covered by the English military organisation in France, for a woman
possessing a special War Office pass, in addition to her ordinary
passport, and understood to be on business which has the good-will of the
Government, though in no sense commissioned by it, are made easy by the
courtesy and kindness of everybody concerned. From the moment of landing
on the French side, my daughter and I passed into the charge of the
military authorities. An officer accompanied us; a War Office motor took
us from place to place; and everything that could be shown us in the short
ten days of our tour was freely open to us. The trouble, indeed, that was
taken to enable me to give some of the vividness of personal seeing to
these letters is but one of many proofs, I venture to think, of that warm
natural wish in British minds that America should understand why we are
fighting this war, and how we are fighting it. As to myself, I have
written in complete freedom, affected only by the absolutely necessary
restrictions of the military censorship; and I only hope I may be able to
show something, however inadequately, of the work of men who have done a
magnificent piece of organisation, far too little realised even in their
own country.
For in truth we in England know very little about our bases abroad; about
what it means to supply the ever-growing needs of the English Armies in
France. The military world takes what has been done for granted; the
general English public supposes that the Tommies, when their days in the
home camps are done, get "somehow" conveyed to the front, being "somehow"
equipped, fed, clothed, nursed, and mended, and sent on their way across
France in interminable lines of trains. As to the details of the process,
it rarely troubles its head. The fact is, however, that the work of the
great supply bases abroad, of the various Corps and Services connected
with them--Army Ordnance, Army Service, Army Medical, railway and motor
transport--is a desperately interesting study; and during the past
eighteen months, under the "I.G.C."--Inspector-General of
Communications--has developed some of the best brains in the Army.
Two days spent under the guidance of the Base Commandant or an officer of
his staff among the docks and warehouses of a great French port, among the
huts of its reinforcement camp, which contains more men than Aldershot
before August, 1914, or in its workshops of the Army Ordnance Corps, gave
me my first experience of the organising power that has gone to these
departments of the war. The General in command of the base was there in
the first weeks of the struggle and during the great retreat. He retired
with his staff to Nantes--leaving only a broken motor-car behind
him!--just about the time that the French Government betook itself to
Bordeaux. But in September he was back again, and the building-up process
began, which has since known neither stop nor stay. That the commercial
needs of a great French port should have been able to accommodate
themselves as they have to the military needs of the British Army speaks
loudly for the tact and good feeling on both sides. The task has not been
at all times an easy one; and I could not help thinking as we walked
together through the crowded scene, that the tone and temper of the able
man beside me--his admiration, simply expressed, yet evidently profound,
for the French spirit in the war, and for the heroic unity of the country
through all ranks and classes, accounted for a great deal. In the presence
of a good-will so strong, difficulties disappear.
Look now at this immense hangar or storehouse--the largest in the
world--through which we are walking. It was completed three years before
the war, partly, it is said, by German money, to house the growing
cotton-trade of the port. It now houses a large proportion of the food of
the British Army. The hangar is half a mile long, and is bounded on one
side by the docks where the ships are discharging, and on the other by the
railway lines where the trains are loading up for the front.
You walk through avenues of bacon, through streets of biscuits and jam. On
the quays just outside, ships from England, Canada, Norway, Argentina,
Australia are pouring out their stores. Stand and watch the endless cranes
at work, and think what English sea power means! And on the other side
watch the packing of the trucks that are going to the front, the order and
perfection with which the requisitions, large and small, of every regiment
are supplied.
One thinks of the Crimean scandals. The ghost of Florence Nightingale
seems to move beside us, watching contentedly what has come of all that
long-reforming labour, dealing with the health, the sanitation, the food
and equipment of the soldier, in which she played her part; and one might
fancy the great shade pausing specially beside the wired-in space labelled
"Medical Comforts," and generally known as "The Cage." Medical
_necessaries_ are housed elsewhere; but here are the dainties, the special
foods, the easing appliances of all kinds which are to make life bearable
to many a sorely-wounded man.
