A
"Temporary Gentleman"
in France
Home Letters from an Officer at
the Front
With Introductory Chapters by
Captain A. J. Dawson
Border Regiment (British Forces)
[Illustration]
G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1918
COPYRIGHT, 1918
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
The Knickerbocker Press, New York
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
Permission has been given by the British War Office for the
publication of this series of Letters written by a Temporary Officer
of the New Army. No alteration has been made in the Letters to prepare
them for the Press beyond the deleting or changing, for obvious
reasons, of certain names used.
BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION
The writer has introduced this "Temporary Gentleman" to many good
fellows in England, France, and Flanders, and is very anxious to
introduce him on a really friendly footing to all his brothers-in-arms
across the Atlantic; from New York to San Francisco, and from Quebec
to Vancouver Island, also. But how best to do it? It really is no very
easy matter, this, to present one simple, very human unit of the New
Armies, to a hundred millions of people.
"Dear America: Herewith please find one slightly damaged but wholly
decent 'Temporary Gentleman' who you will find repays consideration."
I think that is strictly true, and though, in a way, it covers the
ground, it does not, somehow, seem wholly adequate; and I have an
uncomfortable feeling that the critics might find in it ground for
severe comments. But it is just what I mean; and I would be well
content that all the kindly men and women of America should just find
out about this "Temporary Gentleman" for themselves, and form their
own opinion, rather than that I should set down things about him in
advance. If these letters of his do not commend him to America's heart
and judgment, I am very sure no words of mine would stand any chance
of doing so. Yes, for my part, warmly anxious as I am for America to
know him, and to feel towards him as folk do in France and Flanders
and Britain, I am perfectly prepared to let him stand or fall upon his
own letters, which certainly discover the man to you, whatever you may
think of him.
Withal, in case it may interest any among the millions of American
families from which some member has gone out to train and to fight,
to save the Allied democracies of the world from being over-ridden by
the murderous aggression of its remaining autocracies, I take pleasure
in testifying here to the fact that among the officers now serving in
Britain's New Armies (as among those who, whilst serving, have passed
to their long rest) are very many thousands who are just for all the
world like the writer of these letters. I have watched and spoken with
whole cadet-training battalions of them, seen them march past in column
of fours, chins well up, arms aswing, eyes front, and hearts beating
high with glad determination and pride--just because their chance has
nearly come for doing precisely what the writer of these letters did:
for treading the exact track he blazed, away back there in 1915; for
the right to offer the same sort of effort he made, for God and King
and Country; to guard the Right, and avenge the Wrong, and to shield
Christendom and its liberties from a menace more deadly than any that
the world's admitted barbarians and heathens ever offered.
I know there are very many thousands of them who are just like this
particular "Temporary Gentleman,"--even as there must be many thousands
of his like in America,--because there have been so many among those
with whom I have lived and worked and fought, in the trenches. And it
does seem to me, after study of the letters, that this statement forms
something of a tribute to the spirit, the efficiency, and the devotion
to their duty, of the whole tribe of the Temporary Officers.
Their lost sense of humour (withered out of existence, I take it,
by the poison gas of Prussian _Kultur_) would seem to have made the
German nation literally incapable of forming an approximately correct
estimate of the capacities of any people outside the confines of their
own machine-made, despotically ordered State, in which public sentiment
and opinion is manufactured from "sealed pattern" recipes kept under
lock and key in Potsdam and the Wilhelmstrasse. Their blunders in
psychology since July, 1914, would have formed an unparalleled comedy
of errors, if they had not, instead, produced a tragedy unequalled in
history. With regard to America alone, the record of their mistakes and
misreadings would fill a stout volume. In the earlier days of the War,
I read many German statements which purported (very solemnly) to prove:
(_a_) That in the beginning of the War they killed off all the British
officers.
(_b_) That the British officer material had long since been exhausted.
(_c_) That, since it was impossible for the British to produce more
officers, they could not by any effort place a really big Army in the
field.
And the queer thing is that German machine-made illusions are of
cast-iron. They "stay put"; permanently. During 1917 I read again
precisely the same fatuous German statement regarding America and her
inability to produce an army, that one read in 1914 and 1915 about
Britain. The British New Armies (which Germany affirmed could never
seriously count) have succeeded in capturing nearly three times as
many prisoners as they have lost, and more than four times as many
guns. From 1916 onward they steadily hammered back the greatest
concentrations of German military might that Hindenburg could put up,
and did not lose in the whole period as much ground as they have won in
a single day from the Kaiser's legions. Yet still, in 1917, the same
ostrich-like German scribes, who vowed that Britain could not put an
army in the field because they could never officer it, were repeating
precisely the same foolish talk about America and her New Armies.
Perhaps there is only one argument which Germany is now really able
to appreciate. That argument has been pointedly, and very effectively,
presented for some time past by the writer of these letters, and all
his comrades. From this stage onward, it will further be pressed home
upon the German by the armies of America, whose potentialities he has
laboriously professed to ridicule. It is the argument of high explosive
and cold steel; the only argument capable of bringing ultimate
conviction to the Wilhelmstrasse that the English-speaking peoples,
though they may know nothing of the goose-step, yet are not wont to cry
"Kamerad," or to offer surrender to any other people on earth.
