CASSEL AND IN HOSPITAL (NOVEMBER 1917)
About this time I went to Paris and met several Generals and Mr.
Andrew Weir (now Lord Inverforth), and it was arranged that Aikman was
to go home to the War Office and that I, perhaps, might have my
brother out later to look after me. Aikman left, and I was very
lonely. A better-hearted companion and a kinder man one could not
meet, and regarding the intricacies of "King's Regulations" and
such-like things, he was a past master.
After this, whenever I went to Paris, the great thing was to stop on
the way at Clermont and lunch with "Hunchie." "Hunchie" kept the
buffet at the station. He had a broken back and had been a chemist in
Paris, but said he had come to the station at Clermont for excitement.
It was so exciting that Maude proposed stopping there for a rest cure!
But "Hunchie's" lunches were excellent. I remember one day on my way
to Paris, I asked him at lunch if he had any Worcestershire Sauce; he
had not. He asked me when I was coming back North again. I said the
next day, which I did, and stopped for lunch. He had the sauce. He had
been to Paris to get it. "Hunchie" was a wonder, so was Madame, and so
was their dog "Black."
One spot in Paris, the Gare du Nord, will always mean a lot to the
British Army on the Western Front. What sights one saw there!--masses
of humanity, mostly British officers and men, each with their little (p. 056)
"movement order": there they were in the heart of the Gay City. Yet
that little slip of paper would, in a couple of hours, send them to
Amiens, and a little later they would be at the front suffering Hell.
Laboreur did a wonderful etching of an officer bidding farewell to his
wife at the Gare du Nord. It gave the whole tragedy of the place--the
blackness, smoke, smell and crush. There, any night during an air
raid, one could not help thinking what would happen if the Boche got a
bomb on the Gare, with its thousands of fighting men all jambed
together under its glass roof in the semi-darkness. What a slaughter!
And yet through it all, if the old Gare could only speak, it could
tell some strange and amusing tales of that time--tales that would
make one laugh, but with the laughter there would be a catch in the
throat and a swimming in the eyes. It is extraordinary how funny
sometimes the most tragic things can be.
The weather had become very bad and cold, and I worked on all
impossible out-of-door days in my room in the "Hôtel de la Paix,"
which was known as the "Bar." My only rule was that the "Bar" was not
open till 6.30 p.m. At times it nearly rivalled "Charlie's Bar." At
what hour the "Bar" closed I was not always certain, as, no matter who
was there, at about 10:30 I used to undress and go to bed, and so
accustomed did I get to the clink of glasses and the squirt of the
syphons that I slept calmly through it all. Among the regular
attendants when in Amiens were Captain Maude, "Major" Hogg, Colonel
MacDowall of the 42nd G.H., Colonel Woodcock, Colonel Belfield (the
Spot King), Captain Ernest Courage (Jorrocks), Captains Hale and Inge
(then of the Press), Bedelo (Italian correspondent), and Captain
Brickman--a merry lot, taking them all round, and that room heard some
good stories; some may have been not quite nice, but none were as (p. 057)
dirty or disreputable as the room itself, with its smell of mud,
paint, drink, smoke, and the fumes from the famous "Flamme Bleue"
stove. The last man to leave the bar had to open the window. This was
a firm rule. It sometimes took the last man a long time to do it, but
it was always done.
[Illustration: XXIII. _Changing Billets._]
By this period of the war nearly every French girl could speak some
English, and great was their anger if one could not understand them. I
remember a very nice girl, who worked at the "Hôtel de la Paix," came
to me one day and said solemnly, "My grandfadder he kill him."
"Gracious!" I said, "whom did he kill?" "He kill him," was the furious
reply. Apparently the poor grandfather, living under German rule at
Landrecies, had committed suicide.
I went back to Cassel and began to itch, mildly at first, and I was
not in the least put out. My brother came to France, and I went to
Boulogne to meet him. His boat was to arrive at 6.15 p.m., but did not
get in till just 10 p.m. They had been away down the Channel avoiding
something. Driving back to Cassel we had a fine sight of bombing and
searchlights. Hardly a night passed at this period that the Boche did
not have a "go" at St. Omer. One night, just then, they dropped three
torpedoes in Cassel as we were having dinner, but Suzanne, the
"Peach," at her desk, never fluttered an eyelid. I believe afterwards,
during the summer of 1918, when things were quite nasty at Cassel, she
never showed any signs of being nervous: just sat at her desk, made
out the bills, and occasionally made some lad happy by a look and a
smile.
On some evenings we used to give great entertainments in the kitchen
of the "Sauvage." I would stand the drinks, and Howlett (my chauffeur)
played the mouth-organ, and Green (my batman) step-danced. It was an (p. 058)
amusing sight watching the expressions of those old, fat Flemish
workwomen of the hotel.
The itching got worse, so one wet, black evening I went to see the
M.O., took off my clothes in a dirty, cold, dark room, and he examined
me carefully with the aid of an oil lamp. "You've got lice," he said.
"Really?" said I. "Have you got a servant?" "Yes," said I. "Well, go
back and give him Hell, and tell him to examine your clothes." I asked
him about my foot, which had a hole in it about the size of a
sixpence. "That's nothing," said he. "Keep it clean." So back I went,
down the black cobbled street, called up my faithful boys, Howlett and
Green, and told them I was lousy. I took my clothes off, and they
examined them with electric torches and candles and oil lamps. Not a
thing could they find. "Do you mind my looking at you, sir?" said
Howlett. So he had one look. Said he, "If it were lice got you into
that state, you'd be crawling with them."