As to the huge sheds of the Army Ordnance, which supply everything that
the soldier doesn't eat, all metal stores--nails, horseshoes, oil-cans,
barbed wire--by the ton; trenching-tools, wheelbarrows, pickaxes, razors,
sand-bags, knives, screws, shovels, picketing-pegs, and the like--they are
of course endless; and the men who work in them are housed in one of the
largest sheds, in tiers of bunks from floor to ceiling.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the Depot to the outsider are the
repairing sheds and workshops established in a suburb of the town to which
we drive on. For this is work that has never been done before in
connection with an army in the field. Day by day trains full of articles
for repair come down from the front. I happened to see a train of the
kind, later on, leaving a station close to the fighting line. Guns,
rifles, range-finders, gun-carriages, harness, all torn and useless
uniforms, tents, boots by the thousand, come to this base to be repaired,
or to be sent home for transformation into "shoddy" to the Yorkshire
towns. Nothing seems too large or too small for Colonel D.'s department.
Field-glasses, periscopes, water-bottles, they arrive from the trenches
with the same certainty as a wounded howitzer or machine-gun, and are
returned as promptly.
In one shed, my guide called my attention to shelves on which were a
number of small objects in china and metal. "They were found in kits left
on the field," he says gently. "Wherever we can identify the owner, such
things are carefully returned to his people. These could not be
identified."
I took up a little china dog, a bit of coarse French pottery, which some
dead father had bought, at Poperinghe, perhaps, or Bailleul, for the
children at home. Near by were "souvenirs"--bits of shell, of German
equipment; then some leaves of a prayer-book, a neck-medallion of a
saint--and so on--every fragment steeped in the poignancy of sudden
death--death in youth, at the height of life.
The boot and uniform sheds, where 500 French women and girls, under
soldier-foremen, are busy, the harness-mending room, and the engineering
workshops might reassure those pessimists among us--especially of my own
sex--who think that the male is naturally and incorrigibly a wasteful
animal. Colonel D. shows me the chart which is the record of his work, and
its steadily mounting efficiency. He began work with 140 men, he is now
employing more than a thousand, and his repairing sheds are saving
thousands of pounds a week to the British Government. He makes all his own
power, and has four or five powerful dynamos at work.
We come out into a swirl of snow, and henceforward sightseeing is
difficult. Yet we do our best to defy the weather. We tramp through the
deepening snow of the great camp, which lines the slopes of the hills
above the river and the town, visiting its huts and recreation-rooms, its
Cinema theatre, and its stores, and taking tea with the Colonel of an
Infantry Base Depot, who is to be our escort on the morrow.
But on the last morning before we start we mount to the plateau above the
reinforcement camp, where the snow lies deep and the wind blows one of the
sharpest blasts of the winter. Here are bodies of men going through some
of the last refinements of drill before they start for the front; here are
trenches of all kinds and patterns, revetted in ways new and old, and
planned according to the latest experience brought from the fighting line.
The instructors here, as at other training-camps in France, are all men
returned from the front. The men to whom they have to give the final touch
of training--men so near themselves to the real thing--are impatient of
any other sort.
As we stand beside the trenches under the bright sun and piercing wind,
looking at the dark lines of British soldiers on the snow, and listening
to the explanations of a most keen and courteous officer, one's eyes
wander, on the one side, over the great town and port, over the French
coast and the distant sea, and on the other side, inland, over the
beautiful French landscape with its farms and country houses. Everything
one sees is steeped in history, a mingled history, in which England and
France up to five centuries ago bore an almost equal share. Now again they
are mingled here; all the old enmities buried in a comradeship that goes
deeper far than they, a comradeship of the spirit that will surely mould
the life of both nations for years to come.
