Fields and battlefields

CHAPTER I "My eyes I lend to you, but not my heart."

Old Play.

THE town of Bailleul stands upon a hill and may be seen over your shoulder for a two days' march, but the town of Steenwerk lies below on the plain of Flanders and peers above the orchards and willow trees surrounding it. Bailleul is a center of gaiety. Bands play of a Sunday afternoon in the market place, Charlie Chaplin is seen every night by crowded audiences in the Y.M.C.A. Cinema, and the correct incidental music is provided. There are, or were, concerts every evening at the Caisse d*Epargne. All the important journals — La Vie Parisienne, The Cambridge Magazine, The Listening Post, John Bull, The Feathered World — can be borrowed or bought; and English beer can be found in limited quantities. Also an English soldier once chose a wife among the daughters of Bailleul and married her: yet it is not of Bailleul but of Steenwerk that I wish to write.

^Written before the German offensive of 1918. It is feared that these towns are now in ruins.

There was a time when Steenwerk set herself to rival in gaiety her sister on the hill. It was during the tenancy of the market place by some Motor Transport men of great originality and enterprise. There was no regular brigade band on Sundays, but these talented ones could render the opening bars of The Rosary on the horns of their motor-lorries. They set up a cinema of their own and worked it themselves, they assembled an orchestra of one man and two or three instruments, but the instruments did not long survive. Concerts were given at which R.A.M.C. men sang, and if marriages were not made in Steenwerk that was nobody's fault.

For in our own phrase there were "beaucoup Mamselles" in Steenwerk. I recall as sweet a vision as any of its kind. Once on entering the town I passed a young person wearing a red dress and apron. She carried water pails slung over her firm shoulders and walked in spite of them with the grace of perfect simplicity, or of perfect art. She did not raise her eyes. Her face was pale — a maid pale in the spring. Doubtless she thought of no khaki soldier but of one in cornflower blue, with perhaps a coffee-mill of hers in his pack, a red sash round his waist, and eyes more eloquent than ours.

Yet Steenwerk, little city of the plain, thou art ever remembered not for youth, or pleasure, but because from thy precincts we first looked back to England from a land at war.

In Steenwerk we first became European. But it was from the old we chiefly learned our lessons.

A good soldier is always learning lessons, if not from his military duties, then from his civil duties. Having cut himself off from the ties and obligations of common life, he is the more bound in honor to observe them in others. It is also his inclination to do so. In the army, although "no expressions of sentiment are allowed," this is but a confession of weakness. La vie militaire is above all la vie sentimentale. For sentiment we enlisted, we live, we die, and until the sentiment called Liberty is become a fact of this world, armies — those quixotic bands — will continue to exist. And while we endure the isolation of army life sentiment alone saves us. Thus Sergeant Booky proposed to French ladies once a month. When questioned on the subject he replied, "Practice makes perfect." He had a song of his own for sympathetic occasions —

"Almong soldar no bong, Anglay soldar tout sweet."

This, when sung to an effective tender tune, had made great impressions. French women understand these matters very well, but sometimes their cursed native realism makes itself felt.

Thus Sergeant Booky to my knowledge received something like a coup de grace on one occasion. We were together in an estaminet when he opened the kind of conversation that led up to a proposal. The lady was something beyond youth in years, in person both motherly and attractive, with rosy cheeks and brown eyes. She stood at her stove adding more coffee into the coffee-pot which sat on the fire day and night all the year round. She waited, listening to Booky, and stirred the pot as she listened. A man wearing corduroys sat near by smoking a clay pipe and spitting solemnly at intervals into the hearth. The conversation reached the stage at which the proposer said, ''Voulez vous aimer, desirer, alter promenarder avec moif" Others joined in. The lady of the estaminet replied to some one else as well as to Booky, ''Mais Old, deux ueufs, anglay beaucoup promeiiard" Then Booky said, "Aves vous un mari a la guerre ou voules vous moif" At which the lady looked at him with arched brows for a moment in silence, then as to herself she remarked, "Mais c'est un enfant,'^ and continued to look at Booky in a disconcerting fashion as though she was comparing his height and probable weight to that of her own little boy of the same age. Some time after this I received a commission from Booky, when I was about some shopping on a large scale, to buy him a tube of pomard hongroise for his moustache.

