kind-hearted man.

Discipline was his God, smartness on parade and off the greatest virtue
in man, with the exception of pluck. He ruled with a rod of iron,
tempered by justice, and his keenness was a thing to marvel at. At
first we all hated him with a pure-souled hate. Then, as he licked us
into shape, and the seeds of soldiering were sown, we began to realise
that he was right, and that we were wrong--and that, after all, the
only safe thing to do was to obey!

One day a man was slow in doing what his corporal told him to do. As
was his habit, the S.-M. came on the scene suddenly, a lean tower of
steely wrath. After he had poured out the vials of his displeasure on
the head of the erring one, he added: “I’ll make you a soldier, lad, or
I’ll break your heart!” He meant it; he could do it; we knew he could,
and it resulted in our company being the best in the regiment.

Shortly before we moved to France, a personage and his consort
inspected us. He shook hands with Rattle-Snake, and spoke to him for
several moments.

“How old are you?”

“Forty-five, Your Majesty.”

“Military age, I suppose?” queried the Personage with a kindly smile.

“Yes, sir.”

Never in his life was Rattle so happy as he was that day, and we felt
rather proud of him ourselves.

_Our_ Sergeant-Major had shaken hands with the King!

Those who had stood near enough to hear what had passed achieved a
temporary fame thereby, and in tent and canteen the story was told,
with variations suited to the imagination of the raconteur, for days
after the event.

When we moved to France Rattle-Snake Pete came with us. I think the
doctor saw it would have broken his heart not to come, although at his
age he certainly should not have done so. But come he did, and never
will the writer forget the day Rattle pursued him into an old loft, up
a broken, almost perpendicular ladder, to inquire in a voice of thunder
why a certain fatigue party was minus a man.

“Come you down out of there, lad, or you’ll be for it!” And, meekly as
a sucking-dove, I came!

He was wounded at the second battle of Ypres, and, according to all
accounts, what he said about the Germans as he lay on that battle-field
petrified the wounded around him, and was audible above the roar of
bursting Jack Johnsons.

They sent him to hospital in “Blighty,” an unwilling patient, and there
he has been eating out his heart ever since, in the face of adamantine
medical boards.

One little incident. We were billeted in an old theatre, years ago it
seems now, at Armentières. We had marched many kilometres in soaking
rain that afternoon, and we were deadly weary. Rattle, though he said
no word, was ill, suffering agonies from rheumatism. One could see it.
Being on guard, I was able to see more than the rest, who, for the most
part, slept the sleep of the tired out. One fellow was quite ill, and
he tossed and turned a good deal in his sleep. Rattle was awake too,
sitting in front of the dying embers in the stove, his face every now
and then contorted with pain. Often he would go over to the sick man
and arrange his bed for him as gently as a woman. Then he himself lay
down. The sick man awoke, and I heard his teeth chatter. “Cold, lad?”
said a deep voice near by. “Yes, bitter cold.” The old S.-M. got up,
took his own blanket and put it over the sick man. Thereafter he sat
until the dawn broke on a rickety chair in front of the dead fire.




MULES


Until there was a war, quite a lot of people hardly knew there were
such things as mules. “Mules?” they would say, “Oh, er, yes ... those
creatures with donkey’s ears, made like a horse? or do you mean
canaries?”

_Nous avons changé tout cela!_ “Gonga Din” holds no hidden meaning
from us now. We have, indeed, a respect for mules, graded according to
closeness of contact.

In some Transports they think more of a mule than of a first-class,
No. 1 charger. Why? Simply because a mule is--a mule. No one has yet
written a theory of the evolution of mules. We all know a mule is a
blend of horse and donkey, and that reproduction of the species is
mercifully withheld by the grace of heaven, but further than that we do
not go.

When the war began our C.O. was talking about mules. We had not crossed
the water then. He said: “I will _not_ have any mules. No civilised
man should have to look after a mule. When I was in Pindi once, a mule
... Mr. Jenks”--our worthy Transport Officer--“there will be no mules
in this regiment.” That settled it for a while.

Our first mule came a month after we had landed in Flanders. It was
a large, lean, hungry-looking mule. It stood about 17 feet 2 inches,
and it had very large floppy ears and a long tail: it was rather a
high-class mule, as mules go. It ate an awful lot. In fact it ate about
as much as two horses and a donkey put together. The first time it was
used some one put it in the Maltese cart, and it looked round at the
cart with an air of surprise and regret. We were on the move, and the
Transport was brigaded, and inspected by the Brigadier as it passed the
starting point. James--the mule--behaved in a most exemplary fashion
until he saw the Brigadier. Then he was overcome by his emotions.
Perhaps the red tabs reminded him of carrots. (James was a pure hog
where carrots were concerned.) At all events he proceeded to break up
the march. He took the bit between his teeth, wheeled to the left,
rolled his eyes, brayed, and charged across an open ditch at the G.O.C.
with the Maltese cart.

The G.O.C. and staff extended to indefinite intervals without any word
of command.

James pulled up in a turnip patch and began to eat contentedly. It took
six men and the Transport Officer to get him on to the road again, and
the Maltese cart was a wreck.

After that they tried him as a pack-mule. He behaved like an angel for
two whole weeks, and then some bright-eyed boy tried him as a saddle
mule. After that the whole of the Transport tried him, retiring worsted
from the fray on each occasion. One day the Transport Officer bet
all-comers fifty francs on the mule. The conditions were that riders
must stick on for five minutes. We used to think we could ride any
horse ever foaled. We used to fancy ourselves quite a lot in fact,
until we met James. Half the battalion came to see the show, which took
place one sunny morning at the Transport lines. We looked James over
with an appraising eye. We even gave him a carrot, as an earnest of
goodwill. James wore a placid, far-away expression and, now and then,
rolled his eyes sentimentally.

We gathered up the reins, and vaulted on to his back. For a full two
seconds James stood stock still. Then he emitted an ear-splitting
squeal, laid back his ears, bared his teeth, turned round and bit at
the near foot, and sat down on his hind legs. He did all these things
in quick time, by numbers. The betting, which had started at 2-1 on
James, increased to 3-1 immediately. However, we stuck. James rose
with a mighty heave, then, still squealing, made a rush of perhaps ten
yards, and stopped dead. We still stuck. The betting fell to evens,
except for the Transport Sergeant, who in loud tones offered 5-1 (on
James). That kept him busy for two minutes, during which time James did
almost everything but roll, and bit a toe off one of my new pair of
riding boots.

There was one minute to go, and there was great excitement. James gave
one squeal of concentrated wrath, gathered his four hoofs together
tightly, bucked four feet in the air, kicked in mid-ether, and tried to
bite his own tail. When we next saw him he was being led gently away.

Since then we have had many mules. We have become used to them, and we
respect them. If we hear riot in the Transport lines we know it is a
mule. If we hear some one has been kicked, we know it is a mule. If we
see one of the G.S. wagons carrying about two tons we know mules are
drawing it. Old James now pulls the water-cart. He would draw it up to
the mouth of the biggest Fritz cannon that ever was, but Frank Wootton
could not ride him!




“OFFICE”


“Charge against No. 7762543, Private Smith, J.C.; In the field,
11.11.16, refusing to obey an order, in that he would not wash out a
dixie when ordered to do so. First witness, Sergeant Bendrick.”

“Sirr! On Nov. 11th I was horderly sergeant. Private Thomas, cook,
comes to me, and he says as ’ow ’e ’ad warned the pris-- the haccused,
sir, to wash out a dixie, which same the haccused refused to do.
Hordered by me to wash hout the dixie, sir, the haccused refused again,
and I places ’im under hopen arrest, sir.”

“Cpl. Townsham, what have you to say?”

“Sirr! On Nov. 11th I was eatin’ a piece of bread an’ bacon when I was
witness to what took place between Sergeant Bendrick an’ Private Smith,
sir. I corroborates his evidence.”

“All right; Private Thomas?”

“Sirr! I coboriates both of them witnesses.”

“You corroborate what both witnesses have said?”

“Yessir.”

“Now, Smith, what have you got to say? Stand to attention!”

“I ain’t got _nothin’_ to say, sir, savin’ that I never joined the army
to wash dixies, an’ I didn’t like the tone of voice him”--indicating
the orderly Sergeant--“used to me. Also I’m a little deaf, sir, an’
my ’ands is that cut with barbed wire that it’s hagony to put ’em in
boilin’ water, sir! An’ I’m afraid o’ gettin’ these ’ere germs into
them, sir. Apart from which I ain’t got anything to say, sir!”

After this Private Smith assumes the injured air of a martyr, casts his
eyes up to heaven, and waits hopefully for dismissal. (The other two
similar cases were dismissed this morning!)

The Captain drums his fingers on the table for a few moments. “This is
your first offence, Smith.”

“Yessir!”

“But it is not made any the less serious by that fact.”

The gleam of joy in Smith’s eye departs.

“Disobedience of an order is no trivial matter. A case like this should
go before the Commanding Officer.”

Long pause, during which the accused passes from the stage of hope
deferred to gloom and disillusion, and the orderly Sergeant assumes a
fiercely triumphant expression.

“Twenty-eight days Field Punishment number one,” murmurs the Captain
ruminatively, “or a court-martial”--this just loud enough for the
accused to hear. The latter’s left leg sags a trifle, and consternation
o’erspreads his visage.

“In view, Smith,” says the Captain aloud, “in view of your previous
good record, I will deal with you myself. Four days dixie washing, and
you will attend all parades!”

Before Private Smith has time to heave a sigh of relief the C.S.M.’s
voice breaks on the air, “Left turrn! Left wheel, quick marrch!”

“A good man, Sergeant-Major,” says the Captain with a smile. “Have to
scare ’em a bit at times, what?”

Battalion Orderly Room is generally a very imposing affair, calculated
to put fear into the hearts of all save the most hardened criminals.
At times the array is formidable, as many as thirty--witnesses, escort,
and prisoners--being lined up outside the orderly room door under the
vigilant eye of the Regimental Sergeant-Major. It is easy to see which
is which, even were not the “dress” different. The prisoners are in
clean fatigue, wearing no accoutrements or equipment beyond the eternal
smoke-helmet. The escort are in light marching order, and grasp in
their left hands a naked bayonet, point upwards, resting along the
forearm. The witnesses wear their belts. Most of the accused have a
hang-dog look, some an air of defiance.

“Escort and prisoners.... Shun!”

The Colonel passes into orderly room, where the Adjutant, the Battalion
Orderly Officer, and Officer witnesses in the cases to be disposed of
await him, all coming rigidly to attention as he enters. In orderly
room, or “office” as the men usually call it, the Colonel commands the
deference paid to a high court judge. He is not merely a C.O., he is an
Institution.

The R.S.M. hovers in the background, waiting for orders to call the
accused and witnesses in the first case. The C.O. fusses with the
papers on his desk, hums and haws, and finally decides which case he
will take first. The Adjutant stands near him, a sheaf of papers in his
hand, like a learnéd crown counsel.

Not infrequently the trend of a case depends on whether the C.O.
lunched well, or if the G.O.C. strafed or complimented him the last
time they held palaver. Even colonels are human.

“Charge against Private Maconochie, No. 170298, drunk,” etc., reads the
Adjutant.

After the evidence has been heard the Colonel, having had no
explanation or defence from the accused, proceeds to pass sentence.
This being a first “drunk” he cannot do very much but talk, and talk he
does.

“You were drunk, Thomkins. You were found in a state of absolutely
sodden intoxication, found in the main street of Ablain-le-Petit at
4 P.M. in the afternoon. You were so drunk that the evidence quotes
you as sleeping on the side-walk. You are a disgrace to the regiment,
Thomkins! You outrage the first principles of decency, you cast a
slur on your battalion. You deliberately, of set purpose, intoxicate
yourself at an early hour of the afternoon. I have a good mind to
remand for a Field General Court-martial. Then you would be shot! Shot,
do you understand? But I shall deal with you myself. I shall not permit
the name of this battalion to be besmirched by _you_. Reprimanded!
Reprimanded! Do you hear, sir!”

(Voice of the R.S.M., north front.) “Right turn. Right wheel; quick
marrch!”




OUR FARM


                                                      _July 30th, 1916._

We are staying at a farm; quite an orthodox, Bairnsfather farm, except
that in lieu of one (nominal) dead cow, we possess one (actual) portion
of Dried Hun. The view from our doorway is somewhat extensive, and
full of local colour! There are “steen” other farms all around us,
all of which look as though they had been played with by professional
house-wreckers out on a “beno.” “AK” Company--what there is left of
it--has at present “gone to ground,” and from the lake to “Guildhall
Manor” (we are very Toney over here!) there is no sign of life. A
Fokker dropped in to call half an hour ago, but Archie & Sons awoke
with some alacrity, and he has gone elsewhere. It is too hot even to
write, and the C.O. of “AK” Coy., who _will_ wash every day, is a
disturbing influence. He splashes about in two inches of “wipers swill”
as though he really liked it, and the nett result is that somewhere
around 4 “pip emma” the rest of us decide to shave also, which ruins
the afternoon siesta.

This is a great life. Breakfast at 2 A.M., lunch at noon, dinner at 4
P.M., and supper any old time.

Macpherson--one of those enthusiastic blighters--insisted on taking
me for a walk this morning. Being pure Edinburgh, Mac collects rum,
whisky, and miscellaneous junk of all descriptions. When he returns to
Canada he intends to run a junk shop in rear of a saloon.

The Boche was in a genial mood this morning. As we squelched along
Flossy way, “out for bear,” he began to tickle up poor old Paradise
Wood with woolly bears, and Mount Sparrow with Minnies. Mac has no
sense of humour, he failed to see the joke. “There is a pairfectly
good pair of field-glasses to the left of Diamond Copse,” he said
mournfully, “and we cannot get them.” Diamond Copse is the sort of
place one reads about, and wishes one had never seen. It is about an
acre and a half in extent, and was once a pretty place enough, with a
few fine oak trees, and many young saplings. Nowadays, it can hardly
show a live twig, while shell-holes, bits of shrapnel, stinking pools
tinged with reddy-brown, and forlorn remnants of trench--not to speak
of dead bodies--make it into a nightmare of a place.

“There is a sniper in Paradise Wood, and I do not like him,” Mac
announced gravely, after the fifth bullet, so we dodged over a
grave, under a fallen oak, and into a shell-wrecked dug-out full of
torn web equipment, machine-gun belts, old bully-beef, biscuits, a
stained blanket, and a boot with part of the wearer’s leg in it. The
horse-flies were very annoying, and a dead donkey in a narrow street
of Cairo would be as violets to patchouli compared with the smell. Mac
kept nosing around, and finally retrieved a safety razor and a box of
number nine pills from an old overcoat. “There is some one over there
in need of burial,” he said, “I can see the flies.” The flies were
incidental, but Mac is that kind of chap.

We found what was left of the poor fellow near by. There was nothing
but bone and sinew, and torn remnants of clothing. It was impossible
to identify the man, and equally impossible to move him. By his side
lay a bunch of letters, dirty and torn, and in a pocket which I opened
gingerly with a jack-knife, a photograph of a girl--“With love, from
Mary.” The letters had no envelopes, and all began, “Dear Jimmy.” Mac
read one, and passed it over to me: “Dear Jimmy,--Enclosed you will
find a pair of socks, some chewing gum, and a pair of wool gloves I
knitted myself. The baby is well, and so am I. Peraps you will get
leeve before long. Take care of yourself, Jim dear. The pottatoes have
done good, an’ I am growing some tommatos. My separashun allowence
comes reglar, so don’t worry. You will be home soon, Jim, for the
papers say the Germans is beaten. I got your letter written in May.
Alice is well. Your lovin’ wife, Mary.” “Och, it’s a shame,” said Mac,
not looking at me. “A Tragedy, and but one of thousands.”

We covered poor Jim over with old sand-bags, as best we might, and
his letters and photograph with him. Then we came back to our farm to
lunch.




AEROPLANES AND “ARCHIE”


There is something fascinating about aeroplanes. However many thousands
of them one may have seen, however many aerial combats one may have
witnessed, there is always the desire to see these things again, and,
inwardly, to marvel.

Ten thousand feet above, round balls of black smoke appear in the blue
sky, coming, as it were, out of the nowhere into here. After long
listening you hear the echo of the distant explosion, like the clapping
together of the hands of a man in the aisle of an empty church, and
if you search very diligently, you will at last see the aeroplane, a
little dot in the ether, moving almost slowly--so it appears--on its
appointed course. Now the sun strikes the white-winged, bird-like thing
as it turns, and it glitters in the beams of light like a diamond in
the sky. Now it banks a little higher, now planes down at a dizzy
angle. Suddenly, short, sharp, distinct, you catch the sound of
machine-gun fire. Quick stuttering bursts, as the visible machine and
the invisible enemy circle about each other, seeking to wound, wing,
and destroy. Ah! There it is! The Fokker dives, steep and straight,
at our machine, and one can clearly see the little darts of flame as
the machine-guns rattle. Our man quite calmly loops the loop, and then
seems almost to skid after the Fokker which has carried on downwards,
evidently hit. He swoops down on the stricken plane, pumping in lead
as he goes. The twain seem to meet in collision, then--yes, the Fokker
is plunging, nose-diving, down, down, at a terrific rate of speed. Our
aviator swings free in a great circle, banks, and at top speed makes
back to his air-line patrol, while the German Archies open up on him
with redoubled violence, as, serenely confident, he hums along his way.

It is truly wonderful what a fire an aeroplane can pass through quite
unscathed as far as actual hinderance to flight is concerned. Many a
time you can count nearly two hundred wreathing balls of smoke in the
track of the machine, and yet it sails placidly onward as though the
air were the native element of its pilot and the attentions of Archie
nonexistent.

It is Tommy who first gave the anti-aircraft gun that euphonious name.
Why, no one knows. It must be intensely trying to be an Archie gunner.
Rather like shooting at driven partridges with an air-gun, though far
more exciting. The shells may burst right on the nose of the aeroplane,
to all intents and purposes, and yet the machine goes on, veering this
way or that, dropping or rising, apparently quite indifferent to the
bitter feelings it is causing down below. It is the most haughty and
inscrutable of all the weapons of war, to all outward appearances, and
yet when misfortune overtakes it, it is a very lame duck indeed.

Archie is very much like a dog, his bark is worse than his bite--until
he has bitten! His motto is “persevere,” and in the long run he meets
with some success. Halcyon days, when he wags his metaphorical tail and
the official communiqués pat him on the head. He does not like other
dogs, bigger dogs, to bark at him. They quite drown his own bark, so
that it is useless to bark back, and their highly explosive nature
forces him to put his tail between his legs and run for it, like a chow
pursued by a mastiff. No common-sense Archie stops in any place long
after the five-nines and the H.E. shrapnel begin to burst around it. In
that case discretion is indubitably the better part of valour.

Aeroplanes have a nasty habit of “spotting” Archies, whereby they
even up old scores and prove their superiority. For even the lordly
aeroplane does not charge an Archie barrage by preference.

It is when the planes come out in force, a score at a time, that
poor Archibald has a rough time, and, so to speak, scratches his ear
desperately with his hind leg. The planes do not come in serried mass,
but, wheeling this way and that, diving off here and down yonder,
so confuse poor Archie that he even stops barking at all, wondering
which one he ought to bark at first! By this time most of the planes
have sidled gracefully out of range, rounded up and driven down the
iron-cross birds, and, having dropped their “cartes de visite” at the
rail-head, are returning by ways that are swift and various to the
place whence they came. All of which is most unsettling to the soul of
Archibald.

