IN CAMP
I have often remarked that English writers use the word “depression”
much more frequently than do writers on this side of the water, and I
have often wondered what could be the reason for this. I had not passed
one week in England before I knew. A few days in an English military
camp will give one an idea of what depression is.
The military camp to which we were sent was Bramshott--a great
collection of long, low, one-story huts, built row on row, with a door
at each end, opening into muddy lanes that ran the whole length of the
camp. It was raining mildly the evening we arrived and we marched in
the darkness for three miles along soft muddy roads, and now and again
we splashed through a puddle, though we tried to avoid them.
There seems to be an especially slippery quality about the mud of
England,--to say nothing of that of France--that makes it very
difficult to retain one’s balance. My cane, which according to military
regulations I always carried, for the first time now proved useful.
Day after day as the soldiers of the camp drilled in the soft, muddy
squares, their movements resembled sliding more than orderly marching.
Sometimes thick pads of the soft, yellow mud clung heavily to their
feet; very often a gentle drizzle of rain fell, and nearly always the
sky was dark grey and sombre, so that one wondered no longer why the
word “depression” should be so frequently used in English literature.
But notwithstanding the mud and the dark skies, many of us grew to like
England. There were many quaint, winding roads hedged in places with
hawthorne bushes or spruce or boxwood. These led us into delightful
little country villages with their old free-stone churches, sometimes
covered with ivy that often ran for a long distance up the old Norman
tower.