But Mack, who like myself preferred serious to tender conversation, discovered the watchmaker of Steenwerk and advised me to make his acquaintance. I did so on a later occasion.

The watchmaker of Steenwerk lived in the smallest shop in Europe, so small indeed that the shop window contained only his head and beard. From outside we peered through at him as though we were visitors at the Zoo, at the cage of a small bear. The shop within was so low that a man of ordinary height had to bend his head. Not more than two customers could occupy the shop at one time. Monsieur the watchmaker sat in his window, but he could serve at his counter by turning in his chair. When you entered he would unscrew the magnifying glass from his eye, take one or two keys and cog-wheels out of his beard and replace them carefully on his table, turn half round, and then call for Marie his wife. "Please, Monsieur," said he to the customer, "be careful of my counter; it was broken and I had it mended, and then but the other day un ecossais leaned upon it, a weighty man, and you see it is again broken. Marie, here is one who wants deux aiguilles — it is not possible."

Monsieur had very small soft hands. He was a great craftsman and known all over France for his knowledge of clocks and watches, not only of modern but also of the ancient makes. He told me this himself on one occasion and added, "I am a man of education." Monsieur believed that the war would by then have been over if Jaures had not been abime by the traitors. But whatever the plight of France, over which he was complaisantly tragic, it was well for Monsieur and his business that Madame Marie, his wife, had not met with the fate of Jaures. He called for her every two minutes, whether for his spectacles mislaid beyond his immediate range of vision, whether for some tiny tool of his craft, or for the smoking lamp, or more often to soften some soldier customer whose watch had been overlooked for too many weeks. At the sound of her name she appeared noiselessly as a ghost, through a half -closed door, and was at his side at once scolding and explaining softly. She had a white pasty face but with sprightly eyes, and she always wore a pink square garment. She had an air of having grown old indoors and of knowing her shop as an oyster its shell. She had also a kind of motherof-pearl beauty composed of soft shades of patience, gentleness, and hope. She never despaired in her mediations. She would enter to find a customer come after his watch — some stolid youth in khaki, standing gloomily before her husband who rallied him for being impatient, mondain, for not considering the political and economic conditions of France, for not respecting the good faith of the educated craftsman. Then Madame Marie, having already overheard the customer's request from behind the door, lost no time in words but took out her order-book and bent her head down to the page. The customer in reply to his own shortcomings would say, "But we're likely marching to-morrow. Mister. YouVe had it a fortnight and you said it would take you doo joo, two days — never mind a pal of mine's wat you've lost altogether." Fortunately, neither side fully understood the other, and as Monsieur would often end his discourse with a sweet and childish smile across his beard, it was difficult to be angry with him. Madame Marie would then lay the order-book before him on top of all the tools and cog-wheels, and together they would move their fingers up and down the columns. Two pairs of spectacles and two pairs of sorely-tried old eyes were exercised to decipher their own writing. At last, after infinite discussion, a number would be agreed upon, while the customer sank into a deeper gloom. Then three or four little packages tied up with string would be routed out as likely to be the missing watch, two of which — Mon Dieu — had the same number upon them. But then after all the thing was explained. On one package some one had written Corporal Tom- Tom, and was not the customer's name Corporal Thompson? and the watch after all has been waiting for him for more than a week.

When you emerge from the smallest shop in Europe it is likely that you may have an idee fixe about a drink. You can get a glass of citron opposite, and a slice of pain d' epice, but you will have to eat and drink standing up with your head In a cloud of fancy aprons hanging from the ceiling. But If you are an "old soldier" you will turn to your right up the main street and go Into Le Cerf estamlnet for the purpose of drinking French beer.

