This was to have been an essay from an igloo, describing the
awful privations of the writer and the primitive savagery of his
surroundings on the Murman coast. It was to have wrung the sympathetic
heart of the public and at the same time to have enthralled the
student of barbaric life with its wealth of exotic detail. While
embodying all the best-known newspaper _clichés_ appropriated to these
latitudes it was to have included others specially and laboriously
prepared after a fascinating study of Arctic literature.
But circumstances have blighted its early inspiration, and the article
it was to have been will never be written, the telling word-pictures
designed on board the transport never executed.
Figure the disgust of five adventurers who, landing at the Murman
base, sternly braced to encounter the last extremity of peril and of
hardship, to sleep in the snow and dig one another out o' mornings,
to give the weakest of their number the warmest icicle to suck, the
longest candle to chew--found themselves billeted in a room which the
landladies of home would delight to advertise! Its walls were hung
with such pictures as give cheap lodgings half their horror; it was
encumbered with countless frail chairs and "kiggly" tables, and upon
every flat surface had settled a swarm of albums, framed photographs,
china dogs, wax flowers, penholder-stands, and all the choicest
by-products of civilization struggling towards culture. As we were not
to be frozen by exposure or immediately attacked by Bolshies, we might
reasonably have expected to be asphyxiated by the Russian stove; but
even this consolation was denied us, since Madame, convinced that
the English are mad in their love of fresh air, consented to leave it
unlit.
When first we arrived, five large soldiers with five large kits, the
aspect of the room filled us with terror. The fiercest frost or foe we
could have faced, but the bravest man may quail before wax-flowers and
fragile tables top-heavy with ornaments and knick-knacks, and all felt
that to encounter such things within the Arctic Circle was an unfair
test of our fortitude. Why had not the War Office or some newspaper
correspondent warned us?
Madame, however, proved to have a sense of proportion or humour; or
perhaps the collection was not her own. In any case she showed no
reluctance to displace family photographs or china dogs, and rapidly
had the room cleared for action; so that now, when we roll about the
floor in friendly struggle, it is only someone's toilet tackle that
crashes with its spidery table, instead of cherished artificial fauna
and flora.
Thanks to our serviceable and becoming Arctic kit and the steady
approach of the Spring thaw, heralded by the preparation of spare
bridges to replace the existing ones, we can defy the eccentricities
of the climate. Even the language begins to reveal what might be
termed hand-holds; though possibly, when the natives echo our words
of greeting, painfully acquired from textbooks on Russian, they are
simply imitating the sounds we make under the impression that they are
learning a little English.
More difficult problems arise, however, regarding questions of
military etiquette. Not King's Regulations, nor Military Law, nor
any handbook devotes even a sub-paragraph to light and leading upon
certain points which we have here to consider every day. For example,
if a subaltern glissading on ski down the village street, maintaining
his precarious balance by the aid of a "stick" in each hand, meets
a General, also on ski and also a novice, what should happen? What
_does_ happen we know by demonstration: the subaltern brandishes both
sticks round his head, slides forward five yards, smartly crosses the
points of his ski and then, plunging forward, buries his head in the
wayside drift, while the General Officer sits down and says what he
thinks. But we do not know if these gestures of natural courtesy are
such as our mentors would approve. No authority has set up for us any
ideal in such matters. From official rules of deportment the British
soldier knows how to salute when on foot or mounted on bicycle, horse,
mule, camel, elephant, motor-lorry or yak, but no provision has been
made for the case of an army scooting on ski. So here we are at large
in the Arctic Circle, coping with new conditions by the light of
nature, and paying such perilous "compliments" to senior officers as
our innate courtesy and sense, of balance suggest and permit.
Further, consider the question of dress. Even the gunners, who in the
late war used to wear riding-breeches of their favourite colour, no
matter what it was, the kind of footgear they most fancied, and any
old variety of hat they thought becoming, are shocked by the fantastic
kit that is countenanced in this latitude. It must be borne in mind
that most of us are old campaigners and old nomads whose tailors have
grown accustomed to build us appropriate gear for various climes.
Fashions for fighting in France, in Egypt, in Mesopotamia, have gained
a hold upon our affections, to say nothing of those designs for civil
breadwinning or moss-dodging in Central Africa, Bond Street, Kirkcaldy
or Dawson City. The consequence is that here, pretty well out of
A.P.M. range, sartorial individualism flourishes unchecked. Thus
the eye is startled to behold a fur headdress as big as a busby, an
ordinary service tunic, gaberdine breeches, shooting stockings and
Shackleton boots, going about as component parts of one officer's
make-up; or snow-goggles worn with flannel trousers, or sharp-toothed
Boreas defied by a bare head and a chamois-leather jerkin; or the
choice flowers of Savile Row associated with Canadian moccasins.
What idea will the North Russians retain of the outward appearance of
the typical British officer? How will the little Lapps, befurred and
smiling, who come sliding to market behind the trotting reindeer,
report of us to the smaller Lapps at home? In any case I hope we shall
found a legend of a well-meaning if peculiar and patchwork people.
* * * * *
[Illustration: SOCIAL DIFFICULTIES IN EARLY TIMES.
_British Matron (whose husband has just had his weekly coat of woad,
to visitor)._
"I'M SORRY, SIR, BUT MY HUSBAND CAN'T SEE YOU TILL HE'S DRY."]
* * * * *
"Gas Stoker wanted for 11 million works, used to gas
engine and exhauster; 50_s_. per week of seven 12-hour
shifts."--_Advt. in Daily Paper_.
In the circumstances the reference to "exhauster" seems superfluous.
* * * * *