what is your cab doing up against these railings? You are causing an
obstruction.”
These questions were promptly answered by the old gentleman in a
sustained passage, supported by a soprano _obbligato_ from the interior
of the taxi. The “Special” listened judicially, and finally held up his
hand.
“That’ll do,” he intimated, and turned to the taxi-driver.
“What have you got to say?”
The taxi-driver, having by this time cleared his larynx of cigarette-ash,
shrugged his shoulders.
“Me? Oh, nothink! What I say don’t matter. I’m a poor man: I don’t count
for anythink. That old garrotter only tried to murder me—that’s all!
Flew at me, he did, out of the middle of the road like a laughin’ hyena,
and nearly broke my neck, besides wreckin’ my keb. But of course I don’t
matter. Let ’im ’ave it ’is own way. One law for the rich, and another—”
“Do you charge this gentleman with assault?” interpolated the Special,
who had evidently come to the conclusion that it was time to get down to
the rigid official formula provided for such occasions as this.
“Charge ’im? And waste ’alf a workin’ day at a blinkin’ police court,
waitin’ for the case to come on? Not me!” replied the taxi-man, with
evident sincerity. “Oh, no, I’m only a pore—”
“Constable, will you _please_ tell this man to drive me to Half-moon
Street?” demanded a high-pitched voice from the interior of the cab.
“I have no power to compel him to drive you anywhere, madam,” replied the
Special, with majestic humility.
“Well, what powers _have_ you got?” shouted the old gentleman.
“At your request, sir, I can take his name and number, and you can charge
him with declining to ply for hire when called upon to do so,” chanted
the limb of the Law. “Do you wish to charge him?”
“_Wish?_” shrieked the old gentleman. “Of course I wish! I mean”—as he
met the cold and steady eye of the Special—“I shall be obliged if you
will charge this man, officer.”
“Very good,” was the gracious reply. “Now I can _act_.” The Special
turned to the cabman, with pencil poised. “Your name?”
“Most certainly you shell ’ave my name!” retorted the other, with the
air of a master-tactician who at last sees his opponent walk into a
long-prepared trap. “_And_ my number, too! And you’ll oblige me,
Constable, by takin’ _his_ name and address as well. I don’t intend for
to—”
“Your name?” suggested the Special unfeelingly.
“Henery Mosscockle, Number Five-oh-seven-oh—”
Details followed, all duly noted. Then came the turn of the old
gentleman. He proffered a visiting-card, and gave another to the cabman,
who apologized for being unable to reciprocate, on the ground that he
had left his card-case on the Victrola in his drawing-room. Our Three
Musketeers, together with their D’Artagnan, were moved to audible
chuckles. The old gentleman, aware of their presence for the first time,
swung round and addressed them.
“American soldiers!” he exclaimed. “Good-morning, gentlemen. I am
sorry that you should have witnessed such a poor specimen of British
patriotism. None of that sort in your country, I’ll be bound!”
Our friends saluted politely, and cast about for an answer which should
be both candid and equally agreeable to all parties—not, when you come
to think of it, a particularly easy task. But it was that ill-used
individual, the taxi-driver, who replied. He thrust a bristling chin
towards the old gentleman.
“Patriotism?” he barked. “As man to man, tell me—’ow old are you?”
“That,” snapped the old gentleman, “is my business!”
“Well,” announced the taxi-driver, with the air of a man who has been
awarded a walk-over, “I’m fifty-seven. Any sons?”
“Two.”
“Two? Well, I got two too—one in the East Surreys and the other in the
Tanks. (’E was a machine-gunner in the first place.) Both bin in the
War four years. Both bin wounded. What are yours in? The Circumloosion
Office, or the Conchies’ Battalion?”[2]
“One is in the Coldstream Guards. The other was a Gunner, but he was
killed.”
The cabman became human at once.
“I’m sorry for that—sir! May I ask where?”
“First Battle of Ypres.”
“Epray? That was where our Bert stopped his first one.”
“I have a son too,” interpolated the Special eagerly—“in the—”
But no one took any notice of him. The cabman and the old gentleman had
entirely forgotten the existence of the rest of the party.
“Not badly wounded, I hope?”
