July, 1915
_July 1st._ In place of the old hotel, where operations are still being
carried on, our new hut has sprung up. The dimensions, let me see,
are somewhere about 120 feet by 40 feet. Beside the platform at the
far end lies the library, to fill which our store of books is to be
greatly enlarged. Behind the counter are situated the ladies' room, the
store-room, the mess-room, to beautify which I am busy all day making
curtains, etc.
The kitchen is so small that it is not easy to get range and sink and
boilers fitted in, but a patent coal-shed adjoining, by means of which
one may shovel coal straight from the shed on to the fires through a
lifting door, is a convenience. We glory in a bath for the resident
secretaries, and if other sanitary accommodation is of the most
primitive, we console ourselves that, being under military inspection,
it is bound to be hygienic.
[Illustration: OUR NEW HUT]
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A HUT
Behind the counter are situated the store-room and the mess-room]
Our hut has the advantage of standing in its own field, which,
though none too even for cricket pitches, should make an excellent
football ground, to popularise which we have decided to have a formal
opening ceremony, preceded by sports.
In the interim of getting things ready for the hut I am lending a hand
at an Expeditionary Force canteen. The work, being in a camp where all
the men have been under fire, is intensely interesting. But, of course,
the social element is lacking.
Apart from the amusements and distractions offered, the men seem to
appreciate the Y.M.C.A. so much, because within the shelter of its
walls they can forget for the moment the stringent military discipline
under which they live.
_July 2nd._ In my hotel are quartered the latest "Lena Ashwell Concert
Party," whose good humour keeps the whole place alive. The place is so
noisy that it is impossible to sleep. Said the humorist of the party,
"That reminds one of the tale of the man in an hotel who was greatly
disturbed by someone walking about in the room above. The second night
things were no better; the third, the place shook as if he were jumping
the house down. Going upstairs he tapped at the door and said, 'I say,
old fellow, do you mind letting me get a little sleep? You've kept me
awake three nights with your noise.'
"'Am I disturbing you?' came the rejoinder. 'I'm so sorry. You see, I'm
under doctor's orders, and he's given me some medicine and told me to
take it two nights running and skip the third!'"
_July 3rd._ It is no easy matter now to get a photograph taken,
even of so harmless a thing as a grave. Nevertheless, in reply to a
request from a woman whose son is buried here, we resolved to leave
no stone unturned to obtain the necessary permits. And, as we waited
for the signing and countersigning of the valuable documents at the
Commandant's office, whilst outside the "Caterpillars" rumbled past,
taking their heavy guns up to the front, we wondered whether the
same stringent regulations apply to the many "neutral" seamen, whose
business, on cargo steamers, brings them into the port.
_July 9th._ By the evening the usual septic throat had claimed
me victim, and in spite of strenuous efforts to attribute it to
imagination, it is necessary to bow to the verdict that quarantines
one as a "Query Diphtheria" case.
Faced with the idea of being isolated in a bathing-box ward and nursed
by orderlies, there is nothing left for it but to take the landladies'
advice and pray. Really, their faith is wonderful. They pray for
everything; and seeing old Madame has a very short memory, and is
always losing things for which she proceeds to pray without making the
least effort to find them, St. Antony must be getting rather tired of
this house!
Blinding rain in a jerry-built summer villa is not exactly cheerful, in
spite of the Madonna lilies with which it is possible to adorn one's
attic.
_July 15th._ The finishing touches are being put to the new building.
My "Query Diphtheria" throat proved to be a false alarm, and now,
having toiled for nine hours, behold me taking a moment's rest on the
veranda, whilst thirty men--voluntary fatigue parties, who came in
response to a hint that their assistance would be appreciated--are at
work on different jobs.
Ten are darkening the table legs with permanganate of potash. Some are
cleaning windows and others pasting on our "Dutch" frieze, whilst a
little Scotty, who has been lent us as an orderly to help over these
first days, and whose dialect is so broad that even his own compatriots
sometimes fail to interpret, is watering and hanging geraniums we have
had out from England. Yes, there is a breath of home about our hut.
Bright English pottery adorns the shelves, bright curtains relieve the
Mediterranean blue of the walls, and, as I said before, our plants,
straight from Covent Garden, make the veranda as unwarlike as it is
possible to make it.
_July 16th._ Our hut certainly opened with _éclat_! In spite of the
fact that at midday the place was still full of French painters and
workmen, we managed to be superficially in order by four o'clock when
the D.D.M.S. declared the building open.
No sooner had the decorators laid down their tools at midday for lunch
than we bundled their ladders and paints outside and set to work to get
the hall straight.
In spite of the rain and biting wind, our campaign for opening with
sports in the afternoon was carried through; and after the many kindly
speeches and wishes for the welfare of the work, I distributed the
prizes from the platform, and we concluded with a concert.
_July 18th._ And now we are all suffering from a disease that might be
called "Hut fever"; its symptoms, a readiness to do anything to get the
place in order and (in spite of the still wet green paint that leaves
anyone who is careless enough to lean against the doors a souvenir not
easily eradicated) to make it into the finest centre at the Base.
The men themselves are equally enthusiastic, and one of them, the local
versifier, brought us a poem penned for the occasion, which I quote as
it stands:
_"There's poets come and poets go,
You've heard of that no doubt,
But guess before you've heard much more--
You'll want to throw me out.