I know very well that the writer of these letters had no thought as
he wrote--back there in 1916--of any kind of argument or reply to
Potsdamed fantasies. But yet I would submit that, all unwittingly,
he has furnished in these letters (on America's behalf, as well as
Britain's) what should prove for unprejudiced readers outside Germany
a singularly telling answer to the Boche's foolish boasts of the
Anglo-Saxon inability to produce officers. As a correspondent in the
Press recently wrote: "Why, for generations past the English-speaking
peoples have been officering the world and all its waters--especially
its waters!" And so they have, as all the world outside Germany knows,
from the Yukon to Tierra del Fuego; from the Atlantic round through the
Philippines to the golden gate and back.
It is a high sense of honour, horse sense, and sportsmanship, in our
Anglo-Saxon sense, that lie at the root of successful leadership. And
one of Prussia's craziest illusions was that with us, these qualities
were the sole monopoly of the men who kept polo ponies and automobiles!
Only the guns of the Allies and the steel of their dauntless
infantrymen can enlighten a people so hopelessly deluded as the Germans
of to-day. But for the rest of the world I believe there is much in
this little collection of the frank, unstudied writings of an average
New Army officer, who, prior to the War, was a clerk in a suburban
office, to show that sportsmanship and leadership are qualities
characteristic of every single division of the Anglo-Saxon social
systems; and that, perhaps more readily than any other race, we can
produce from every class and every country in the English-speaking half
of the world, men who make the finest possible kind of active service
officers; men who, though their commissions may be "Temporary" and
their names innocent of a "von," or any other prefix, are not only fine
officers, but, permanently, and by nature, gentlemen and sportsmen.
Withal, it may be that I should be falling short of complete
fulfilment of a duty which I am glad and proud to discharge, if I
omitted to furnish any further information regarding the personality
of the writer of these letters. And so, if the reader will excuse yet
another page or two of wire entanglement between himself and the actual
trenches--the letters, I mean--I will try to explain.
A. J. DAWSON,
_Captain_.
LONDON, 1918.
THE GENESIS OF THE "TEMPORARY GENTLEMAN"
In the case of the Service Battalion officer of Britain's New Army who,
with humorous modesty, signs himself "Your 'Temporary Gentleman,'" what
is there behind that enigmatic signature that his letters do not tell
us? The first of these homely epistles shows their writer arriving with
his Battalion in France; and the visit is evidently his first to that
fair land, since he writes: "I wonder if I should ever have seen it had
there been no war!" That exclamation tells a good deal.
But of the man and his antecedents prior to that moment of landing with
his unit in France, the letters tell us nothing; and if it be true that
the war has meant being "born again" for very many Englishmen, that
frequently quoted statement at all events points to the enjoyment of
some definite status before the war.
Inquiry in this particular case speedily brings home to one the fact
that one is investigating the antecedents of a well-recognised New
Army type, a thoroughly representative type, as well as those of an
individual. In his antecedents, as in the revolutionary development
which the war has brought to him, this "Temporary Gentleman" is clearly
one among very many thousands who have, so to say, passed through
the same crucibles, been submitted to the same standard tests, and
emerged in the trenches of France and Flanders, in Gallipoli and in
Mesopotamia, in Africa, and in other places in which the common enemy
has endeavoured to uphold his proposed substitution of _Kultur_ for
civilisation, as we understand it.
In the year 1896 there died, in a south-western suburb of London,
a builder and contractor in a small, suburban way of business. An
industrious, striving, kindly, and honourable man, he had had a number
of different irons in the fire, as the saying goes, and some of them,
it may be, would have provided a good reward for his industry if he
had lived. As the event proved, however, the winding-up of his affairs
produced for his widow a sum representing no more than maintenance upon
a very modest scale of a period of perhaps three years. The widow was
not alone in the world. She had a little daughter, aged five, and a
sturdy son, aged eight years. Nineteen years later that boy, into whose
youth and early training not even the mention of anything military
ever crept, was writing letters home from fire trenches in France, and
signing them "Your 'Temporary Gentleman.'"
For seven years after his father's death the boy attended a day school
in Brixton. The tuition he there received was probably inferior in
many ways to that which would have fallen to his lot in one of the big
establishments presided over by the County Council. But his mother's
severely straitened circumstances had rather strengthened than lowered
her natural pride; and she preferred to enlarge the sphere of her
necessary sacrifices, and by the practice of the extremest thrift and
industry to provide for the teaching of her two children at private
schools. The life of the fatherless little family was necessarily a
narrow one; its horizon was severely restricted, but its respectability
was unimpeachable; and within the close-set walls of the little Brixton
home there never was seen any trace of baseness, of coarseness, or
of what is called vulgarity. The boy grew up in an atmosphere of
reticence and modesty, in which the dominant factors were thrift, duty,
conscientiousness, and deep-rooted family affection.