“Nothing to signify—a couple of machine-gun bullets in the forearm. The
second time was worser. That was at a place somewhere in the ’Indenburg
line, spring of last year. ’En-in-’Ell, or some such name. Bert copped
a sweet one that time—bit o’ shell-splinter as big as me ’and. It was
nearly a year before ’e was fit to go back. You see—”
But the old gentleman had laid an indignant hand on the other father’s
shoulder.
“You mean to tell me,” he demanded, “that your son, twice badly wounded,
has been sent back to the firing-line again?”
“I do. He’s there now.”
For the second time that day the old gentleman began to shake his fist.
“It’s monstrous!” he shouted. “It’s damnable! They did the same thing
to my boy—my only surviving boy! It’s this infernal system of throwing
all the burden on the willing horse—this miserable cringing to so-called
Labour!” He choked. “The Government.… If I were Lloyd George.…” He
exploded. “_Pah!_”
“Never mind,” said a soothing voice from the interior of the cab. “If
he won’t go, he won’t. Besides, it’s no use making him violent. I dare
say I shall be able to get another taxi. Will you please open this door,
Constable? It seems to have stuck.”
The two parents stopped short, guiltily conscious of having strayed from
their text. Al Thompson addressed the driver.
“Say, friend,” he enquired, “ain’t you got enough gas to take this lady
where she belongs?”
“Gas?” The taxi-driver glared suspiciously.
“He means petrol,” interpreted the Special.
“I got about an inch-and-a-’alf in me tank,” replied the taxi-driver,
half-resuming his professional air of martyrdom. “I been on this box
since eight this mornin’, and ain’t ’ad a bite o’ dinner; but I’ll take
the lady anywheres in reason. She ain’t _arst_ me yet. I don’t want to be
disobligin’ to nobody. ’Elp everybody, and everybody’ll ’elp you! That’s
my motto. Give us a ’and, matey”—to Al Thompson—“and back my keb off the
curb. Crank ’er up, Jock! Thanks! Good-mornin’, all! Good-mornin’, sir!”
“Good-morning!” called the old gentleman. “You have my card. Come and
tell me how your sons are doing. Meanwhile I’ll tackle those rascals.
We’ll get something done! Twice wounded! The same old story! Oh,
criminal! Monstrous! Da—”
The cab rattled away, leaving the old gentleman to apostrophize His
Majesty’s Government. The Special, with the air of a man who has
performed a difficult and delicate task with consummate tact, packed up
his pocket-book and resumed his beat.
“And now,” enquired the peevish voice of Joe McCarthy, “_Where do we
eat?_”
They dined at a red plush restaurant somewhere off the Strand, and were
introduced to some further War economies.
First, the waitress. By rights she should have been a waiter.
“Bin here nearly two years, now,” she informed them. “The last man here
was called up in March. Sorry for the Army if there’s many more like him
in it. Flat feet, something cruel. Anyhow, there’s only us girls now.”
“And varra nice, too!” ventured Andrew Drummond.
“None of your sauce, Scottie,” came the reply, promptly, but without
rancour.
“You’re married, ma’m, I see,” said Al Thompson deferentially with a
glance at her left hand.
“Widow,” said the girl briefly. “Since the Somme, two years ago.”
“That’s too bad,” observed Al, painfully conscious of the inadequacy of
the remark.
“Most of us has lost some one. In the house where my sister’s in service
there’s three gone—all officers. I’m not one to ask for sympathy when
there’s others needs it more,” replied this sturdy little city sparrow.
“Carry on—that’s my motto! He was in the Field Artillery: just bin
promoted bombardier. Got any meat coupons?”
They shook their heads. As regularly rationed soldiers they were free
from such statutory fetters.
“Better have bacon and eggs,” announced Hebe. “They’re not rationed.” She
dealt them each a slice of War bread. Butter they found was unobtainable;
so was sugar. Andrew suggested that the party should solace itself with
beer; but his companions, like most Americans, whether of the dry habit
or the wet, preferred to drink water with their actual meals. The fact
that the water when served was tepid received due comment from Joe
McCarthy.
“That’s the way folks always tak’ it here,” explained Andrew. “I dinna
often drink it mysel’, I canna see what other kind o’ water ye could
expect.”
“You could put ice in it,” grunted Joe.
“Ice?” The Scottish soldier explained the omission with elaborate
tact. “In this country,” he pointed out, “ice is no obtainable in the
summer-time. We are situated here in the Temperate Zone, and if a body
needs ice, he has tae wait till the winter for it. Oot in Amerikey I doot
ye’ll be able tae gather it all the year roond. Aye! couldna fancy iced
watter mysel’. It must be sair cauld tae the stomach.”