In the evening, when the west is pink and gold, Archie’s eyes grow
wearied. He sees dimly many aeroplanes, here and there, going and
coming, and he _has_ been known to bark at the wrong one! Wherefore the
homing aeroplane drops a star-signal very often to let him know that
all is well, and that no German hawks menace the safety of the land
over which he is the “ethereal” guardian, in theory, if not always in
practice.

At night Archie slumbers profoundly. But the birds of the air do not
always sleep. Many a night one hears the throb and hum of a machine
crossing the line, and because Archie is asleep we pay him unconscious
tribute: “Is it ours, or theirs?”

Once, not a mile from the front line, Archie dreamed he saw a Zeppelin.
He awoke, stood to, and pointed his nose straight up in the air. Far
above him, many thousands of feet aloft, a silvery, menacing sphere
hung in the rays of the searchlights. And he barked his loudest and
longest, but without avail, for the distance was too great. And the
imaginative French folk heaped unintentional infamy upon him when they
spoke quite placidly of “Archie baying at the moon!”




STIRRING TIMES


At the corner of the Grande Route de Bapaume near the square, stands
the little old Estaminet of La Veuve Matifas.

It is only a humble Estaminet, where, in the old days, Pierre Lapont
and old Daddy Duchesne discussed a “chope,” and talked over the
failings of the younger generation, but nowadays it bears a notice
on the little door leading into the back room, “For officers only.”
The men have the run of the larger room, during hours, but the little
parlour in rear is a spot sacred to those wearing from one star upwards.

Madame Matifas is old, and very large.

“Mais, Monsieur le Capitaine, dans ma jeunesse.... Ah! Alors!”--and
she dearly loves a good hearty laugh. She also sells most excellent
champagne, and--let it be murmured softly--Cointreau, Benedictine,
and very rarely a bottle of “Skee” (“B. & W.” for choice). She has
twinkling brown eyes, fat comfortable-looking hands, and we all call
her “Mother,” while she calls those of us who please her “Mon brave
garçon.”

But La Veuve Matifas is not the sole attraction of the Bon Fermier nor
are even her very excellent wines and other drinks, that may inebriate.
She has two children: Cécile and Marie Antoinette. The former is,
strange to say, “petite” and “mignonne”--she is also very pretty and
she knows all the officers of our Division; most of the young and
tender ones write to her from the trenches. You may kiss Cécile on the
cheek if you know her well.

Marie Antoinette is of the tall, rather rich coloured, passionate type.
She was engaged to a “Little Corporal” of the 77th Infantry of the
Line. Alas, he died of wounds seven months ago. She wears mourning for
him, but Marie is now in love with the Senior Major, or else we are
all blind! (Uneasy rests the arm that wears a crown!) However, that is
neither here not there. We like the widow Matifas, and we all admire
her daughters, while some of us fall in love with them, and we _always_
have a “stirring time” when we reach rest billets within walking
distance of the “Estaminet du Bon Fermier,” or even gee gee distance.

In defiance of the A.P.M. we float into town about 8 “pip emma” (the
O.C. signals _will_ bring “shop” into every-day conversation) and
stealthily creep up the little back alley which leads to the back
door of the Estaminet. We gather there--four of us, as a rule--and we
tap thrice. We hear a fat, uneven walk, and the heavy respiration of
“Maman,” and then:

“Qui est là?”

“C’est nous, Mère Matifas!”

The door is unbolted, and we enter. Scholes invariably salutes Maman
on both cheeks, and we--if we have the chance--salute her daughters.
Then we carry on to the parlour. Pelham--who thinks all women love his
goo-goo eyes--tries to tell Marie Antoinette, in simply rotten French,
how much he loves her, and Marie gets very business-like, and wants to
know if we want Moët et Chandon at 12 frcs. a bottle or “the other” at
six.

So far we have never dared to try “the other,” for fear that we appear
“real mean”! Maman bustles about, and calls us her brave boys, and
_never_ says a word about the war, which is a real kindness to us
war-weary people.

Cécile makes her entrance usually after the second bottle; probably to
make her sister envious, because she always gets such a warm welcome.
In fact there is an almost scandalous amount of competition for the
honour of sitting next to her.

La Veuve Matifas stays until after the third bottle. She has tact, that
woman, and a confidence in ourselves and her daughters that no man who
is worthy of the name would take advantage of.

Last time we were there an incident occurred which literally took
all our breaths away. We were in the middle of what Allmays calls
“Close harmony” and Allmays was mixing high tenor, basso profundo, and
Benedictine, when suddenly the door opened in a most impressive manner.
That little plain deal door _felt_ important, and it had the right to
feel important too.

The C.O. came in.

We got up.

The C.O. turned to Cécile, who was sitting _far_ too close to Pelham,
in my estimation (for I was on the other side), and said, “Cécile, two
more bottles please!” Then to us, “Sit down, gentlemen, carry on.” We
were all fairly senior officers, but Maman nearly fainted dead away
when we conveyed to her the fact that a real, live, active service
Colonel was in her back parlour at 9.15 “pip emma,” ordering up the
bubbly.

He stayed a whole hour, and we had to sing. And then he told us that
he had been offered a Brigade, and was leaving us. We were all jolly
sorry--and jolly glad too--and we said so. We told the girls. “Un
Général!” cried Cécile. “Mon Dieu!” and before we could stop her she
flung her arms round the C.O.’s neck and kissed him. We all expected to
be shot at dawn or dismissed the service, but the C.O. took it like a
real brick, and Pelham swears he kissed her back--downy old bird that
he is!

After he had left we had a bully time. Marie Antoinette was peeved
because she had not kissed the Colonel herself, and Cécile was
sparkling because she _had_ kissed him. Which gave us all a chance.
Mère Matifas drank two whole glasses of champagne, and insisted on
dancing a Tarantelle with Allmays, whom she called a “joli garçon,” and
flirted with most shamelessly. Pelham got mixed up with a coon song,
and spent half an hour trying to unmix, and Scholes consoled Marie
Antoinette. As for me, well, there was nothing for it--Cécile _had_ to
be talked to, don’t you know!

Mother “pro-duced” a bottle of “B. & W.” also. In fact we had a most
stirring time!

We still go to see La Veuve Matifas. She never speaks to us without
saying at least once, “Ah! Mais le brave Général, image de mon mari, où
est il?”

I have a photograph of Cécile in the left-hand breast pocket of my
second-best tunic. Scholes says he is going to marry Marie Antoinette,
“Après la Guerre,” in spite of the Senior Major!




SICK PARADE


“The Company,” read the orderly Sergeant, “will parade at 8.45 A.M.,
and go for a route march. Dress: Light marching order.”

A groan went up from the dark shadows of the dimly-lighted barn, which
died down gradually on the order to “cut it out.” “Sick parade at
7.30 A.M. at the M.O.’s billet Menin-lee-Chotaw,” announced the O.S.
sombrely. “Any of you men who wanter go sick give in your names to
Corporal Jones right now.”

Yells of “Right here, Corporal,” “I can’t move a limb, Corporal,”
and other statements of a like nature, announced the fact that there
were quite a number of gentlemen whose pronounced view it was that
they could not do an eight-mile route march the next day. Corporal
Jones emerged, perspiring, after half an hour’s gallant struggle.
Being very conscientious he took full particulars, according to Hoyle:
name, number, rank, initials, age, religion, and nature of disease.
The last he invariably asked for by means of the code phrase,
“wossermarrerwi_you_?”

Having refused to admit at least half a dozen well-known scrimshankers
to the roll of sick, lame, and lazy, he finished up with Private
Goodman, who declared himself suffering from “rheumatics hall over. Me
legs is somethin’ tur’ble bad.”

There were thirteen names on the report.

Menin-le-Château being a good three kilometres distant, the sick
fell in at 6.30 A.M. the next day. The grey dawn was breaking in
the East, and a drizzling rain made the village street even more
miserable-looking than it was at all times. As on all sick parades, all
the members thereof endeavoured to look their very worst, and succeeded
admirably for the most part. They were unshaven, improperly dressed,
according to military standards, and they shuffled around like a bunch
of old women trying to catch a bus. Corporal Jones was in a very bad
temper, and he told them many things, the least of which would have
made a civilian’s hair turn grey. But, being “sick,” the men merely
listened to him with a somewhat apathetic interest.

They moved off in file, a sorry-looking bunch of soldiers. Each man
chose his own gait, which no injunctions to get in step could affect,
and a German under-officer looking them over would have reported to his
superiors that the morale of the British troops was hopeless.

At 7.25 A.M. this unseemly procession arrived in Menin-le-Château. In
the far distance Corporal Jones espied the Regimental Sergeant-Major.
The latter was a man whom every private considered an incarnation of
the devil! The junior N.C.O.’s feared him, and the Platoon Sergeants
had a respect for him founded on bitter experience in the past, when
he had found them wanting. In other words he was a cracking good
Sergeant-Major of the old-fashioned type. He was privately referred to
as Rattle-Snake Pete, a tribute not only to his disciplinary measures,
but also to his heavy, fierce black moustachios, and a lean, eagle-like
face in which was set a pair of fierce, penetrating black eyes.

“If,” said Corporal Jones loudly, “you all wants to be up for Office
you’ll _walk_. Otherways you’ll _march_! There’s the Sergeant-Major!”

The sick parade pulled itself together with a click. Collars and
the odd button were furtively looked over and done up, caps pulled
straight, and no sound broke the silence save a smart unison of
“left-right-left” along the muddy road. The R.S.M. looked them over
with a gleam in his eye as they passed, and glanced at his watch.

“’Alf a minute late, Co’poral Jones,” he shouted. “Break into double
time. Double ... march!” The sick parade trotted away steadily--until
they got round a bend in the road. “Sick!!!” murmured the R.S.M. “My
H’EYE!”

A little way further on the parade joined a group composed of the sick
of other battalion units, some fifty in all. Corporal Jones handed his
sick report to the stretcher-bearer Sergeant, and was told he would
have to wait until the last.

In half an hour’s time the first name of the men in his party was
called--Lance-Corporal MacMannish.

“What’s wrong?” asked the doctor briskly.

“’A have got a pain in here, sirr,” said MacMannish, “an’ it’s sair,
sorr,” pointing to the centre of his upper anatomy.

“Show me your tongue? H’m. Eating too much! Colic. Two number nine’s.
Light duty.”

Lance-Corporal MacMannish about-turned with a smile of ecstatic joy and
departed, having duly swallowed the pills.

“What did ye get, Jock?”

“Och! Light duty,” said the hero with the air of a wronged man
justified, “but _you’ll_ be no gettin’ such a thing, Bowering!”

“And why not?” demanded the latter scowling. However, his name being
then called put an end to the discussion.

“I have pains in me head and back, sir,” explained Mr. Bowering, “and
no sleep for two nights.” The doctor looked him over with a critical,
expert eye.

“Give him a number nine. Medicine and duty. Don’t drink so much,
Bowering! That’s enough. Clear out!”

“_He’s_ no doctor,” declared the victim when he reached the street.
“Huh! I wouldn’t trust a _cat_ with ’im!”

The next man got no duty, and this had such an effect on him that he
almost forgot he was a sick man, and walloped a pal playfully in the
ribs on the doorstep, which nearly led to trouble.

Of the remaining ten, all save one were awarded medicine and duty, but
they took so long to tell the story of their symptoms, and managed
to develop such good possible cases, that it was 8.45 before the
parade fell in again to march back to billets, a fact which they all
thoroughly appreciated!

Wonderful the swinging step with which they set forth, Corporal Jones
at the head, Lance-Corporal MacMannish, quietly triumphant, bringing
up the rear. They passed the Colonel in the village, and he stopped
Corporal Jones to inquire what they were.

“Your men are marching very well, Corporal. ‘A’ Company? Ah, yes.
Fatigue party, hey?”

“No-sir, sick-parade-sir!”

“Sick Parade! God bless my soul! Sick! How many men were given medicine
and duty?”

“Nine, sir.”

“Nine, out of thirteen.... ‘A’ Company is on a route march this
morning, is it not?”

“Yessir.”

“My compliments to Major Bland, Corporal, and I would like him to
parade these nine men in heavy marching order and send them on a
nine-mile route march, under an officer.”

“Very good, sir!”

Next day there were no representatives of “A” Coy. on sick parade!




BATMEN


This war has produced a new breed of mankind, something that the army
has never seen before, although they have formed a part of it, under
the same name, since Noah was a boy. They are alike in name only.
Batmen, the regular army type, are professionals. What they don’t know
about cleaning brass, leather, steel, and general valeting simply isn’t
worth knowing. They are super-servants, and they respect their position
as reverently as an English butler respects his. With the new batman it
is different. Usually the difficulty is not so much to discover what
they do not know, as what they do! A new officer arrives at the front,
or elsewhere, and he has to have a batman. It is a rather coveted
job, and applicants are not slow in coming forward. Some man who is
tired of doing sentry duty gets the position, and his “boss” spends
anxious weeks bringing him up in the way he should go, losing, in the
interval, socks, handkerchiefs, underwear, gloves, ties, shirts, and
collars galore! What can be said to the wretched man when in answer to
“Where the ---- is my new pair of socks?” he looks faint and replies:
“I’ve lost them, sir!” Verily, as the “professional” scornfully
remarks, are these “Saturday night batmen!”

Yet even batmen are born, not made. Lucky is he who strikes on one
of the former; only the man is sure to get killed, or wounded, or go
sick! There is always a fly in the ointment somewhere. The best kind
of batman to have is a kleptomaniac. Treat him well and he will never
touch a thing of your own, but he will, equally, never leave a thing
belonging to any one else!

“Cozens, where did you get this pair of pants?”

“Found them, sir!”

“Where did you find them?”

“Lying on the floor, sir,” with an air of injured surprise.

“_Where!_”

“I don’t justly remember, sir.”

Voice from right rear: “The Major’s compliments, sir, and have you
seen his new pants?”

“Cozens!”

“Yessir.”

“Give me those pants.... Are those the Major’s?”

“Yes, sir, them’s them.”

Cozens watches the pants disappear with a sad, retrospective air of
gloom.

“You ain’t got but the _one_ pair now, sir.” This with reproach.

“How many times have I got to tell you to leave other people’s clothes
alone? The other day it was pyjamas, now it’s pants. You’ll be taking
somebody’s boots next. Confound it. I’ll--I’ll return you to duty if
you do it again!... How about all those handkerchiefs? Where did _they_
come from?”

“All yours, sir, back from the wash!” With a sigh, one is forced to
give up the unequal contest.

Albeit as valets the batmen of the present day compare feebly with the
old type, in certain other ways they are head and shoulders above them.
The old “pro” refuses to do a single thing beyond looking after the
clothing and accoutrements of his master. The new kind of batman can
be impressed to do almost anything. He will turn into a runner, wait
at table, or seize a rifle with gusto and help get Fritz’s wind up. Go
long journeys to find souvenirs, and make himself generally useful. He
will even “bat” for the odd officer, when occasion arises, as well as
for his own particular boss.

No man is a hero in the eyes of his own batman. He knows everything
about you, even to the times when your banking account is nil. He knows
when you last had a bath, and when you last changed your underwear. He
knows how much you eat, and also how much you drink; he knows all your
friends with whom you correspond, and most of your family affairs as
revealed by that correspondence, and nothing can hide from his eagle
eye the fact that you are--lousy! Yet he is a pretty good sort, after
all; he never tells. We once had a rather agéd sub. in the Company
whose teeth were not his own, not a single one of them. One night,
after a somewhat heavy soirée and general meeting of friends, he
went to bed--or, to be more accurate, was tucked in by his faithful
henchman--and lost both the upper and lower sets in the silent watches.
The following morning he had a fearfully worried look, and spake not at
all, except in whispers to his batman. Finally, the O.C. Company asked
him a question, and he _had_ to say something. It sounded like “A out
mo,” so we all instantly realised something was lacking. He refused
to eat anything at all, but took a little nourishment in the form of
tea. His batman was to be observed crawling round the floor, perspiring
at every pore, searching with his ears aslant and his mouth wide open
for hidden ivory. We all knew it; poor old Gerrard knew we knew it,
but the batman was faithful to the last, even when he pounced on the
quarry with the light of triumph in his eye. He came to his master
after breakfast was over and asked if he could speak to him. Poor
Gerrard moved into the other room, and you could have heard a pin drop.
“Please, sir,” in a stage whisper from his batman, “please, sir, I’ve
got hold of them TEETH, sir! But the front ones is habsent, sir, ’aving
bin trod on!”

The biggest nuisance on God’s earth is a batman who spends all his
spare moments getting drunk! Usually, however, he is a first-class
batman during his sober moments! He will come in “plastered to the
eyes” about eleven o’clock, and begin to hone your razors by the pallid
rays of a candle, or else clean your revolver and see if the cartridges
fit! In his cups he is equal to anything at all. Unless the case is
really grave the man wins every time, for no one hates the idea of
changing his servant more than an officer who has had the same man for
a month or so and found him efficient.

Not infrequently batmen are touchingly faithful. They will do anything
on earth for their “boss” at any time of the day or night, and never
desert him in the direst extremity. More than one batman has fallen
side by side with his officer, whom he had followed into the fray,
close on his heels.

Once, after a charge, a conversation ensued between the sergeant of a
certain officer’s platoon and that officer’s batman, in this fashion:

“What were _you_ doin’ out there, Tommy?”

“Follerin’.”

“And why was you close up on his heels, so clost I could ’ardly see
’im?”

“Follerin’ ’im up.”

“And why wasn’t you back somewhere _safe_?” (This with a touch of
sarcasm.)

“Lord, Sargint, you couldn’t expect me to let _’im_ go out by ’isself!
’E might ha’ got hurt!”




RATIONS


“Bully-beef an’ ’ard-tack,” said Private Boddy disgustedly. “Bully-beef
that’s canned dog or ’orse, or may be cats, an’ biscuits that’s _fit_
for dawgs.... This is a ’ell of a war. W’y did I ever leave little old
Walkerville, w’ere the whiskey comes from? Me an’ ’Iram we was almost
pals, as you may say. I worked a ’ole fortnight in ’is place, at $1.75
per, an’ then I----” Mr. Boddy broke off abruptly, but not soon enough.

“Huh!” broke in a disgusted voice from a remote corner of the dug-out,
“then I guess you went bummin’ your way till the bulls got you in
Windsor. To hear you talk a chap would think you didn’t know what
pan-handlin’ was, or going out on the stem.”

“Look ’ere,” said Boddy with heat, “you comeralong outside, you great
long rubberneck, you, an’ I’ll teach you to call me a pan-’andler, I
will. You low-life Chicago bum, wot never _did_ ’ave a better meal
than you could steal f’m a Chink Chop Suey.”

“Say, fellers,” a quiet voice interposed, “cut it out. This ain’t a
Parliament Buildings nor a Montreal cabaret. There’s a war on. If youse
guys wants to talk about rations, then go ahead, shoot, but cut out the
rough stuff!”

“Dat’s what _I_ say, Corporal,” interrupted a French-Canadian. “I’m a
funny sort of a guy, I am. I likes to hear a good spiel, widout any
of dis here free cussin’ an’ argumentation. Dat ain’t no good, fer it
don’t cut no ice, _no’ d’un ch’en_!”

“Talkin’ of rations,” drawled a Western voice, “when I was up to
Calgary in ’08, an’ was done gone busted, save for two bits, I tuk a
flop in one of them houses at 15 cents per, an’ bot a cow’s heel with
the dime. You kin b’lieve me or you needn’t, but I _tell_ you a can of
that bully you’re shootin’ off about would ha’ seemed mighty good to
_me_, right then, an’ it aren’t so dusty naow.”

