Chapter III: Part 3

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!