Ice being unobtainable, it was obviously futile to ask for ice-cream.
Sweet corn the waitress had never heard of: the mention of waffles merely
produced an indulgent shake of the head. However, a timid enquiry for
pie—after Andrew had amended the wording to “tart”—was more successful.
It was obvious War-pie, but it satisfied.
“And,” enquired their conductor, as they shouldered their way, full-fed,
into the Strand, “where are you boys for now?”
They were bound, it seemed, for a great Ball Game between the American
Navy and Army, at a place called Stamford Bridge. This was outside the
ken of Andrew Drummond, but a policeman directed their attention to the
Underground Railway System of London.
Presently they found themselves at the great football ground, converted
for the time being into American territory. It is true that King George
himself sat in the Grand Stand, surrounded by Generals, Admirals, and
Councillors. It is true that thousands of British soldiers, sailors,
and civilians lined the ground, and that British brass bands made
indefatigable music. But it was America’s day. From the moment when the
teams lined up, and the two captains were presented to the King by an
American Vice-Admiral and an American Major-General, the proceedings were
controlled by the fans and rooters of the American Navy and Army.
How far the British contingent followed the intricacies of the combat
it is difficult to say. When Al Thompson pointed out a sturdy but
medium-sized player, and announced that he had once been a Giant, Andrew
Drummond merely wondered vaguely why he had shrunk. When another player
was uproariously identified as a late Captain of the Red Socks, the
English spectators mentally registered the Red Socks as some obsolescent
Indian tribe—like the Blackfeet.
But you cannot, as has been well said during this War, remain neutral on
a moral issue. Within twenty minutes every one on the ground was shouting
“Attaboy!” or consigning the umpire to perdition, or endeavouring to
imitate the concerted war-songs of the rival sides. When the sailors won
the game by a narrow margin every soldier present, American or British,
lamented to heaven.
“This is the End of a Perfect Day, I guess,” remarked that most
satisfactory guest, Al Thompson, as the trio made their way arm in arm
along the crowded Strand in the cool of the evening. “What do you say,
Ed?”
“Sure!” replied Mr. Gillette. “Fine!”
“You all right, Joe?” enquired Al.
The carper made no reply, but looked about him with a dissatisfied air.
“Seems to me,” he remarked querulously, “that this War ain’t such a
fierce proposition as folks made out. Look at these people all enjoying
themselves.”
“Well, I guess they done their day’s work,” said Gillette pacifically.
“Besides, most of them are in khaki—or else that hospital uniform”—as a
string of _char-à-bancs_ conveying convalescents to the theatre rattled
cheerfully past.
But the misanthrope would not be denied.
“These here wounded don’t appear to be wounded so bad,” he grumbled. “You
don’t never see no seriously wounded men in the streets of this town.”
“No,” rapped out Al Thompson, ruffled for once, “and you don’t see no
dead laying around neither! I guess if you was to take a walk through a
hospital, Joe McCarthy—No, you can cancel the hospital. This will do.”
They had reached Charing Cross Station. From the farther gate streamed
a slow-moving procession of loaded Red Cross ambulances. Another
procession, empty, was moving in at the nearer gate, to disappear inside
the station. Down an adjacent street stretched a line of more ambulances,
and more yet. But the busy crowd in the Strand gave little heed to the
spectacle. They had witnessed it, or could have witnessed it, at this
hour and in this place, among others, any evening during the past four
years.
Our friends halted, waiting for an opening in the close-moving stream.
Presently it slowed down and stopped, and Joe McCarthy led the way
across. But he paused curiously, as did the others, at the open back of
an ambulance, and peered in.
The car contained four passengers. Each lay very still upon his
stretcher—two upon the floor, and the other two packed neatly on shelves
overhead. All were rolled up in brown Army blankets. From the end of one
of these protruded a heavily splinted and bandaged foot. Another man
had his arm strapped across his chest. The third lay on his face, his
back torn by shrapnel. The fourth lay on his back. His head was swathed
in bandages, and only one eye was visible. It was closed. One hand was
bandaged; the other clasped to his bosom a German sniper’s helmet.