Private Boddy snorted his contempt. “An’ the jam they gives you,” he
said, “w’y at ’ome you couldn’t _give_ it away! Plum an’ happle! Or
wot they call plain happle! It ain’t never seed a plum, bar the stone,
nor a happle, bar the core. It’s just colourin’ mixed up wiv boiled
down turnups, that’s what it is.”

“De bread’s all right, anyways,” said Lamontagne, “but dey don’t never
git you more’n a slice a man! An dat cheese. Pouff! It stink like a
Fritz wot’s laid dead since de British takes Pozières.”

Scottie broke in.

“Aye, but hold yerr maunderin’. Ye canna verra weel have aught to clack
aboot when ’tis the Rum ye speak of.”

“Dat’s all right,” Lamontagne responded, “de rum’s all right. But
who gets it? What youse gets is one ting. A little mouthful down de
brook wot don’t do no more than make you drier as you was before. What
does de Sargents get? So much dey all is so rambunctious mad after a
feller he dasn’t look dem in de face or dey puts him up for office!
Dat’s a fine ways, dat is! An’ dem awficers! De limit, dat’s what
dat is. I was up to de cook-house wid a--wid a rifle----”--“a dirty
rifle too, on inspection, by Heck,” the Corporal supplemented--“wid
a rifle, as I was sayin’,” continued Lamontagne, with a reproachful
look in the direction of his section commander, “an’ I sees wot was
in de cook-house a cookin’ for de awficers” (his voice sunk to an
impressive whisper). “D’ere was eeggs, wid de sunny side up, an’ dere
was bif-steaks all floatin’ in gravy, an’ pottitters an’ _beans_, an’
peaches an’ peyers.”

“Quit yer fool gabbin’,” said Chicago. “H’aint you got no sense in that
mutt-head o’ yourn? That’s food them ginks BUYS!”

Boddy had been silent so long he could bear it no longer.

“’Ave a ’eart,” he said, “it gives me a pain ter fink of all that
food the horficers heats. Pure ’oggery, I calls it. An’ ter fink of
th’ little bit o’ bread an’ biscuit an’ bacon--wot’s all fat--wot we
fellers gets to eat. _We_ does the work, an’ the horficers sits in easy
chairs an’ Heats!! Oh _w’y_ did I join the Harmy?”

At this moment, Private Graham, who had been slumbering peacefully
until Lamontagne, in his excitement, put a foot in the midst of his
anatomy, added his quota to the discussion. Private Graham wore the
King and Queen’s South African medal and also the Somaliland. Before
drink reduced him, he had been a company Q.M.S. in a crack regiment.
His words were usually respected. “Strike me pink if you Saturday night
soldiers don’t give me the guts-ache,” he remarked with some acerbity.
“In Afriky you’d ha’ bin dead an’ buried months ago, judgin’ by the way
you talks! There it was march, march, march, an’ no fallin’ out. Little
water, a ’an’ful o’ flour, an’ a tin of bully wot was fly-blowed two
minutes after you opened it, unless you ’ad eat it a’ready. An’ you
talks about food! S’elp me if it ain’t a crime. Rations! W’y, never in
the ’ole ’istory of the world ’as a Army bin better fed nor we are. You
young soldiers sh’d learn a thing or two afore you starts talkin’ abaht
yer elders an’ betters. Lord, in th’ old days a hofficers’ mess was
somethin’ to dream abaht. Nowadays they can’t ’old a candle to it. Wot
d’yer expec’? D’yer think a horficer is goin’ to deny ’is stummick if
’e can buy food ter put in it? ’E ain’t so blame stark starin’ mad as
all that. You makes me sick, you do!”

“Dat’s what _I_ say,” commented Lamontagne!

From afar came a voice crying, “Turn out for your rations.”

In thirty seconds the dug-out was empty!




OUR SCOUT OFFICER


We have a certain admiration for our scout officer; not so much for his
sleuth-hound propensities, as for his completely _dégagé_ air. He is a
Holmes-Watson individual, in whom the Holmes is usually subservient to
the Watson.

Without a map--he either has several dozen or none at all--he is purely
Watson. With a map he is transformed into a Sherlock, instanter. The
effect of a _new_ map on him is like that of a new build of aeroplane
on an aviator. He pores over it, he reverses the north and south gear,
and gets the magnetic differential on the move; with a sweep of the
eye he climbs up hills and goes down into valleys, he encircles a wood
with a pencil-marked forefinger--and asks in an almost pained way for
nail-scissors. Finally, he sends out his Scout Corporal and two men,
armed to the teeth with spy-glasses and compasses (magnetic, mark
VIII), to reconnoitre. When they come back (having walked seventeen
kilometres to get to a point six miles away) and report, he says,
wagging his head sagely: “Ah! I knew it. According to this map, 81×D
(parts of), 82 GN, south-west (parts of), 32 B^1, N.W. (parts of), and
19 CF, East (parts of), the only available route is the main road,
marked quite clearly on the map, and running due east-north-east by
east from Bn. H.Q.”

But he is a cheerful soul. The other day, when we were romancing around
in the Somme, we had to take over a new line; one of those “lines”
that genial old beggar Fritz makes for us with 5.9’s. He--the Scout
Officer--rose to the occasion. He went to the Commanding Officer, and
in his most ingratiating manner, his whole earnest soul in his pale
blue eyes, offered to take him up to his battle head-quarters.

This offer was accepted, albeit the then Adjutant had a baleful glitter
in _his_ eye.

After he had led us by ways that were strange and peculiar through the
gathering darkness, and after the Colonel had fallen over some barbed
wire into a very damp shell-hole, he began to look worried. We struck
a very famous road--along which even the worms dare not venture--and
our Intelligence Officer led us for several hundred yards along it.

An occasional high explosive shrapnel shell burst in front and to rear
of us, but, map grasped firmly in the right hand, our Scout Officer
led us fearlessly onwards. He did not march, he did not even walk, he
sauntered. Then with a dramatic gesture wholly unsuited to the time
and circumstances, he turned and said: “Do you mind waiting a minute,
sir, while I look at the map?” After a few brief comments the C.O. went
to earth in a shell-hole. The Scout Officer sat down in the road, and
examined his map by the aid of a flash-light until the Colonel threw a
clod of earth at him accompanied by some very uncomplimentary remarks.
“I think, sir,” said the Scout Officer, his gaunt frame and placid
countenance illumined by shell-bursts, “that if we cross the road and
go North by East we may perhaps strike the communication trench leading
to the Brewery. _Personally_, I would suggest going overland, but----”
His last words were drowned by the explosion of four 8.1’s 50 yards
rear right. “Get out of this, sir! Get out of this DAMN quick,” roared
the C.O. The Scout Officer stood to attention slowly, and saluted with
a deprecating air.

He led.

We followed.

He took us straight into one of the heaviest barrages it had ever been
our misfortune to encounter, and when we had got there he said he was
lost. So for twenty minutes the C.O., the Adjutant, nine runners, and,
last but not least, the Scout Officer, sat under a barrage in various
shell-holes, and prayed inwardly--with the exception of the Scout
Officer--that _he_ (the S.O.) would be hit plump in the centre of his
maps by a 17-inch shell.

It were well to draw a veil over what followed. Even Holmes-Watson
does not like to hear it mentioned. Suffice to say that the C.O. (with
party) left at 5.30 P.M. and arrived at battle head-quarters at 11.35
P.M. The Scout Officer was then engaged in discovering a route between
Battle H.Q. and the front line. He reported back at noon the following
day, and slept in a shell-hole for thirteen hours. No one could live
near the C.O. for a week, and he threatened the S.O. with a short-stick
MILLS.

If there is one thing which the Scout Officer does not like, it is
riding a horse. He almost admits that he cannot ride! The other day he
met a friend. The friend had one quart bottle of Hennessey, three star.
The Scout Officer made a thorough reconnaissance of the said bottle,
and reported on same.

A spirited report.

Unhappily the C.O. ordered a road reconnaissance an hour later, and our
Scout Officer had to ride a horse. The entire H.Q. sub-staff assisted
him to mount, and the last we saw of Holmes-Watson, he was galloping
down the road, sitting well on the horse’s neck, hands grasping the
saddle tightly, rear and aft. Adown the cold November wind we heard his
dulcet voice carolling:

  “I put my money on a bob-tailed nag!...
  Doo-dah ... Doo-dah!
  _I_ put my money on a bob-tailed nag;
  ... Doo-dah! ... Doo-dah!! ... _DEY!!!_”




MARTHA OF DRANVOORDE


Martha Beduys, in Belgium, was considered pretty, even handsome. Of
that sturdy Flemish build so characteristic of Belgian women, in whom
the soil seems to induce embonpoint, she was plump to stoutness. She
was no mere girl; twenty-seven years had passed over her head when the
war broke out, and she saw for the first time English soldiers in the
little village that had always been her home. There was a great deal
of excitement. As the oldest of seven sisters, Martha was the least
excited, but the most calculating.

The little baker’s shop behind the dull old church had always been a
source of income, but never a means to the attainment of wealth. Martha
had the soul of a shop-keeper, a thing which, in her father’s eyes,
made her the pride of his household.

Old Hans Beduys was a man of some strength of mind. His features
were sharp and keen, his small, blue eyes had a glitter in them
which seemed to accentuate their closeness to each other, and his
hands--lean, knotted, claw-like--betokened his chief desire in life.
Born of a German mother and a Belgian father, he had no particular love
for the English.

When the first British Tommy entered his shop and asked for bread, old
Beduys looked him over as a butcher eyes a lamb led to the slaughter.
He was calculating the weight in sous and francs.

That night Beduys laid down the law to his family.

“The girls will all buy new clothes,” he said, “for which I shall
pay. They will make themselves agreeable to the English mercenaries,
but”--with a snap of his blue eyes--“nothing more. The good God has
sent us a harvest to reap; I say we shall reap it.”

During the six months that followed the little shop behind the church
teemed with life. The Beduys girls were glad enough to find men to
talk to for the linguistic difficulty was soon overcome--to flirt with
mildly, and in front of whom to show off their newly-acquired finery.
From morn till dewy eve the shop was crowded, and occasionally an
officer or two would dine in the back parlour, kiss Martha if they felt
like it, and not worry much over a few sous change.

In the meantime old Hans waxed financially fat, bought a new Sunday
suit, worked the life out of his girls, and prayed nightly that the
Canadians would arrive in the vicinity of his particular “Somewhere in
Belgium.”

In a little while they came.

Blossoming forth like a vine well fertilised at the roots, the little
shop became more and more pretentious as the weekly turnover increased.
Any day that the receipts fell below a certain level old Beduys raised
such a storm that his bevy of daughters redoubled their efforts.

Martha had become an enthusiastic business woman. Her fair head with
its golden curls was bent for many hours in the day over a crude
kind of ledger, and she thought in terms of pickles, canned fruits,
chocolate, and cigarettes. The spirit of commerce had bitten deep into
Martha’s soul.

More and more officers held impromptu dinners in the back parlour.
Martha knew most of them, but only one interested her. Had he not
shown her the system of double entry, and how to balance her accounts?
He was a commercial asset.

As for Jefferson, it was a relief to him, after a tour in the trenches,
to have an occasional chat with a moderately pretty girl.

One rain-sodden, murky January night, very weary, wet, and muddy,
Jefferson dropped in to see, as he would have put it, “the baker’s
daughter.”

Martha happened to be alone, and welcomed “Monsieur Jeff” beamingly.

Perhaps the dim light of the one small lamp, perhaps his utter war
weariness, induced Jefferson to overlook the coarseness of the girl’s
skin, her ugly hands, and large feet. Perhaps Martha was looking
unusually pretty.

At all events he suddenly decided that she was desirable. Putting
his arm around her waist as she brought him his coffee, he drew her,
unresisting, on to his knee. Then he kissed her.

Heaven knows what possessed Martha that evening. She not only allowed
his kisses, but returned them, stroking his curly hair with a
tenderness that surprised herself as much as it surprised him.

Thereafter Martha had two souls. A soul for business and a soul for
Jefferson.

The bleak winter rolled on and spring came.

About the beginning of April old Beduys received, secretly, a letter
from a relative in Frankfurt. The contents of the letter were such
that the small pupils of the old man’s eyes dilated with fear. He hid
the document away, and his temper for that day was execrable. That
night he slept but little. Beduys lay in bed and pictured the sails of
a windmill--HIS windmill--and he thought also of ten thousand francs
and his own safety. He thought of the distance to the mill--a full two
kilometres--and of the martial law which dictated, among other things,
that he be in his home after a certain hour at night, and that his
mill’s sails be set at a certain angle when at rest. Then he thought
of Martha. Martha of the commercial mind. Martha the obedient. Yes!
That was it, obedient! Hans Beduys rose from his bed softly, without
disturbing his heavily-sleeping wife, and read and re-read his
brother’s letter. One page he kept, and the rest he tore to shreds, and
burned, bit by bit, in the candle flame.

High up on the hill stood the windmill--the Beduys windmill. Far
over in the German lines an Intelligence Officer peered at it in the
gathering dusk through a night-glass. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the
sails of the mill turned, and stopped for a full minute. Slowly, almost
imperceptibly, they turned again, and stopped again. This happened
perhaps twenty times. The German made some notes and went to the
nearest signalling station.

Five minutes later a salvo of great shells trundled, with a noise like
distant express trains, over to the left of the mill.

There were heavy casualties in a newly-arrived battalion bivouacked not
half a mile from the baker’s shop. The inhabitants of the village awoke
and trembled. “Hurrumph-umph!” Again the big shells trundled over the
village, and again. There was confusion, and death and wounding.

In his bed lay Hans Beduys, sweating from head to foot, while his brain
hammered out with ever-increasing force: “Ten thousand francs--Ten
Thousand Francs.”

In the small hours a shadow disengaged itself from the old mill,
cautiously. Then it began to run, and resolved itself into a woman.
By little paths, by ditches, by side-tracks, Martha reached home. She
panted heavily, her face was white and haggard. When she reached her
room she flung herself on her bed, and lay there wide-eyed, dumb,
horror-stricken, until the dawn broke.

Jefferson’s Battalion finished a tour in the trenches on the following
night. Jefferson marched back to billet with a resolve in his mind.
He had happened to notice the windmill moving the night before, as he
stood outside Company head-quarters in the trenches. He had heard the
shells go over--away back--and had seen the sails move again. The two
things connected themselves instantly in his mind. Perhaps he should
have reported the matter at once, but Jefferson did not do so. He meant
to investigate for himself.

Two days later Jefferson got leave to spend the day in the nearest
town. He returned early in the afternoon, put his revolver in the
pocket of his British warm coat, and set out for the windmill. He did
not know to whom the mill belonged, nor did that trouble him.

An Artillery Brigade had parked near the village that morning.
Jefferson got inside the mill without difficulty. It was a creaky,
rat-haunted old place, and no one lived within half a mile of it.
Poking about, he discovered nothing until his eyes happened to fall on
a little medallion stuck between two boards on the floor.

Picking it up, Jefferson recognised it as one of those little
“miraculous medals” which he had seen strung on a light chain around
Martha’s neck. He frowned thoughtfully, and put it in his pocket.

He hid himself in a corner and waited. He waited so long that he fell
asleep. The opening of the little wooden door of the mill roused him
with a start. There was a long pause, and then the sound of footsteps
coming up the wooden stairway which led to where Jefferson lay. The
window in the mill-face reflected the dying glow of a perfect sunset,
and the light in the mill was faint. He could hear the hum of a
biplane’s engines as it hurried homeward, the day’s work done.

A peaked cap rose above the level of the floor, followed by a stout,
rubicund face. A Belgian gendarme.

Jefferson fingered his revolver, and waited. The gendarme looked
around, grunted, and disappeared down the steps again, closing the door
that led into the mill with a bang. Jefferson sat up and rubbed his
head.

He did not quite understand.

Perhaps ten minutes had passed when for the third time that night the
door below was opened softly, closed as softly, and some one hurried up
the steps.

It was Martha. She had a shawl over her head and shoulders, and she was
breathing quickly, with parted lips.

Jefferson noiselessly dropped his revolver into his pocket again.

With swift, sure movements, the girl began to set the machinery of the
mill in motion. By glancing over to the window, Jefferson could see the
sails move slowly--very, very slowly. Martha fumbled for a paper in her
bosom, and, drawing it forth, scrutinised it tensely. Then she set
the machinery in motion again. She had her back to him. Jefferson rose
stealthily and took a step towards her. A board creaked and, starting
nervously, the girl looked round.

For a moment the two gazed at each other in dead silence.

“Martha,” said Jefferson, “Martha!”

There was a mixture of rage and reproach in his voice. Even as he spoke
they heard the whine of shells overhead, and then four dull explosions.

“Your work,” cried Jefferson thickly, taking a stride forward and
seizing the speechless woman by the arm.

Martha looked at him with a kind of dull terror in her eyes, with utter
hopelessness, and the man paused a second. He had not known he cared
for her so much. Then, in a flash, he pictured the horrors for which
this woman, a mere common spy, was responsible.

He made to grasp her more firmly, but she twisted herself from his
hold. Darting to the device which freed the mill-sails, she wrenched at
it madly. The sails caught in the breeze, and began to circle round,
swiftly and more swiftly, until the old wooden building shook with the
vibration.

       *       *       *       *       *

From his observation post a German officer took in the new situation at
a glance. A few guttural sounds he muttered, and then turning angrily
to an orderly he gave him a curt message. “They shall not use it if we
cannot,” he said to himself, shaking his fist in the direction of the
whirring sails.

       *       *       *       *       *

In the little village part of the church and the baker’s shop lay in
ruins. Martha had sent but a part of her signal, and it had been acted
upon with characteristic German promptitude.

In the windmill on the hill, which shook crazily as the sails tore
their way through the air, a man and a woman struggled desperately, the
woman with almost superhuman strength.

Suddenly the earth shook, a great explosion rent the air, and the mill
on the hill was rent timber from timber and the great sails doubled up
like tin-foil.

“Good shooting,” said the German Forward Observation Officer, as he
tucked his glass under his arm and went “home” to dinner.




COURCELETTE


“It was one of the nastiest jobs any battalion could be called on to
perform; to my mind far more difficult than a big, sweeping advance.
The First Battalion has been in the trenches eighteen days, on the
march four days, and at rest one day, until now. No men could be asked
to do more, and no men could do more than you have done. I congratulate
you, most heartily.”

In the above words, addressed to the men and officers of the First
Canadian Infantry Battalion, Western Ontario Regiment, Major-General
Currie made it plain to all that among the Honours of the First
Battalion few will take higher place than that which will be inscribed
“COURCELETTE.”

On the night of September 20th, 1916, the First Battalion moved up from
support to the firing-line, beyond the ruins of the above-mentioned
little hamlet. For the past few days it had rained incessantly, and
all ranks had been working night and day, in mud and slush, carrying
material of all kinds to the front line. The men were soaked to the
skin, caked with mud, and very weary, but they went “up-along” with
an amazing cheeriness, for rumour had whispered that the regiment was
to attack, and the men were in that frame of mind when the prospect
of “getting their own back” appealed to them hugely. Although the
enemy opened up an intense barrage during the relief, casualties
were comparatively few, and by morning the First Battalion was,
Micawber-like, “waiting for something to turn up.”

Three companies, “A,” “B,” and “D,” held the front line, with
“C” Company in close support. The positions were to the east of
Courcelette, opposite a maze of German trenches which constituted a
thorn in the side of the Corps and Army Commanders, and which had for
several days checked the advance and were therefore a serious menace
to future plans. Just how great was the necessity to capture this
highly organised and strongly manned defensive system may be gauged
by the letter received by the Commanding Officer from the Divisional
Commander on the eve of the attack. In it the G.O.C. expressed his
confidence in the ability of “The Good Old First” to capture the
position, and to hold it, and he added that it _must_ be taken at all
costs--“if the first attack fails, you must make a second.” On the
capture of this strong point hung the fate of other operations on the
grand scale.