The first epoch of his fatherless life closed when our "Temporary
Gentleman" left school, at the age of fifteen, and mounted a stool in
the office of a local auctioneer and estate agent, who, in the previous
decade, had had satisfactory business dealings with the youth's father.
This notable event introduced some change into the quiet little
mother-ruled _ménage_; for, in a sense, it had to be recognised that,
with the bringing home of his first week's pay, the boy threatened
to become a man. The patient mother was at once proud and a little
disconcerted. But, upon the whole, pride ruled. The boy's mannishness,
brought up as he had been, did not take on any very disconcerting
shapes, though the first cigarette he produced in the house, not very
long after the conclusion of the South African War, did prove something
of a disturbing element just at first.
The South African War affected this little household, perhaps, as much
as it would have been affected by a disastrous famine in China. It
came before the period at which the son of the house started bringing
home an evening newspaper, and while the only periodicals to enter the
home were still _The Boy's Own Paper_ and a weekly journal concerned
with dressmaking and patterns. As a topic of conversation it was not
mentioned half a dozen times in that household from first to last.
The next really great event in the life of the auctioneer's clerk was
his purchase of a bicycle, which, whilst catastrophic in its effect
upon his Post Office Savings Bank account, was in other respects a
source of great happiness to him. And if it meant something of a wrench
to his mother, as a thing calculated to remove her boy a little farther
beyond the narrow confines of the sphere of her exclusive domination,
she never allowed a hint of this to appear. Her son's admirable
physique had long been a source of considerable pride to her; and she
had wisely encouraged his assiduity in the Polytechnic gymnasium of
which he was a valued supporter.
For the youth himself, his bicycle gave him the key of a new world,
whilst robbing the cricket and football clubs to which he belonged of
a distinctly useful member. He became an amateur of rural topography,
learned in all the highways and by-ways of the southern Home Counties.
His radius may not have exceeded fifty miles, but yet his bicycle
interpreted England to him in a new light, as something infinitely
greater and more beautiful than Brixton.
Quietly, evenly, the years slid by. The boy became a youth and the
youth a man; and, in a modest way, the man prospered, becoming the
most important person, next to its proprietor, in the estate agent's
business. The mother's life became easier, and the sister (who had
become a school-teacher) owed many little comforts and pleasures to the
consistent kindliness of one who now was admittedly the head of the
little household and its chief provider. He never gave a thought to the
State or felt the smallest kind of interest in politics; yet his life
was in no way self-centred or selfish, but, on the contrary, one in
which the chief motive was the service of those nearest and dearest to
him. Whilst rarely looking inward, his outward vision was bounded by
the horizon of his well-ordered little home, of the Home Counties he
had learned to love, and of the south-coast seaside village in which
the family spent a happy fortnight every summer.
They were in that little seaside village when the Huns decreed
war and desolation for Europe in August, 1914, and the three were
a good deal upset about the whole business, for it interfered with
the railway service, and broke in very unpleasantly upon the holiday
atmosphere, which, coming as it did for but one fortnight in each
year, was exceedingly precious to the little family. However, with the
Englishman's instinct for clinging to the established order, with all
the national hatred of disturbance, they clung as far as possible to
the measured pleasantness of their holiday routine, and, after a week,
returned to the workaday round of life in Brixton.
Then began a time of peculiar stress and anxiety for the little
household, the dominating factor in which was the growing strangeness,
as it seemed to them, of its actual head and ruler; of the man in the
house. At first he talked a great deal of the war, the overpowering
news of the day, and he passed many scathing criticisms upon the
conduct of the authorities in their handling of the first stages of the
monstrous work of preparation. He had much to say of their blunders
and oversights; and somewhat, too, of what he called their criminal
unpreparedness. He stopped talking rather abruptly at breakfast one
morning; and one of the headlines which subsequently caught the eyes
of his sister, in the newspaper her brother had propped against the
coffee-pot, put this inquiry, in bold black type:
"WHOSE FAULT IS IT, MR. CITIZEN, THAT THE COUNTRY IS UTTERLY
UNPREPARED FOR WAR?"
Those nightmarish early days of the great war slowly succeeded one
another, and the mother and daughter grew perturbed over the change
they saw creeping over their man. He talked hardly at all now. All the
old cheery, kindly good humour which had provided half the sunshine
of their lives seemed to be disappearing and giving place to a queer,
nervous, morose sort of depression. It was as if their man lived a
double life. Clearly he was much affected, even absorbed, by some
mental process which he never so much as mentioned to them. Morning
and evening they saw him, and yet it was as though he was not there,
as though he lived and had his being in some other world, aloof from
the old cosy, familiar, shared world in which they had always been
together. The house-wifely eye of his mother noted with something like
alarm that his bedroom candlestick required a fresh candle every day.
One had been wont to serve him for a fortnight. Always, she thought he
would unburden himself when he kissed her good-night. But he said never
a word; and the nerve strain in the little household, which had been so
quietly happy and bright, became almost unendurable.
Then the end came, with the beginning of the third week in September.