As they gazed, another figure edged in beside them—a London flower-girl,
in the usual dilapidated shawl and deplorable hat, with her fragrant
stock-in-trade clasped in the hollow of her left arm. She plucked a
couple of pink carnations from a bundle, and flung them to the man with
the bandaged head.
“For you, ole sport,” she announced, “with my love. So long!”
The wounded man opened his visible eye and smiled his thanks; and the
girl was passing on to the next ambulance, there to squander more of her
sole means of livelihood, when a hand of iron fell upon her shoulder. On
the defensive in a moment, she whirled round.
“Nar, then! You stop pawin’ me! I never done no—”
But Joe McCarthy, misanthrope, merely deprived her of the bundle of
pink carnations, placing in her grimy palm in exchange all the money he
happened to have with him. It was roughly three days’ pay—no mean sum in
the most highly paid Army in the world. Then leaning into the ambulance,
which had begun to move again, he deposited the flowers beside the
wounded soldier, and said gruffly:
“Say, Tommy!”
The solitary eye opened again, and a voice replied:
“Tommy yourself! I’m from Elizabeth, New Jersey. We’re all Doughboys in
here.”
The Three Musketeers, thrilled to the core, broke into a trot, and panted:
“You don’t say? Where you been fighting?”
“Place called Belleau Wood. Good-night, boys!”
It was their first contact with actuality.
[2] “Conchies,” being interpreted, means “Conscientious Objectors.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE PROMISED LAND
We have now discovered France. Our first impression of that fair but
voluble land is one of amazement that the inhabitants should be able to
speak such a difficult language so fluently. Even the children can do it.
Later, we modified that opinion—either because we found that the French
tongue was not so difficult as we had imagined, or more probably
because we had learned that in France a knowledge of French is not so
indispensable—at any rate, in war-time—as we had imagined. Indeed, we
found the French language quite as intelligible as some of the English
rural dialects. Contrariwise, the French appeared to understand our mode
of expression much more readily than some of our English hosts.
For instance, if you ask an English railway porter for such a simple
thing as the check-room or the news-stand, he will simply gape at you;
whereas, if you stride into a French country hotel and hold up one
finger—naturally one has to employ gesture just a little with the Latin
races—and say “Oon room!” in a firm voice, the proprietor will comprehend
at once, and smilingly hand you a key right away. One can only ascribe
this instant sympathy to the freemasonry of a common democratic ideal. Or
it may be that a room is the only thing which a hotel proprietor could
expect a stranger carrying a grip to ask for.
However, this by the way. The main point is that we are at last in
France—France, the land of the Great Adventure, for which our ardent
dreams and hard training have been shaping us for months past.
Still, at first sight it is not too easy to realize that we are there at
all; for the surroundings in which we found ourselves on landing might
have been lifted bodily from Hoboken.
Speaking of Hoboken, we note that the prevailing slogan of the moment,
posted on barrack walls, painted on transport wagons, even blazoned in
stencilled letters across the wind-shields of Staff automobiles, is:
_Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken by Christmas!_ To this pious aspiration one
ardent spirit has added, in smaller lettering: _But let it be Hoboken,
please, via Berlin!_
Certainly, the Armies of Invasion, both friendly and hostile, have
transformed France, each in its own way. The Hun in the east has effected
his share of the transformation in his own way, by fire, rapine, and
pillage. But the British and Americans in the west have left a mark
just as unmistakable and, it is to be hoped, more enduring. A great
army cannot disembark upon the soil of another people’s country without
importing a great deal of its own personality at the same time. That
accounts for the foregoing reference to Hoboken. The amount of portable
property that we have brought with us is enormous. There were days, not
far distant, when a soldier subsisted upon the country wherein he found
himself. During the Shenandoah Valley campaign Stonewall Jackson’s men
lived on unripe corn and green apples, for the very good reason that
there existed no means of providing them with anything else. Throughout
the centuries this fact has kept expeditionary forces down to reasonable
numbers; the size of an army was limited to the capacity of the country
to support it. But modern science has changed all that. Canned meat
has revolutionized warfare far more surely and permanently than the
aeroplane or the submarine. It is now possible, by modern methods of food
preservation and transportation, to arm practically a whole nation and
maintain it continuously and comfortably in the field thousands of miles
from its base of supplies. That is why France is the most overcrowded and
best-fed country in the world to-day.