It was the key position, and it fell to the First Canadian Battalion to
be honoured with the task of taking it.

Until two and a half hours previous to the attack (when the Operation
Order had been issued, and final instructions given), the latest _maps_
of the German defences had been all the C.O. and his staff could work
upon. Then, truly at the eleventh hour, an aerial _photograph_, taken
but twenty-four hours before, was sent to Bn. Head-quarters with the
least possible delay. This showed such increase in the enemy defences,
and trenches in so much better shape to withstand attack, that the
whole tactical situation was changed, and it became necessary not only
to alter the operation order completely, but also to draw a map,
showing the most recent German lines of defence. This was done.

It is difficult to single out for praise any special portion of a
regiment, or any member of it, especially when _all_ the units have
been subjected to intense and violent bombardment prior to attack,
not to mention the activities of numerous snipers. One Company alone
lost half their effectives through the fire of a “whizz-bang” battery
which completely enfiladed their position. The Battalion and Company
runners cannot be too highly praised--they were the sole means of
communication--and risked their lives hourly, passing through and over
heavily-pounded trenches, and in and out of the village of Courcelette,
which was subjected to “strafing” at all hours of the day and night,
without cessation. Tribute is also due to the carrying parties, who
took from beyond the Sugar Refinery, and through the village, bombs,
ammunition, water, and rations, leaving at every trip their toll of
dead and wounded.

Zero hour was at 8.31 P.M., preceded for one minute by hurricane
artillery fire. Previous to this the heavy guns had carried out a
systematic bombardment of the German defences, yet, as was subsequently
discovered, failing to do them great damage, and not touching the main
fire trench at all.

At 8.28½ P.M. the Germans suddenly opened with a murderous artillery
and machine-gun fire along our front. They had by some means or other
discovered that an attack was about to take place. At this time the
assaulting waves were in position, “A” Coy. on the left flank, “D”
Coy. in the centre, and “B” Coy. on the right flank, while a Battalion
Reserve of eighteen men--five of whom became casualties three minutes
later--waited for orders a little in rear. These men belonged to
“C” Company, the major portion of which had already been sent to
reinforce the front line. All our guns then opened up with an electric
spontaneity. To such an extent that one charging company was forced
to halt a full minute in No Man’s Land until the barrage lifted a few
hundred yards in rear of the German lines, to catch their reserves
coming up.

Among the _Fragments from France_ there is a Bairnsfather picture
entitled “We shall attack at Dawn” and “We do!” The situation much
resembled it.

One could hear nothing but the vicious “splack” of high explosive
shrapnel, the deep “Krrumph” of 6-inch and 8.2’s, “coal-boxes” and
“woolly bears”; great herds of shells whined and droned overhead, and
now and then emerged from the tumult the coughing, venomous spit of
machine-guns. One could see myriads of angrily-bursting yellow and
orange-coloured flames, and all along the front dozens of green Verey
lights, and red, as the Germans called frantically on their artillery,
and at the same time showed that some of their own batteries were
firing short (a thing which always gives great joy to all ranks). Now
and then a deeper series of booms announced a bombing battle, and the
air was heavy with the odour of picric fumes and thick with smoke.

On the left flank “A” Coy. met with stubborn opposition. Four
machine-guns opened on their first wave, cutting it to pieces, as
it was enfiladed from the flanks. The Company reformed at once, and
charged again. This time they were met by a heavy counter-attack in
force. In the cold words of official phraseology, “This opposition was
overcome.” It was here that two very gallant officers were lost--Lieut.
B. T. Nevitt and Major F. E. Aytoun--while leading their men. The
last seen of Lieut. Nevitt, he was lying half in and half out of a
shell-hole, firing his revolver at the enemy who were almost on top of
him, and calling to his men to come on. Major Aytoun’s last words were,
“Carry on, men!”

“B” Coy., on the left flank, met with little opposition, attained the
whole of their objective, and established communication by patrol
with the troops on their right flank, a difficult operation. Here
Lieut. Unwin, a splendid young officer, laid down his life, and
Lieut. MacCuddy, who had carried on in the most exemplary manner, was
mortally wounded. This Company captured a German Adjutant from whom
much valuable information was obtained. Thoroughly demoralised, his
first words were: “Take me out of this, and I will tell you anything,
but anything.” On this German’s reaching head-quarters he amused every
one by saying: “I come me to the West front September 22nd, 1914, as
a German officer. I go me from the West front September 22nd, 1916,
Heaven be thanked, as a German prisoner. For me the war is over,
hurrah!”

In the centre “D” Coy. also attained their objective and captured a
trophy, in the shape of a Vickers gun (which had been converted to
German usage). This gun was taken by Lieut. J. L. Youngs, M.C., who
bombed the crew, which thereon beat a hasty retreat, leaving half their
number killed and wounded. This was one of the best pieces of work done
individually in this action. Major W. N. Ashplant was wounded here, at
the head of his men, and is now missing, and believed killed.

Bombing posts were thrown out at once, and manned by Battalion and
Company bombers, who, time and again, repulsed German bombing attacks.
“A” Coy. linked up with “D” and “D” Coy. with “B,” while the Lewis gun
sections worked admirably, but one gun being lost, despite the heavy
artillery fire. The whole line was at once consolidated. Hundreds of
German bombs, Verey lights and pistols, many rifles, and quantities of
ammunition were captured, and also forty prisoners, the great majority
of whom were unwounded.

“C” Coy.’s reserve was almost immediately used up, a company of the 4th
Bn. coming up in support, at the request of the Commanding Officer of
the First Battalion.

“Your attack was so vicious,” declared a prisoner, “that no troops
could withstand it.”

“Too good troops”--this from a tall, fair member of the Prussian
Guard--“better than we are!”

The Germans opposed to the First Battalion were picked troops, among
whom the iron-cross had been freely distributed.

On capturing this network of enemy lines to the east of Courcelette,
the First Battalion discovered that what was at first deemed a small
stronghold, was in reality a formidable position, held by the enemy in
large numbers. Not only was there a deep, fire-stepped main trench, in
which they had dug many “funk-holes,” but also a series of support and
communication trenches, and numerous bombing posts.

During the thirty hours following the capture of this ground, numerous
counter-attacks took place, all of which were repulsed with heavy enemy
losses. Bombing actions were frequent along the whole line, and at
least two attacks were made in force.

A small post, held by two men, on the right flank of “D” Coy., to
communicate with “B,” accounted for six Germans in the following
manner: Early in the morning six of the enemy advanced with their hands
up. Our men watched them closely, albeit they called out “Kamerad” and
were apparently unarmed. The foremost suddenly dropped his hands and
threw a bomb. Our men thereupon “went to it” and killed three of the
Germans, wounding the remainder with rifle fire as they ran back to
their own lines.

At dusk on the 23rd the Germans tried another ruse before attempting
an attack in force. Two of them were sent out, calling “Mercy, mercy,
Kamerad,” and as usual with their hands up, and no equipment. But the
officer in charge saw a number of Germans advancing behind them, and at
once ordered heavy rifle and machine-gun fire to be opened on them.
This, and bombs, resulted in the attack being broken up completely. “B”
Coy. dispersed several bombing attacks, and “A” Coy. broke up a heavy
attack, as well as bombing attacks. Fog at times rendered the position
favourable for the enemy, but not one inch of ground was lost.

Every man of the fighting forces of the First Battalion was engaged
in this action, and much valuable assistance during consolidation and
counter-attack was rendered by the Company of the Fourth Battalion sent
up to support. For over thirty hours after the assault the regiment
held on, heavy fog rendering relief in the early hours of the 24th
a difficult undertaking, all the more so in view of the intense and
long-continued barrage opened by the enemy during the hours of relief.
In fact, during the whole tour of the First Canadian Battalion in the
Courcelette sector, the regiment was subjected to intense and incessant
fire.

When the remainder of the First Battalion marched out to rest, with Hun
helmets and other souvenirs hanging to their kits, they marched with
the pride of men who knew they had done their bit.

The Corps Commander rode over to congratulate the Commanding Officer
and the regiment, and such terms were used from the Highest Command
downwards that the “Old First” knows and is proud of the fact, that
another laurel has been added to the wreaths of the battalion, the
brigade, the division, and the Canadian Army.

We have but one sorrow, one deep regret, and that is for Our Heroic
Dead.




CARNAGE


There is a little valley somewhere among the rolling hills of the Somme
district wherein the sun never shines. It is a tiny little valley, once
part of a not unattractive landscape, now a place of horror.

Half a dozen skeletons of trees, rotting and torn, fringe the southern
bank, and the remnants of a sunken road curve beneath the swelling
hill that shields the valley from the sun. Flowers may have grown
there once, children may have played under the then pleasant green of
the trees; one can even picture some dark-eyed, black-haired maid of
Picardy, sallying forth from the little hamlet not far off with her
milking-stool and pail, to milk the family cow in the cool shade of the
trees and the steep above.

But that was long ago--at least, it seems as though it _must_ have been
long ago--for to-day the place is a shambles, a valley of Death. Those
who speak of the glory of war, of the wonderful dashing charges, the
inspiring mighty roar of cannon--let them come to this spot and look on
this one small corner of a great battle-field. Within plain view are
villages that will have a place in history--piles of broken brick and
crushed mortar that bear silent, eloquent testimony to the Kultur of
the twentieth century. Round about the land is just a series of tiny
craters, fitted more closely together than the scars on the face of a
man who has survived a severe attack of small-pox; and here and there,
scattered, still lie the dead. No blade of grass dare raise its sheath
above ground, for the land is sown with steel and iron and lead, and
the wreckage and wrack and ruin of the most bitter strife.

Even those who have seen such things for many months past pause
involuntarily when they reach this valley of the shadow. It is a
revelation of desolation--the inner temple of death. In that little
space, perhaps three hundred feet long and a bare forty wide, lie the
bodies of nearly a hundred men, friend and foe, whose souls have gone
on to the happy hunting ground amid circumstances of which no tongue
could give a fitting account, no pen a fitting description.

Once a German stronghold, this place passed into our hands but a short
while since. Two guns were tucked away in under the hill, and the
infantry, suddenly ejected from their forward position, fell back on
them, and taking advantage of a pause strengthened their position, and
brought up reinforcements. Thereupon our guns concentrated on them
with fearful results, although when the infantry swept forward, there
were still enough men in the deep, half-filled in trench to put up a
desperate resistance.

It is not difficult to read the story of that early morning struggle.
The land is churned in all directions, two of the bigger trees have
fallen, and now spread out gnarled branches above the remnants of some
artillery dugouts. Pools of water, thick glutinous mud--both are tinged
in many spots a dark red-brown--and portions of what were once men, lie
scattered around in dreadful evidence.

But for his pallor, one might think that man yonder is still living. He
is sitting in an easy attitude, leaning forward, one hand idle in his
lap, his rifle against his knee, and with the other hand raised to his
cheek as though he were brushing off a fly. But his glassy eyes stare,
and his face is bloodless and grey, while a large hole in his chest
shows where the enemy shrapnel smote him.

Corpses of dead Germans are piled, in places, one over the other, some
showing terrible gaping wounds, some headless, some stripped of all
or part of their clothing, by the terrific explosion of a great shell
which rent their garments from them. In more than one place old graves
have been blown sky-high, and huddled skeletons, still clad in the rags
of a uniform, lie stark under the open sky.

Papers, kits, water-bottles, rifles, helmets, bayonets, smoke goggles,
rations, and ammunition are scattered everywhere in confusion. Some
of the _débris_ is battered to bits, some in perfect condition.
Shell-cases, shell-noses, and shrapnel pellets lie everywhere, and
there arises from the ground that peculiar, terrible odour of blood,
bandages, and death, an odour always dreaded and never to be forgotten.
In one German dug-out three men were killed as they lay, and sat,
sleeping. Some one has put a sock over their faces; it were best to let
it remain there. Yonder, a Canadian and a German lie one on top of the
other, both clutching their rifles with the bayonets affixed to them,
one with a bayonet thrust through his stomach, the other with a bullet
through his eye.

At night the very lights shine reluctant over the scene, but the moon
beams impassive on the dead. Burial parties work almost silently,
speaking in whispers, and, shocking anomaly, one now and then hears
some trophy hunter declare, “Say, this is some souvenir, look at this
‘Gott mit Uns’ buckle!”




“A” COMPANY RUSTLES


When we got into the bally place it was raining in torrents, and the
air was also pure purple because the Colonel found some one in his old
billet, and the Town-Major, a cantankerous old dug-out who seemed to
exist chiefly for the purpose of annoying men who did go into the front
line, was about as helpful as the fifth wheel to a wagon. Finally,
the Colonel shot out of his office like an eighteen-pounder from a
whizz-bang battery, and later on the tattered remnants of our once
proud and haughty Adjutant announced to us, in the tones of a dove who
has lost his mate, that there were no billets for us at all, and that
officers and men would have to bivouac by the river.

Under all circumstances the Major is cheerful--and he has a very
clear idea of when it is permissible to go around an order. Also the
Town-Major invariably has the same effect on him as such an unwelcome
visitor as a skunk at a garden-party would have on the garden-party.
Having consigned the aforesaid T.-M. to perdition in Canadian, English,
French, and Doukhobor, he said: “We are going to have billets for
the men, and we are going to have billets for ourselves.” That quite
settled the matter, as far as we Company officers were concerned. In
the course of the next half-hour we had swiped an empty street and a
half for the men, and put them into it, and then we gathered together,
seven strong, and proceeded to hunt for our own quarters.

There is a very strongly developed scouting instinct among the
Canadian forces in the Field. Moreover, we are not overawed by outward
appearances. In the centre of the town we found a château; and an hour
later we were lunching there comfortably ensconed in three-legged
arm-chairs, with a real bowl of real flowers on the table, and certain
oddments of cut-glass (found gleefully by the batmen) reflecting the
bubbling vintage of the house of Moët et Chandon. Our dining-hall
was about sixty feet by twenty, and we each had a bedroom of
proportionate size, with a bed of sorts in it. Moreover, the place was
most wonderfully clean--it might almost have been prepared for us--and
McFinnigan, our cook, was in the seventh heaven of delight because he
had found a real stove with an oven.

“I cannot understand,” said the Major, “how it is no one is in this
place. It’s good enough for a Divisional Commander.”

There was actually a bath in the place with water running in the taps.
Jones, always something of a pessimist, shook his head when he saw the
bath.

“Look here, all you boys,” he said, “this is no place for us. There is
an unwritten law in this outfit that no man, unless he wears red and
gold things plastered all over his person, shall have more than one
bath in one month. Now _I_ had one three weeks ago, and I am still----
but why dwell on it?”

Needless to say he was ruled out of order.

Just to show our darned independence, we decided to invite most of
the other officers of the battalion to dinner that evening, “plenty
much swank” and all that kind of thing. Would that we had thought
better of it. Of course we eventually decided to make a real banquet
of it, appointed a regular mess committee, went and saw the Paymaster,
and sent orderlies dashing madly forth to buy up all the liqueurs,
Scotch, soda, and other potations that make glad the heart of man. We
arranged for a four-course dinner, paraded the batmen and distributed
back-sheesh and forcible addresses on the subjects of table-laying and
how to balance the soup and unplop the bubbly.

Nobody came near us at all. As far as the Town-Major was concerned we
might have been in Kamtchatka. The Major had gone to the C.O. (_after_
lunch) and told him we had “found a little place to shelter in,” and
as the latter had written a particularly biting, satirical, not to
say hectic note to the Brigadier on the subject of the Town-Major’s
villainy, and was therefore feeling better, he just told the Major to
carry on, and did not worry about us in the least.

Nineteen of us--Majors, Captains, and “Loots”--sat down to dinner. It
was a good dinner, the batmen performed prodigies of waitership; the
wine bubbled and frothed, frothed and bubbled, and we all bubbled too.
It was a red-letter night. After about the seventeenth speech, in which
the Doc. got a little mixed concerning the relationship of Bacchus and
a small statue of the Venus de Milo which adorned one corner of the
room, some one called for a song. It was then about 11 “pip emma.”

We were in the midst of what the P.M. called a little “Close
Harmony”--singing as Caruso and McCormack NEVER sang--when we heard the
sound of feet in the passage, feet that clanked and clunk--feet with
spurs on.

A hush fell over us, an expectant hush. The door opened, without
the ceremony of a knock, and in walked not any of your common or
garden Brigadiers, not even a Major-General, but a fully-fledged
Lieutenant-General, followed by his staff, and the Town-Major.

In our regiment we have always prided ourselves on the fact that we can
carry on anywhere and under any circumstances. But this fell night our
untarnished record came very near to disaster. It was as though Zeus
had appeared at a Roman banquet being held in his most sacred grove.

The General advanced three paces and halted. Those of us who were able
to do so got up. Those who could not rise remained seated. The silence
was not only painful, it was oppressive. A steel-grey, generalistic
eye slowly travelled through each one of us, up and down the table,
unadorned with the remnants of many bottles, the half-finished glasses
of many drinks. Just then the Town-Major took a step forward; he was a
palish green, with an under-tinge of yellow.

“WHAT is the meaning of----” said the General, in a voice tinged with
the iciest breath of the far distant Pole, but he got no further.

There was a sudden rending, ear-splitting roar, the lights went out,
the walls of the château seemed to sway, and the plaster fell in great
lumps from the frescoed ceiling.

That (as we afterwards discovered) no one was hurt was a marvel. It is
the one and only time when we of this regiment have thanked Fritz for
shelling us. In the pale light of early dawn the last member of the
party slunk into the bivouac ground. The General, where was he? We knew
not, neither did we care.

But it was the first and last time that “A” Company rustled a Corps
Commander’s Château!




“MINNIE AND ‘FAMILY’”


When first I met her it was a lush, lovely day in June; the birds were
singing, the grass was green, the earth teemed with life, vegetable and
animal, and the froglets hopped around in the communication trenches.
Some cheery optimist was whistling “Down by the Old Mill Stream,” and
another equally cheery individual was potting German sniping plates
with an accuracy worthy of a better cause. It was, in sooth, “A quiet
day on the Western Front.”

And then _she_ came. Stealing towards me silently, coming upon me like
a brigand in the leafy woods. I did not see her ere she was descending
upon me, but others did. There came distant yells, which I failed
to interpret for a moment; then, glancing upward, I saw her bobbing
through the air, her one leg waving, her round ugly head a blot on
the sky’s fair face. The next thing that happened was that the trench
gathered unto itself wings, rose and clasped me lovingly from the neck
down in a cold, earthy embrace, the while the air was rent with an
ear-splitting roar, like unto a battery of 17-inch naval guns firing a
salvo. After that I respected Minnie; I feared her--nay, I was deadly
scared of her.

Of all the nasty things “old Fritz” has invented, the Minenflamm
is perhaps the nastiest of all. She is purely vicious, utterly
destructive, and quite frightful. The very slowness with which she
sails through the air is in itself awe-inspiring. I never see Minnie
without longing for home, or the inside of the deepest German dug-out
ever digged by those hard-working German Pioneer blighters, who must
all have been moles in their respective pre-incarnations. Minnie
reminds one of Mrs. Patrick Campbell in _The Second Mrs. Tangueray_:
all fire and flame and perdition generally.