The evening was extraordinarily peaceful and fine. The sister and a
girl friend were at the little cottage piano. The visitor had a rather
rich contralto voice, and sang with considerable feeling. In the middle
of her third song the master of the house rose abruptly and walked out
of the room, closing the door sharply behind him. The song was one of
those called a "recruiting song." Late that night, when the visitor had
departed, the brother apologised to his mother and sister for leaving
them so abruptly, and spoke of a sudden headache. And the next evening
he brought home the devastating news that he had enlisted, and would be
leaving them next day for a military depot.
The news was received in dead silence. In some mysterious way neither
of the women had contemplated this as possible. For others, yes. For
their man--the thing was too wildly, remotely strange to be possible.
There was his business; and, besides--It was merely impossible. And
now he was an enlisted soldier, he told them. But, though they hardly
suspected it, not being given to the practice of introspection,
their man was not the only member of the little household in whom
a fundamental and revolutionary change had been wrought by the
world-shaking news of the past six weeks. In the end the women kissed
their man, and the central fact of his astounding intelligence was
not discussed at all. They proceeded direct to practical, material
arrangements. But when the time came for her good-night kiss, the
mother said, very quietly, "God bless you, dear!"; and the sister
smiled and showed a new pride through the wet gleam of her eyes.
And then the auctioneer's clerk disappeared from the peaceful purlieus
of Brixton and went out alone into an entirely new world, the like
of which had never presented itself to his fancy, even in dreams. He
became one of fifteen men whose home was a bell tent designed to give
easy shelter to perhaps half that number. He began to spend his days
in a routine of drill which, even to him with his gymnasium training,
seemed most singularly tiresome and meaningless--at first.
At the end of four weeks he returned home for a Saturday night and
Sunday in the Brixton house; and he wore one stripe on the sleeve of
his service jacket. To his intelligence there now was nothing in the
whole intricate round of section, platoon, and company drill which was
meaningless, however wearing it might sometimes seem. There was a tan
on his cheeks, a clear brightness in his eyes, an alert swing in his
carriage, and a surprisingly crisp ring in his voice which at once
bewildered and delighted his womenfolk. He seemed not so much a new man
as the man whom they had always loved and respected, in some subtle way
magnified, developed, tuned up, brought to concert pitch.
In November he was advised by his Company Commander to apply for a
Commission. The officer badly wanted him for a Sergeant, but this
officer had long since learned to place duty first and inclination a
long way behind; and it was apparent to him that in this tall, alert
Lance-Corporal of his, as in so many hundreds of other men in the
ranks, there was the making of a good officer.
Shortly before Christmas, 1914, he was gazetted a Second Lieutenant,
and on New Year's Day he found himself walking across a parade ground
to take his place in front of the platoon he subsequently led in
France, after long months of arduous training in several different
English camps.
Three-quarters of a year passed between the day of this "Temporary
Gentleman's" enlistment and his writing of the first of the letters now
published over his pseudonym; and it may well be that all the previous
years of his life put together produced no greater modification and
development in the man than came to him in those nine months of
training for the New Army. The training had its bookish side, for he
was very thorough; but it was in the open air from dawn till dark, and
ninety per cent. of it came to him in the process of training others.
The keynotes of the training were _noblesse oblige_, sportsmanship and
responsibility, that form of "playing the game" which is at the root
of the discipline of the British Army. While he taught the men of his
platoon they taught him, in every hour of the day and many hours of the
night. They learned to call him "A pretty good sort," which is very
high praise indeed. And he learned to be as jealous of his men as any
mother can be of her children. He learned to know them, in fair weather
and in foul, for the splendid fellows they are; and in the intensely
proud depths of his own inner consciousness to regard them as the
finest platoon in the New Army.
And then came the longed-for day of the departure for France, for the
land he was to learn to love, despite all the horrors of its long
fighting line, just as he learned most affectionately to admire the
men and reverence the women of brave, beautiful France. In the letters
that he wrote from France he had, of course, no faintest thought of the
ultimate test of publication. That is one reason why his name is not
now attached to documents so intimate, even apart from the sufficiently
obvious military reasons.
A. J. D.
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE FIRST LETTER 1
THE FIRST MARCH 9
THE TALE OF A TUB 18
THE TRENCHES AT LAST 28
A DISSERTATION ON MUD 37
TAKING OVER ON A QUIET NIGHT 46
"WHAT IT'S LIKE" 56
THE DUG-OUT 67
A BOMBING SHOW 79
OVER THE PARAPET 89
THE NIGHT PATROL 99
IN BILLETS 111
BOMBARDMENT 121
THE DAY'S WORK 132
TOMMY DODD AND TRENCH ROUTINE 142
STALKING SNIPERS 152
AN ARTFUL STUNT 160
THE SPIRIT OF THE MEN 169
AN UNHEALTHY BIT OF LINE 179
THEY SAY---- 188
THE NEW FRONT LINE 197
A GREAT NIGHT'S WORK 210
THE COMING PUSH 220
FRONT LINE TO HOSPITAL 229
THE PUSH AND AFTER 239
BLIGHTY 250
A "Temporary Gentleman"
in France
THE FIRST LETTER
Here we are at last, "Somewhere in France," and I suppose this will
be the first letter you have ever had from your "Temporary Gentleman"
which hasn't a stamp on it. It is rather nice to be able to post
without stamps, and I hope the Censor will find nothing to object to in
what I write. It's hard to know where to begin.