I stood the pain and itching another couple of days, and sent for the
M.O. to come to me. As there was more light in my room, he came and
had a look. "Ah!" said he, "I thought last time it might have been
that: you've got scabies. You must leave here for X---- in the
morning, and have all your bed-clothes sent round to me before you
leave."
[Illustration: XXIV. _The Receiving-room: 42nd Stationary Hospital._]
In the morning I broke the news gently to Madame that I was a "dirty
dog," and that my bed must go for a bit to be purged, and went round
to the A.P.M. to say good-bye. When I told him where I was being sent,
he said, "That place! Don't you do it. I was waiting there the other
day to see someone, and I counted ten bugs on the wall." That put the
wind up me, so I wrote to the M.O. and said I had an important (p. 059)
meeting at Amiens that evening at 6 p.m., and that I would report at
the X---- hospital immediately after that. He seemed rather hurt at my
getting out of his reach, but he let me go (as I mentioned having to
see the C.-in-C. on the way. It was wonderful what the mention of the
C.-in-C. did for one!). He gave me my slip for the hospital:
"Herewith Major Orpen, suffering from scabies. Please...."
and with this I departed for Amiens, where I reported to the Colonel
of the X---- Hospital. Over a whisky-and-soda I gave him the "slip,"
and he looked at my arm and said, "Yes, scabies," and I was put into
the isolation ward and treated for this disease. How more people did
not die in that hospital beats me. I personally never got any sleep,
and left in a fortnight nearly dead. Lights were out at 10 p.m. This
sounds good, but there were about eight of us in the ward. I had to
have my foot treated every three hours. The man in the next bed to
mine was treated for something every two hours; and nearly all the
other beds were treated three or four times during the night. For all
these treatments the lights blazed about twenty times each night, and
some of the treatments were very noisy. At 6.30 a.m., in the dark, the
nurse came round, and anyone who was not dying was turned out of bed.
Why, I know not: there was no heat in the place. If you were well
enough you went off to a soaking sort of scullery and heated some
water over a gas-jet and shaved. If you were not well enough, you sat
in your dressing-gown on a chair. You were not allowed to sit on your
bed. At 8 a.m. you were given an extraordinarily bad breakfast--porridge
with no milk, tea with no sugar, bread with--most days--no butter. (p. 060)
After breakfast you could go to bed again, but this was not allowed if
you were going to be let out during the day, as I was most of the
time. So there you sat again, freezing, till an orderly came and said
your bath was ready, usually about 9.30 a.m.--three hours after you
had left your bed. The bath was in an outhouse about fifty yards
across the yard from the ward. In hail, rain or snow, you had got to
go there. In it I was boiled in a bath, scrubbed all over with a
nail-brush, and then smothered all over with sulphur--wet, greasy,
stinking sulphur rubbed in all over me. I dressed by putting on a pair
of pyjamas first. These more or less kept this grease from getting
through to my other clothes, and I was allowed out to work--a sick,
freezing, wet individual. But my room at the "Hôtel de la Paix" was
warm, and I sat over my "Flamme Bleue" all the morning. After I had
been treated with sulphur for "scabies" a couple of weeks, a hole came
in my throat just like the one I had on my foot--a white hole with a
black band round it, and all the flesh for about six inches beyond it
a deep scarlet. One morning the boy who washed me said: "I beg your
pardon, sir, but what are you being treated for?" "Scabies," said I.
Said he: "Don't say I said so, sir, but show the M.O. that thing on
your neck. You haven't got scabies, and this sulphur will kill you
soon." So I waited for the M.O. till he did his rounds. When he came
to me he said the usual, "Everything all right with you?" "No," said
I. "I've got a scabie on my neck that is worrying me." So he had a
look at it and said: "I don't think this treatment is doing you much
good. I shall get you dismissed from the hospital to-day." So I was
chucked out. I happened to have blood-poisoning, not scabies, and I (p. 061)
have it still. During the time I was in hospital, I got four very
amusing poems from a General at G.H.Q. They were the bright spots
during those days. I am sorry they are too personal to print.
[Illustration: XXV. _A Death among the Wounded in the Snow._]
About this time an officer told me a good story about my friend,
Carroll Carstairs. The Cambrai battle was on, and the Grenadier Guards
were advancing through a village. Carroll was with a brother officer,
and said suddenly, "Look at the shape of that church now! Isn't it
magnificent?" Another shell shrieked and hit the structure, and he
said, "Damn! the fools have spoilt it." I believe it was during this
battle he earned the M.C.
My brother became very popular with those he met in France. Too
popular, indeed, with the girls in the hotel at Amiens to please Maude
or myself. Maude and I used to complain about it. Maude would say,
"William, here you and I have been slaving for months to make
ourselves liked by these girls, and your blinking little brother comes
along, and cuts us out in a few days. It's disgusting." It was true:
Maude, the A.P.M., and I, "le petit Major," took a back seat. We
worked hard to prevent it, my brother did nothing: he kept silent,
laughed, and won. It was very sad, and we were much upset.