Part 6

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.