Here we are "at last," I say--we were nearly a year training at home,
you know--and I shall not easily forget our coming. It really was a
wonderful journey from Salisbury Plain, with never a hitch of any sort
or kind, or so much as a buttonstick gone astray. Someone with a pretty
good head-piece must arrange these things. At ten minutes to three this
morning we were on the parade ground at ---- over a thousand strong. At
twenty minutes to eleven we marched down the wharf here at ----, well,
somewhere in France; and soon after twelve the cook-house bugle went
in this camp, high up on a hill outside the town, and we had our first
meal in France--less than eight hours from our huts on the Plain; not
quite the Front yet, but La Belle France, all the same. I wonder if I
should ever have seen it had there been no war?
Our transport, horses, mules, and limbers had gone on ahead by another
route. But, you know, the carrying of over a thousand men is no small
matter, when you accomplish it silently, without delay, and with all
the compact precision of a battalion parade, as this move of ours was
managed. Three minutes after our train drew up at the harbour station,
over there in England, the four companies, led by Headquarters Staff,
and the band (with our regimental hound pacing in front) were marching
down the wharf in column of route, with a good swing. There were four
gangways, and we filed on board the steamer as if it had been the
barrack square. Then off packs and into lifebelts every man; and in ten
minutes the Battalion was eating its haversack breakfast ration, and
the steamer was nosing out to the open sea, heading for France, the
Front, and Glory.
The trip across was a stirring experience in its way too. The wide sea,
after all, is just as open to the Boche as to us, and he is pretty
well off for killing craft and mines. Yet, although through these long
months we have been carrying troops to and fro every day, not once
has he been able to check us in the Channel. The way the Navy's done
its job is--it's just a miracle of British discipline and efficiency.
All across the yellow foam-flecked sea our path was marked out for us
like a racecourse, and outside the track we could see the busy little
mine-sweepers hustling to and fro at their police work, guarding the
highway for the British Army. Not far from us, grim and low, like a
greyhound extended, a destroyer slid along: our escort.
The thing thrilled you, like a scene in a play; the quiet Masters of
the Sea guarding us on our way to fight the blustering, boastful,
would-be stealers of the earth. And from first to last I never heard a
single order shouted. There was not a single hint of flurry.
It is about seven hours now since we landed, and I feel as though
we had been weeks away already--I suppose because there is so much
to see. And yet it doesn't seem very foreign, really; and if only I
could remember some of the French we were supposed to learn at school,
so as to be able to understand what the people in the street are
talking about, it would be just like a fresh bit of England. Although,
just a few hours away, with no sea between us, there's the Hun, with
his poison gas and his Black Marias and all the rest of the German
outfit. Well, we've brought a good chunk of England here since the war
began; solid acres of bully beef and barbed wire, condensed milk and
galvanised iron, Maconochie rations, small-arm ammunition, biscuits,
hand grenades, jam, picks and shovels, cheese, rifles, butter, boots,
and pretty well everything else you can think of; all neatly stacked in
miles of sheds, and ready for the different units on our Front.
I think the French are glad to see us. They have a kind of a welcoming
way with them, in the streets and everywhere, that makes you feel as
though, if you're not actually at home, you are on a visit to your
nearest relations. A jolly, cheery, kindly good-natured lot they are,
in spite of all the fighting in their own country and all the savage
destruction the Huns have brought. The people in the town are quite
keen on our drums and bugles; marching past them is like a review. It
makes you "throw a chest" no matter what your pack weighs; and we are
all carrying truck enough to stock a canteen with. The kiddies run
along and catch you by the hand. The girls--there are some wonderfully
pretty girls here, who have a kind of a way with them, a sort of style
that is French, I suppose; it's pretty taking, anyhow--they wave their
handkerchiefs and smile. "Bon chance!" they tell you. And you feel they
really mean "Good luck!" I like these people, and they seem to like us
pretty well. As for men, you don't see many of them about. They are in
the fighting line, except the quite old ones. And the way the women
carry on their work is something fine. All with such a jolly swing and
a laugh; something brave and taking and fine about them all.
If this writing seems a bit ragged you must excuse it. The point of
my indelible pencil seems to wear down uncommonly fast; I suppose
because of the rough biscuit box that is my table. We are in a tent,
with a rather muddy boarded floor, and though the wind blows mighty
cold and keen outside, we are warm as toast in here. I fancy we shall
be here till to-morrow night. Probably do a route march round the town
and show ourselves off to-morrow. The C. O. rather fancies himself in
the matter of our band and the Battalion's form in marching. We're not
bad, you know; and "A" Company, of course, is pretty nearly the last
word. "Won't be much sleep for the Kaiser after 'A' Company gets to
the Front," says "the Peacemaker." We call our noble company commander
"the Peacemaker," or sometimes "Ramsay Angell," as I think I must have
told you before, because he's so deadly keen on knuckle-duster daggers
and things of that sort. "Three inches over the right kidney, and when
you hear his quiet cough you can pass on to the next Boche," says "the
Peacemaker," when he is showing off a new trench dagger. Sort of, "And
the next article, please," manner he has, you know; and we all like him
for it. It's his spirit that's made "A" Company what it is. I don't
mean that we call him "the Peacemaker" to his face, you know.