Now it is fairly well known that old soldiers never die.

"Old soldiers nevER die, "They fade away."

But it may be worth while to hear about one who did die, and to hear it in the proper setting, for the story was going about at that time fresh from the mint. Le Cerf is a long low room fitted with little tables and decorated with hand-painted hunting scenes in panels along the walls. The hunting scenes were in greens and browns. The animals represented were full of vigor and set off by little churches and houses in the background. It is a hot sultry evening. The place is crowded and is filled with smoke. Beer^lies in little pools on the floor, or on the tables. Conversation of all kinds in many different dialects is heard on all sides. But here is a group dominated by a single speaker. He is obviously an old soldier by his hardbitten face and round black eyes like two plums in a plum pudding, and although he tolerates his younger listeners he addresses his conversation to another of the same breed, but of the silent variety, who reclines upon the chair immediately in front of him. At supreme moments in his conversation the speaker will throw his remarks into the form of a question. But this is only for effect. No reply is desired or expected, and the reclining one opposite opens his mouth only for the purpose of admitting beer, occasionally nodding his head sagaciously.

These Falstaffs understand each other perfectly. The younger listeners, members of a new degenerate army, may learn lessons if they wish. The theme of the conversation was the base quality of malt liquors as supplied by the French. "You can get stout 'ere," said the speaker, glaring at one of the painted panels on the wall, "but it's now good, ifs nozv good. 'Ere 'ave I been 'avin' a one, a t' other, or a 'alf-and-'alf off the bloomin' reel waitin' for them blinkin' 'ounds to catch that alleluia stag these two hours, but I dunno, that bloke in a mess jacket wiv a chase-me fewer on his 'ead won't let 'em slip, 'e won't. No, chum — ^this ain't a Christian country for no Christian war wiv no drink you'd give the 'oly name of beer ter. And some of our orfficers they'r that innocent they couldn't lead a little child down a garden path. They couldn't — not a little child — they wants to get a rope bloody ladder and climb straight up to 'eaven — some of 'em. They do straight. On my life. Why, there's some of 'em will talk to yer like a farver fust and then 'ave it you're drunk arter. I've said to some of 'em, I've

said Why, there's some of 'em never seen our

lads boozed in this flamin' country at all ; they can't do it. / know for a bloody fact they can't." Here the speaker leaned forward breathing beer upon us and sending his round black eyes right and left as if in alarm of spies.

"Now you mayn't belee what I'm goin' to say, but if you'll belee me it's the gorspel truth. Did you know Charley Crabtree in the Corps in the old days ? Makeweight Charley they called 'im 'cause he knew wot

F I E L PS AND BATTLEFIELDS

corpses made up to after P.M.s. You knew 'im — ^he was post mortem orderly — no one could beat him at that job out in Africa wot with the flies and the heat and the corpses and one thing and another, but blimey he could drink like a fish. / never seen any one like him. Well, out 'ere he was Corporal Crabtree! At the beginning of this 'ere war he put up two stripes on his own, and his South Africa ribbon, and 'listed. Of course he were no chicken, and they were glad to 'ave him in Aldershot in September. But out 'ere! Lord lummy he didn't half carry on ! He couldn't do with this beer. Of course he wouldn't of come over if he'd a known, he'd 'ave arranged otherwise, 'cause he was fifty-two / knew for a bloody fact. But if you'll belee me it took 'im so bad — his not getting drunk and one thing and another, all along of this 'ere beer, and mind he'd left no stone unturned, that he vowed he'd get boozed if he took all day over it. Stripes! He didn't mind about his stripes. 'The Lord gave and the Lord may take 'em away,' he used to say. Well, one day he cut all parades. He knew what he were in for. Stayed away all bloomin' day. Of course he knew of a little house on the quiet where he'd fixed it up. His unit were in rest at the time. He stayed away all day and did the thing pukker. And he must have put some away, too, for I knew Makeweight Charley wot he could put away. But could he get boozed on this baptizing liquor? . . . Could he?" . . . Here the speaker sat back in his chair and, turning

XO his head slowly, gave us a kind of foreshortened glare, expressive of the fiercest scorn.

