Australians slouched up the Street of the Three Pebbles with a grim look
under their wide-brimmed hats, having come down from Pozieres, where it
was always hell in the days of the Somme fighting. I liked the look
of them, dusty up to the eyes in summer, muddy up to their eyes in
winter--these gipsy fellows, scornful of discipline for discipline's
sake, but desperate fighters, as simple as children in their ways of
thought and speech (except for frightful oaths), and looking at life,
this life of war and this life in Amiens, with frank, curious eyes, and
a kind of humorous contempt for death, and disease, and English Tommies,
and French girls, and “the whole damned show,” as they called it. They
were lawless except for the laws to which their souls gave allegiance.
They behaved as the equals of all men, giving no respect to generals or
staff-officers or the devils of hell. There was a primitive spirit of
manhood in them, and they took what they wanted, and were ready to
pay for it in coin or in disease or in wounds. They had no conceit of
themselves in a little, vain way, but they reckoned themselves the only
fighting-men, simply, and without boasting. They were hard as steel, and
finely tempered. Some of them were ruffians, but most of them were, I
imagine, like those English yeomen who came into France with the Black
Prince, men who lived “rough,” close to nature, of sturdy independence,
good-humored, though fierce in a fight, and ruthless. That is how they
seemed to me, in a general way, though among them were boys of a more
delicate fiber, and sensitive, if one might judge by their clear-cut
features and wistful eyes. They had money to spend beyond the dreams of
our poor Tommy. Six shillings and sixpence a day and remittances from
home. So they pushed open the doors of any restaurant in Amiens and
sat down to table next to English officers, not abashed, and ordered
anything that pleased their taste, and wine in plenty.
In that High Street of Amiens one day I saw a crowd gathered round an
Australian, so tall that he towered over all other heads. It was at the
corner of the rue de Corps Nu sans Teste, the Street of the Naked Body
without a Head, and I suspected trouble. As I pressed on the edge of the
crowd I heard the Australian ask, in a loud, slow drawl, whether there
was any officer about who could speak French. He asked the question
gravely, but without anxiety. I pushed through the crowd and said:
“I speak French. What's the trouble?”
I saw then that, like the French poilu I have described, this tall
Australian was in the grasp of a French agent de police, a small man of
whom he took no more notice than if a fly had settled on his wrist. The
Australian was not drunk. I could see that he had just drunk enough
to make his brain very clear and solemn. He explained the matter
deliberately, with a slow choice of words, as though giving evidence
of high matters before a court. It appeared that he had gone into the
estaminet opposite with four friends. They had ordered five glasses of
porto, for which they had paid twenty centimes each, and drank them.
They then ordered five more glasses of porto and paid the same price,
and drank them. After this they took a stroll up and down the street,
and were bored, and went into the estaminet again, and ordered five
more glasses of porto. It was then the trouble began. But it was not
the Australian who began it. It was the woman behind the bar. She served
five glasses more of porto and asked for thirty centimes each.
“Twenty centimes,” said the Australian. “Vingt, Madame.”
“Mais non! Trente centimes, chaque verre! Thirty, my old one. Six sous,
comprenez?”
“No comprennye,” said the Australian. “Vingt centimes, or go to hell.”
The woman demanded the thirty centimes; kept on demanding with a voice
more shrill.
“It was her voice that vexed me,” said the Australian. “That and the
bloody injustice.”
The five Australians drank the five glasses of porto, and the tall
Australian paid the thirty centimes each without further argument. Life
is too short for argument. Then, without words, he took each of the five
glasses, broke it at the stem, and dropped it over the counter.
“You will see, sir,” he said, gravely, “the justice of the matter on my
side.”
But when they left the estaminet the woman came shrieking into the
street after them. Hence the agent de police and the grasp on the
Australian's wrist.
“I should be glad if you would explain the case to this little
Frenchman,” said the soldier. “If he does not take his hand off my wrist
I shall have to kill him.”
“Perhaps a little explanation might serve,” I said.
I spoke to the agent de police at some length, describing the incident
in the cafe. I took the view that the lady was wrong in increasing the
price so rapidly. The agent agreed gravely. I then pointed out that the
Australian was a very large-sized man, and that in spite of his quietude
he was a man in the habit of killing Germans. He also had a curious
dislike of policemen.
“It appears to me,” I said, politely, “that for the sake of your health
the other end of the street is better than this.”
The agent de police released his grip from the Australian's wrist and
saluted me.
“Vous avez raison, monsieur. Je vous remercie. Ces Australiens sont
vraiment formidables, n'est-ce pas?”
He disappeared through the crowd, who were smiling with a keen sense of
understanding. Only the lady of the estaminet was unappeased.
“They are bandits, these Australians!” she said to the world about her.
The tall Australian shook hands with me in a comradely way.
“Thanks for your trouble,” he said. “It was the injustice I couldn't
stick. I always pay the right price. I come from Australia.”
I watched him go slouching down the rue des Trois Cailloux, head above
all the passers-by. He would be at Pozieres again next day.