If you are a very wide-awake Johnny, absolutely on the spot,
don’t-you-know--you may hear her sigh ere she leaves the (temporary)
Vaterland to take flight. It is a gentle sigh, which those
verblitzender English artillery-men are not meant to hear. If you _do_
happen by chance to hear it, then the only thing to do, although it is
not laid down in K. R. & O. or Divisional Orders (you see they only
_hear_ about these things), is to silently steal away; to seek the
seclusion which your dug-out grants. Later, if you are a new officer,
and want to impress the natives, as it were, you saunter jauntily
forth, cigarette at the correct slope, cane pending vertically from the
right hand, grasped firmly in the palm, little finger downwards, cap at
an angle of 45°, and say: “Minnie, by Jove! Eh what? God bless my soul.
Did it fall over heah or over theah?” Which is a sure way of making
yourself really popular.

Fortunately Minnie has her dull days. Days when she positively refuses
to bust, and sulks, figuratively speaking, in silent wrath and
bitterness on the upper strata of “sunny” France, or Belgium, as the
case may be. After many Agags have trodden very delicately around her,
and she has proved incurably sulky and poor-spirited, some one infused
with the Souvenir spirit carts her away, and pounds her softly with a
cold-chisel and a mallet, until he has either dissected her interior
economy, or else she has segmented _his_.

Minnie has her little family. The eldest male child is called by the
euphonious name of Sausage, and he has brothers of various sizes, from
the pure-blood Hoch-geboren down to the bourgeois little chap who
makes an awful lot of fuss and clatter generally. I remember meeting
little Hans one day, about the dinner hour, when he was a very naughty
boy indeed. The Company was waiting to get a half-canteenful of the
tannin-cum-tea-leaves, called “tea” on the Western front (contained in
one large dixie placed in a fairly open spot in the front line), when
suddenly little Hans poked his blunt nose into the air, and all notions
of tea-drinking were banished _pro tem_. In other words, the Company
took cover automatically, as it were, without awaiting any word of
command. Personally I tripped over a bath-mat, came into close contact
with an old shell-hole full of mud, and offered up a little prayer in
the record time of one-fifth of a second. Instead of entering Nirvana
I only heard a resounding splash, followed by a sizzling sound, like
that made by an exhausted locomotive. Little Hans had fallen into the
dixie, and positively refused to explode. I think the tannin (or the
tea leaves) choked him!

There is also an infant--a female infant--who deserves mention. Her
name is Rifle-grenade, and, according to the very latest communication
from official sources, the gentleman who states with some emphasis
that he is divinely kingly, refuses to sanction any further production
of her species. Like many females she is one perpetual note of
interrogation. She starts on her wayward course thus: “Whrr-on?
Whrr-oo? Whoo? Whoo? Whe-oo? Whe-_oo_?” And then she goes off with
a bang, just as Cleopatra may have done when Antony marked a pretty
hand-maid.

To sum up: Minnie and her children are undoubtedly the product of
perverted science and Kultur, aided and abetted by the very Devil!




AN OFFICER AND GENTLEMAN


He was a tall well-built chap, with big, blue eyes, set far apart, and
dark wavy hair, which he kept too closely cropped to allow it to curl,
as was meant by nature. He had a cheery smile and a joke for every one,
and his men loved him. More than that, they respected him thoroughly,
for he never tolerated slackness or lack of discipline for an instant,
and the lips under the little bronze moustache could pull themselves
into an uncompromisingly straight line when he was justly angry.

When he strafed the men, he did it directly, without sparing them or
their failings, but he never sneered at them, and his direct hits were
so patently honest that they realised it at once, and felt and looked
rather like penitent little boys.

He never asked an N.C.O. or man to do anything he would not do himself,
and he usually did it first. If there was a dangerous patrol, he
led. If there was trying work to do, under fire, he stayed in the
most dangerous position, and helped. He exacted instant obedience
to orders, but never gave an order that the men could not understand
without explaining the reason for it. He showed his N.C.O.’s that he
had confidence in them, and did not need to ask for their confidence in
him. He had it.

In the trenches he saw to his men’s comfort first--his own was a
secondary consideration. If a man was killed or wounded, he was
generally on the spot before the stretcher-bearers, and, not once, but
many times, he took a dying man’s last messages, and faithfully wrote
to his relations. A sacred duty, but one that wrung his withers. He
went into action not only _with_ his men, but at their head, and he
fought like a young lion until the objective was attained. Then, he
was one of the first to bind up a prisoner’s wounds, and to check any
severity towards unwounded prisoners. He went into a show with his
revolver in one hand, a little cane in the other, a cigarette between
his lips.

“You see,” he would explain, “it comforts a fellow to smoke, and the
stick is useful, and a good tonic for the men. Besides, it helps me
try to kid myself I’m not scared--and I _am_, you know! As much as any
one could be.”

On parade he was undoubtedly the smartest officer in the regiment, and
he worked like a Trojan to make his men smart also. At the same time
he would devote three-quarters of any leisure he had to training his
men in the essentials of modern warfare, his spare time being willingly
sacrificed for their benefit.

No man was ever paraded before him with a genuine grievance that he did
not endeavour to rectify. In some manner he would, nine times out of
ten, turn a “hard case” into a good soldier. One of his greatest powers
was his particularly winning smile. When his honest eyes were on you,
when his lips curved and two faint dimples showed in his cheeks, it was
impossible not to like him. Even those who envied him--and among his
brother officers there were not a few--could not bring themselves to
say anything against him.

If he had a failing it was a weakness for pretty women, but his manner
towards an old peasant woman, even though she was dirty and hideous,
was, if anything, more courteous than towards a woman of his own class.
He could not bear to see them doing work for which he considered they
were unfit. One day he carried a huge washing-basket full of clothes
down the main street of a little village in Picardy, through a throng
of soldiers, rather than see the poor old dame he had met staggering
under her burden go a step farther unaided.

The Colonel happened to see him, and spoke to him rather sharply about
it. His answer was characteristic: “I’m very sorry, sir. I forgot about
what the men might think when I saw the poor old creature. In fact,
sir, if you’ll pardon my saying so, I would not mind much if they did
make fun of it.”

He loved children. He never had any loose coppers or small change
long, and two of his comrades surprised him on one occasion slipping a
five-franc note into the crinkled rosy palm of a very, very new baby.
“He looked so jolly cute asleep,” he explained simply.

Almost all his fellow-officers owed him money. He was a poor financier,
and when he had a cent it belonged to whoever was in need of it at the
time.

One morning at dawn, he led a little patrol to examine some new work in
the German front line. He encountered an unsuspected enemy listening
post, and he shot two of the three Germans, but the remaining German
killed him before his men could prevent it. They brought his body back
and he was given a soldier’s grave between the trenches. There he lies
with many another warrior, taking his rest, while his comrades mourn
the loss of a fine soldier and gallant gentleman.




“S.R.D.”


When the days shorten, and the rain never ceases; when the sky is ever
grey, the nights chill, and the trenches thigh deep in mud and water;
when the front is altogether a beastly place, in fact, we have one
consolation. It comes in gallon jars, marked simply “S.R.D.” It does
not matter how wearied the ration party may be, or how many sacks of
coke, biscuits, or other rations may be left by the wayside, the rum
always arrives.

Once, very long ago, one of a new draft broke a bottle on the way up
to Coy. H.Q. (The rum, by the way, _always_ goes to Coy. H.Q.) For a
week his life was not worth living. The only thing that saved him from
annihilation was the odour of S.R.D., which clung to him for days. The
men would take a whiff before going on a working-party, and on any
occasion when they felt low and depressed.

There are those who would deny Tommy his three spoonfuls of rum in the
trenches; those who declare that a man soaked to the skin, covered
with mud, and bitterly cold, is better with a cayenne pepper lozenge.
Let such people take any ordinary night of sentry duty on the Western
front in mid-winter, and their ideas will change. There are not one,
but numberless occasions, on which a tot of rum has saved a man from
sickness, possibly from a serious illness. Many a life-long teetotaler
has conformed to S.R.D. and taken the first drink of his life on the
battle-fields of France, not because he wanted to, but because he
had to. Only those who have suffered from bitter cold and wet, only
those who have been actually “all-in” know what a debt of gratitude is
owing to those wise men who ordered a small ration of rum for every
soldier--officer, N.C.O., and man--on the Western front in winter.

The effect of rum is wonderful, morally as well as physically. In
the pelting rain, through acres of mud, a working-party of fifty men
plough their weary way to the Engineers’ dump, and get shovels and
picks. In single file they trudge several kilometres to the work
in hand, possibly the clearing out of a fallen-in trench, which
is mud literally to the knees. They work in the mud, slosh, and
rain, for at least four hours. Four hours of misery--during which
any self-respecting Italian labourer would lose his job rather than
work--and then they traipse back again to a damp, musty billet, distant
five or six kilometres. To them, that little tot of rum is not simply
alcohol. It is a God-send. Promise it to them before they set out, and
those men will work like Trojans. Deny it to them, and more than half
will parade sick in the morning.

It is no use, if the rum ration is short, to water it down. The men
know it is watered, and their remarks are “frequent and painful, and
free!” Woe betide the officer who, through innocence or intentionally,
looks too freely on the rum when it is brown! His reputation is gone
for ever. If he became intoxicated on beer, champagne, or whisky, he
would only be envied by the majority of his men, but should he drink
too much rum--that is an unpardonable offence!

As a rule, one of the hardest things in the world to do is to awaken
men once they have gone to sleep at night. For no matter what purpose,
it will take a company a good half-hour to pull itself together and
stand to. But murmur softly to the orderly Sergeant that there will be
a rum issue in ten minutes, and though it be 1 A.M. or the darkest hour
before dawn, when the roll is called hardly a man will be absent! That
little word of three letters will rouse the most soporific from their
stupor!

Few men take their rum in the same fashion or with the same expression.
The new draft look at it coyly, carry the cup gingerly to their lips,
smell it, make a desperate resolution, gulp it down, and cough for five
minutes afterwards. The old hands--the men of rubicund countenance and
noses of a doubtful hue--grasp the cup, look to see if the issue is a
full one, raise it swiftly, and drain it without a moment’s hesitation,
smacking their lips. You can see the man who was up for being drunk
the last pay-day coming from afar for his rum. His eyes glisten, his
face shines with hopefulness, and his whole manner is one of supreme
expectation and content.

It is strange how frequently the company staff, from the
Sergeant-Major down to the most recently procured batman, find it
necessary to enter the inner sanctum of H.Q. after the rum has come.
The Sergeant-Major arrives with a large, sweet smile, acting as guard
of honour. “Rum up, sir.” “Thank you, Sergeant-Major.” “I’ve detailed
that working-party, sir.” “Thank you, Sergeant-Major.” “Is that all,
sir?” “Yes, thank you, Sergeant-Major.” He vanishes, to reappear a
minute later. “Did you CALL me, sir?” “No” ... long pause ... “Oh!
Still there? Er, have a drink, Sergeant-Major?” “Well, sir, I guess I
_could_ manage a little drop! Thank you, sir. _Good_-night, sir!”




BEDS


“Think of my leave coming in two weeks, and of getting a decent bed to
sleep in, with sheets!”

Sancho Panza blessed sleep, but perhaps he always had a good bed to
sleep in; we, who can almost slumber on “apron” wire, have a weakness
for good beds.

To appreciate fully what a good bed is, one must live for a time
without one, and go to rest wrapped in a martial cloak--to wit a
British warm or a trench coat, plus the universal sand-bag, than which
nothing more generally useful has been seen in this war. Any man who
has spent six months (in the infantry) at the front knows all about
beds. Any man with a year’s service is a first-class, a number one,
connoisseur. The good bed is so rare that whoever spends a night in one
talks about it for a week, and brings it up in reminiscences over the
charcoal brazier.

“You remember when we were on the long hike from the salient? And the
little place we struck the third night--Cattelle-Villeul I think it
was called? By George, I had a good bed. A peach! It had a spring
mattress and real linen sheets--not cotton--and two pillows with frilly
things on them, and a ripping quilt, with a top-hole eider-down. I was
afraid to get into it until my batman produced that new pair of green
pyjamas with the pink stripes. It simply hurt to give that bed up!”

And if you let him he will continue in like vein for half an hour.
Recollections of that bed have entered into his soul; it is one of the
bright spots in a gloomy life.

Needless to say, the farther you go back from the line, the better the
beds. They can be roughly classified as follows: Battle beds. Front
line beds. Support beds. Reserve beds. Divisional rest beds. Corps
reserve beds, and Army Reserve beds. Beyond this it is fifty-fifty you
will get a good bed, provided there are not too many troops in the
place you go to.

Battle beds, as such, are reserved for battalion commanders, seconds
in command, and adjutants. Sometimes Os.C. units have a look-in, but
the humble sub. has _not_, unless he is one of those Johnnies who can
always make something out of nothing.

When there is a “show” on nobody expects to sleep more than two hours
in twenty-four, and he’s lucky if he gets that. The C.O. takes his
brief slumber on some bare boards raised above the floor-level in a
dug-out. The Os.C. units use a stretcher, with a cape for a pillow, and
the others sleep any old where--on a broken chair, in a corner on the
ground, on the steps of a dug-out, on the fire-step of a parapet, or
even leaning against the parapet. One of the best snoozes we ever had
was of the last variety, while Fritz was plastering the communication
trenches with a barrage a mouse could not creep through.

There is one thing about battle beds; one is far too weary to do
anything but flop limply down, and go instantly to sleep. The nature
of your couch is of secondary importance. Possibly the prize goes to
the man who slept through an intense bombardment, curled up between two
dead Germans, whom he thought were a couple of his pals, asleep, when
he tumbled in to rest.

Front line beds vary according to sector. Usually they are simply a
series of bunks, tucked in one above the other as in a steamer-cabin,
and made of a stretch of green canvas nailed to a pair of two by fours.
Sometimes an ingenious blighter introduces expanded metal or chicken
wire into the general make-up, with the invariable result that it gets
broken by some 200-pounder, and remains a menace to tender portions
of the human frame until some one gets “real wild” and smashes up the
whole concern.

In support, the “downy couch” does not improve very much. Sometimes it
is worse, and it is always inhabited by a fauna of the largest and most
voracious kind.

There is a large element of chance as to reserve beds. They are
generally snares of disillusionment, but once in a while the
connoisseur strikes oil. It will not have sheets--clean sheets, at
all events--but it may possess the odd blanket, and the room may have
been cleaned a couple of weeks ago. If Madame is clean the bed will be
clean; if otherwise, otherwise also.

All the beds at the front are the same in some respects. They are all
wooden, and they nearly all have on them huge piles of mattresses,
four or five deep. It is wisest not to investigate too thoroughly the
inner consciousnesses of the latter, or the awakening may be rude. In
the old days, long, long ago, when the dove of Peace billed and cooed
over the roof of the world, no self-respecting citizen would sleep in
them, but now with what joy do we sink with a sigh of relief into the
once abominated feather-bed of doubtful antecedents, which has been
slept in for two years by one officer after another, and never, never,
never been aired.

C’est la guerre!

Divisional rest beds are at least two points superior to the last. They
are the kind of beds run by a sixth-rate lodging-house in Bloomsbury,
taken on the whole. Usually there is one bed short per unit, so some
one has to double up, with the result that the stronger of the twain
wraps _all_ the bed-clothes around him, and the other chap does not
sleep at all, or is ignominiously rolled out on to the brick _pavé_.

Every one in French villages must go to bed with their stockings on.

Judging by the permanent kinks in all the beds, they must have been
beds _solitaire_ for a life-time, before the soldiers came.

Once we were asked to share a bed with _bébé_, who was three. We
refused. On another occasion, when we were very tired indeed, we were
told that the only bed available was that usually dwelt in by “Jeanne.”
We inspected it, and made a peaceful occupation. “Jeanne” came home
unexpectedly at midnight, and slipped indoors quietly to her room. It
was a bad quarter of an hour, never to be forgotten! Especially when
we found out in the morning that “Jeanne” was twenty years old, and
decidedly pretty. Our reputation in that household was a minus quantity.

In corps reserve one gets beds with coffee in the morning at 7 A.M.
“Votre café, M’sieu.” “Oui, oui, mercy; leave it outside the door--la
porte--please!” “Voiçi, M’sieu! Vous avez bien dormi?” And of course
you can’t say anything, even if Madame stands by the pillow and tells
you the whole story of how Yvonne makes the coffee!

They are fearless, these French women!




MARCHING


We have left the statue of the Virgin Mary which pends horizontally
over the Rue de Bapaume far behind us and the great bivouacs, and the
shell-pitted soil of the Somme front. Only at night can we see the
flickering glare to the southward, and the ceaseless drum of the guns
back yonder is like the drone of a swarm of bees. Yesterday we reached
the last village we shall see in Picardy, and this morning we shall
march out of the Departement de la Somme, whither we know not.

It is one of those wonderful mid-October days when the sun rises red
above a light, low mist, and land sparkling with hoar-frost; when the
sky is azure blue, the air clean and cold, and the roads white and
hard. A day when the “fall-in” sounds from rolling plain to wooded
slope and back again, clear and mellow, and when the hearts of men are
glad.

“Bat-ta-lion ... Shun!”

It does one good to hear the unison of sound as the heels come
together, and a few moments later we have moved off, marching to
attention down the little main street of Blondin-par-la-Gironde, with
its 300 inhabitants, old, old church, and half-dozen estaminets.
Madame, where we billeted last night, and her strapping daughter
Marthe, are standing on the doorstep to see us go by. “Bonjour,
M’sieurs, Au revoir, Bonne chance!”

“Left, left, left--ri--left,” the pace is short, sharp, and decisive,
more like the Rifle Brigade trot. Even the backsliders, the men who
march as a rule like old women trying to catch a bus, have briskened up
this morning. Looking along the column from the rear one can see that
rhythmical ripple which betokens the best marching, and instinctively
the mind flashes back to that early dawn three days ago--no, four--when
they came out of the trenches, muddy, dead-beat, awesomely dirty, just
able to hobble along in fours.

Ninety-six hours and what a change!

“March at ease.”

The tail of the column has passed the last little low cottage in the
village, and the twenty-one kilometre “hike” has begun. Corporal
McTavish, mindful that he was once a staff bugler, unslings his
instrument, and begins--after a few horrid practice notes--to play
“Bonnie Dundee,” strictly according to his own recollection of that
ancient tune. The scouts and signallers are passing remarks of an
uncomplimentary nature anent the Colonel’s second horse, which, when
not trying to prance on the Regimental Sergeant-Major’s toes, shows an
evil inclination to charge backwards through the ranks. The bombers are
grousing, as usual; methodically, generally, but without bitterness.
“They will not sing, they cannot play, but they can surely fight.”

“A” Company band consisting of the aforesaid Corporal McTavish, three
mouth-organs, an accordion, a flute, and a piccolo, plus sundry
noises, is heartily engaged with the air “I want to _go_ back, I
WANT to _go back_ (_cres._), I want to go back (_dim._), To the farm
(_pizzicato_),” which changes after the first kilometre to “Down in
Arizona where the Bad Men are.” They are known as the “Birds,” and not
only do they whistle, but they also sing!

“B” Company is wrapped in gloom; they march with a grim determination,
a “just-you-wait-till-I-catch-you” expression which bodes ill for
somebody. Did not a rum-jar--a full jar of rum--vanish from the
rations last night? Isn’t the Quartermaster--and the C.S.M.’s batman
too--endowed with a frantic “hang-over” this morning? This world is an
unfair, rotten kind of a hole anyhow. The Company wit, one Walters,
starts to sing “And when I die.” He is allowed to proceed as far as
“Just pickle my bones,” but “in alcohol” is barely out of his mouth
when groans break in upon his ditty, coupled with loud-voiced protests
to “Have a heart.”