How we grudged the snow and the low-sweeping clouds and the closed motor,
on our drive of the next day! I remember little more of it than occasional
glimpses of the tall cliffs that stand sentinel along the river, a hasty
look at a fine church above a steeply built town, an army lorry stuck deep
in the snow-drifts, and finally the quays and ships of another base port.
Our escort, Colonel S., pilots us to a pleasant hotel full of officers,
mostly English, belonging to the Lines of Communications, with a few poor
wives and mothers among them who have come over to nurse their wounded in
one or other of the innumerable hospitals of the base.
Before dinner the general commanding the base had found me out and I had
told my story.
"Oh, we'll put some notes together for you. We were up most of last night.
I dare say we shall be up most of this. But a little more or less doesn't
matter." I protested most sincerely. But it is always the busiest men who
shoulder the extra burdens; and the notes duly reached me. From them, from
the talk of others spending their last ounce of brain and energy in the
service of the base, and from the evidence of my own eyes, let me try and
draw some general picture of what that service is: Suppose a British
officer speaking:
Remember first that every man, every horse, every round of
ammunition, every article of clothing and equipment, all the
guns and vehicles, and nearly all the food have to be
brought across the English Channel to maintain and reinforce
the ever-growing British Army, which holds now so important
a share of the fighting line in France. The ports of entry
are already overtaxed by the civil and military needs of
France herself. Imagine how difficult it is--and how the
difficulty grows daily with the steady increase of the
British Army--to receive, disembark, accommodate, and
forward the multitude of men and the masses of material!
You see the khaki in the French streets, the mingling
everywhere of French and English; but the ordinary visitor
can form no idea of the magnitude of this friendly invasion.
There is no formal delimitation of areas or spaces, in
docks, or town, or railways. But gradually the observer will
realise that the town is honeycombed with the temporary
locations of the British Army, which everywhere speckle the
map hanging in the office of the Garrison Quartermaster. And
let him further visit the place where the long lines of
reinforcement, training and hospital camps are installed on
open ground, and old England's mighty effort will scarcely
hide itself from the least intelligent. _Work, efficiency,
economy_ must be the watchwords of a base. Its functions may
not be magnificent--_but they are war_--and war is
impossible unless they are rightly carried out.
When we came back from the Loire in September, after our
temporary retreat, the British _personnel_ at this place
grew from 1,100 to 11,000 in a week. Now there are thousands
of troops always passing through, thousands of men in
hospital, thousands at work in the docks and storehouses.
And let any one who cares for horses go and look at the
Remount Depot and the Veterinary Hospitals. The whole
treatment of horses in this war has been revolutionised.
Look at the cheap, ingenious stables, the comfort produced
by the simplest means, the kind quiet handling; look at the
Convalescent Horse Depots, the operating theatres, and the
pharmacy stores in the Veterinary Hospitals.
As to the troops themselves, every Regiment has its own
lines, for its own reinforcements. Good food, clean cooking,
civilised dining-rooms, excellent sanitation--the base
provides them all. It provides, too, whatever else Tommy
Atkins wants, and _close at hand_; wet and dry canteens,
libraries, recreation huts, tea and coffee huts, palatial
cinemas, concerts. And what are the results? Excellent
behaviour; excellent relations between the British soldier
and the French inhabitants; absence of all serious crime.
Then look at the docks. You will see there armies of
labourers, and long lines of ships discharging horses,
timber, rations, fodder, coal, coke, petrol. Or at the
stores and depots. It would take you days to get any idea of
the huge quantities of stores, or of the new and ingenious
means of space economy and quick distribution. As to the
Works Department--camps and depots are put up "while you
wait" by the R.E. officers and unskilled military labour.
Add to all this the armies of clerks, despatch riders, and
motor-cyclists--and the immense hospital _personnel_--then,
if you make any intelligible picture of it in your mind, you
will have some idea of what bases like these mean.
Pondering these notes, it seemed to me that the only way to get some kind
of "intelligible picture" in two short days was to examine something in
detail, and the rest in general! Accordingly, we spent a long Sunday
morning in the Motor Transport Depot, which is the creation of Colonel B.,
and perhaps as good an example as one could find anywhere in France of the
organising talent of the able British officer.
