Part 5

Well, I’ve had a great trip this last time. I went to see refugee work—and saw it. There were barracks full of babies—the youngest only six days’ old. There were very many children who have been re-captured from the Huns.

To-morrow I start off for the borders of Switzerland to see the repatriated French civilians arrive. Then I go with the head of the Red Cross for a tour to see the reconstruction work in the devastated districts. When that is finished, I return to London to put my book together. I hope to get back to my battery about the end of March.

What a time I have had. A year ago it would have seemed impossible. I’ve motored, gone by speeders and trains to all kinds of quiet and ancient places which it would never have entered my head to visit in peace times. The American soldier is everywhere, striking a strange note of modernity and contrast. He sits on fences through the country-side, swinging his legs and smoking Bull Durham, when he isn’t charging a swinging sack with a bayonet. He is the particular pal of all the French children.

I’m now due for a day of interviews and shall have to ring off. I rose at seven this morning so as to write this letter. At the moment I’m sitting in a deep arm-chair, with an electric lamp at my elbow. It’s an awful war! In less than two months I’ll be sitting in clothes that I haven’t taken off for a fortnight—the mud will be my couch and the flash of the guns my reading lamp. It’s funny, but up there in the discomfort I shall be ten times more happy.

XXIX

Paris

February 13, 1918

I’ve not heard from you for two weeks—which is no fault of yours. There was a delay in getting passports—so I’m only just back from the devastated districts and get on board the train for London to-night. It’s exactly six weeks today since I left England on this adventure.

I’ve done a good many things since last I wrote you. Did I tell you that among others I visited Miss Holt’s work for the blind? I can think of nothing which does more to call out one’s sympathy than to sit among those sightless eyes. I have talked about courage, but these men leave me appalled and silent. They are covered with decorations—the Legion d’.onneur, etc. They all have their stories. One, after he had been wounded and while there was still a chance of saving his sight, insisted on being taken to his General that he might give information about a German mine. When his mission was completed his chance of ever seeing again was ended.

On the way back I saw Joffre walking. I now know why they call him Papa Joffre. He is huge, ungainly, and white and kind. Somehow he made me think of a puppy—he had such an air of surprise. There was a premature touch of spring in the tree-tops. The grand old man of France was aware of it—he looked as though it were his first spring, so young in an ancient sort of way. He was stopping all the time to watch the sparrows flying and the shrubs growing misty with greenness. For all his braid and decorations he looked like an amiable boy of splendid size.

And then I went to Amiens. When I was in the line, it was always my dream to get there. Our senior officers used to play hooky in Amiens and come back with wonderful tales of sheeted beds and perpetual baths. I got there toward evening and was met by a British Staff officer with a car. After dinner I escaped him and wandered through the crooked streets, encountering everywhere my dearly beloved British Tommy, straight out of the trenches for a few hours’ respite. As I passed estaminets I could hear concertinas being played and voices singing. It was London and heroism and home-sickness all muddled up together that these voices sang. And they sang just one song. It is the first song I heard in France, when the war was very much younger. When the war is ended, I expect it will be the last. If the war goes on for another thirty years, our Tommies will be singing it—wheezing it out on concertinas and mouth-organs, in rain and sunshine, on the line of march, on leave or in their cramped billets. Invincible optimists that they are—so ordinary, so extraordinary, so good-humoured and mild! I peered in through the estaminets’ windows of Amiens—there they sat with their equipment off, their elbows on the table and their small beer before them. And here’s what they sang, as so many who are dead have sung before them:

“Après la guerre fini Tous les soldats parti, Mademoiselle 'ave a souvenir— Apres la guerre fini.”

After all my wandering along French and American fronts, I was back among my own people.