But still, here goes; I'll really try
And get outside the rut,
By putting into time and rhyme
The tale of OUR NEW HUT._
_"What sauce to call it 'ours' I hear
A few outsiders say.
But we don't mean we own the scheme--
No, not a bit that way.
We only mean its our new home
It's the best way to put
Our thoughts about this new turn out
We've christened OUR NEW HUT._
_"Now if perchance in Wimereux
You're looking for a treat,
Step off the road to our abode
And kindly take a seat.
You'll find it filled with khaki boys,
From ploughman to the knut.
But men of any mob, hob-nob
Alright, in OUR NEW HUT._
_"I haven't got their names off pat;
These ladies and the gents,
Whose active work they never shirk,
No matter what events.
But I feel sure we'll bless their help
When peaceful lives we strut,
And trust that in our lives, survives
The good from OUR NEW HUT."_
Thus the American journalist who called on us to-day won our hearts
completely by designating the hut as the "Grosvenor Square of Boulogne."
The place is kept lively by the Canadians, who are stationed close by,
and who, with their music and overseas songs that carry one straight
out on to the prairies of "God's Own Country," never leave us a dull
moment.
Their ideas of justice, however, are rudimentary and original. To-day
the French girl whom, in default of an orderly, we keep to do the
rough work, was in trouble. She is an odd little creature of about
twenty-six, eternally brandishing imaginary knives at an imaginary
husband who ill-treats her. "The Little Savage" (thus we dubbed her
because of the way in which she holds her food in her mouth and tears
at it with both hands) had put her beautiful two-year-old boy out to
nurse when she came to work, and, on returning to see him, discovered
that he had been kidnapped by her parents-in-law.
After much ado with the police, and searching and wrangling at
relatives' houses, it transpired that, owing to her own peccadilloes,
the poor creature could not claim the custody of her child.
Crying like a wild thing, brandishing her helpless little fists,
calling down invectives against the laws whose aid, only a few hours
previously, she had been invoking, the girl returned; as I stood there,
trying to bring her to her senses with soothing words and a cup of
coffee, one of the Canadians came up and listened, open-mouthed, to her
story.
"Give me the child's address," he exclaimed, his great solemn eyes
fixed on the hysterical girl. "Law or no laws, it's hers. I'll steal
it back for her and brain that rotten husband when he comes out of the
trenches--and anyone else who gets in the way!"
Although there are so many tales illustrative of the Canadian lack of
class distinction being told on all sides, I cannot refrain from noting
down one told me by a Canadian to-day who fails utterly to see the
humour of it. A certain important general came along to a Canadian camp
to see his friend who was in command.
"Well, and what do _you_ want?" asked the private on guard at the
entrance.
"I want to see Colonel Birkdale," replied the General.
The private raised his voice. "Say, Birkdale," he shouted, "come right
here, there's a general wants to see you!"
"What else could he do?" asked the narrator of me. "He couldn't go off
and fetch the old man if he was on guard, could he?"
_July 23rd._ In spite of the conquest of German South-West Africa and
the advance of four hundred yards in Gallipoli, the situation seems
as indefinite as ever. Yet in the lull on the West is to be felt
the presaging of the advance, in anticipation of which we live on
the tip-top of expectation. This time there will be no shortage of
ammunition, they tell us; but, as Mr. Asquith says, we must "Wait and
see!" In the meantime we are less busy, and able to enjoy exhilarating
walks along the hospital-lined shore; or inland, to where that ruined
Jesuit monastery that has sheltered so many Indians and figured so
often in the papers as the "Ruins of Ypres," to rejoice the heart of an
unsuspecting public, rises an impressive pile against the sky.
Everywhere one notes the comparative opulence of our men, drawing from
1s. 2d. to 6s. per day, as compared with the French soldiers, who, less
well nurtured, only receive 1/2d.!
And if the tremendous wastage that went on during the early months has
now ceased; if loaves and meat are no longer buried in large quantities
daily, at least one could find quite a number of poverty-stricken
French families able to subsist happily on the "leavings" of the camps
hard by.
_July 29th._ I cannot help recalling how surprised everyone looked at
home if I spoke of "Blighty," or a friend who was now a T.C.O. (Train
Conducting Officer), and another who had been promoted to D.D.M.S.
(Deputy Director Medical Supplies). I believe they thought it "swank,"
though they themselves had added "strafing" and "hating" (in the
European-war sense) to their vocabulary.
Let us do ourselves justice! We at the Base are so accustomed to our
own "jargon" that it comes as second nature to us.
We are often asked for "a cup of you and me and a wad" (tea and bit
of bread and butter), or told that, although a man has spent all his
"toot" (money) on "pig's ear" (beer), he would be glad of a pinch of
"Lot's wife" (table salt) to eat with a sandwich, as the "shakles"
(stew) was so undercooked as to be uneatable; and I defy _anyone_ not
to lose reckoning of the rights and wrongs of their own language when
every other man states his wants in a terminology of his own. "Five
steps to heaven" is, perhaps, the favourite term for Woodbines; "Cape
of Good Hope" stands for soap; "jankers," confinement to barracks.
And is not every third office blazoned with hieroglyphics of some sort?
Does not every third man wear some kind of distinctive brassard with
its distinctive letters?