CALM BEFORE THE STORM
Peace reigned for the next five days, the last taste of careless days
that so many of those poor fellows were to have.
A route march generally occupied the mornings, and a musketry parade the
evenings. Meanwhile, the men were rapidly accustoming themselves to the
new conditions. The Officers occupied themselves with polishing up their
French, and getting a hold upon the reservists who had joined the
Battalion on mobilisation.
The French did everything in their power to make the Battalion at home.
Cider was given to the men in buckets. The Officers were treated like
the best friends of the families with whom they were billeted. The
fatted calf was not spared, and this in a land where there were not too
many fatted calves.
The Company "struck a particularly soft spot." The miller had gone to
the war leaving behind him his wife, his mother and two children.
Nothing they could do for the five officers of the Company was too much
trouble. Madame Mère resigned her bedroom to the Major and his second in
command, while Madame herself slew the fattest of her chickens and
rabbits for the meals of her hungry Officers.
The talk that was indulged in must have been interesting, even though
the French was halting and ungrammatical. Of all the companies' Messes,
this one took the most serious view of the future, and earned for itself
the nickname of "Les Misérables." The Senior Subaltern said openly that
this calm preceded a storm. The papers they got--_Le Petit Parisian_ and
such like--talked vaguely of a successful offensive on the extreme
right: Mülhouse, it was said, had been taken. But of the left, of
Belgium, there was silence. Such ideas as the Subaltern himself had on
the strategical situation were but crude. The line of battle, he
fancied, would stretch north and south, from Mülhouse to Liège. If it
were true that Liège had fallen, he thought the left would rest
successfully on Namur. The English Army, he imagined, was acting as
"general reserve," behind the French line, and would not be employed
until the time had arrived to hurl the last reserve into the mêlée, at
the most critical point.
And all the while, never a sound of firing, never a sight of the red and
blue of the French uniforms. The war might have been two hundred miles
away!
Meanwhile Tommy on his marches was discovering things. Wonder of
wonders, this curious people called "baccy" tabac! "And if yer wants a
bit of bread yer awsks for pain, strewth!" He loved to hear the French
gabble to him in their excited way; he never thought that reciprocally
his talk was just as funny. The French matches earned unprintable names.
But on the whole he admired sunny France with its squares of golden corn
and vegetables, and when he passed a painted Crucifix with its cluster
of flowering graves, he would say: "Golly, Bill, ain't it pretty? We
oughter 'ave them at 'ome, yer know." And of course he kept on saying
what he was going to do with "Kayser Bill."
One night after the evening meal, the men of the Company gave a little
concert outside the mill. The flower-scented twilight was fragrantly
beautiful, and the mill stream gurgled a lullaby accompaniment as it
swept past the trailing grass. Nor was there any lack of talent. One
reservist, a miner since he had left the army, roared out several songs
concerning the feminine element at the sea-side, or voicing an inquiry
as to a gentleman's companion on the previous night. Then, with an
entire lack of appropriateness, another got up and recited "The Wreck of
the _Titanic_" in a most touching and dramatic manner. Followed a song
with a much appreciated chorus--
"Though your heart may ache awhile,
Never mind!
Though your face may lose its smile,
Never mind!
For there's sunshine after rain,
And then gladness follows pain,
You'll be happy once again,
Never mind!"
The ditty deals with broken vows, and faithless hearts, and blighted
lives; just the sort of song that Tommy loves to warble after a good
meal in the evening. It conjured to the Subaltern's eyes the picture of
the dainty little star who had sung it on the boards of the Coliseum.
And to conclude, Madame's voice, French, and sonorously metallic, was
heard in the dining-room striking up the "Marseillaise." Tommy did not
know a word of it, but he yelled "March on" (a very good translation of
"Marchons") and sang "lar lar" to the rest of the tune.
Thus passed peacefully enough those five days--the calm before the
storm.