multitude of impotent folk. The lame, the halt, and the blind
congregated here as if awaiting some miracle. I met them
everywhere--Zouaves, Turcos, French infantry of the line, in every stage
of infirmity. Our town was indeed but one vast hospital--orderly,
subdued, and tenebrous. Every hotel but our own was closed to visitors
and flew the Red Cross flag, displaying on its portals the register of
wounded like a roll-call. The streets at night, with their lights
extinguished, were subterranean in their darkness, and the single café,
faintly illuminated, looked like some mysterious grotto within which
the rows of bottles of cognac and Mattoni gleamed like veins of quartz
and felspar. We were, indeed, a race of troglodytes, and we were all
either very young or very old. Our adolescence was all called up to the
colours. There was never any news beyond a laconic bulletin issued from
the _Mairie_ at dusk, the typescript duplicates of which, posted up at
street-corners, we read in groups by the light of a guttering candle,
held up against the wall, and husbanded from the wind, by a little old
woman of incredible age with puckered cheeks like a withered apple and
hands like old oak. We were not very near the zone of war, yet not so
far as to escape its stratagems. Only a day or two before an armoured
motor-car, with German officers disguised in French uniforms, paid us a
stealthy visit, and, after shooting three gendarmes in reply to their
insistent challenge, ended its temerarious career one dark night by
rushing headlong over the broken arch of a bridge into the chasm
beneath. After that the rigour of our existence was, if anything,
accentuated; much was "défendu," and many things which were still lawful
were not expedient. Every one talked in subdued tones--it was only the
wounded who were gay, gay with an amazing insouciance. True, there were
the picture postcards in the shops--I had forgotten them--nothing more
characteristically _macabre_ have I ever seen. One such I bought one
morning--a lively sketch of a German soldier dragging a child's wooden
horse behind him, and saluting his officer with, "Captain, here is the
horse--I have slain the horseman" ("Mon Gabidaine, ch'ai dué le
cavalier, foilà le cheval"). It was labelled "Un Héros."
It was at this little town, on a memorable afternoon early in the war,
that I was first admitted to the freedom of the soldiers of France. The
ward was flooded with the soft lambent light of September sunshine, and
it sheltered, I should say, some twenty-three men. Four were playing
cards at the bedside of a cheerful youth, who a few weeks earlier had
answered on tripping feet to the cry of "Garçon!" in a big Paris hotel,
and was now a _sous-officier_ in 321st Regiment, recovering from wounds
received in the thick of the fighting round Mülhausen. He was enjoying
his convalescence. For a waiter to find himself waited upon was, he
confided to me as the orderly brought in the soup, a peculiarly
satisfying experience. Charles Lamb would have agreed with him. Has he
not written that the ideal holiday is to watch another man doing your
own job--particularly if he does it badly? The _sous-officier_ nearly
wept with joy when, a moment later, the orderly upset the soup. With
him was a plumber who was dealing the cards in that leisurely manner
which appears to be one of the principal charms of the plumber's
vocation. A paperhanger studied the wall-paper with a professional eye
while he appropriated his cards. An Alsatian completed the party. In a
distant corner a Turco, wearing his red fez upon his head, sat with his
chin on his knees amid an improvised bivouac of bed-clothes and looked
on uncomprehendingly. The rest smoked cigarettes and toyed with the
voluptuous pages of _La Vie Parisienne_.
The _sous-officier_, being an artiste in his way, had been giving me a
histrionic exhibition of shell-fire. With a long intake and a discharge
of the breath he imitated the sibilant flight of the projectiles and
followed it up with a duck of his head over the counterpane. He extended
his arms in a wide sweep to show the crater they make and indicated the
height of the leaping earth.
"_Quinze mètres--comme ça, monsieur! Les Allemands? Ah! cochons!_ And
they shoot execrably. We shoot from the shoulder (_sur l'épaule_)--so!
They shoot under the arm (_sous le bras_)--so! And they like to join
hands like children--they are afraid to go alone. They came out of the
wood crouching like dogs--one behind the other. They are a bad
lot--_canaille_. They hide guns in ambulance-waggons and mount them on
church-towers. There was one of our sappers--_diable!_ they tied him to
a telegraph-pole and lit a fire under him."
"But you make them pay for that?"