For six months past “C” Company has rejoiced in the generic title
of “Scorpions.” Their strong suit is limerics, the mildest of which
would bring a blush to the cheek of an old-time camp-follower. Within
the last twenty-four hours their O.C. has been awarded the Military
Cross. His usually stern visage--somewhat belied by a twinkling blue
eye--is covered with a seraphic smile. Cantering along the column
comes the Colonel. The artists of the limeric subside. Pulling up,
the C.O. about turns and holds out his hand. “I want to congratulate
you, Captain Bolton. Well deserved. Well deserved. Honour to the
regiment ... yes, yes ... excellent, excellent ... ahem ... thank you,
thank you...!” With one accord the old scorpions, led by the Company
Sergeant-Major, break into the refrain “See him smi-ling, see him
smi-ling, see him smi-i-ling just now.” And Bolton certainly does smile.

By this time we have marched for an hour, and the signal comes to halt,
and fall out on the right of the road. The men smoke, and the officers
gather together in little groups. It is wonderful what ten minutes’
rest will do when a man is carrying all his worldly goods on his back.

A few minutes after starting out again we see ahead of us a little
group of horses, and a red hat or twain, and red tabs. The Divisional
Commander _and_ the Brigadier. The Battalion takes a deep breath,
slopes arms, pulls itself together generally, dresses by the right, and
looks proud and haughty. There is a succession of “Eyes Rights” down
the column, as each unit passes the reviewing base, and then we all
sigh again. _That’s_ over for to-day!

On we march, through many quaint little old-world villages, every one
of which is filled with troops, up hill and down dale, through woods,
golden and brown, tramping steadily onward, a long green-brown column a
thousand strong. Cussing the new drafts who fall out, cussing the old
boots that are worn out, cussing the war in general, and our packs in
detail, but none the less content. For who can resist the call of the
column, the thought of the glorious rest when the march is done, and
the knowledge that whatever we may be in years to come, just now we are
IT!




THE NATIVES


“Bonn joor, Madame!”

“Bonjour, M’sieu!”

“Avvy voo pang, Madame?”

“Braëd? But yes, M’sieu. How much you want? Two? Seize sous, M’sieu.”

“_How_ much does the woman say, Buster?”

“Sixteen sous, cuckoo!”

“Well, here’s five francs.”

“Ah, but, M’sieu! Me no monnaie! No chanch! Attendez, je vous donnerai
du papier.”

Madame searches in the innermost recesses of an old drawer, and
produces one French penny, two sous, a two-franc bill of the Commune
of Lisseville, stuck together with bits of sticking-paper, a very
dirty one-franc bill labelled St. Omer, and two 50-centimes notes from
somewhere the other side of Amiens.

“Je regrette, M’sieu,” Madame waves her hands in the air, “mais c’est
tout ce que j’ai.... All dat I ’ave, M’sieu!”

The transaction, which has taken a full ten minutes, is at last
completed. They are very long-suffering, the natives, taken on the
whole. In the first place “C’est la guerre.” Secondly, they, too, have
soldier husbands, sons, and brothers and cousins serving in the Grandes
Armées. Is it to be expected that they be well treated unless _we_ do
_our_ share? And--these British soldiers, they have much money. And
they are generous for the most part.

So Madame, whose husband is in Champagne, gives up the best bedroom to
Messieurs les Officiers, and sleeps with her baby in the attic. The
batmen use her poële, and sit around it in the evening drinking her
coffee. Le Commandant buys butter, milk, eggs--“mais, mon dieu, one
would think a hen laid an egg every hour to hear him! Trois douzaine!
But, Monsieur, I have but six poules, and they overwork themselves
already! There is not another egg above eleven dans tous le pays,
M’sieu. Champagne? But yes, certainement. Bénédictine? Ah, non, M’sieu,
it is défendu, and we sold the last bottle to an officier with skirts
a week ago. Un treès bon officier, M’sieu; he stay two days, and make
love to Juliette. Juliette fiancée? Tiens, she has a million, M’sieu,
to hear them talk, like every pretty girl in France. So soon you enter
the doorway, M’sieu, and see Juliette, you say ‘Moi fiancé, vous?’ You
are très taquin--verree bad boys--les Anglais!”

Sometimes there is war, red war. Madame enters, wringing her hands, her
hair suggestive of lamentation and despair. She wishes to see M’sieu
l’Officier who speaks a little French.

“Ah, M’sieu, but it is terrible. I give to the Ordonnances my fire,
my cook-pots, and a bed of good hay in the stable, next to the cows,
and what do they do? M’sieu, they steal my gate that was put there by
my grandfather--he who won a decoration in soixante et six--and they
get a little axe and make of it fire-wood! And in the early morning
they milk the cows. Ah, but, M’sieu, I will go to the Maire and make a
réclammation! Fifteen francs for a new gate, and seventeen sous for the
milk that they have stolen! And the cuillers! Before the war I buy a
new set, with Henri, of twenty-four cuillers. Where are they? All but
three are volées, M’sieu! It is not juste. M’sieu le Capitaine who was
here a week ago last Dimanche--for I went to Mass--say it is a dam
shame, M’sieu. I do not like to make the trouble, M’sieu, but I must
live. La veuve Marnot over yonder, two houses down the street on the
left-hand side, she could have a hundred gates burned and say nothing.
She is très riche. They say the Mayor make déjà his advances. But me,
what shall I do, my gate a desecration in the stoves, M’sieu, and the
milk of my cows drunk by the maudits ordonnances!”

Note in the mess president’s accounts: “To one gate (burned) and milk
stolen, 7.50 francs.”

All over France and Belgium little stores have grown and flourished.
They sell tinned goods without limit, from cigarettes, through lobster,
to peaches.

Both are practical countries.

In nearly all these boutiques there is a pretty girl. Both nations have
learned the commercial value of a pretty girl. It increases the credit
side of the business 75 per cent. In the Estaminets it is the same,
only more so. Their turnover is a thing which will be spoken of by
their great-grandchildren with bated breath.

More cases than one are known where the lonely soldier has made a
proposal, in form, to the fair débitante who nightly handed him his
beer over the bar of a little Estaminet. Sometimes he has been accepted
pour l’amour de sa cassette--sometimes “pour l’amour de ses beaux yeux!”

In a little hamlet several days’ march behind the firing-line, lived
a widow. She was a grass-widow before Verdun, and there she became
“veuve.” She was a tall, handsome woman, twenty-seven or twenty-eight
perhaps, and her small feet and ankles, the proud carriage of her head,
and the delicate aquiline nose bespoke her above the peasantry. She
kept a little café at the junction of three cross-roads. The natives
know her as Madame de Maupin.

Why “de” you ask? Because her father was a French count and her mother
was a femme de chambre. The affair made an esclandre of some magnitude
many years ago. Madame de Maupin was fille naturelle. She married, at
the wishes of her old harridan of a mother, a labourer of the village.
She despised her husband. He was uncouth and a peasant. In her the
cloven hoof showed little. Despite no advantages of education she had
the instincts of her aristocratic father. The natives disliked her for
that reason.

Madame de Maupin kept a café. Until the soldiers came it did not pay,
but she would not keep an Estaminet. It was so hopelessly “vulgaire.”
After closing hours, between eight and ten, Madame de Maupin held her
Court. Officers gathered in the little back room, and she entertained
them, while they drank. She had wit, and she was very handsome. One of
her little court, a young officer, fell in love with her. Her husband
was dead.

Her lover had money, many acres, and position. He proposed to her. She
loved him and--she refused him, “because,” she said simply, “you would
not be happy.”

He was sent to the Somme.

Madame de Maupin closed her Estaminet and vanished.

There is a story told, which no one believes, of a woman, dressed in a
private’s uniform of the British army, who was found, killed, among the
ruins of Thiepval. She lay beside a wounded officer, who died of his
wounds soon after. He had been tended by some one, for his wounds were
dressed. In his tunic pocket was a woman’s photograph, but a piece of
shrapnel had disfigured it beyond recognition.

But, as I said, no one believes the story.




“OTHER INHABITANTS”


There is a little story told of two young subalterns, neither of whom
could speak the lingua Franca, who went one day to the Estaminet des
Bons Copins, not five thousand miles from Ploegstraete woods, to buy
some of the necessities of life, for the Estaminet was a little store
as well as a road-house. Both of the said subalterns had but recently
arrived in Flanders, from a very spick and span training area, and
neither was yet accustomed to the ways of war, nor to the minor
discomforts caused by inhabitants other than those of the country,
albeit native to it from the egg, as it were.

They entered the Bons Copins, and having bought cigarettes and a few
odds and ends, one of them suddenly remembered that he wanted a new
pair of braces, to guarantee the safety of his attire. But the French
word for braces was a knock-out. Neither himself nor his friend could
think of it, and an Anglo-French turning of the English version met
with dismal failure.

At last a bright idea smote him. He smiled benignly, and vigorously
rubbed the thumbs of both hands up and down over his shoulders and
chest. Madame beamed with the light of immediate understanding. “Oui,
Monsieur, mais oui ... _oui_!” She disappeared into the back of the
store, to return a moment later, bearing in her hand a large green box,
labelled distinctly: “Keating’s Powder!”

There are few things that will have the least effect on a vigorous
young section of “other inhabitants.”

Those good, kind people who send out little camphor balls, tied up in
scarlet flannel bags, and tins of Keating’s without number, little know
what vast formations in mass these usually deadly articles must deal
with. We have suspended camphor balls--little red sacks, tapes, and
all--in countless numbers about our person. We have gone to bed well
content, convinced of the complete route of our Lilliputian enemies.
And on the morrow we have found them snugly ensconced--grandmamma,
grandpapa, and their great-great-grandchildren--right plumb in the
centre of our batteries. Making homes there; waggling their little
legs, and taking a two-inch sprint now and then round the all-red
route. What is camphor to them? This hardy stock has been known to live
an hour in a tin of Keating’s powder, defiant to the last! What boots
it that a man waste time and substance on a Sabbath morn sprinkling his
garments over with powders and paraffins. He is sure to miss a couple,
and one of them is certain to be the blushing bride of the other.

From deep below the calf comes the plaintive wail, spreading far and
wide, to the very nape of the neck: “Husband, where are you? I am lost
and alone, and even off my feed!” With no more ado hubby treks madly
down the right arm and back again, hits a straight trail, and finds the
lost one.

And the evening and the morning see the grandchildren.

Grandpa leads them bravely to the first collision mat, an area
infected with coal-oil. “Charge, my offspring!” he cries, waggling
his old legs as hard as he can, “prove yourselves worthy scions of
our race!” And the little blighters rush madly over the line--with
their smoke-helmets on, metaphorically speaking--and at once set about
establishing a new base.

Henry goes to Mabel, and says: “Mabel, darling! I have found a sweet
little home for two--or (blushing!) perhaps _three_--in the crook of
the left knee. Will you be my bride?” And Mabel suffers herself to be
led away, and duly wed, at once. So they dance a Tarantelle under the
fifth rib, and then proceed to the serious business of bringing up
little Henrys and Mabels in the way they should go!

There is only one way to deal with them, cruel and ruthless though
it be. Lay on the dogs! Remove each garment silently, swiftly,
relentlessly. Pore over it until you see Henry hooking it like Billy-oh
down the left leg of your--er, pyjamas. Catch him on the wing, so to
speak, and squash him! Then look for Mabel and the children, somewhere
down the other leg, and do ditto! Set aside two hours _per diem_ for
this unsportsmanlike hunt, and you may be able to bet evens with
the next chappy inside a couple of months! Even then the odds are
against you, unless you hedge with the junior subaltern, who gets the
worst--and therefore most likely to be tenanted--bed!

If you see a man, en déshabille, sitting out in the sun, with an
earnest, intent look on his face, and a garment in his hands, you can
safely bet one of two things. He is either (1) mad, (2) hunting.

It adds variety to life to watch him from afar, and then have a
sweepstake on the total with your friends. You need not fear the
victim’s honesty. He will count each murdered captive as carefully as
though he were (or she were!) a batch of prisoner Fritzes. There is a
great element of luck about the game, too; you never can tell. Some men
develop into experts. Lightning destroyers, one might say. A brand-new
subaltern joined the sweepstake one day, and he bet 117. The chap had
only been at it half an hour by the clock, too!

The new sub. won.

You can always tell a new sub. You go up to him and you say politely:
“Are you--er ... yet?” If he looks insulted he is new. If he says,
“Yes, old top, millions of ’em!” and wriggles, he is old!

There was a man once who had a champion. He said he got it in a German
dug-out; anyhow, it was a pure-blooded, number one mammoth, and it won
every contest on the measured yard, against all comers. He kept it in
a glass jar, and fed it on beef. It died at the age of two months and
four days, probably from senility brought on by over-eating and too
many Derbies. Thank heaven the breed was not perpetuated, albeit the
Johnny who owned it could have made a lot of money if he had not been
foolishly careful of the thing.

He buried it in a tin of Keating’s--mummified, as it were--and enclosed
an epitaph: “Here lie the last ligaments of the largest louse the Lord
ever let loose!”

Some people think Fritz started the things, as a minor example of
frightfulness. One of them caused a casualty in the regiment, at
all events. A new sub., a very squeamish chappie, found _one_--just
one!--and nearly died of shame. He heard petrol was a good thing, so
he anointed himself all over with it, freely. Then his elbow irritated
him, and he lighted a match to see if it was another!

He is still in hospital!




BOMBS


We counted them as they came up the communication trench, and the
Commander of “AK” Company paled; yet he was a brave man. He cast a
despairing glance around him, and then looked at me.

“George,” he said (you may not believe it, but there can be a world of
pathos put into that simple name). “_George_, we are Goners.”

By this time they had reached the front line.

My thoughts flew to the Vermoral sprayer, last time it had been the
Vermoral sprayer. Was the V.S. filled, or was it not...?

They came from scent to view, and pulling himself together with a click
of the heels closely imitated by the S.I.C., the O.C. “AK” Coy. saluted.

“Good morning, sir!”

The General acknowledged the salute, but the ends of his moustache
quivered. G.S.O. one, directly in rear, frowned. The Colonel looked
apprehensive, and glared at both of us. The Brigadier was glum, the
Brigade Major very red in the face. Two of those beastly supercilious
Aides looked at each other, smiled, glanced affectionately at their red
tabs and smiled again.

It was exactly 2.29 “pip emma” when the mine went up.

“Discipline, sir,” said the General, “discipline is lacking in your
company! You have a sentry on duty at the head of Chelwyn Road. A
sentry! What does he do when he sees me? Not a damn thing, sir! Not a
damn thing!”

Of course the O.C. “AK” made a bad break; one always does under such
circumstances.

“He may not have seen you, sir.”

G.S.O. one moved forward in support, so that if overcome the General
could fall back on his centre.

A whizz-bang burst in 94--we were in 98--and the Staff ducked,
taking the time from the front. The Aides carried out the movement
particularly smartly, resuming the upright position in strict rotation.

The General fixed us with a twin Flammenwerfer gaze.

“What’s that? Not _see_ me? What the devil is he there for, sir? I
shall remember this, Captain--ah, Roberts--I shall remember this!”

Pause.

“Where is your Vermoral sprayer?”

Like lambkins followed by voracious lions, we lead them to the Vermoral
sprayer.

I was at the retaking of Hill 60, at Ypres long months ago, at
Festubert and Givenchy, but never was I so inspired with dread as now.

Praise be to Zeus, the V.S. was full!

We passed on, until we reached a bomber cleaning bombs. The General
paused. The bomber, stood to attention, firmly grasping a bomb in the
right hand, knuckles down, forearm straight.

“Ha!” said the General. “Ha! Bombs, what?”

The bomber remained apparently petrified.

“What I always say about these bombs,” the General continued, turning
to the Brigadier, “is that they’re so damn simple, what? A child can
use them. You can throw them about, and, provided the pin is in, no
harm will come of it. But”--looking sternly at me--“_always_ make sure
the pin is safely imbedded in the base of the bomb. That is the first
duty of a man handling bombs.”

We all murmured assent, faintly or otherwise, according to rank.

“Give me that bomb,” said the General to the bomber, waxing
enthusiastic. The man hesitated. The General glared, the bomb became
his.

We stood motionless around him. “You see, gentlemen,” the General
continued jocularly. “I take this bomb, and I throw it on the
ground--so! It does not explode, it cannot explode, the fuse is not
lit, for the pin----”

Just then the bomber leapt like a fleeting deer round the corner, but
the General was too engrossed to notice him.

“As I say, the pin----”

A frightened face appeared round the bay, and a small shaky voice broke
in:

“Please, sir, it’s a five-second fuse--an’ _I ’ad took HOUT the pin_!”

       *       *       *       *       *

After all the General reached the traverse in time and we were not shot
at dawn. But G.S.O. one has gone to England “Wounded and shell-shock.”




SOFT JOBS


This war has produced a new type of military man--so-called--to
wit: the seeker after soft jobs. He flourishes in large numbers in
training areas; he grows luxuriantly around head-quarters staffs, and
a certain kind of hybrid--a combination of a slacker and a soldier--is
to be found a few miles to the rear of the firing-line in France and
Flanders. There are some of him in every rank, from the top of the tree
to the bottom. If he is a natural-born soft-jobber he never leaves
his training area--not even on a Cook’s tour. Should the virus be
latent, he will develop an attack, acute or mild, after one tour in the
trenches, or when one of our own batteries has fired a salvo close by
him.

If he is affected by very mild germs he may stand a month or two in the
firing-line in some sector where fighting troops are sent for a rest
and re-organisation. Broadly speaking, therefore, he belongs to one of
three classes, of which the second class is perhaps the worst.

There are some men who join the army without the least intention of
ever keeping less than the breadth of the English Channel between
themselves and fighting territory. Not for them the “glorious”
battle-fields, not for them the sweat and toil and purgatory of
fighting for their country. Nothing at all for them in fact, save a
ribbon and a barless medal, good quarters, perfect safety, staff pay,
weekend leave, with a few extra days thrown in as a reward for their
valuable services, and--a soft job!

They are the militaresques of our armies. The men who try hard to be
soldiers, and who only succeed in being soldier-like beings erect upon
two legs, with all the outward semblance of a soldier. Yet even _their_
lives are not safe. They run grave risks by day and by night in the
service of their country.

Zeppelins!

There is an air of bustle and excitement around the officers’ quarters
in the training camp to-day. Batmen--hoary-haired veterans with six
ribbons, whom no M.O. could be induced to pass for active service,
even by tears--rush madly hither and thither, parleying in odd moments
of Ladysmith, Kabul to Kandahar, and “swoddies.” Head-quarters look
grave, tense, strained.

In the ante-room to the mess stand soda syphons and much “B. & W.”
There are gathered there most of the officers of two regiments--base
battalions, with permanent training staffs. In the five seats of honour
recline nonchalantly two majors, one captain, and two subalterns. (O.C.
Lewis gun school, O.C. nothing in particular, Assistant O.C. Lewis
gun school, Assistant Assistant Lewis gun school, Deputy Assistant
Adjutant.) They are smoking large, fat cigars, and consuming many
drinks. Are they not the heroes of the hour? When the sun rises well
into the heavens to-morrow they will set forth on a desperate journey.

They are going on a Cook’s tour of two weeks’ duration to the trenches!
(So that they can have the medal!) In the morning, with bad headaches,
they depart. In Boulogne they spend twelve hours of riotous life.
(“Let us eat and drink,” says the O.C. nothing in particular, “for
to-morrow, dont-cher-know!”) They arrive in due course at Battalion
battle H.Q. The majors have the best time, as they stay with the C.O.,
drink his Scotch, and do the bombing officer and the M.G.O. out of a
bed.

