THE COMFORTS OF THE FORCE--SPIRITUAL AND OTHER.
The Padres--The semi-religious organisations--E.F.C. Comforts--Studying
the Fighting man--The Great Beer Save.
"There has never been an army that had more chaplains, or that needed
them less." That was the verdict of one American observer on the British
Army--a sound one. The British Army was notably well supplied with
chaplains--"padres" as the soldier knows them; but this was not in
answer to a call for spiritual leaders to combat a special degree of
wickedness. Quite the contrary. The Army was a very well-behaved,
sober-minded institution on the whole, as if it recognised the solemnity
of its task and fitted its conduct accordingly. To this fact the French
population can bear witness. The French villagers among whom the British
soldiers have been quartered came to a view of them which was once
eloquently expressed: "They are lions in the trenches and lambs in the
villages."
So the padre went out for duty with the troops having no task of leading
a forlorn hope against ramping wickedness. His trouble was rather in the
other direction. "I don't see how I can have the 'front' to preach to
these men," said a padre attached to an Artillery Division one day: "I'd
rather they preached to me."
It really was a difficult task--that of the padre at the Front, and only
the best type of clergyman made a success of it. His attitude to life
had to be manly, his character brave. But the padre who ran risks just
for the sake of running them was often more of a bother than a help. The
best padre's spirit was that of the careful soldier who will face any
danger that comes in the way of duty, but will not go looking for danger
in a spirit of bravado. The padre could make two mistakes. He could take
things too easily and just be a parson available to conduct Divine
service when he was wanted to; or he could try to do too much, to
interfere too much and become a nuisance in the fighting line. The good
padre struck the happy mean. He had the knack of being there when he was
wanted, but he recognised that the Army's first duty was to fight, and
he did not get in the way of its fighting activities. Above all he did
not try to arrange a church parade for the morning after tired troops
from the line had reached rest billets.
One of the most successful padres in France was known as "the Lost
Sheep." He had a Mess to which he was properly attached and this Mess
was responsible for having a comfortable billet for him. But he was
rarely "At home." He wandered all over the district, picking up a meal
here and there and sleeping wherever he found himself after dinner. At
first it was thought to be fecklessness on his part. As a matter of fact
it was artfulness. Moving about as he did, taking a meal and a bed
anywhere, he got to know everybody and found out who needed him as
padre.
The actual organisation of the padre service was a little difficult for
the layman to understand. The "Principal Chaplain" with the Forces was a
Presbyterian clergyman, the Rev. J. M. Simms. Under him came all the
padres, including Roman Catholic priests, except the padres of the
Church of England, who had a separate organisation under a Deputy
Chaplain General, Bishop Gwynne, who had been Bishop of Khartoum before
the war. What was the exact reason for the division of authority I could
never quite make out. There was no ill-feeling at all or jealousy
between the various padres. The Principal Chaplain had his headquarters
at Montreuil and was a regular visitor to the Officers' Club. The Deputy
Chaplain General had his headquarters at Paris Plage.
Of the typical padre it was said that he was responsible for at least
as many sports meetings in rest camps as Divine services, but was a
genuinely spiritual man withal. There was credited to one the aphorism
that the men did so much worshipful work in the trenches that in rest
camps the first thing to be rightly thought of was relaxation.
G.H.Q. Staff I fear were poor Church-goers. The Commander-in-Chief set a
good example by attending Divine Service almost every Sunday at
Montreuil, but most of the Staff Officers followed the maxim "_laborare
est orare_" and were at their desks on Sunday. The padres understood the
position and there were no reproaches.
At meals at the Officers' Club there were always a few padres. We were
not expected to make too much concession to "the cloth" in the way of
conversation, and the average padre stood his chaffing with the best of
them.
I noted one, who had a rather pontifical manner (though he was a
thoroughly good fellow at heart), take a hard hit in a sporting fashion.
The conversation had turned on Lord Roberts' campaign before the war to
try to arouse the British people to a sense of the imminence of the war
and the necessity of preparation. The padre blundered in with:
"It seems to me that Lord Roberts and his friends must have been
singularly lacking in clearness of argument and persuasiveness seeing
that, knowing the truth as they did yet they were not able to convince
the people."
"Yes," retorted an officer, "arguing on the same lines, quite a number
of excellent gentlemen seem to have been singularly lacking in clearness
of argument and persuasiveness for nearly 2,000 years, seeing that,
knowing the greatest truth of all, they have not yet been able to
convince the world."
The padre took it in the right spirit and owned that it is not
necessarily a reflection on a preacher if his hearers will not listen.
Lord Roberts' name was venerated by most officers, and the Army was glad
that when the time came for the good old man to lay down his sword it
was from among old comrades at G.H.Q. that he passed away.
* * * * *
In addition to the padre service the British soldier in the field had a
great number of semi-spiritual organisations looking after him. These
followed a sound rule, generally, of providing hot coffee and harmless
recreation as the best missionary work. G.H.Q. recognised the Y.M.C.A.,
the Church Army and the Salvation Army as semi-religious agencies, and
all these bodies did excellent work in providing rest huts and reading
and recreation rooms for the troops, and thus keeping them out of
mischief when they had idle times. Satan, when he came roaming round,
found the British Army well dug in, and plenty of wire out.
To some proposed forms of guarding the welfare of the soldier G.H.Q. had
to refuse sanction. There were many cranks with very curious notions on
this point. Perhaps the most remarkable proposal was that which came
from a lady, the goodness of whose intentions was obvious but who had "a
marked moral strabismus," as a Scots doctor pawkily observed. She wanted
to form an organisation of ladies (and said she could do so) to meet
soldiers at the ports of disembarkation and take them to homes where
would be provided all the comforts of domesticity. I believe that some
such organisation once actually existed in an Eastern country whilst it
was at war. But so far as the B.E.F. was concerned it had to be
discouraged.
