It was pleasant one morning to hear a sudden voice at my elbow: 'How's
the Rest Hut?' and to find at least one of its regular frequenters still
whole and hearty, in the press outside this teeming Y.M.C.A. But a more
embarrassing encounter occurred the same day and on the same too public
spot.
It began in the hut, with a couple of sad young Jocks, who were like to
be sad, as they might have said; but they only smiled in wry yet not
unhumorous resignation. Their story was that of thousands upon the
imperative stoppage of all leave. These two had started off on theirs,
and were going aboard at Boulogne when headed back to their Battalion,
which they had now to find. It chanced to be one of those to which I had
helped to minister in the sunken road at Christmas. They remembered the
Cocoa Man, as I had been called there, but in the morning they were not
demonstrative.
About mid-day we met again, and as I say, in the surging crowd outside
the Y.M.C.A. This time the case was sadly altered; the hapless pair had
been consoling themselves at another spring, and were at the
warm-hearted stage. Nothing was now too good for the poor Cocoa Man, no
compliment too wildly hyperbolical. Falling with their unabated forces
upon both his hands, only stopping short of the actual neck, they
greeted him as 'a brave mon' in that concourse of braves, and proceeded
to embroider the charge with unconscionable detail.
'Thairty-five yarrds from the Gairmans,' declared one, 'this ol' feller
was teemin' cocoa in the trenches. I'm tellin' ye! Lash C'rishmash--mind
ye--shnow an' ische! Thairty-five yarrds from the Gairmans--strike me
dead!'
A vindictive Deity might well have taken him at his word, for dividing
the real distance by more than ten. But nothing came of it except a
murmur of general incredulity, obsequiously confirmed by the Cocoa Man,
and from the other Jock's wagging head a sentimental echo: 'Thish ol'
feller! Thish ol' feller!' he could only say for the pavement's benefit.
'Why was _I_ there?' demanded the spokesman, with a rhetorical thump
upon his chest. 'Dis-_cip_-line--dis-_cip_-line--only reason _I_ was
there. But this ol' feller----'
'Thish ol' _feller_!' screamed the other, in a paroxysm of affection;
and when I had eventually retrieved both hands I left them singing my
longevity in those terms, like a catch, and took my blushes to a safer
part of the town.
'I've given them a bitty,' whispered one of our ministers, who had
assisted my escape, 'and told them to go away and get something to
_eat_.'
And the sly carnal wisdom of the advice, no less than the charity which
made it practicable, left a good taste in the mouth. It was the kind of
thing I ventured to think we wanted in our workers. In any community of
sinners there is room for the saint who will help a man to get sober
sooner than scold him for getting drunk.
Not that I saw above half-a-dozen tipsy men in all the huts that I was
ever in. They were to be seen, no doubt, but they did not come our way.
The soldier who seeks the Y.M. in his cups is not a hardened case. He is
the last person to be discouraged, as he will be the first to deplore
his imprudence in the morning. I have heard a splendid young New
Zealander speak of the lapse that had cost him his stripes as though
nobody had ever made so dire a fool of himself. That is the kind of
notion to scout even at the cost of a high line in these matters. It is
possible to make too much of the virtues that come easily to ourselves;
and to the average Y.M.C.A. man the cardinal virtues seemed very like
second nature. This is not covert irony, but a simple fact which, for
that matter, ought hardly to have been otherwise, since most of us were
ministers of one denomination or another. The minority were apt to
feel, but were not necessarily justified in feeling, that a more liberal
admixture of 'sinful laymen' might have put us, as a body, even more
intimately in touch with the men than we undoubtedly were.
Chief, however, among the virtues of my comrades, I think any
unprejudiced observer would have placed that of Courage. There were now
no fewer than eighty of us, all leaves before the wind of war, blown
helter-skelter into this little town that must be nameless. We had come
off all sorts and sizes of trees, down to the most sensitive and
frailest; but from the first squall to the last we were permitted to
face, and throughout these days of precarious shelter, in many ways a
higher test, I never saw a man among us outwardly the worse for nerves.
And be it known that the small personal escapes and excitements recorded
in these notes, were as nothing to the full-size adventures of a great
many of our refugees. In outlying huts, cheek by jowl with the camps
they served, the shelling had been far heavier and more direct than the
officers of the Rest Hut had been privileged to undergo; the
responsibility had been much greater, and the means of escape not to be
compared with ours. Little home-made dug-outs, under the hut itself, had
been their nearest approach to our vaulted dungeon, a tattoo of shrapnel
their variety of shell-music. Whole walls had been blown in on them,
men killed and wounded under the riddled roof. Some had suffered even
more from a bodyguard of our own guns than from the enemy; one reverend
gentleman declared in writing that his 'hut reeled like a ship in a
great sea.'