We can't be altogether war-worn veterans or old campaigners yet,
I suppose, though it does seem much more than seven hours since we
landed. But everyone agrees there's something about us that we did not
have last year--I mean yesterday. From the Colonel down to the last man
in from the depot we've all got it; and though I don't know what it is,
it makes a lot of difference. I think it is partly that there isn't any
more "Out there" with us now. It's "Out here." And everything that came
before to-day is "Over in England," you know; ever so far away. I don't
know why a man should feel more free here than in England. But there
it is. The real thing, the thing we've all been longing for, the thing
we joined for, seems very close at hand now, and, naturally, you know,
everyone wants to do his bit. It's funny to hear our fellows talking,
as though the Huns were round the corner. If there's anything a man
doesn't like--a sore heel, or a split canteen of stew, or a button torn
off--"We'll smarten the Boche for that," they say, or, "Righto! That's
another one in for the Kaiser!"
You would have thought we should have had time during the past
six months or so to have put together most of the little things a
campaigner wants, wouldn't you? especially seeing that a man has
to carry all his belongings about with him and yet I would make a
sporting bet that there are not half a dozen men in the Battalion who
have bought nothing to carry with them to-day. There is a Y. M. C.
A. hut and a good canteen in this camp, and there has been a great
business done in electric torches, tooth-powder, chocolate, knives,
pipe-lighters, and all manner of notions. We are all very glad to be
here, very glad; and nine out of ten will dream to-night of trenches
in France and the Push we all mean to win V.C.'s in. But that's not to
say we shall forget England and the--the little things we care about
at home. Now I'm going to turn in for my first sleep in France. So
give what you have to spare of my love to all whom it may concern, and
accept the rest yourself from your
"_Temporary Gentleman_."
THE FIRST MARCH
We reached this long, straggling village in pale starlight a little
after six this morning; and with it the welcome end of the first stage
of our journey from the port of disembarking to our section of the
French Front.
In all the months of our training in England I never remember to
have seen "A" Company anything like so tired; and we had some pretty
gruelling times, too, during those four-day divisional stunts and in
the chalk trenches on the Plain; and again in the night ops. on the
heather of those North Yorkshire moors. But "A" Company was never so
tired as when we found our billets here this morning. Yet we were in
better form than any other company in the Battalion; and I'm quite sure
no other Battalion in the Brigade could march against our fellows.
The whole thing is a question of what one has to carry. Just now,
of course, we are carrying every blessed thing we possess, including
great-coats and blankets, not to mention stocks of 'baccy, torches,
maps, stationery, biscuits, and goodness knows what besides; far fuller
kits, no doubt, than tried campaigners ever have. (I found little
M----, of No. 3 Platoon, surreptitiously stuffing through a hedge a
case of patent medicines, including cough-mixture and Mother Somebody's
Syrup!) If you ever visit France you probably won't travel on your own
ten toes; but if you should, be advised by me and cut your kit down to
the barest minimum; and when you've done that, throw away a good half
of what's left.
Boots and socks. Some people will tell you that stocks and shares and
international politics are matters of importance. I used to think the
pattern of my neckties made a difference to our auctions. I know now
that the really big things, the things that are really important, are
socks and boots, and hot coffee and sleep, and bread--"Pang--Compree?"
says Tommy to the French women, with a finger at his mouth--and then
socks and boots again. You thought we paid a good deal in the shop for
those swanky trench boots, W---- and myself. That was nothing to what
we've paid since for wearing 'em. Excellent trench boots, I dare say;
but one has to walk across a good bit of France before getting to the
trenches, you know. Those boots are much too heavy to carry and no good
for marching. They look jolly and workmanlike, you know, but they eat
up too much of one's heels. Tell all the officers you know to come out
in ordinary marching boots, good ones, but ordinary ankle boots. Plenty
time to get trench boots when they get to the trenches. Good old Q.M.
Dept. will see to that. Our respected O.C. Company had no horse, you
know (we haven't yet made connection with our transport), and his heels
to-day look like something in the steak line about half-grilled.
We left camp at the port I mustn't name about eight o'clock last
night, and marched down the hill to the station in sort of thoughtful
good spirits, the packs settling down into their grooves. To save
adding its immensity to my pack, I wore my imposing trench coat, with
its sheep-skin lining; waist measurement over all, say a hundred
and twenty-five. Two of us had some difficulty about ramming "the
Peacemaker," through his carriage door into the train, he also being
splendid in a multi-lined trench coat. Then we mostly mopped up
perspiration and went to sleep.
