THE BROWN GRAVES
When first one has dealings with the Waacs and their officers, one
imagines distractedly that one has fallen among Royalty. This is because
the word "Ma'am" is always used by a Waac when speaking to another of
superior rank, till you very nearly find yourself bobbing. Later this
impression is strengthened by the memory for faces which every Waac
officer displays in a manner one has always been taught to consider
truly royal. It is only among themselves that any titles exist; to the
outside world, even the Army officers, each Waac officer is mere "Mrs."
or "Miss," whichever she may chance to be. The "putting on of frills"
has been avoided with extraordinary dexterity; there is just enough
ritual to make the girls feel they belong to an organised body, without
the enemy being given occasion to blaspheme by saying that women like
playing at being men. In France, though not in England, the girls salute
their officers, as this helps them to get at the "idea" of the
thing--that feeling of being part of an ordered whole, which is so
valuable.
In the matter of uniforms, someone at the War Office, or wherever these
things are thought out, has really had a rather charming series of
inspirations. At first the women wore the same badges as denote the
ranks of soldiers, but a paternal--or should one not almost say
maternal?--Government evidently thought that not feminine enough, and
now the badges of varying rank are roses, fleur-de-lys and laurel
leaves, a touch which would have delighted old Andrew Marvell.
One of the chief activities of the Waacs is cooking, and when, escorted
by the D.D.M.S., whom I have before mentioned, I arrived at the little
wooden office amidst the pines, it was to hear a one-sided conversation
on the telephone between the Area Controller and various great ones of
the earth who were frantically ringing up for cooks. Also a new
Officers' Club for senior officers wanting a rest from the firing line
is just being opened near E----, and it is to be staffed by Waacs and
the cook is to be of the very best. Punch's immortal advice as to the
treatment of husbands is not forgotten by the Waac controllers when
questions of this kind arise.
After talk of cooks came the seeing of cooks, in a big camp and Small
Arms school near. Kitchens are kitchens and mess-rooms mess-rooms
everywhere you go, and beyond a general impression of extreme
cleanliness, an extraordinarily appealing smell of stew, and the sight
of great branches of mimosa set about the long mess tables, there is
nothing of particular interest to describe. The point is that all the
preparing and the serving of food in this great camp for officers and
men is done by women and that all the male creatures are unreservedly
jubilant at the change. The C.O. expressed his hope that after the war
the W.A.A.C. would continue as a permanent part of the Army, while a
sergeant gave it as his opinion that the women managed to introduce so
much more variety into the preparation of the food than the men had
done. Also, he added that they wasted much less.
In every kitchen there is a forewoman cook--there are these forewomen in
every department of the work of the women, and they correspond rather to
the "noncoms" among the men. At present they are distinguished by a
bronze laurel leaf and always have their own mess-room and sitting-room
as distinct from the rest of the girls, but it is rather an influence
than an authority which is vested in them, though the advisability of
definitely endowing them with more of the latter is being considered.
They "answer," as the rest of the Waac machinery does, extremely well.
An interesting point about army kitchens, as they are run nowadays, is
that after the amount of fats necessary to the cooking has been put
aside, the rest is poured into great tins, graded according to its
quality, and sent home for munitions. We are getting things down to the
fine edge of no-waste at last, and the women are helping to do it.
At another camp I found the C.O. most anxious for the women to start a
Mending Factory--it would be such a help to the men, who, unlike
sailors, are not adept at the repairing of their clothes. Also a
laundry, he intimated, would be necessary really to round off the scheme
satisfactorily. Both these are thoroughly sound suggestions that may
yet, let us hope, come to something, though they would be in a sense
breaking new ground, as the idea of the Waacs is that they actually
replace men. Each cook releases one man, while among the clerks at
present the ratio is four women to three men. And there are already six
thousand Waacs in France.... Does not this give the obvious reason why
slanders, started by enemy agents, have been busy trying to drive the
Women's Army out of France?
Every Waac who goes to France is like the pawn who attains the top of
the chessboard and is exchanged for a more valuable piece. She sends a
fighting man to his job by taking on the jobs that are really a woman's
after all. For is it not woman's earliest job to look after man?
She looks after him to keep him well and strong, she looks after him
when he is ill--and now, in France, she looks after the gallant dead,
who are lying in the soil for which they fought. Between the pines and
the gleaming river with its sandy shoals are the rows of crosses,
sparkling, the ash grey wood of them, in the effulgence of the spring
light, making hundreds of points of brightness above the earth still
brown and bare, that soon, under the gardeners' care, will blossom like
the rose. Not a desert even now--for no place where fighters rest is a
desert--but a place expectant, full of the promise of beauty to come, an
outward beauty which is what it calls for as its right, because it is
holy ground. Not only in the merely technical sense as the consecrated
earth of quiet English cemeteries, where lie all, both those who lived
well and those who lived basely, but holy as a place can only be when it
is held by those who all died perfectly....
Here and there, among the earth-brown graves, stooping above them, are
the earth-brown figures of the gardeners. Every grave is freshly raked,
moulded between wooden frames to a flat, high surface where the flowers
are to overflow, and above every raised dais of earth the bleached wood
of the cross spreads its arms, throwing a shadow soft and blue like a
dove's feather, a shadow that curves over the mound and laps down its
edge lightly as a benison. On each cross is the little white metal plate
giving the name and regiment of the man who lies beneath and the letters
R.I.P. Here and there is an ugly stiff wreath of artificial immortelles
beneath a glass frame, the pathetic offering of those who came from
England to lay it there.
Sometimes a wreath fresh and green shows that someone who loves the dead
man has sent money with a request that flowers shall be bought and put
upon his grave on the anniversary of his death. Sometimes, when they
come over from England, these poor people break down and turn blindly,
as people will for comfort, to the nearest sympathy, to the women
gardeners who are showing them the grave they came to see. And a sudden
note of that deep undercurrent which at times of stress always turns the
members of either sex to their own sex for comfort sends the women
mourners to the arms of the women who are working beside them.
Sentiment, if you will--but a sentiment that is stirred up from the deep
and which would scorn the apologies of the critical.
And what of the girls who work daily on that sacred earth, who see
before their eyes, bright in the sun, inexpressibly grey and dauntless
in the rain, those serried rows of crosses, all so alike and each
standing for a different individuality, a different heartbreak--Do you
suppose that they will ever again forget the aspect of those silent
witnesses to the splendour and the unselfishness and the utter release
from pettiness of the men who lie there? This is what it is to make good
citizens, and that is what the members of the Women's Army are doing
daily. They are not only doing great things for the men--but they are
making of themselves, come what conditions may after the war, efficient,
big-minded citizens who will be able to meet with them.