Modern transportation has also made possible—which in warfare means
indispensable—the intensive employment of heavy artillery. We use
siege guns to-day where yesterday we employed eighteen-pounders and
seventy-fives. That involves the construction of complicated railroad
systems—tracks, sidings, locomotives, ammunition-wagons—all over
the country, operating forward and sideways behind the line. Two
years ago—twelve months ago—the spot where we find ourselves was a
sleepy third-rate seaport, whose very existence was known to few
English-speaking people, save the captains of Channel coasters. To-day
that port still slumbers in the Brittany sunshine, but it has thrown out
an _annexe_ many times larger than itself, comprising a complete system
of docks and basins, two hundred and fifty miles of railroad siding,
and enough storage accommodation to house two million tons of military
supplies.
But American activity has not halted there. To secure a provision of
fair drinking-water for the huge population of this mushroom city the
Engineers have constructed a great reservoir among the foothills a few
miles away—an enterprise which frankly astonishes the natives, to whom,
in common with the rest of their countrymen, water as a beverage is
unknown.
One other item—an inevitable item—swells the population of the district.
This is the great American Base Hospital, which has been erected by the
side of the main road leading inland from the coast. The hospital is a
city in itself. Its buildings, cunningly isolated one from another, cover
many acres, and contain twenty-four thousand beds. Thank God, these have
never yet all been occupied at one time.
And this great base port is only one of several. That fact is borne in
upon us at every turn by the prevalence of large printed signs, headed,
_Race to Berlin!_ which plaster the town. Upon these signs are printed
in column down the left-hand side the names of all the base ports used
by American troops—our own port among the number. At the opposite edge
of the sign there is a great black splash, marked BERLIN. The splash is
connected to each of the base ports by a straight black line. On each
line, at varying distances from the base ports, stands a small movable
flag. The big idea, any passer-by will tell you, is to stimulate activity
among the units forming the Service of Supply by means of healthy
competition. Every good day’s work in any port sets the flag of that port
an inch or two nearer Berlin. A port is not called upon to compete with
other ports (which would be manifestly unfair, for some are larger and
better equipped than others), but only with its own previous record in
the matter of unloading ships, and the like.
Attached to each diagram is a printed notice, pointing out in simple
language that hard work at the base is just as indispensable as hard
fighting at the front, and that when Victory comes the credit will
be shared equally by both departments. The notice is signed _John J.
Pershing_, and it has roused the dusky warriors at the various base ports
to a fever of emulation.
Certainly there is much to unload. An army carries as much personal
baggage as a prima donna. Observe these wharves. Here are great naval
guns—fourteen-inch. They are like millionaires, because each requires a
private railway train of its own. In fact they are super-millionaires,
because each requires a private track as well. There are great
motor-lorries, some from America, some from England. There is a fleet of
rolling kitchens—or “soup-guns,” as the Doughboy calls them-awaiting
horse-traction. At present they are hitched one behind another like a
string of ducks, and are attached to a road engine for transference to
the forward areas. There are mighty Mogul locomotives, shipped bodily
from the United States, together with the appurtenances thereof—even that
mysterious tolling bell on top of the boiler.
The American locomotive bell impresses Europeans enormously. They wonder
what it is for. On the whole they regard it with reverence; it confers a
sort of ecclesiastical sanctity upon American railroad travel. A Scotsman
once told me that whenever he visited America he used frequently to wake
up in the sleeping-car, standing in some great railroad junction in the
small hours, under the firm impression that he was back in his native
town on a Sunday morning.
As for the ordinary military stores, they come in one unceasing cataract.
Gasoline tanks; water-tanks; cold-storage carcasses; bags of flour;
canned meat; canned fruit; bales of clothing; consignments of tobacco;
chewing-gum, books, and other comforts. Liberty motors; aeroplanes;
machine guns; spare parts. The dingy, oddly painted ships come sliding
down from the horizon, deposit them all in mountain ranges upon dock and
wharf, then turn round and steal back to America for more.
Shells are not landed here. They are touchy and inflammable folk, and
have a private and exclusive place of debarkation of their own, higher up
the river.
But there is human freight to be deposited too. Here are two liners,
newly docked. Each, despite her great size, is heeling over towards the
wharf, as the biggest ships will when the whole cargo hangs over one
side. One cargo is white, the other coloured.
“Where yo’ from?” shrieks a stevedore, to the dusky grinning human
mountain above him.