The rest of them are right up among the companies, where they are an
infernal nuisance. About 11 “pip emma” Fritz starts fire-works, and
finishes up with a bombing attack on the left flank. The O.C. nothing
in particular stops at B.H.Q. The O.C. Lewis gun school mistakes the
first general head-quarters line (one kilometre in rear) for the front
line, and goes back with shell-shock, having been in the centre of
a barrage caused by one 5.9 two hundred yards north. The Assistant
Assistant gets into the main bomb store in the front line, and stops
there, and the Assistant O.C. Lewis gun school remains in Coy. H.Q. and
looks after the batmen. The Deputy Assistant Adjutant gets out into
the trench, finds some bombers doing nothing, gets hold of a couple of
bombs, makes for the worst noise, and carries on as a soldier should.

After the show the O.C. nothing in particular tells the Colonel all
_his_ theories on counter-attack, and goes sick in the morning for
the remaining period of his tour; the other twain stand easy, and the
Deputy Assistant Adjutant makes an application for transfer to the
Battalion. Incidentally he is recommended for the military cross.

When the four previously mentioned return to England they all of them
apply for better soft jobs, on the strength of recent experiences at
the front. The one man who threw up his soft job to become junior
subaltern in a fighting regiment is killed in the next “show” before
his recommendation for a decoration has been finally approved.

_Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum._




“GROUSE”


We aren’t happy; our clothes don’t fit, and we ain’t got no friends!
Rations are not up yet--confound the Transport Officer--it’s raining
like the dickens, as dark as pitch, and we’ve only got one bit of
candle. Some one has pinched a jar of rum, that idiot batman of mine
can’t find a brazier, and young John has lost his raincoat. In fact
it’s a rotten war.

We had lobster for lunch; it has never let us forget we had it! The
Johnny we “took over” from _said_ there were 7698 million bombs in the
Battalion grenade store, and there are only 6051. The Adjutant has
just sent a “please explain,” which shows what you get for believing a
fellow.

The little round fat chap has left his gumboots (thigh) “Somewhere in
France,” and fell into the trench tramway trying to wear an odd six on
the right foot, and an odd nine on the left. George has busted the D
string of the mandoline, and A. P. has lost the only pack of cards we
had to play poker with.

It’s a simply _rotten_ war!

John has a working-party out of sixty “other ranks” and says they are
spread in two’s and three’s over a divisional frontage. He has made two
trips to locate them, and meditates a third. His language is positively
hair-raising. If he falls into any more shell-holes no one will let him
in the dug-out.

Those confounded brigade machine gunners are firing every other second
just in front of the dug-out. Heaven knows what they are firing at, or
where, but how a man could be expected to sleep through the noise only
a siege artillery man could tell you.

George went out on a “reconnaissance” recently. George is great on
doing reconnaissances and drawing maps. This time the reconnaissance
did _him_, and the only map he’s yet produced is mud tracings on his
person. Incidentally he says that _all_ the communication trenches are
impassable, and that no one but a cat could go over the top and keep on
his feet for more than thirty seconds. (N.B.--George fell into the main
support line and had to be pulled out by some of John’s working-party.)
George says that if the Germans come over it’s all up. Cheerful sort
of beggar, George.

My new smoke-helmet--the one you wear round your neck all the time,
even in your dreams--is lost again. This is the third time in the
course of six hours. The gas N.C.O. has calculated that with the wind
at its present velocity we should be gassed in one and three-quarter
seconds, not counting the recurring decimal.

John has just told a story about a bayonet. It would be funny at any
other time. Now, it simply sticks!

The cook has just come in to say our rations have been left behind by
mistake. Troubles never come singly. May heaven protect the man who
is responsible if we get him! John has told another story, about an
Engineer. It can’t be true, for he says this chap was out in No Man’s
Land digging a trench. No one ever knew a Canadian Engineer do anything
but tell the infantry how to work. It’s a rotten story, anyhow.

Just look at this dug-out; a bottle of rum on the table--empty. The odd
steel helmet, some dirty old newspapers, and a cup or two (empty!),
and a pile of strafes from the Adjutant six inches thick. My bed has
a hole in it as big as a “Johnson ’ole,” and there are rats. Also the
place is inhabited by what the men call “crumbs.” Poetic version of a
painful fact.

John says this is the d--est outfit he has ever been in. John is right.
My gumboots were worn by the Lance-Corporal in No. 2 platoon, and they
are wet, beastly wet. Also my batman has forgotten to put any extra
socks in my kit-bag. Also he’s lost my German rifle--the third I’ve
bought for twenty francs and lost.

This is a _deuce_ of a war!

The mail has just arrived. George got five, the little round fat fellow
_nine_, A. P. two, and John and me shake hands with a duck’s-egg. Still
the second mentioned has his troubles. One of his many inamoratas has
written to him in French. He knows French just about as well as he
knows how to sing! Nuff said!

John has “parti’d” to his triple-starred working-party. The men have
not got any letters either. You should hear them! The most expert
“curser” of the Billingsgate fishmarket would turn heliotrope with
envy. George is feeling badly too. He lent his flash-light to dish out
rations with. That is to say, to illuminate what the best writers of
nondescript fiction call the “Cimmerian gloom!”

A. P. has had letters from his wife. Lucky dog! She takes up four pages
telling him how she adores him.

This is a _beastly_ rotten war.

Fritz is a rotter too. My dug-out is two hundred yards north by
nor’-east. Every time I have to make the trip he never fails to keep
the Cimmerian gloom strictly “Cim.” And the bath-mats are broken in two
places, and I’ve found both of them every time.

Another strafe from the Adjutant. May jackals defile his grave, but
he’ll never have one in France, anyhow. “Please render an account
to Orderly Room of the number of men in your unit who are qualified
plumbers.”

We haven’t any.

If we had we should have mended the hole in the roof, which leaks on
John’s bed. It has only just begun to leak. It will be fun to hear
what John says when he comes back. Only he may be speechless.

The little round fat fellow is still reading letters, and A. P. is
hunting in his nether garments. “Kinder scratterin’ aroun’!” So far the
bag numbers five killed and two badly winged, but still on the run.

Somebody has turned out the guard. Yells of fire. After due inspection
proves to be the C.O.’s tunic. It was a new one! May his batman
preserve himself in one piece.

More yells of “Guard turn out!” Support my tottering footsteps!
Our--that is to say _my_ dug-out is on fire.... Confusion.... Calm....
I have no dug-out, no anything.... This is, pardonnez-moi, a Hell of a
war!




PANSIES


There are some pansies on my table, arranged in a broken glass one of
the men has picked up among the rubble and débris of this shattered
town. Dark mauve and yellow pansies, pretty, innocent looking little
things. “Pansies--that’s for thoughts.”

Transport is rattling up and down the street--guns, limbers, G.S.
wagons, water-carts, God knows what, and there are men marching along,
mud-caked, weary, straggling, clinging fast to some German souvenir as
they come one way; jaunty, swinging, clean, with bands a-blowing as
they go the other. It is a dull grey day. There is “something doing” up
the line. I can hear the artillery, that ceaseless artillery, pounding
and hammering, and watch the scout aeroplanes, dim grey hawks in the
distance, from the windows of the room above--the broken-down room with
the plasterless ceiling, and the clothes scattered all over the floor.

“Pansies--that’s for thoughts.”

The regiment is up yonder--the finest regiment God ever made. They
are wallowing in the wet, sticky mud of the trenches they have dug
themselves into, what is left of them. They are watching and waiting,
always watching and waiting for the enemy to attack.

And they are being bombarded steadily, pitilessly, without cessation.
Some will be leaning against the parapet, sleeping the sleep of
exhaustion, some will be watching, some smoking, if they have got any
smokes left. I know them. Until the spirit leaves their bodies they
will grin and fight, fight and grin, but always “Carry On.”

Last night they went up to relieve the --th, after they had just come
out of the line, and were themselves due to be relieved. Overdue, in
fact, but the General knew that he could rely on them, knew that THEY
would never give way, while there was a man left to fire a rifle. So
he used them--as they have always been used, and as they always will
be--to hold the line in adversity, to take the line when no one else
could take it.

We have been almost wiped out five times, but the old spirit still
lives, the Spirit of our mighty dead. There are always enough “old
men” left, even though they number but a score, with whom to leaven
the lump of raw, green rookies that come to us, and to turn them into
soldiers worthy of the Regiment.

Dark mauve pansies.

I knew all the old soldiers of the Brigade, I have fought with them,
shaken hands with them afterwards--those who survived--mourned with
them our pals who were gone--buried many a one of them.

This time I am out of it. Alone with the pansies ... and my thoughts.
Thomson was killed last night; Greaves, Nicholson, Townley, between
then and now. Nearly all the rest are wounded. Those who come back will
talk of this fight, they will speak of hours and events of which I
shall know nothing. For the first time I shall be on the outer fringe,
mute ... with only ears to hear, and no heart to speak.

Perhaps they will come out to-morrow night. Or, early, very early the
following morning. They will be tired--so tired they are past feeling
it--unshaven, unwashed, and covered with mud from their steel helmets
down to the soles of their boots. But they will be fairly cheerful.
They will try to sing on the long, long march back here, as I have
heard them so many times before. When they reach the edge of the town
they will try to square their weary shoulders, and to keep step--and
they will do it, too, heaven only knows _how_, but they will do it.
Their leader will feel very proud of them, which is only right and
proper. He will call them “boys,” encourage the weak, inwardly admire
and bless the strong. And he will be proud of the mud and dirt, proud
of his six days’ growth of beard. Satisfied; because he has just done
one more little bit, and the Good Lord has pulled him through it.

When they get to their billets they will cheer; discordantly, but cheer
none the less. They will crowd into the place, and drop their kits
and themselves on top of them, to sleep the sleep of the just--the
well-earned sleep of utter fatigue.

In the morning they will feel better, and they will glance at you with
an almost affectionate look in their eyes, for they know--as the men
always know--whether you have proved yourself, whether you have made
good--or failed.

“Pansies ... that’s for thoughts....”

And I am out of it--out of it _ALL_ ... preparing “To re-organise what
is left of the regiment.”

For God’s sake, Holman, take away those flowers!




GOING BACK


A large crowd packed the wide platform, hemmed in on one side by
a barrier, on the other by a line of soldiers two paces apart.
The boat-train was leaving in five minutes. That a feeling of
tension permeated the crowd was evident, from the forced smiles and
laughter, and the painful endeavours of the departing ones to look
preternaturally cheerful. In each little group there were sudden
silences.

Almost at the last moment a tall, lean officer pressed through the
crowd, made for a smoking-carriage, and got in. He surveyed the scene
with a rather compassionate interest, while occasionally a wistful look
passed over his face as he watched for a moment an officer talking with
a very pretty girl, almost a child, who now and then mopped her eyes
defiantly with a diminutive handkerchief.

“All aboard.”

The pretty girl lifted up her face, and the lonely one averted his
eyes, pulled a newspaper hastily from his overcoat pocket, and
proceeded to read it upside down!

As the train pulled out of the station a cheer went up and
handkerchiefs fluttered. The sole other occupant of the carriage, a
young--very young--subaltern who had just said good-bye to his mother,
muttered to himself and blinked hard out of the window. The Lonely
One shrugged himself more deeply into his seat, and abstractedly
reversed the newspaper. A paragraph caught his eye: “Artillery activity
developed yesterday in the sector south of Leuville St. Vaast. An enemy
attempt to raid our trenches at this point was foiled.” He smiled a
trifle, and putting down the paper fell to thinking. Unable to contain
himself any longer, the boy in the corner spoke.

“Rotten job, this going back show,” he said. The other assented
gravely, and they fell to talking, spasmodically, of the Front. Pure,
undiluted shop, but very comforting.

Finally the train arrived at the port of embarkation. A crowd of
officers of all ranks surged along the platform, glanced at the
telegram board, and passed on towards the boat. The Lonely One
stopped, however, for his name in white chalk stared at him. He got the
telegram eventually and opened it. It contained only two words and no
signature: “Good luck.” Flushing a trifle he walked down to the waiting
mail-boat, and getting his disembarkation card passed up the gangway.

An air of impenetrable gloom hung over the dirty decks. Here and there
a few men chatted together, but for the most part the passengers kept
to themselves. The lonely man found the young lieutenant waiting for
him, and together they mounted to the upper deck, and secured two
chairs aft, hanging their life-belts on to them.

A little later the boat cast off, and they watched the land fade from
sight as many others were watching with them. “Ave atque Vale.”

“I wonder ...” said the youngster, and then bit his lips.

“Come below and have some grub,” the other said cheerily. They ate,
paid for it through the nose, and felt better. Half an hour later they
were in Boulogne.

As they waited outside the M.L.O.’s office for their turn, the younger
asked:

“I say, what Army are you?”

“First.”

“So’m I,” joyfully, “p’raps we’ll go up together.”

“I hope so, but we shall have to stop here the night, I expect.”

Even as he said so a notice was hung outside the little wooden office:
“Officers of the First Army returning from leave will report to the
R.T.O., Gare Centrale, at 10.00 A.M. to-morrow, Saturday, 17th instant.”

“That settles it,” said the elder man, “come along, and we’ll go to the
Officers’ Club and bag a couple of beds.”

“Nineteen hours,” wailed the other, “in this beastly place! What on
earth shall we find to do?”

“Don’t worry about that--there is usually some one to whom one can
write.” It was both a hint and a question.

“Yes--ra--_ther_!”

They had tea, and afterwards the boy wrote a long letter, in which he
said a great deal more to the mother who received it than was actually
written on the paper. The Lonely One sat for some time in front of the
fire, and finally scribbled a card. It was addressed to some place in
the wilds of Scotland, and it bore the one word “Thanks.”

After dinner they sat and smoked awhile. The Lonely One knew much of
the life-history of the other by now. It had burst from the boy, and
the Lonely One had listened sympathetically and with little comment,
and had liked to hear it. It is good to hear a boy talk about his
mother.

“What shall we do now?”

“We might go to the cinema show; it used to be fairly good.”

“Right-oh! I say”--a little diffidently--“last time I was on
leave, the first time too, I came back with some fellows who were
pretty--well--pretty hot stuff. They wanted me to go to a--to a place
up in the town, and I didn’t go. I think they thought I was an awful
blighter, don’t-you-know, but----”

“What that kind of chap thinks doesn’t matter in the least, old man,”
interposed the other. “You were at Cambridge, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you may have heard the old tag? Besides, I don’t think--some
one--somebody ...” he hesitated and stopped. The youngster flushed.

“Yes, I know,” he said softly.

They boarded the train together, and shared the discomforts of the
long tedious journey. Every hour, or less, the train stopped, for many
minutes, and then with a creak and a groan wandered on again like an
ancient snail. Rain beat on the window-panes, and the compartment was
as drafty as a sieve.

It was not until the small hours that they reached their destination, a
cold, bleak, storm-swept platform.

“This is where we say good-bye,” the youngster began regretfully,
“thanks awf’ly for----”

“Rot,” broke in the other brusquely, taking the proffered hand in his
big brown one. “Best of luck, old man, and don’t forget to drop me a
card.”

“A nice boy, a _very_ nice boy,” he mused, as he climbed into the
military bus, and was rattled off, back to the mud and slush and
dreariness of it all.

“Have a good time?” asked the Transport Officer the next morning,
as the Lonely One struggled into his fighting kit, preparatory to
rejoining the battalion in the trenches.

“Yes, thanks. By the way, any mail for me?”

“One letter. Here you are.”

He took it, looked an instant at the handwriting, and thrust it inside
his tunic. The postmark was the same as that of the wire he had
received at the port of embarkation.




THREE RED ROSES


In the distance rose the spires of Ypres, and the water-tower, useless
now for the purpose for which it was built, but still erect on its
foundations. The silvery mist of early April hung very lightly over
the flat surrounding land, hiding one corner of Vlamertinghe from
sight, where the spire of the church still raised its head, as yet
unvanquished. A red sun was rising in the East, and beyond Ypres a
battle still raged, though nothing to the battle of a few short days
before. Hidden batteries spoke now and then, and the roads were a cloud
of dust, as men, transport, guns, and many ambulances passed along
them. Overhead aeroplanes droned, and now and again shells whistled
almost lazily overhead, to fall with a thunderous “crrumph” in Brielen
and Vlamertinghe.

By the canal there was a dressing-station. The little white flag with
its red cross hung listless in the still air. Motor ambulances drove up
at speed and departed with their burdens. Inside the dressing-station
men worked ceaselessly, as they had been working for days. Sometimes
shells fell near by. No one heeded them.

Beyond the dressing-station, down the road, the banks of which were
filled with little niches hollowed out with entrenching tools, hurried
a figure. He was but one of many, but there was that about him which
commanded the attention of all who saw him. His spurs and boots were
dirty, his uniform covered with stains and dust, his face unshaven. He
walked like a man in a dream, yet as of set purpose. Pale and haggard,
he strode along, mechanically acknowledging salutes.

Arrived at the dressing-station, without pausing he entered, and went
up to one of the doctors who was bandaging the remnants of an arm.

“Have they come yet?” he asked.

The other looked at him gravely with a certain respect and pity, and
with the eye also of a medical man.

“Not yet, Colonel,” he answered. “You had better sit down and rest, you
are all in.”

The Colonel passed a weary hand over his forehead.

“No,” he said. “No, Campbell; I shall go back and look for the party.
They may have lost their way, and--they were three of my best officers,
three of my boys.... I--I----”

“Here, sir! Take this.”

It was more of a command than a request. The Colonel drained what was
given him, and went out without a word.

Back he trudged, along the shell-pitted road, even now swept by
occasional salvos of shrapnel. He took no notice of anything, but
continued feverishly on his way, his eyes ever searching the distance.
At last he gave vent to an exclamation. Down the road was coming a
stretcher party. They had but one stretcher, and on it lay three
blanketed bundles.

The Colonel met them, and with bowed head accompanied them back to the
dressing-station.

“You found them--all?” It was his only question.

“Yes, sir, all that was left.”

The stretcher was taken to a little empty dug-out, and with his own
hands the C.O. laid the Union Jack over it.

“When will the--the graves be ready?” he asked the doctor.

“By five o’clock, sir.”

“I will be back at 4.30.”

“You must take some rest, Colonel, or you’ll break down.”

“Thank you, Campbell, I can look after myself!”

“Very good, sir.”

As he went away Captain Campbell looked after him rather anxiously.

“Never would have thought _he could_ be so upset,” he mused. “He’ll be
in hospital, if----”

Straight back to Brielen the Colonel walked, and there he met his
orderly with the horses. He mounted without a word, and rode on,
through Vlamertinghe, until he reached Popheringe. There he dismounted.

“I shall be some time,” he said to the orderly.

He went through the square, up the noisy street leading to the
Vehrenstraat, and along it, until he reached a little shop, in which
were still a few flowers. He entered, and a frightened-looking woman
came to serve him.

“I want three red roses,” he said.

It took the saleswoman several minutes to understand, but finally she
showed him what she had. The roses were not in their first bloom,
but they were large and red. The Colonel had them done up, and left
carrying them carefully. The rest of his time he spent in repairing as
well as might be the ravages of battle on his clothes and person. At
4.20 he was again at the dressing-station.

A quiet-voiced padre awaited him there, a tall, ascetic-looking man,
with the eyes of a seer.

They carried the bundles on the stretcher to the graves, three among
many, just behind the dressing-station.

“Almighty God, as it has pleased Thee to take the souls of these, our
dear brothers ...” the sonorous voice read on, while the C.O. stood,
bare-headed, at the head of the graves, holding in his hand the three
red roses. The short burial service came to an end.