"Could he?" he shouted.

Then bending forward again suddenly he continued.

"And what riled him most — this was from wot I heard after. There were two cooks knew where he were, silly bloody fellers who'd get boozed on their own tea, and they got blindo and wanted to take him back to billets with 'em singin* and carryin* on.

"But he wouldn't go with 'em, he wouldn't. Walked back by hisself and give hisself up to the guard sober as a gent. Yus.

"And if you'll belee me he died in the night of a broken 'eart.

"They called it V.D.H., but I knew better. But "

And here the speaker leaned forward again, and held us with his eyes.

''Only think what he'd been through/'

But to reflect properly on the enormity of this and other tragedies, let us leave that wan beery atmosphere and its clink of glasses and continue our way up the main street. Perhaps the salient guns can be heard and you may overhear one officer's servant confide an important rumor to another. Through the press of men, N.C.O.s, interpreters and others, a staff motor-car hoots its way impatiently. It is a relief to find some place of quiet. There are several little shops facing the street with shop windows, but apparently

IX no doors. The way to enter one is to choose a halldoor near by, open it, descend some steps and open one of several doors until you find the proper parlor. Here you may buy picture post-cards, Menier chocolate, Sunlight soap, embroidered aprons, Euthymol, chocolate pralines, beetroot sugar, and shaving soap. In these little parlors some conversation with your hostess will often bring a hundred friendly qualities to light. In a back parlor you may be treated to coffee in a china bowl ^nd stir it in a blessed silence while you look out on a strip of back garden where vegetables grow in neat rows. In this haven, forgetful of time, you may watch Madame polishing the rails of her stove, or having undressed her child hold him upon her lap and repeat, sentence by sentence, a little Latin prayer. A chain clock on the wall ticks out the hours convenient to eating, sleeping and praying. The great stream of Life underflowing the gnat-like gyrations of men is revealed for a moment ; and for a moment you, too, may dip in it and ease all thought, all baneful flutterings.

At the end of the main street is the market place through which all are now strolling back to billets. The tall Gothic church occupies most of the square and around it the big transport lorries are lined, wheel to wheel. Along one side of the square there runs a little river, beyond which are small gardens and the houses of prosperous citizens. Each house has a private bridge across the river. At seven o'clock every evening the priest crosses one of these bridges on his way to church, and presently some women in black and little girls follow him in. There are many of us who will not forget the first time we, too, pushed open the red baize door and entered a French church. Outside, at that hour, hurrying men's feet, noise, laughter and the sound of a mouth organ. An early star shines down upon the scene, one of many such little vortices of men and their intentions to be found at that moment all over Europe. But within, candlelight and the soft noise of Aves. The women kneel before their shrines, the children go hand in hand from one saint to another down the aisles. The priest beckons to the confessional, a figure rises and follows. Here also is a pageant, also one of many to be found at that moment all over Europe. Consider it well. It is not unrelated to that other noisy pageant outside. Indeed, without this within, perhaps that without would be impossible. Without, we soldiers, politicians, drinkers, journalists, blowers of mouth-organs, all of us eternally engaged in fighting, in interpreting, in inflicting wounds, in binding them up, in sacrificing ourselves, in all forms of quixotism, which we are pleased to call reality. Within, Humanity eternally compensating itself for its own follies, already united in a community of sorrow.

