A HARD TIME
_France, November 28th._
He is having a hard time. I do not see that there is any reason to make
light of it. If you do, you rob him of the credit which, if ever man
deserved it, he ought to be getting now--the credit for putting a good
face upon it under conditions which, to him, especially at the
beginning, were sheer undiluted misery. Some people think that to tell
the truth in these matters would hinder recruiting. Well, if it did, it
would only mean that the young Australians who stay at home are guilty
of greater meanness than one has ever thought. For the Australian here
has plunged straight into an existence more like that of a duck in a
farmyard drain than to any other condition known or dreamed of in his
own sunny land. He is resisting it not only passably but well. And if
you want to know the reason--as far as any general reason can be
given--the motive, which keeps him trying day after day, is the desire
that no man shall say a word against Australia. I don't know if his
country is thinking of him--a good part of it must be--but he is
thinking of his country all the time. Australia has made her name in the
world during this war--the world knows her now. It is these men--not the
men who shout at stadiums and race meetings at home, but the simple,
willing men who are described in this letter--who are making Australia's
name for her--and just at present holding on to it like grim death.
Even the life of a duck in a farmyard drain becomes in a wonderful way
supportable when you tackle it as cheerfully as that. It comes to the
Australian as a shock, at the first introduction--the Manning River
country after the Manning River flood has subsided is, as a New South
Welshman suggested, the nearest imitation that he has ever seen. But
then there was blue sky and dazzling sun over that; whereas here the
whole grey sky seems to drip off his hatbrim and nose and chilled
fingers and the shiny oil sheet tied around his neck, and to ooze into
his back and his boots. It is all fairly comfortable in the green
country from which he starts. There has been a fairly warm billet in the
half dark of a big barn, where the morning light comes through in
strange shafts and triangles up in the blackness amongst the gaunt roof
beams. There was a canteen--which is really an officially managed shop
for good, cheap groceries--in an outhouse at the end of the village;
there were three or four estaminets and cafés, with cheerful and
passably pretty mademoiselles, and good coffee, and very vile wine,
labelled temporarily as champagne. There was also--for some who obtained
leave--a visit to a neighbouring town.
The battalion moved off early--its much-prized brass band at its
head--and the men who didn't obtain leave at the tail. The battalion is
to be carried to the front in the same string of groaning autobuses
which brought out its weary predecessors. The buses are a great help
immensely valued--but the battalion has to march four miles to them--to
warm it, I suppose. The men who did not obtain leave are carrying the
iron cooking dixies for those four miles. In the nature of things
military, there will be another four miles to march at the other end.
The platoon at the tail thoroughly appreciates this. Its philosophy of
life is wasted, unfortunately, on four miles of stately, dripping French
elm trees which cannot understand, and one richly appreciative
Australian subaltern who can.
The battalion was not disappointed. The motor-buses brought it to a most
comfortable-looking village--pretty well as good as the one it had left.
It climbed out, and straightaway marched to another village five miles
distant. The darkness had come down--huge motor-wagons shouldered them
off the road into gutters, where they found themselves ankle deep in the
mud-heaps scraped by the road gangs. Every second wagon blinded them
with its two glaring gig-lamps, and slapped up the mud on to their
cheeks. A mule wagon, trotting up behind, splashed it into their back
hair, where they found it in dry beads of assorted sizes next morning.
It was raining dismally. The head of the column was commenting richly on
its surroundings--the platoon at the tail had ceased to comment at all.
The last couple were a pair who, I will swear, must have tramped
together many a long road over the Old Man Plains towards the evening
sun--old felt hats slightly battered; grim, set lips, knees and backs a
little bent with the act of carrying; and pack, oil sheet, mess tin
rising heavenwards in one mighty hump above their spines. At the gap in
a hedge, where the column turned off into a sort of mud lake, stood an
officer whose kindly eyes were puckered from the glare of the central
Australian sun. You could have told they were Australians at a mile's
distance. He looked at them with a queer smile.
"Are you the Scottish Horse?" he asked inquiringly.
"We are the blanky camel corps," was the answer.
That march at both ends of the motor trip was the adjutant's salvation.
When the battalion splashed up to its appointed billets, and found them
calculated for receiving only half of its number of soldiers awake, he
shifted two-thirds of them in; and, as they promptly fell to sleep the
moment the column ceased to move, he shifted in the remainder when they
were asleep.
When the battalion drew its breath next morning, it was inclined to
think that it was enduring the full horror of war; and was preparing to
summarise the situation. But before it could draw a second breath it was
marched off to--to what I will call a reserve camp. It was not
technically a reserve camp, which was farther on; but they knew it was a
camp for battalions to rest in--when they have been very good, and it
is desired to give them time to recover their wind. They were rather
"bucked" with the idea of this resting-place.
At midday they arrived there. That is to say, they waded up to a
collection of little tents, not unlike bushmen's tents in Australia, and
stood knee deep at the entrances, looking into them--speechless. They
were not much by way of tents at the best of times. There was nearly as
much mud inside as there was outside. But on top of the normal
conditions came the fact that the last battalion to occupy those tents
must have camped there in dry weather. Since there was not enough
headroom upwards it had dug downwards. And, as it had not put a drain
round them, the water had come in, and the interior of a fair proportion
of these residences consisted of a circular lake, varying in depth from
a few inches to a foot and a half.
The battalion could only find one word, when its breath came--and, as
the regiment which had made those holes, and the town major to whom they
now belonged, were probably of unimpeachable ancestry, I do not think
the accusation was justified. But when it realised that, good or bad,
this was the place where it was to pass the night, it split itself up,
as good Australian battalions have a way of doing.
"Which is the way to our tents, Bill?" asked the rear platoon of one of
the band, which had arrived half an hour before.
"I don't know--I'm not the blanky harbour-master," was the reply. The
battalion set to work, like a tribe of beavers, to make a home. It
banked up little parapets of mud to prevent water coming in. It dug
capacious drains to let the water which was in run out. It scraped the
mud out of the interior of its lake dwellings, until it reached more or
less dry earth. A fair proportion of the regiment melted out into the
landscape, and returned during the rest of the day by ones and twos,
carrying odd bits of timber, broken wood, bricks, fag ends of rusty
sheet iron, old posts, wire and straw. By nightfall those Australians
were, I will not say in comfort, but moderately and passably warm and
dry.
It so happened that they stayed in that camp four days. By the time they
left it they were looking upon themselves as almost fortunate. There was
only one break in its improvement--and that was when a dug-out was
discovered. It was a charming underground home, dug by some French
battery before the British came--with bunks and a table and stove. The
privates who discovered it made a most comfortable home until its fame
got abroad, and the regimental headquarters were moved in there.
Dug-outs became all the fashion for the moment--everyone set about
searching for them. But the supply in any works on the Allied side is,
unfortunately, limited--and after half a day's enthusiasm the battalion
fell back resignedly on its canvas home.
When it came back some time later to these familiar dwellings,
heavy-eyed and heavy-footed, there was no insincerity in the relief with
which it regarded them. They were a resting-place then. Another
battalion had kept them decently clean, and handed them over drained and
dry; for which thoughtfulness, not always met with, they were more
grateful than those tired men could have explained.
For they had been up into the line, and the places behind the line, and
out again.