Between twelve and one o'clock in the morning we left the train (not
without emotion; it was a friendly, comfortable train), and started to
march across France. The authorities, in their godlike way, omitted to
give us any information as to how far we were to march. But the weather
was fine, and "A" Company moved off with a good swing, to the tune of
their beloved "Keep the Camp Fires Burning." The biggest of packs seems
a trifle, you know, immediately after four hours' rest in a train. But
after the first hour it's astonishing how its importance in your scheme
of things grows upon you; and at the end of the third or fourth hour
you are very glad to stuff anything like bottles of Mother Somebody's
Syrup through a gap in the nearest hedge.
It was at about that stage that word reached us of one or two men
falling out from the rear companies. At this "the Peacemaker" began
jogging up and down the left of our Company--we march on the right of
the road in France--and, for all his sore heels and tremendous coat,
showing the skittishness of a two-year-old. And he's even good years
older than any of the rest of us, or than anyone else in the Company.
I chipped my fellows into starting up another song, and my Platoon
Sergeant cheerfully passed the word round that if anybody in No. 1
dared to fall out he'd disembowel him with a tin-opener.
As an actual fact not a single "A" Company man did fall out, though in
the last lap I was a bit nervy about old Tommy Dodd in 3 Section, whose
rifle I carried, and one or two others. At the end "the Peacemaker" was
carrying the rifles of two men, and everybody was thankful for walls to
lean against when we stood easy in this village. My chaps were splendid.
"Stick it, Tommy Dodd!" I said to the old boy once, near the end. His
good old face was all twisted with the pain of his feet and the mass of
extra kit which no doubt his wife had made him carry.
"Stick it!" says he, with his twisted grin. "Why, I'm just beginning
to enjoy it, sir. Just getting into me stride, I am. I wouldn't 've
missed this for all the beer in England, sir. But you wait till we get
alongside them blighted Boches, sir, an' see if I don't smarten some of
'em for this. I'll give 'em sore 'eels!"
It was only by lying to the extent of at least ten years that the old
thing was able to enlist, and you couldn't get him to "go sick" if you
drove him with a whip. The only way old Tommy Dodd's spirit could be
broken would be if you sent him to the depot and refused him his chance
of "smartening them blighted Boches."
Everyone in the village was asleep when we got there, but on the
door we found chalked up (as it might be "Lot So-and-so" at a sale)
"1 Officer, 25 men, 'A' Coy.," and so on. We officers shed our packs
and coats in the road--the joy of that shedding!--and went round
with our platoons picking out their quarters, and shepherding them
in before they could fall asleep. We knocked up the inhabitants, who
came clattering out in clogs, with candle-ends in big lanterns. Most
remarkably cheery and good-natured they all seemed, for that time of
day; mostly women, you know, you don't find many home-staying men in
France to-day. The most of the men's billets are barns and granaries,
and there is a good supply of straw. I can tell you there was no need
to sound any "Lights Out" or "Last Post." No. 1 Platoon just got down
into their straw like one man, and no buck at all about it.
Then when we had seen them all fixed up, we foraged round for our
own billets. Mine proved a little brick-floored apartment, in which
you might just swing a very small cat if you felt like that kind of
jugglery, opening out of the main room, or bar, of an estaminet--the
French village version of our inn, you know. Here, when they had had
their sleep, the men began to flock this afternoon for refreshment.
The drinking is quite innocent, mostly café au lait, and occasionally
cider. The sale of spirits is (very wisely) entirely prohibited. It's
most amusing to hear our chaps "slinging the bat." They are still at
the stage of thinking that if they shout loudly enough they must be
understood, and it is rather as a sort of good-humoured concession to
the eccentricities of our French hosts, than with any idea of tackling
another language, that they throw in their "Bon jor's" and the like.
"Got any pang, Mum?" they ask cheerfully. Another repeats it, in
a regular open-air auction shout, with a grin and an interrogative
"Compree?" at the end of each remark. Some, still at the top of
their voices, are even bold enough to try instructing the French.
"Françaisee, 'pang'--see? In Engletairy, 'bread'--see? Compree?
B-R-E-A-D, bread." And the kindly French women, with their smiling lips
and anxious, war-worn eyes, they nod and acquiesce, and bustle in and
out with yard-long loaves and bowls of coffee of precisely the same
size as the diminutive wash-hand basin in my room. I tell you one's
heart warms to these French women, in their workmanlike short frocks
(nearly all black), thick, home-knitted stockings, and wooden clogs.
How they keep the heels of their stockings so dry and clean, I can't
think. The subject, you notice, is one of peculiar interest to all of
us just now--sock heels, I mean.