The red baize door swings to behind us again. The pleasant reassuring noise and spectacle again present themselves. And we — ^are we not the van of the common men of Great Britain enlisting in their hundred thousands? Are we not the first of Kitchener's Army? Shall we, too, swirl and vanish and leave no trace? Shall our deeds, too, need to be compensated for? Perish the thought. It is ever important to remember one's own importance. What great things are alreadywhispered by officers' servants and other persons who really know. And Italy has just joined the Allies. The war will be over in three months or four. "Which way to the Divisional Rest Station, chum? Turn to your right at the end of the square and you'll find the flag on your left. Good-night."

U

CHAPTER II "What is pourquoi?

I would I had bestowed that time in the tongues That I have in fencing, dancing and bear-baiting."

Twelfth Night.

IN the days of yore, in peace time, the convent was occupied by nuns who led a holy life and, with other ministrations, kept a school for girls. But even before our day they had all departed. The school was closed to pupils, and nothing remained except the images of saints on brackets, texts and pictures of the Sacred Heart which hung on the walls. The convent buildings were not in themselves old, yet they retained an ancient atmosphere among their fruit trees. They were divided from each other by little paddocks and vegetable gardens. We had arrived one evening in May after a march of twenty miles or more, and when we fell out I and others sat down in one of these little paddocks and leaned our backs against an apple tree. A faint old-world odor greeted us, pigeons flapped their wings upon the tiled roofs, a cat jumped over the wall. Hither we had come from England — by sea, by train, and on our own feet : and rested here and not elsewhere.

But the place had soon become the scene of incredible labors, for the divisional sick to the number of fifty had here to be accommodated, and "old world odors" were not appreciated by medical science. Wards, receiving-room, isolation wards, pack store, dispensary, bath-house, quarter-master's stores, cook-houses and billets for the ambulance, had all to be organized out of a number of detached buildings of one and two stories in height, all of which communicated with each other through courts and round paved corners in a bewildering way. The orderly sergeant had to rise fully five minutes before his wont in order to thread this labyrinth before reveille.

Of all the roles picturesquely filled, in that our first Divisional Rest Station, I recall that of Peter G., the bath orderly, as the most romantic. He and his tubs found themselves in a pleasant vinehouse, a brick floor beneath them, and the vines above them hanging from the glass roof. He heated his water at a copper and himself set upon a tub under a large statue of the Madonna, who presided over the company from a high pedestal, her head wreathed in vine leaves. Peter G. was an Irishman and a Catholic, and knew how to respect the Madonna. He marshalled his patients at the proper times and moved between their naked bodies through the steamy twilight of his realm with a grave and deliberate air, and with a sense of mys-

i6 tery. Peter had known many jobs in his time and had visited many places on his two feet before the war, but this job appealed to all the complexities of his nature. Here he was at once priest, medicine man, stoker of fires, stern usher, collector of tales, sanitary expert, and penseur; and was, moreover, left very much under his own orders as far as his particular duties were concerned.

Patients for admission to hospital came first into the receiving- and casualty-room, which had formerly been a school room of the convent. It was large and airy, and had a floor of black and white tiles. The patients sat in a row under a large text, "Laissez venir a moi Us petits enfanfs" Here one morning I found myself on duty. I collected the sick reports from the patients and arranged them in order for the M.O., who stood in a dcgage way at his desk at a suitable distance. The sterilizer shone in the sun, and a scrubbed table supported such implements as a thermometer in a vase of carbolic, a tongue depressor, a case of dental instruments. The Primus stove roared softly in a corner and Harry E., with another orderly, wxre already at work dressing boils and applying foments. I collected a new sick report and waited for the M.O. to initial the last. The patients were not, as a rule, suffering from severe complaints, but to the uninitiated in those early days many of them appeared quite serious enough. I frequently envied the calm of the M.O. who, though no older than myself, had many years' experience of out-patients behind him. This calm I noticed grew more pronounced when the patient gave us a series of those dark and baffling symptoms so distressing to the ear of sympathy.

"Next patient," and a robust-looking youth came forward.