My final night in Amiens was equally typical. I went to the officers’ club and found a sing-song in progress. There was a cavalry major there who had been in the show at Cambrai. He was evidently a hunting-man, for he kept on getting off his hunting calls whenever things threatened to become dull. Most of the music was rag-time, which offended him very much. “Let’s sing something English,” he kept on saying. So we gave him “John Peel,” “Hearts of Oak,” “Drink to me only with thine Eyes”—and he went to bed happy.

I had a good fast car, so using Amiens as our base we struck into the Aisne, Oise, and Somme, covering a good many kilometres a day. In these districts the Huns were masters a year ago—and now we are ploughing. The enemy withdrew from these districts last March. Nearly all the demolition is wilful, and very little of it is due to shell-fire. In town after town scarcely a house is left standing—everything is gutted. The American Red Cross is trying to do something to alleviate this distress. It was in a ruined château I found the Smith College Unit and, much to my surprise, Miss W. from Newark, who had just received a letter from M. She was wanting to go to Amiens, so we put her in the car and took her back with us.

I’m longing to get to England to read all your letters. I feel quite out of touch. To-morrow I shall be in London.

I was in Paris when the Huns were overhead, and saw one of them come down. The calmness of the people was amazing. There was no dashing for the Métro or other funk holes; only a contemptuous cheeriness. The French are great.

XXX

London

February 18, 1918

To-day I have made a start on my book Out to Win, and miss you very much. It’s quite a difficult thing, I find, to really concentrate on literary work in a strange environment. I wish I could take a magic powder and find myself back in my own little study, with my own little family, till the book is written.

Heaps of people I met in France were returning to America, and promised to telephone you to say they had seen me.

I stumbled across a most inspiring conversation which I overheard the other day, and which, if I had time, I would work into a story, entitled “His Bit.”

I was sitting in front of two women on a bus.

“Well,” said one, “when they told me that Phil was married, you could 'ave knocked me darn wiv a feather.”

It transpired that Phil was a C3 class man, no good for active service. He had met a girl, turned out into the streets by her parents because she was about to have a child by a soldier now dead, whom she had not married. Phil, without asking her any questions, did his “bit”—led her off and married her right away because he was sorry for her.

“And she ain’t a wicked girl,” said one of the good ladies on the bus. “She didn’t mean no harm. She was just soft-like to a Tommy on leave, I expect. It was 'ard lines on 'er. But that Phil—my goodness, he’ll make 'er a good 'usband. Is the child born? I should just fink so. 'E’s that proud, she might be 'is own dawter. 'E carries 'er raund all over the plaice, Lord bless yer. And 'is wife’s people, they can’t make too much of ’im. No, 'e’s not strong—a C 3 man. I thought I told yer. She 'as ter work to 'elp ’im along. But between ’em——There! I’m 'ats h’orf to Phil. They’re a bloomin’ pair of love-birds.”

I like to think of Phil, don’t you? I like to know that chaps like him are in the world. He couldn’t fight the Germans; but he could play the man by a dead soldier.

That’s a little bit of real life to help you along. Now I’m going to knock off and rest.

XXXI

London

February 24, 1918

I’m not spending much time on letter-writing just at present. From morning till night, just as I did when I was writing The Glory of the Trenches, I shove away at my new book. I am most anxious to get it creditably finished and soon. The weather is getting quite ripping for the Front and I’m keen to be back in time for the spring offensive.

You’ll be pleased to know that, under my encouragement, your youngest son has broken out into literature. He did it while I was away in France. And the result is extraordinarily fine. He’s managed to fling the spirit of his job on paper—it lives and gets you. When they are asked at the end of a patrol what they have been doing, they answer, “Pushing Water”—so that he’s made that answer his title.

When I took the manuscript to W., he said: “But haven’t you another brother? What’s he doing? Where’s his manuscript? And what about your mother and sister in America, and your sister in Holland? Don’t tell me that they’re not all writing?”

At that moment I felt a deep sympathy for Solomon, who I’m sure must have been a publisher. Only a publisher would say so tiredly: “Of making many books there is no end.”