The depot opened in a theatre on the 13th of August, 1914. "It began,"
says Colonel B., "with a few balls of string and a bag of nails!" Its
staff then consisted of 6 officers and 91 N.C.O.'s and men--its permanent
staff at present is about 500. All the drivers of some 20,000 motor
vehicles--nearly 40,000 men--are tested here and, if necessary, instructed
before going up to the fighting lines; and the depot deals with 350
different types of vehicles. In round figures 100,000 separate parts are
now dealt with, stored, and arranged in the depot. The system of records
and accounts is extraordinarily perfect, and so ingenious that it seems to
work itself.
Meanwhile Colonel B.'s relations with his army of chauffeurs, of whom
about 1,000 are always housed on the premises, are exceedingly human and
friendly in spite of the strictness of the army discipline. Most of his
men who are not married, the Colonel tells me, have found a "friend," in
the town, one or other of its trimly dressed girls, with whom the English
mechanic "walks out," on Sundays and holidays. There are many engagements,
and, as I gather, no misconduct. Marriage is generally postponed till
after the war, owing to the legal and other difficulties involved. But
marriage there will be when peace comes. As to how the Englishman and the
French girl communicate, there are amusing speculations, but little exact
knowledge. There can be small doubt, however, that a number of hybrid
words perfectly understood by both sides are gradually coming into use,
and if the war lasts much longer, a rough Esperanto will have grown up
which may leave its mark on both languages. The word "narpoo" is a case in
point. It is said to be originally a corruption of "_il n'y a plus_"--the
phrase which so often meets the Tommy foraging for eggs or milk or fruit.
At present it means anything from "done up" to "dead." Here is an instance
of it, told me by a chaplain at the front. He was billeted in a farm with
a number of men, and a sergeant. All the men, from the chaplain to the
youngest private, felt a keen sympathy and admiration for the women of the
farm, who were both working the land and looking after their billetees,
with wonderful pluck and energy. One evening the chaplain arriving at the
open door of the farm, saw in the kitchen beyond it the daughter of the
house, who had just come in from farm work. She was looking at a pile of
dirty plates and dishes which had to be washed before supper, and she gave
a sigh of fatigue. Suddenly in the back door on the other side of the
kitchen appeared the sergeant. He looked at the girl, then at the dishes,
then again at the girl. "Fattigay?" he said cheerfully, going up to her.
"Narpoo? Give 'em me. Compree?" And before she could say a word he had
driven her away, and plunged into the work.
The general relations, indeed, between our soldiers and the French
population could not be better. General after General, both in the bases,
and at the front dwelt on this point. A distinguished General commanding
one of our armies on the line, spoke to me of it with emphasis. "The
testimony is universal, and it is equally creditable to both sides." The
French civilian in town and country is, no doubt, profiting by the large
demand and prompt payments of the British forces. But just as in the case
of the women munition workers, there is infinitely more in it than money.
On the British part there is, in both officers and men, a burning sympathy
for what France has suffered, whether from the outrages of a brutal
enemy, or from the inevitable hardships of war. The headquarters of the
General I have mentioned were not more than fifteen or twenty miles from
towns where unspeakable things were done by German soldiers--officers no
less than men--in the first weeks of the struggle. With such deeds the
French peasantry and small townsfolk, as they still remain in Picardy and
Artois, can and do contrast, day by day, the temper, the courtesy, the
humanity of the British soldier. Great Britain, of course, is a friend and
ally; and Germany is the enemy. But these French folk, these defenceless
women and children, know instinctively that the British Army, like their
own, whether in its officers, or in its rank and file, is incapable,
toward any non-combatant, of what the German Army has done repeatedly,
officially, and still excuses and defends.
[Illustration: One of the Wards of a Base Hospital Visited by the King.]