The Colonel walked to the foot of each grave in turn, and gently threw
on each poor shattered remnant a red rose. Straightening himself, he
stood long at the salute, and then, with a stern, set face, he strode
away, to where the Padre awaited him, not caring that his eyes were
wet. The Padre said nothing, but took his hand and gripped it.

“Padre,” said the Colonel, “those three were more to me than any other
of my officers; I thought of them as my children.”




ADJUTANTS


If Fate cherishes an especial grievance against you, you will be made
an Adjutant.

One of those bright beautiful mornings, when all the world is young
and, generally speaking, festive, the sword of Damocles will descend
upon you, and you will be called to the Presence, and told you are to
be Adjutant. You will, perhaps, be rather inclined to think yourself a
deuce of a fellow on that account. You will acquire a pair of spurs,
and expect to be treated with respect. You will, in fact, feel that
you are a person of some importance, quite the latest model in good
little soldiers. You may--and this is the most cruel irony of all--be
complimented on your appointment by your brother officers.

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, saith the preacher!

As soon as you become the “voice of the C.O.,” you lose every friend
you ever possessed. You are just about as popular as the proverbial
skunk at a garden-party. It takes only two days to find this out.

The evening of the second day you decide to have a drink, Orderly Room
or no Orderly Room. You make this rash decision, and you tell the
Orderly-Room Sergeant--only heaven knows when _he_ sleeps--that you are
going out.

“I will be back in half an hour,” you say.

Then you go forth to seek for George--George, your pal, your intimate,
your bosom friend. You find George in your old Coy. head-quarters, and
a pang of self-pity sweeps over you as you cross the threshold and see
the other fellows there: George, Henry, John, and the rest.

“Come and have a----” you begin cheerily. Suddenly, in the frosty
silence you hear a cool, passionless voice remark,

“Good evening, SIR!”

It is George, the man you loved and trusted, whom you looked on as a
friend and brother.

“George, come and have a----” again the words stick in your throat.

George answers, in tones from which all amity, peace, and goodwill
towards men have vanished:

“Thanks very much, sir”--oh baleful little word--“but I’ve just started
a game of poker.”

Dimly light dawns in your reeling brain; you realise the full extent
of your disabilities, and you know that all is over. You are the
Adjutant--the voice of the C.O.!

Sadly, with the last glimmer of Adjutant pride and pomp cast from out
your soul, you return to Orderly Room, drinkless, friendless, and alone.

“The Staff Captain has been ringing you up, sir. He wants to know if
the summary of evidence ...” and so on. In frenzied desperation you
seize the telephone. Incidentally you call the Staff Captain away
from his dinner. What he says, no self-respecting man--not even an
Adjutant--could reveal without laying bare the most lacerated portions
of his innermost feelings.

You go to bed, a sadder and a wiser man, wondering if you could go
back to the Company, even as the most junior sub., were you to make an
impassioned appeal to the C.O.

About 1 A.M. some one comes in and awakens you.

“Message from Brigade, sir.”

With an uncontrite heart you read it: “Forward to this office
immediately a complete nominal roll of all men of your unit who have
served continuously for nine months without leave.” That takes two
hours, and necessitates the awakening of all unit commanders, as the
last Adjutant kept no record. In psychic waves you feel curses raining
on you through the stilly night. Having made an application--in
writing--to the C.O., to be returned to duty, you go to bed.

At 3.30 A.M. you are awakened again. “Movement order from Brigade, sir!”

This time you say nothing. All power of speech is lost. The entire
regiment curses you, while by the light of a guttering candle you write
a movement order, “operation order number”--what the deuce _is_ the
number anyhow. The Colonel is--shall we say--indisposed as to temper,
and the companies get half an hour to fall in, ready to march off. One
Company loses the way, and does not arrive at the starting-point.

“Did you specify the starting-point quite clearly, Mr. Jones?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where did you say it was?”

“One hundred yards south of the ‘N’ in CANDIN, sir.”

“There are _two_ ‘N’s’ in CANDIN, Mr. Jones; _two_ ‘N’s’! How can you
expect a company commander to know _which_ ‘N’? Gross carelessness.
Gross carelessness. Go and find the Company, please.”

“Yessir.”

You find the Company only just out of billets, after scouring the
miserable country around the wrong ‘N’ for fifteen minutes, and falling
off your horse into one of those infernal ditches.

The battalion moves off half an hour later, and the C.O. has lots
to say about it. He also remarks that his late Adjutant was “a good
horseman”--a bitter reflection!

There is absolutely no hope for an Adjutant. If he is a good man at
the “job” everybody hates him. If he is feeble the C.O. hates him.
The Brigade staff hate him on principle. If he kow-tows to them they
trample on him with both feet, if he does _not_ they set snares for
him, and keep him up all night. He is expected to know everything: K.
R. and O. backwards and forwards, divisional drill, and the training of
a section. Routine for the cure of housemaid’s knee in mules, and the
whole compendium of Military Law. He is never off duty, and even his
soul is not his own. He is, in fact, The Adjutant.

Sometimes people try to be nice to him. They mean well. They will
come into the Orderly Room and say: “Oh, Mr. Jones, can you tell me
where the 119th Reserve Battery of the 83rd Reserve Stokes Gun Coy. is
situated?” Of course, Adjutants know _everything_.

And when you admit ignorance they look at you with pained surprise, and
go to Brigade.

“I asked the Adjutant of the --th Battalion, but he did not seem to
know.”

Adjutants die young.




HOME


There is one subject no man mentions at the Front unless it be very
casually, _en passant_. Even then it brings with it a sudden silence.
There is so much, so very much in that little word “Home.”

If a man were to get up at a sing-song and sing “Home, Sweet Home,” his
life would be imperilled. His audience would rise and annihilate him,
because they could not give vent to their feelings in any other way.
There are some things that strike directly at the heart, and this is
one of them.

You see the new officer, the men of the new draft, abstracted, with a
rather wistful look on their faces, as they gaze into the brazier, or
sit silently in billets when their work is done. You have felt like
that, and you know what is the matter. The symptoms are not to be
encouraged in the individual nor the mass. They lead to strong drink
and dissipation, for no man can preserve his inward calm for long, if
he dwells much on his dearest recollections of Home. There is but one
remedy: work, and lots of it, action, movement, anything to distract.

Many a man has committed some small “crime” that brought him to Orderly
Room because he allowed his mind to wander ... Home--and realised too
fully the percentage of his chances of ever seeing that home again. The
Front is not a garden of Allah, or a bed of roses, or even a tenth-rate
music-hall as some people would have us believe. It has to be made
bearable by the spirit of those who endure it.

There is enough that is grim and awe-inspiring--aye! and heart-rending,
without seeking it. That is why we do not like certain kinds of music
at the Front, why the one-time student of “intense” music develops
an uncontrollable predilection for wild and woolly rag-time strains,
and never winces at their execution however faulty. That is why the
Estaminets sell so much bad beer, and so much _vin mousseux_ under the
generic title of Champagne.

Men want to forget about Home, for they dare not think of it too much.
I have never heard a man speak of Home without a little hush in his
voice, as though he spoke of something sacred that was, and might not
be again.

How often one heard the remark, a kind of apologia: “One must do
something.” Yet, in spite of all they do to forget Home, they are
least happy who have none to forget. Fortunately they are few. It is
a strange provision of Providence that lends zest to the attempt at
oblivion, and induces a frame of mind that yearns through that attempt
for the very things it would fain forget!

After all, it is very much like the school-boy who longs for privacy
where he can blubber unseen, and is at the same time very glad that he
has not got it, and _can’t_ blubber, because his school-fellows would
see him!

A superficial observer might think that the men at the Front are purely
callous, intent on seizing lustily on every possible chance of doubtful
and other pleasures that they can obtain. He may think that war has
brutalised them, numbed their consciences, steeled their hearts. Or he
may class them as of low intellect. In all of which he is wrong, and
has utterly failed to grasp the morale of the man who lives to fight
to-day, never knowing of a certainty if he will see another dawn.

The soldier knows that he may not dwell in his heart on all he holds
most dear. It “takes the stuffing out of him.” So, according to
his lights, he works very hard indeed to keep up his spirits; to
forget. Not _really_ to forget, only to pretend to himself that he is
forgetting.

What good is it for the man whose sweetheart ran away with the other
fellow to think about it? Therefore, Tommy rises above his thoughts, he
puts them away from him--as best he can. And if that best is not all
that people at home might wish it to be, surely some allowance may be
made for what may be called the exigencies of the military situation!

Perhaps it is the last thing some people would imagine, but
homesickness is a very real disease at the Front, and he may count
himself lucky who escapes it.

“Wot price the Hedgeware Road?” says Bill, ruminatively, as he drinks
his glass of mild--very mild--beer.

And his pal sums up _his_ feelings in the one word “Blimey!”

If you have seen men go into action, not once, but many times; if you
have heard them sing, “Oh _my_, I _don’t_ want to die; _I_ want to
go Home,” “My Little Grey Home in the West,” and many other similar
ditties, then you will understand.

The very trenches shout it at you, these universal thoughts of Home.
Look at some of the names: Oxford Street, Petticoat Lane, The Empire,
Toronto Avenue, Bayou Italien--even the German trenches have their
Wilhelmstrasse! Each nation in arms is alike in this respect. Every
front-line soldier longs for Home.

A singer whose voice was chiefly remarkable for its sympathetic
quality, gave a concert within sound of the guns. A battalion, just
out of the trenches, went to hear her. She sang several bright little
songs, every one encored uproariously, and finally she sang one of
those beautiful Kashmir love songs which go straight to the depths.
There was a moment’s tense silence when she had finished, and then
the “house” rocked with applause, followed by a greater trumpeting of
handkerchiefed noses than was ever before indulged in by any regiment
_en masse_. She had awakened memories of Home.

There are many who rest beneath foreign skies for whom all earthly
homes are done with. _They_ have been gathered to the greatest Home of
all.




ACTION


“Message from Head-quarters, sir.” The runner was breathing hard,
and his eyes were strained and tense-looking. He had not shaved for
days. Fritz’s “thousand guns on the Somme,” that the papers talk of so
glibly, were tuning up for business.

Major Ogilvie took the message, read it, and handed it on to me. “Zero
hour will be at 6.30 P.M. AAA. Our artillery will bombard from 5.30
to 6.20 P.M., slow continuous, and from 6.20 to 6.29 P.M. hurricane
fire AAA. You will give all possible assistance, by means of rifle
and machine-gun fire to ULTRAMARINE, and arrange to reinforce, if
necessary, in case of heavy counter-attack AAA. ULTRAMARINE will
indicate that objective has been gained by firing two red rockets
simultaneously AAA. Please render situation reports every half-hour to
B.H.Q., A.21.d.1.4½.AAA.”

We looked at each other and smiled a little grimly. To be on the flank
of an attack is rather worse than to attack, for it means sitting
tight while Fritz pounds the life out of you.

“You stop here,” said Ogilvie, “in this glory-hole of ours, while I go
up and see Niven. He will have to put his men in those forward saps. If
you get any messages, deal with them, and make sure that Townley keeps
those bombers of his on both sides of the road. They _must_ stop there,
as long as there are any of them left, or the Hun might try to turn our
flank. So long.”

He set out towards the north, leaving me in “AK” Coy.’s
“head-quarters.” The latter consisted of a little niche, three feet
wide, ran back a foot, and was four feet high, cut in the parapet of
the front line. The runner, Thomson, one of our own company, was curled
up in a little cubby-hole at my feet, and had fallen asleep.

It was lonely in that trench, although there were invisible men, not
thirty feet away, on both sides of me.

The time was 5.25 P.M.

Our guns were still silent. Fritz was warming up more and more. He was
shelling our right most persistently, putting “the odd shell” around
head-quarters.

Punctually to the minute our artillery started in. Salvos of heavies,
way back, shrapnel all along the front line and supports.

A wickedly pretty sight along a thousands yard front: Fritz began to
get irritated, finally to be alarmed. Up went his red lights, one after
the other, as he called on his guns, called, and kept on calling.
They answered the call. Above us the air hissed unceasingly as shells
passed and exploded in rear. He was putting a barrage on our supports
and communication trenches. Then he opened up all along our trench.
High explosive shrapnel, and those thunder-crackling “woolly bears.” I
wondered where Ogilvie was, if he was all right, and I huddled in close
to the damp crumbling earth.

It was 5.50 P.M.

“Per-loph-UFF.” An acrid smell of burnt powder, a peculiar, weird
feeling that my head was bursting, and a dreadful realisation that
I was pinned in up to my neck, and could not stir. A small shell,
bursting on graze, had lit in the parapet, just above my head,
exploded, and buried me up to the neck, and the runner also. He called
out, but the din was too great for me to hear what he said. I struggled
until my hands were free, and then with the energy of pure fear tore
at the shattered sand-bags that weighed me down. Finally I was free to
bend over to Thomson.

“Are you hurt?”

“No, sir, but I can’t move. I thought you was dead.”

I clawed him out with feverish haste. The air reeked with smoke, and
the shelling was hellish. Without any cessation shells burst in front
of, above, and behind the trench; one could feel their hot breath on
one’s cheek, and once I heard above the din a cry of agony that wrung
my torn and tattered nerves to a state of anguish.

“Get out of here,” I yelled, and we crawled along the crumbling trench
to the right.

“Hrrumph!” A five-nine landed just beyond us. I stopped a second.
“Stretcher-bearer!” came weakly from a dim niche at my side. Huddled
there was one of my boys. He was wounded in the foot, the leg, the
chest, and very badly in the arm. It took five minutes to put on a
tourniquet, and while it was being done a scout lying by my side was
killed. He cried out once, turned, shivered, and died. I remember
wondering how his soul could go up to Heaven through that awful
concentration of fire and stinging smoke.

It was 6.15 P.M.

There were many wounded, many dead, one of those wonderfully brave
men, a stretcher-bearer, told me, when he came crawling along, with
blood-stained hands, and his little red-cross case. None of the wounded
could be moved then, it was impossible. I got a message, and read it
by the light of the star shells: “Please report at once if enemy are
shelling your area heavily AAA.” The answer was terse: “Yes AAA.”

Suddenly there was a lull. One of those inexplicable, almost terrifying
lulls that are almost more awesome than the noise preceding them. I
heard a voice ten yards away, coming from a vague, shadowy figure lying
on the ground:

“Are you all right, ‘P.’?” It was Ogilvie.

“Yes. Are you?”

We crawled together, and held a hurried conversation at the top of our
voices, for the bombardment had now started in with violent intensity
from our side, as well as from Fritz’s.

“We’ll have to move to the sap, with Niven ... bring ... runners ...
you ... make ... dash for it.”

“How ... ’bout Townley?”

“’S’all right.”

Then we pulled ourselves together and went for it, stumbling along the
trench, over heaped-up mounds of earth, past still forms that would
never move again. On, on, running literally for our lives. At last we
reached the saps. Two platoons were out there, crowded in a little
trench a foot and a half wide, nowhere more than four feet deep. Some
shrapnel burst above it, but it was the old front line, thirty yards in
rear, on which the Germans were concentrating a fire in which no man
could live long.

The runners, Major Ogilvie, Niven, and myself, and that amazing
Sergeant-Major of ours, who would crack a joke with Charon, were all
together in a few yards of trench.

Our fire ceased suddenly. It was zero hour. In defiance of danger
Ogilvie stood up, perfectly erect, and watched what was going on. Our
guns opened again, they had lifted to the enemy supports and lines of
communication.

“They’re over!” we cried all together.

Machine-guns were rattling in a crescendo of sound that was like the
noise of a rapid stream above the roar of a water-wheel. The enemy
sent up rocket upon rocket--three’s, four’s, green and red. Niven, as
plucky a boy as ever lived, watched eagerly. Then a perfect hail of
shells began to fall. One could almost see our old trench change its
form as one glanced at it. It was almost as light as day. Major Ogilvie
was writing reports. One after another he sent out the runners to
head-quarters, those runners every one of whom deserves the Victoria
Cross. Some went never to return.

All at once two red rockets burst away forward, on the right, falling
slowly, slowly to earth.

ULTRAMARINE had attained the objective.

It was then 6.42 P.M.

Curious, most curious, to see the strain pass momentarily from men’s
faces. Two runners took the message down. It proved to be the earliest
news received at H.Q. that the objective was reached.

But the bombardment did not cease, did not slacken. It developed more
and more furiously. Niven, one of the very best--the boy was killed
a few weeks after--lay with his body tucked close to the side of the
trench. I lay with my head very close to his, so that we could talk.
Major Ogilvie’s legs were curled up with mine. Every now and then he
sent in a report.

My conversation with Niven was curious. “Have another cigarette?”
“Thanks, Bertie.” “Fritz is real mad to-night.” “He’s got a reason!”
“Thank the Lord it isn’t raining.” “Yes.” Pause. “Did you get any
letters from home?” “Two.... Good thing they can’t see us now!”
“_Jolly_ good thing!” “Whee-ou, that was close!” “So’s that,” as a
large lump of earth fell on his steel hat. Pause. “I must get a new
pair of breeches.” “When?” “Oh, to go on leave with.” “So must I.” We
relapsed into silence, and from sheer fatigue both of us fell asleep
for twenty minutes.

I was awakened by Ogilvie, who kicked me gently. “I have had no
report from Townley or Johnson for nearly two hours”--it was past
eleven. “I want you to go up to the right and see if you can establish
communication with them. Can you make it?” “I’ll try, sir.” Our guns
had quieted down, but Fritz was still pounding as viciously as ever,
and with more heavy stuff than hitherto. My experience in travelling
perhaps a quarter of a mile of trench that night was the most awful
that has befallen me in nearly two years of war at the Front.

The trench was almost empty, for the men had been put in advance of
it, for the most part. In places it was higher than the level of the
ground, where great shells had hurled parapet on parados, leaving a
gaping crater on one side or the other. Fear, a real personal, loathly
fear, ran at my side. Just as I reached the trench an eight-five
exploded on the spot I had crossed a second before. The force of the
explosion threw me on my face, and earth rained down on me. I knelt,
crouching, by the parapet, my breath coming in long gasps. “Lord, have
mercy on my soul.” I rushed a few yards madly, up, down, over; another
pause, while the shells pounded the earth, and great splinters droned.
I dared not move, and I dared not stay. Every shadow of the trenches
loomed over me like the menacing memory of some past unforgettable
misdeed. Looking down I saw a blood-stained bandage in a pool of blood
at my side, and I could smell that indescribable, fœtid smell of blood,
bandages, and death. As I went round a traverse, speeding like a hunted
hare, I stumbled over a man. He groaned deeply as I fell on him. It was
one of my best N.C.O.’s, mortally wounded. An eternity passed before
I could find his water-bottle. His face was a yellow mask, his teeth
chattered against the lip of the water-bottle, his lips were swollen
and dreadful. He lay gasping. “Can I do anything for you, old man?”
With a tremendous effort he raised his head a little, and opened wide
his glazing eyes. “Write ... sir ... to my ... mother.” Then, his head
on my arm, he died.

On, on, on, the sweat streaming from me, the fear of death at my
heart. I prayed as I had never prayed before.

At last I found Johnson. He gave me his report, and that of Townley,
whom he had seen a few moments before. I went back, another awful trip,
but met Major Ogilvie half-way.

After nine and three-quarter hours, during which they threw all the
ammunition they possessed at us, the German gunners “let up.” And
Ogilvie and I went to sleep, along the trench, too weary to care what
might happen next, to wake at dawn, stiff with cold, chilled to the
bone, to face another day of “glorious war!”

[Illustration: THE TEMPLE PRESS      LETCHWORTH ENGLAND]




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