On Tuesday another beastly birthday is due me—but I shan’t say anything about it. I shall commence my new lease of life with a meat-card in my hand and no prospect of being really fully fed till I get back to France. For the first time England is feeling a genuine shortage. She isn’t particularly annoyed at being rationed, but the worry you have over finding out how much you are allowed to eat and where and when, causes people a good deal of trouble. My own impression is that there is plenty of food in England at present, but that we want to conserve it in order to be able to lend America our tonnage.

XXXII

London March 31, 1919

Below my window, as I write, I can hear the stirring of the Strand. Newsboys are calling the latest papers, motor-horns hoot, and the million feet of London, each pair with their own separate story, clatter against the pavement. What a world! How do we ever get tired of living! Every day there are new faces, bringing new affections and adventure, new demands for tenderness and strength. These footsteps will go on. They will never grow quiet. A thousand years hence they will clatter along these pavements through the miracle of re-creation. Why do we talk of death and old age? It is not true that we terminate. Even in this world the river in whose movement we have our part still goes on—the river of opinions, of effort, of habitation. The sound of us dies faint up the road to the listener who stands stationary; but the fact that at last he ceases to hear us does not mean that we have ceased to exist—only that we have gone farther. How arbitrary we are in our petty prejudices against immortality! God hears more distinctly the travellers to whom men have ceased to listen. Nothing to me is more certain than that we go on and on, drawing nearer to the source of our creation through the ages. Just as I came home to you after so many risks, such suffering, elation, bloodshed, so through the unthinkable adventure of time we journey home to our Maker. Going out of sight is sad, as are all partings. But I can bear to part now in a way that I could not before I saw the heavens open in the horror of war. I have ceased to be afraid of the unguess-able, and better still, I have lost my desire to guess. Not to stand still—to press onwards like soldiers—that is all that is required of us. I have heard men talk about world-sorrows, but if you trace them back, our sorrows are all for ourselves—they are a personal equation. To develop one’s personality in the remembering of others seems to me to be the only road to happiness. All this talk—why? Because of the footsteps beneath my window!

The leave train has just arrived at Charing Cross from France. It steamed across the Thames with the men singing “The Land where the Bluebells grow.” There was laughter and longing in their singing.

XXXIII

Bath

March 24, 1918

Here I am with Mr. Lane, spending the weekend. It’s a wonderful spring Sunday—no hint of war or anything but flowers and sunshine. An hour ago I halted outside the newspaper office and read the latest telegrams of the great German offensive. It seemed like the autumn of 1914, reading of death and not being a part of it. They’ll not take very long in letting me get back to my battery now. One’s curiously egotistic—I feel, if only I were out there, that with my little bit of extra help everything would go well.

Yesterday we went to Batheaston Manor, a fine old Jacobean house, to tea—the kind of house that one has dreamt of possessing. There were high elms with rooks cawing and green lawns with immaculately gravelled paths. Inside there were broken landings and rooms with little stairs descending, and panelling, and pictures—everything for which one used to care. The late Belgian Minister to England, Count de la Laing, was there—a sad, courteous man. As we walked back with him to Bath along the canal, he remarked casually that all the art treasures in his château outside of Brussels had been shipped to Germany.

We spent the afternoon seeing the King’s pictures—mostly Gainsboroughs—which have been brought to Bath from Buckingham Palace. From here we went to tea with an old lady, Miss Tanner, who rode on her lonesome through Persia many years ago and consequently has gained a Lady Hester Stanhope reputation and, what is more important, a splendid selection of Eastern rugs and silverwork. After that we walked home by way of the great crescent which forms the scene in The School for Scandal.

An odd day to dodge in between experiences of European war! I have to pinch myself awake to remember what is happening at this moment in the Front-line trenches. Probably within a few weeks I shall be there—and feeling very much more contented with myself than I do now.