[Illustration: A Howitzer in the Act of Firing.]
The signs of this feeling for and sympathy with the French _civils_, among
our soldiers, are many. Here is one story, slight but illuminating, told
me by an eye-witness. She is one of a band of women under a noble chief,
who, since very early in the war, have been running a canteen for
soldiers, night and day, at the large railway-station of the very base I
have been describing, where trains are perpetually arriving from and
departing to the front. In the early days of the war, a refugee train
arrived one afternoon full of helpless French folk, mainly of course women
and children, and old people, turned out of their homes by the German
advance. In general, the refugees were looked after by the French Red
Cross, "who did it admirably, going along the trains with hot drinks and
food and clothing." But on this occasion there were a number of small
children, and some of them got overlooked in the hubbub. "I found a raw
young Scotchman, little more than a boy, from one of the Highland
regiments," with six youngsters clinging to him, for whom he peremptorily
demanded tea. "He had tears in his eyes, and his voice was all husky as he
explained in homely Scotch how the bairns had been turned out of their
homes--how he _couldn't_ bear it--and he would give them tea." A table
was found. "I provided the milk, and he paid for bread and butter and
chocolate, and waited on and talked to the six little French people
himself. Strange to say, they seemed to understand each other quite well."
III
It was with this railway-station canteen that my latest memories of the
great base are concerned. All the afternoon of our second day at ---- was
spent in seeing a fine Red Cross hospital, and then in walking or driving
round the endless reinforcement and hospital camps in the open country.
Everywhere the same vigourous expanding organisation, the same ceaselessly
growing numbers, the same humanity and care in detail. "How many years
have we been at war?" one tends to ask oneself in bewilderment, as the
spectacle unrolls itself. "Is it possible that all this is the work of
eighteen months?" And I am reminded of the Scotch sergeant's reply to his
German captive, who asked his opinion about the duration of the war. "I'll
tell you what--it's the furrst five years that'll be the worst!" We
seem--in the bases--to have slipped through them already, measuring by any
of the ordinary ratios of work to time. On my return home, a diplomat
representing one of the neutral nations, told me that the Military
Secretary of his staff had been round the English bases in France, and had
come back with his "eyes starting out of his head." Having seen them
myself, the phrase seemed to me quite natural.
Then, last of all, as the winter evening fell, we turned toward the
canteen at the railway-station. We found it going on in an old goods'
shed, simply fitted up with a long tea and coffee bar, tables and chairs;
and in some small adjacent rooms. It was filled from end to end with a
crowd of soldiers, who after many hours of waiting, were just departing
for the front. The old shabby room, with its points of bright light, and
its shadowy sides and corners, made a Rembrandtesque setting for the
moving throng of figures. Some men were crowding round the bar; some were
writing letters in haste to post before the train went off; the piano was
going, and a few, gathered round it, were singing the songs of the day, of
which the choruses were sometimes taken up in the room. The men--drafts
going up to different regiments on the line--appeared to me to come from
many parts. The broad Yorkshire and Cumbrian speech, Scotch, the cockney
of the Home Counties, the Northumberland burr, the tongues of Devon and
Somerset--one seemed to hear them all in turn. The demands at the counter
had slackened a little, and I was presently listening to some of the talk
of the indefatigable helpers who work this thing night and day. One of
them drew a picture of the Canadians, the indomitable fighters of Ypres
and Loos, of their breathless energy, and impatience of anything but the
quickest pace of life, their appetites!--half a dozen hard-boiled eggs, at
_3d_ each, swallowed down in a moment of time; then of the
French-Canadians, their Old World French, their old-world Catholicism,
simple and passionate. One of these last asked if there was any chance of
his being sent to Egypt. "Why are you so anxious to go to Egypt?" "Because
it was there the Holy Family rested," said the lad shyly. The lady to whom
he spoke described to him the tree and the Holy Well in St. Georgius, and
he listened entranced.