Chapter XII: Bailleul

Our next stop was Bailleul, a town of some fifteen thousand inhabitants just over the Franco-Belgian frontier. Possibly it was never known before the war, but it is now, for sooner or later everyone goes to Bailleul: it was, until the taking over of the line below Arras, the Mecca of the British Army.

But it was fifteen weary miles from Brielen, fifteen miles that we stumbled over in a drizzling rain on slippery cobblestones before turning up through an archway off the main street to our billets. Good billets they were, too--a loft with ample straw for one platoon, a school-house for the other three, and houses on another street for the officers.

In spite of the early hour, about 3 o'clock, Madame was up and around and soon made us fresh coffee and the inevitable omelette; then we clattered up the steep little stairs to bed. F----, the sergeant who had been promoted, joined us here and proved a jolly good sort. We went out to hunt up new billets the next day. He, being a Quebecker, acted as interpreter, as our room was too small and stuffy for two, and, moreover, looked into the operating-room of a hospital opposite.

We were fortunate in finding another billet quite close--an important point, as we were to mess together--and then took a stroll around the town.

Bailleul is, like most French provincial towns, arranged like a star, the Grande Place and Hôtel de Ville forming the centre. We found our way to the cathedral, where a white-haired old _curé_ showed us around, pointing out the door leading to the great square tower and the axe marks left by the German soldiers who burst it open. They had used the tower as an observing post during the week their cavalry had held the town the preceding October. The old man had been held as hostage by them, together with the mayor and some other notables, but when asked if he had been badly treated he was very non-committal. "Qu'est-ce que vous voulez?" he answered. "C'est, la guerre!" That is the doctrine of humility taught France in 1870. "C'est la guerre!" It is used to explain anything from the shooting of civilians to the high cost of hand-made lace!

In a jeweller's on the Grande Place we obtained a little fuller information as to the Germans' actions. They had robbed Madame of all her rings, deliberately broken up all her watch glasses--there was not one to be obtained in the town--and smashed with their sword hilts the glass of her show-cases. And across the square they had confiscated all the champagne in a _café_, and when no more was forthcoming they piled the tables on the _pavé_ and burnt them; also she had heard----; but here F----'s patience had worn out, and as he said "Hearsay evidence is not admitted," so we said "Bonjour" and returned to billets.

Fortunately we did so, as we found we were slated to take a bathing parade at 1 o'clock and would barely have time to lunch. However, we caught the parade in time and marched the men to an old factory labelled "Divisional Baths." Here each man was supplied with a hot tub, soap and a clean towel, and was issued on stepping out from his tub with freshly-washed underwear, turning his soiled clothes in. This was a splendid system, and when later the clothes were not only washed but sterilised it ensured the men freedom for a short time at least from vermin.

It took some time running the whole company through in batches of forty, so we had a brief look around that part of the town. We also found that at the asylum officers could get a real bath--full length that one could stretch out in--at any time, but as it was late when our last man was ready to march off, we simply returned to billets.

We found the streets full of ambulances, most of them being gas cases from around Hill 60, and, in spite of the respirators, most of them pretty bad cases.

Being somewhat of a chemist, I managed to see some of these cases a few days later. The hospital was so crowded that many cases were lying on stretchers in the garden that lies at the back of all these hideous perpendicular French houses, shielded from the weather by an awning only. But the worst cases were upstairs in a long hall--some eighteen of them, none of which had any hope. Reeking with chlorine, their faces a livid purple or an even ghastlier green, they lay there on the stretchers, each with a little bowl beside him, coughing his life away. And gradually the body would become weaker, the poor tortured lungs fail to clear themselves of the secretion that poured from their outraged tissue, and the fluid would accumulate slowly--oh, so slowly!--and the agonised victim died, not with the merciful swiftness of a bullet, but by gradual drowning.

This was the death that the Germans--ashamed of their own brutality--afterwards described as painless and merciful!

They may find justification for their crimes in Belgium, they may even smooth over the sinking of the _Lusitania_, but it must always be remembered that they, and they alone, are responsible for introducing into warfare this most ghastly and hideous death. It is said that German scientists spent years in perfecting this horror, practising its powers on plant life in the desert parts of Australia.

And the neutral nations--what of them? Are they not after all "accessories after the fact" and equally guilty? For, having sworn in solemn convention at the Hague to abstain from the use of asphyxiating gases, they entered no definite protest, though public opinion ran high on the subject.

Silence gives consent, and the poisoning of your enemy by chemical gases has now become the proper and chivalrous thing to do, and warfare has an added horror.

But the Allied chemists were at work devising means of lessening and preventing this danger, and already success was crowning their efforts; a new pattern respirator was devised and being issued, and a solution for dipping it in was already available. Dr. G----, of Queen's University, then serving as a subaltern in No. 2 Company, had been experimenting in private and devised a solution which varied only in the proportion of one of its elements from that adopted by the British Army, so we were probably the first brigade in the B.E.F. to receive this protection. Bottles of this fluid were carried by that long-suffering man the platoon sergeant, and parades held showing the men how to adjust and use the respirators.

Later we received flannel hoods, with mica windows, that had been dipped in the same solution, and these gave place in turn to the present gas helmet--a fearsome-looking affair, which, however, gives almost complete protection.

Our stay in Bailleul was enlivened by the arrival of a draft and the posting up of a schedule of training. The draft, needless to say, was the more welcome of the two. With the draft--who were magnificently-built men from the Middle West--we received a major who took command of the company, Captain H---- dropping back as second in command. We thought this was rather hard lines, but H---- made no complaint, though he felt it rather keenly, but finding our new man had the South African ribbon, we were a bit mollified.

Here, too, we held a memorial service for our fallen comrades, a powerful address being delivered by Major the Rev. William Beatty, one of the brigade chaplains. The troops, both old and new, were addressed, too, by Major-General Alderson, the divisional commander, who spoke of what the old men had done that the new men might understand what was expected of them, and stated that from now on he would count on us all as old troops.

Then we marched away feeling we were now a definite part of the old regiment, and a few days later started our trek southward.

We had entered another epoch!