XXXIV

London March 31, 1918

Eric is with me. I am very glad to have him for my last days in England, and I do hope that Reggie may get here in time to see me. He’s ordered south in two weeks’ time, but I may be in France by then. I report at Canadian Headquarters to-morrow, and will probably be sent straight down to camp, and from there to France within two weeks.

Have you seen General Currie’s stirring message to the Canadians, saying that he expects them to die to a man if, by so doing, they can push the Huns back? This summer will see the biggest of all the battles. I’m wildly excited and longing to get back. There’ll be some of the old glamour about this new fighting—it’s all in the open. We’ve got away from trench warfare at last. The beasts are all over the country which we fought for and have recaptured since 1916. They’ve destroyed for a second time all the reconstruction work that I saw in the devastated areas. I’m wondering if all the girls got out in time. There were so many American girls there.

Don’t you dear people get down in the mouth when I’m again at the Front. It’s where I’ve wanted to be for a great many months—ever since I recovered. To be able to go back now, when there’s really something doing, is very fitting. I should have been wasting my time, perhaps, during the inactivity of the winter, if I’d been sitting in dug-outs when I might have been writing Out to Win. But no man, whatever his capacities, is wasting his time in fighting at this hour of crisis. I’ve been made ashamed by the excuses I’ve heard put up for various quitters who have taken bomb-proof jobs. I’m in terror lest I should be confused with such. Heaven knows, I’m no fonder of killing or of being killed than anyone else, but there are times when everything decent responds to the demand of duty. I shall absolutely be immensely happy to be a man again, taking my chances. I know that you will be glad for me. If you hadn’t known for certain that I was going back, you’d have been making excuses for me in your hearts during these last five months. So smile and be proud. And whatever happens, go on being proud and smiling. Your job is to set an example. That’s your contribution towards winning the war.

It’s past midnight, and I go to camp to-morrow. I’ll let you have a cable when I go to the Front—so you needn’t be nervous.

XXXV

In Camp. England April 4, 1918

I got down here last night and reported back this morning. I found the General of my Division had already applied for me, so I am going back to my old Brigade at the beginning of this week—on the Sunday, I think. To-day is Wednesday, so I haven’t lost much time in getting into action. Probably I shall go up to London to-morrow for a two days’ leave and meet Eric.

There’s just a chance that Reggie may be with us as well, for I’ve sent him a telegram to say that I’m going to France.

And now, as you may imagine, I am at last happy and self-respecting. I’m going to be a part of the game again and not a pretence-soldier. What’s more, I’m going to go straight into a real battle—the biggest of the war. It’s really splendid and I feel childishly elated.

Well, I’ve had a run for my money if any man ever had. The good times in England, France, and America will be worth remembering when I’m again in the fighting. I contrast in my mind my present mood with that of the first time when I went out—I was very much afraid then; now I’m extraordinarily happy. I’ve learnt to appreciate the privilege of being in the glory and the heroism. I’m more pleased than if I had won a decoration, that my Colonel should have asked for my return at the first possible moment. It proves to me something which one often doubts—that I really am some good out there.

Keep your tails up, my dear ones, and don’t get worried. This line is only to let you know the good news.

XXXVI

London April 6, 1918

I’m the happiest person in London to-day at the thought of my return. This is quite unreasonable, when I sit down to calculate the certain discomfort and danger. I can’t explain it, unless it is that only by being at the Front can I feel that I am living honourably. I’ve been self-contemptuous every minute that I’ve been out of the line. I began to doubt myself and to wonder whether all my protestations of wanting to get back, were not a camouflage for cowardice. I can prove to myself that they weren’t now. “The Canadians will advance or die to a man,” were the words that General Currie sent to his troops. Isn’t it magnificent to be included in such a chivalrous adventure? I don’t think you’ll read about the Canadians retiring.

Whatever happens I’ve had a grand romance out of life—there’s nothing of which to complain. I owe destiny no grudge. The world has been kind. I don’t think I shall get killed; I never have thought that. But if I am, it will be as fine an ending to a full day’s work as heart could desire.