There have been a good many jobs for officers all day, so far, and
only an hour or so for rest. But we have arranged for a sumptuous
repast--roast duck and sausages and treacle pudding--at six o'clock,
and the C.O. and Providence permitting, we shall all turn in before
eight. We don't expect to move on from here till early the day after
to-morrow, and shall have our transport with us by then. I gather we
shall march all the way from here to the trenches; and really, you
know, it's an excellent education for all of us in the conditions of
the country. People at home don't realise what a big thing the domestic
side of soldiering is. Our C.O. knew, of course, because he is an old
campaigner. That's why, back there in England, he harried his officers
as he did. We have to know all there is to know about the feet, boots,
socks, food, cleanliness, and health of each one of our men, and it has
been made part of our religion that an officer must never, never, never
eat, sleep, or rest until he has personally seen to it that each man in
his command is provided for in these respects. He has made it second
nature to us, and since we reached France one has learned the wisdom
of his teaching. I must clear out now--a pow-wow at Battalion Orderly
Room: the village Ecole des Filles. The weather has completely changed.
There's a thin, crisp coating of snow over everything, and it's clear
and dry and cold. We're all rather tired, but fit as fleas, and awfully
thankful to be getting so near the firing line. So make your mind quite
easy about your
"_Temporary Gentleman_."
THE TALE OF A TUB
If inclined to revile me for apparent neglect of you these last few
days, be charitable and revile lightly.
It's astonishing how full one's days are. And then when late evening
arrives and arrangements for next morning are complete, and one's
been the round of one's platoon billets and seen all in order for the
night--then, instead of being free to write one's own letters, one
must needs wade through scores written by the men of one's platoon,
who--lucky beggars!--have three times the leisure we can ever get.
Their letters must all be censored and initialed, you see. Rightly
enough, I suppose, the military principle seems to be never to allow
the private soldier to be burdened by any responsibility which an
officer can possibly take. The giving away of military information in
a letter, whether inadvertently or knowingly, is, of course, a serious
offence. (German spies are everywhere.) When I have endorsed all my
platoon's letters, the responsibility for their contents rests on my
shoulders and the men run no risks.
If I were an imitative bird now, you would find my letter reading
something after this style:
"Just a few lines to let you know how we are getting on, hoping this
finds you in the pink as it leaves me at present. We are getting very
near the Germans now, and you can take it from me they'll get what for
when we come up with 'em. The grub here is champion, but we are always
ready for more, and I shan't be sorry to get that parcel you told me
of. Please put in a few fags next time. The French people have a queer
way of talking so you can't always understand all they say, but they're
all right, I can tell you, when you get to know 'em, and I can sling
their bat like one o'clock now. It's quite easy once you get the hang
of it, this bong jor and pang parley voo. Milk is lay, and not too easy
to get. The boys are all in the pink, and hoping you're the same, so no
more at present," etc.
One sometimes gets mad with them for trifles, but for all the things
that really matter--God bless 'em all! By Jove! they _are_ Britons.
They're always "in the pink" and most things are "champion," and when
the ration-wagon's late and a man drops half his whack in the mud, he
grins and says, "The Army of to-day's all _right_"; and that, wait till
he gets into the trenches, he'll smarten the Boches up for that! Oh,
but they are splendid; and though one gets into the way of thinking
and saying one's own men are the best in the Army, yet, when one means
business one knows very well the whole of the New Army's made of the
same fine stuff. Why, in my platoon, and in our Company for that
matter, they are every mother's son of them what people at home call
rough, ignorant fellows. And I admit it. Rough they certainly are;
and ignorant, too, by school standards. But, by Jingo! their hearts
are in the right place, and I'd back any one of them against any two
goose-stepping Boches in the Kaiser's Prussian Guard.
And, with it all, mind you, they're so English. I mean they are
_kind_, right through to their bones; good fellows, you know;
sportsmen, every one of 'em; fellows you'd trust to look after
your mother. They're as keen as mustard to get to the strafing of
Boches; but that's because the Boche is the enemy, war is war, and
duty is duty. You couldn't make haters of 'em, not if you paid 'em
all ambassadorial salaries to cultivate a scowl and sing hymns of
hate. Not them. Not all the powers of Germany and Austria could make
baby-killers, women-slayers, and church-destroyers of these chaps of
ours. If I know anything about it, they are fine soldiers, but the
Kaiser himself--"Kayser," they call him--couldn't make brutes and
bullies of 'em. Warm their blood--and, mind you, you can do it easily
enough, even with a football in a muddy field, when they've been on
carrying fatigues all day--and, by Jove! there's plenty of devil in
'em. God help the men in front of 'em when they've bayonets fixed! But
withal they're English sportsmen all the time, and a French child can
empty their pockets and their haversacks by the shedding of a few tears.
But I run on (and my candle runs down) and I give you no news. This
is our last night here, and I ought to be asleep in my flea-bag, for
we make an early start to-morrow for our first go in the trenches. But
it's jolly yarning here to you, while the whole village is asleep, and
no chits are coming in, and the Battalion Orderly Room over the way is
black and silent as the grave, except for the sentry's footsteps in
the mud. I'm in rather good quarters here, in the Mayor's house. When
we left that first village--I'm afraid I haven't written since--we had
three days of marching, sleeping in different billets each night. Here
in this place, twelve miles from the firing line, we've had five days;
practising with live bombs, getting issues of trench kit, and generally
making last preparations. To-morrow night we sleep in tents close to
the line and begin going into trenches for instruction.