The last line of entrenchments against ennui and discomfort was provided
by that wonderful organisation the Expeditionary Force Canteens. It
provided for officers and men cheap shops, good rest and recreation
centres, and for officers excellent hotels. The officer thus had never
to wander to strange places. From the Expeditionary Force Canteens
during the greater part of the time you could buy cigars, cigarettes,
chocolate, sweets, all kinds of canned goods and so on, duty free, and
at prices far lower than those of the London shops. Whisky and beer
could be bought, too, duty free, under some restrictions. The E.F.C.
was, in short, the great comfort-bringer to the soldier at the front. I
say comfort-bringer, for all necessities were supplied by rations.
Just consider what Tommy got from the country he was serving: an ample
supply of meat (fresh meat in the main), and bacon and cheese, of bread,
and of biscuit; a fair supply of vegetables, of butter, of jam, of tea,
milk and sugar; a moderate supply of tobacco and cigarettes; a small
ration of rum. I know from my own experience that one could live
excellently on the men's rations. Nothing was actually needed to
supplement them. But comforts, well, they were comforting; and the
E.F.C. by bringing them almost up to the front trenches (as they did)
helped materially to win the war.
The Expeditionary Force Canteens organisation was formed early in 1915
for the supply of canteen facilities to the troops in the field. Its
operations commenced in France, but were subsequently extended to all
theatres of war. The undertaking was from its commencement conducted by
Sir Alexander W. Prince and Colonel F. Benson, both of whom
patriotically gave their services. In due course the organisation took
on various other functions, but its canteen business alone made it by
far the biggest shopping concern in the world. The "supplies and
shipping" department of the E.F.C. had for canteens alone an average
annual turnover of approximately 500,000,000 francs. From three to four
thousand lines appeared on the stock sheets, ranging from a packet of
pins to officers' equipment.
The tonnage handled was enormous, and during the month of November,
1918, it reached nearly twelve thousand tons, representing 320,000
cases. But the record week was that ending March 16th, 1918, just prior
to the great German offensive, when 3,643 tons of canteen supplies were
landed, and a turnover amounting to 10,586,407 francs was reached. The
tonnage off-loaded for the year 1918 was 121,000 tons, and comprised
over three million packages.
Here is a table of figures of total sales at canteens and depôts:--
Half-year ended Francs.
June, 1915 3,283,641
December, 1915 18,207,427
June, 1916 48,629,071
December, 1916 104,288,430
June, 1917 150,786,105
December, 1917 191,063,817
June, 1918 223,931,847
December, 1918 223,247,454
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Total to end of December, 1918 963,437,792
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The E.F.C. was in business for the good of the troops, not to make
profits for anyone. All profits that were earned will go back to the
soldiers. But profits were kept to a strict minimum. By a happy decision
prices for the same goods were the same on every Front. You bought a tin
of tobacco at Baghdad for the same price as at Boulogne. Thus the
soldier on the more comfortable nearer-home Fronts was able to feel that
the little percentage of profit charged to him was helping his mate in
Mesopotamia.
Yet another fine feature of the E.F.C. work was that it served the man
in the front line first and the man at the Base second. In 1917-1918 the
shipping position was so bad that economies had to be effected in every
possible direction. E.F.C. supplies had to suffer with the rest, and the
complaint came that what supplies did come over were largely absorbed at
Base and on Lines of Communication, and the men in the front line got
very little. The Q.M.G. got rid of that complaint very simply. An order
went out that: (1) certain luxuries which were in very short supply
should go only to front area canteens and not at all to the Base; (2)
other goods should go in the proportion of four to front areas and one
to the Base. As a consequence our Montreuil canteens were very poorly
stocked, for G.H.Q. of course did not count as a front area. But the
simple justice of the step was recognised.
In 1918, the Home Government was forced to the conclusion that the
shipping position was so bad that no more beer could be consigned to the
troops. Beer was a very bulky article and its shipping space must be
saved. G.H.Q. did not like the prospect of stopping the soldiers' beer
just at a time when they had plenty of other troubles. Perhaps G.H.Q.
remembered a much earlier B.E.F. in Flanders in the reign of Henry
VIII., which did very badly until that great War Minister, Cardinal
Wolsey, took the matter of supplies in hand and saw that the Army was
well supplied not only with arrows but with beef and beer. Thereafter
that early B.E.F. retrieved its reputation. It occurred to G.H.Q.,
B.E.F., 1918, that whilst beer is a very bulky article, most of the bulk
is water. Accordingly the Q.M.G. took over, in part or in whole,
breweries in our Army areas and arranged to brew beer locally, importing
only from England the malt and the hops, which were not particularly
bulky.
I do not know whether the decision of the Home Government was in part a
concession to teetotalism and in part only governed by shipping
considerations. If so the teetotallers were disappointed. The British
Army in 1918 continued to number beer among its comforts.
On the whole ours was the most comforted and comfortable Army in the
Field, as all _liaison_ officers from allied units agreed. The
Americans were as well off in most respects, but being a "dry" Army
interfered somewhat with the comfort of its majority. The average
American was not a teetotaller and did not object to wine and beer or
even an occasional whisky. At his own canteens he had to be. The French
of course always had a wine ration, but in other respects their
"comforts" were not up to our standard. The privilege that was extended
to French _liaison_ officers of dealing at our canteens was very highly
appreciated.