I think I’m younger than I ever was. I no longer know satiety. The job in front of me fills all my soul and mind. I’m going to prove to myself and others that my books are not mere heroic sentiment. Going out a second time, despite the chances to hang back, will give a sincerity to what I’ve been trying to say to America. Heaps of people would think it brutal to want so much to go where men are being slaughtered—but it isn’t the slaughtering that attracts, it’s the winning of the ideal that calls me.

C. has command of my battery now. He’s a fine chap. You remember how he left London before his leave was up, “because he wanted to be among men.” That’s the sort he is, and I admire him.

XXXVII

London April 14, 1918

We’re sitting together in the little flat at Battersea, and Reggie is with us. It’s Sunday afternoon. To-morrow morning early I set out for France. The little party wanted me to sleep here to-night so that they could get up about 6 a.m. and see me off. I wouldn’t have that. So we’re going to say good-bye comfortably to-night and the boys will sleep with me at a hotel just outside the station.

You can’t guess how glad I am at the thought of going back. I was afraid I should never be a fighting man again. Now that I’m once more to be allowed to do my bit I feel extraordinarily grateful. I have the silly feeling that just one more man might make all the difference at such a crisis, and I’m jealous lest, when so many are being called upon for an exaggerated display of heroism, I should lose my chance. I know now why soldiers sing when they go out to war—they’re so proud that they have been chosen for the sacrifice.

The boys came down to camp with me and lived near to the camp. I took an anti-gas defence course before re-joining in France. Friday night we came up to town and we’ve had a very jolly time.

Well, dears, we’ve lived a happy crowded life since I was wounded, and we’ve each one of us learnt more about the glory of this undertaking.

XXXVIII

France April 21, 1918

I’ve been back at the Front six days. This is the first opportunity I have had to write. I left England last Monday, having spent Saturday and Sunday in London with the boys. Major H. came up to give me a send-off and we had a very gay time. Saturday evening, after dinner and a theatre, we returned to Battersea and all found beds in one or other of the flats. On Sunday evening we slept at a hotel next to the station so that I might be sure of catching the early morning train. We managed to get a room with three beds in it, and so kept all together as in the old days. By 5 a.m. we were up and stirring. P. and L. walked in on us as we were having breakfast, and S. met us on the platform. They all seemed quite assured that they would never, never see me again—which makes me smile. I suppose they all had visions of grey waves of Germans deluging our infantry by force of numbers, while the gunners were left far in front, trying to stem the tide. That is what we all hope for. It’s the kind of chance we dream about; but it hasn’t happened yet.

Monday afternoon I was in France and slept at the Base that night. Early Tuesday morning I was on the move again, passing Red Cross trains packed with wounded and trucks crammed with ordnance. I couldn’t help comparing this return to the Front with my first trip up. We had a good time playing cards and recalling the old fights—we were like schoolboys coming back for the holidays. There wasn’t one of us who wasn’t wildly excited at the thought of being a part of the game again. This was rather strange, if you come to consider it, for each of us had been wounded at least once and knew the worst of what war could do to us—yet fear was the emotion most remote from us. We were simply and sheerly glad to be going into the thick of it; our great fear had been that our fighting days were ended.

By 2 p.m. we were dumped out at a town through which I used to ride last summer. Here we had to report to the Provost Marshal for further transport orders. He told me that I should have to go to the Corps Reinforcement Camp. I didn’t intend to do that, so waited till he was engaged on the phone and then made my escape. Taking the baggage I could carry, I beat my way back to my old battery on foot and in lorries. I was just coming into the wagonlines when I met Major C., who now commands us. I think he had been lonely for some of the old faces; he went wild with delight. I had a magnificent welcome back. On the spur of the moment he made me a present of his own charger and took me up to the guns with him, where we arrived in time for a very late tea, within thirty-six hours of my leaving England.