Another wrote: 'A wave of gas entered our domain and we had a season of
intense coughing and sneezing, also watering of eyes. Thinking it was
but a passing wave of gas from our own guns, we did not use our
respirators, but reaching up to a box of sweets I distributed them to my
comrades, and we lay sucking sweets to take away the taste.' (This was a
Baptist minister with a South African ribbon, and not the man to lie
long doing anything.) 'After breakfast I called upon the Artillery
Officers to offer my staff to make hot cocoa and supply biscuits during
the morning for the hard-worked gun-teams, an offer which he gratefully
accepted. I then made my way up to the dressing-station to see if the
Medical Officer required our services for the walking wounded. His reply
being in the affirmative, I took stock of the equipment we had on the
spot, then went back to bring up all necessary articles, also my
comrades. The small hut we have near the dressing-station for this work
was being so hotly shelled that the M.O. would not allow us to remain
there, so we worked outside the dressing-station door, a little more
sheltered, but still exposed to shell-fire. We comforted the wounded,
gave them hot tea and free cigarettes. A lull occurred during the
morning in our work, so Mr. ---- returned to make the cocoa for the
gun-teams, Mr. ---- remained to carry on at the dressing-station, and I
returned to clear the cash-boxes, fill my pockets with rescued
paper-money, prepared again for emergency.... We continued our work with
the wounded, and as the same increased in number, I then assisted in
bandaging the smaller wounds, having knowledge of that kind of work.
Later, the A.P.M. gave me his field-glasses and asked me to act as
observer and report to him every change in the progress of the battle of
the ridges. This was most interesting work, but meant constant exposure.
One of our aeroplanes sounded its hooter and dropped a message about 600
yards away. On reporting it I was asked to cross over and see that the
message was delivered to the correct battery.'
This was a man! But do not forget he was also a Baptist minister on a
four-months furlough at the front. 'Once a soldier!' he too may have
said after his first campaign, and clinched it by entering his ministry;
but here he was in his pious prime, excelling his lay youth in deeds of
gallantry, and covering our civilian heads with his reflected glory. No
wonder he 'heard from two sources that my work on that day received
mention in military dispatches.' Let us hope it did. 'If true,' he makes
haste to add, 'the work of my two colleagues is as much deserving.' But
who inspired them? Before they turned their backs, 'the advancing
Germans were only about 700 yards away. Securing some of our goods, we
decided to retire upon ---- for the night and return if possible the
next day.' The last six words italicise themselves.
The party went out of the frying-pan into heavier fire further back:
'Soon after we had retired to rest the Germans commenced to bombard the
place with high velocity shells from long range.... A Lieutenant in our
hut went to the door, but reeled back immediately with a shattered arm.
A Corporal outside received a nasty wound in the shoulder. We set to
work bandaging the wounds of these men and making them comfortable while
others went to obtain a conveyance. There was no shelter, so after the
wounded were safely on their way to a C.C.S. we lay down in our
blankets, considering it as easy to be shelled in the warm as standing
in the cold'--more wine that needs no printer's bush. Later, he relieved
the leader of a very hot hut indeed, where he had for colleague 'one who
was calm in the hour of danger.' Here the congenial pair 'were able to
carry on for four days, when the order came for us to evacuate. We
distributed our stock of goods to the soldiers, then closed up. That
night we lay in our blankets counting the bursting shells around us at
three shells per minute.' On their arrival in our common port, naturally
not before, 'the effects of the gas at ---- began to make themselves
felt, and I was ordered by the Medical Officer to take a week's complete
rest.' One wonders if a rest was better earned in all those terrific
days.
The document from which I have been quoting is only one of many placed
at my disposal. It is typical of them all, exceptional solely in the
telling simplicity of the narrator. The writer was not our only minister
who came through the fire pure gold; he was not even the only Baptist
minister. One there was, the gentlest of souls, whose heroic story I may
yet make shift to tell, though it deserves the hand of Mr. Service or of
'Woodbine Willie.' Such were the men I had the honour of working with
last winter, and of such their adventures as against the personal
experiences it was necessary to recount first or else not at all. I
confess they make my Rest Hut look a little too restful as I set them
down; for there we were wonderfully spared the tangible horrors of the
situation; but many of these others, as little used to bloodshed as
ourselves, had left a shambles behind them, and looked upon the things
that haunt a mind.
And yet, as I began by saying, not a man of them showed shaken nerves,
or what mattered more to those of us who had seen less, a shaken faith.
Therein they were not only worthy of the men they had served so
devotedly to the end, but of the sublime tradition it was theirs to
uphold. It was a great matter that there should not have been one heart
among us so faint as to affect another, that we should have carried
ourselves at least outwardly as I think we did. But to some of us it
seemed a yet greater matter, in the days of anti-climax and reaction now
in store, that those to whom we were entitled to look for spiritual
support did not fail us in a single instance.