"What's your trouble?" said the M.O., without looking at him.

No answer. The patient opened his mouth. He had probably not heard the question, owing to the noise of the Primus stove.

"What's your trouhlef The M.O. turned round and allowed his professional eyes to dwell upon the case.

"Please, sir, I have shooting pains from my right kidney to my left tentacle — and all over "

For myself I believed the man already as good as dead, but the M.O. did not seem to be startled.

"How long have you been like this ?"

"Please, sir, I felt it come on last Wednesday, but then it was in my knees." The M.O. put one hand behind the patient and with the other gave him a friendly dig in the stomach.

"Do you feel that?"

"No, sir."

"Have you a sore throat? Show me your tongue.**

The patient tried to speak and put out his tongue at the same time. A strange gulp was the result.

But the M.O. appeared suddenly to rouse himself

i8 from the meditation and banged his fist on the desk.

"A good purge, orderly. Ol ricini an ounce and a half and let him rest a bit in the mortuary. Next patient."

The mortuary, so-called, was a nice room next door, not often used for corpses at that time. Sometimes the nature of the purge was left to the N.C.O. or to the orderly, who had to choose between three then commonly in use. Sparky, who was a corporal in those days, had a method of his own for deciding the suitability of a purge for a given patient.

"Let's see, you want a purge? What's your religion?"

"C. of E., Corporal."

Then Sparky would repeat to himself an empirical formula —

"Presbyterian — Number nine.

R.C. — Calomels three.

Church of England — Castor oil."

This was a case of showing initiative on Sparky's part. If religions have a column to themselves in A and D books, on sick reports and ward-sheets, why not, he argued, connect them up with reality in some suitable manner. But this Church and State method which we adopted from Sparky once brought me into a very singular situation.

One morning a motor transport sergeant appeared in the receiving-room with a sick report all to himself.

He explained his symptoms loftily, but he did not greatly impress the M.O. on duty. He was awarded a homely remedy. Now, as his religion was correctly noted down R.C., it followed that three little tablets of calomel would meet his case. These he took, believing them to be something soothing, and other than what Nature designed, and departed again to his motor-lorries in the market place. The day passed for me in an ordinary way. The Primus stove required attention; some equipment that rightfully belonged to ordnance pannier A was found lurking in ordnance pannier C, and had to be restored ; I read a little in the book I had begun in England ; the M.O. gave me some thoughts on varicose veins; an excitement occurred over a cup of tea made with tea tablets, which were a novelty in those days. Yes, the day was an ordinary one. Sparky came on duty after tea and I went out for a walk. My steps led me past the church, and following my destiny, I entered. The usual quiet scene presented itself. Three widows knelt in a row telling their beads. But my attention was attracted to the fine western gallery supporting the organ, from whence came sounds of some one very busily hammering and also of an occasional organ note. I found the turret leading to the gallery and ascended it. The hammering came from the center of the organ. A man in khaki stood in front of it staring into the pipes. I started likewise. What holy work was here toward?

"He's a-mending of it," said the man.

"I hope he knows about organs," I said. But my words produced a terrible effect. The hammering ceased a moment and a face peered through the pipes full of rage. I did not recognize the face at first, but caught a kind of association in the words that followed.

Thus spake the organ: "Blimey if that ain't the bloke that gim me them three little blinkin' tablets this morning." Bang — bang — crash. "Upset me more than if I'd swallowed all Sankey and Moody. I didn't want a purge — told yer I didn't want a purge. Wot d'yer think I've got an inside like this 'ere organ not played on for ten years then?" Here an eight-foot pipe roared deafeningly: "Wot d'yer call yerselves?" Bang. "Call yerselves Medicals?" Bang. Crash. "You and yer orfficer. D'yer know what I'd call yer ? I'd call yer C. C. sharp, a mob of blinkin' stomach plumbers. Wait till I get this vox humana mended and I'll let yer know — what — I'd call — ^yer "