He smiled grimly. "_Mais oui!_ When they see us they throw everything
away and run. If we catch them, they put up their hands and say, '_Pas
de mal, Alsatien_.' But we're used to that trick. We just go through
them like butter and say, '_Pour vous!_' A little _étrenne_, you know,
monsieur, what you call 'Christmas-box'!" He laughed at some grim
recollection.
"_Deutschen Hunde! Stink-preussen!_[10] _Ja!_" It was the Alsatian who
was speaking.
"_Sie sprechen Deutsch!_"[11] I exclaimed in astonishment.
"_Ja, ich kann nicht anders--um so mehr schade!_"[12] he replied
mournfully. He was an Alsatian "volunteer," he explained, having
deserted for the French side at an opportune moment. It was odd to hear
him declaiming against the Germans in their own language. It is a way
the Alsatians have. Treitschke once lamented the fact. "But," I
interpolated, "it must be very painful for those of you who cannot get
away like yourself."
"Very painful, monsieur; I have two brothers even now in the German
army. They watch us--and they put Prussian _sous-officiers_ over us to
spy. So when we see the _sous-officier_ sneaking about, we raise our
voices and say, 'Ah! those beastly French, we'll give it them.' But when
we are alone--well, then we say what we think."
And this led us on to talk of German spies and their nasty habits--how
they had mapped out France, its bridges, its culverts, its smithies,
like an ordnance-survey, and how predatory German commanders betray the
knowledge of an Income-tax Commissioner as to the income and resources
of every inhabitant who has the misfortune to find himself in occupied
territory. Also how the German guns get the range at once. And other
such things. All of which the paperhanger listened to in thoughtful
silence and then told a tale.
"An officer in the uniform of your Army, monsieur, strolled up to my
company one day. He was very pleasant, and his French was so good--not
too good, just the kind of French that you English messieurs"--he bowed
apologetically to me--"usually speak. Oh! he was very clever. And he
talked with our captain about the battle for a long time. And then our
captain noticed something--two things. First, monsieur, the English
officer was very troubled with his eyes--he was always applying a large
white handkerchief to the pupil. And it occur to the captain that the
English officers do not carry white handkerchiefs but 'khaki.' What was
the matter with the officer's eye? It could not be a fly--the weather
was too cold; it had been raining. It could not be the dust; the ground
was too wet. And the German shells--they begin to fall right in the
midst of us--they had been so wide before. So the captain was very
concerned for monsieur l'officier's eyes, and he takes him aside very
politely and says he had better see the doctor. A _sous-officier_ and
two men shall take him to the doctor. Which they do. Only the 'doctor'
was the _liaison_ officer with our brigade--an English officer. And he
finds that the officer is a spy--a Bosche. He have no more trouble with
his eyes," added the paperhanger laconically. It was too good a story to
spoil by cross-examination, so I left it at that.
"You like the bayonet?" I asked.
"Ah, yes! we love the bayonet. It is a _bon enfant_," said the
_sous-officier_. "And they can't fence (_escrimer_), the Bosches--they
are too _lourds_. I remember we caught them once in a quarry. Our men
fought like tiger-cats--so quick, so agile. And you know, monsieur, no
one said a word. Nor a sound except the clash of steel." His eyes
flashed at the recollection. "They make a funny noise when you go
through them--they grunt, _comme un cochon_." Perhaps I shuddered
slightly. "Ah, yes! monsieur, but they play such dirty tricks (_ruses
honteuses_). Of course they cry out in French, and put up their hands
after they have shot down our comrades under their white flags." He gave
a snort of contempt.
"What do they cry?"
"Oh, all kinds of things. 'I have a wife and eight children.' The German
pig has a big litter." He looked, and no doubt felt himself to be, a
minister of justice. And after all, I reflect, the Belgians once had
wives and children too. Many of them have neither wife nor child any
longer. And so perish all Germans!
The plumber, who had been studying his "hand," looked up from the cards.
"We have killed a great number of the Bosches," he said dispassionately.
"Yes, a great number. It was in a beetroot field, and there were as many
dead Germans as beetroots. Near by was a corn-field; the flames were
leaping up the shocks of yellow corn and the bodies caught fire--such a
stench! And the faces of the dead! Especially after they have been
killed with the bayonet--they are quite black. I suppose it's the
grease."
"The grease?"
"Yes, we always grease our bayonets, you know. To prevent them getting
rusty."
He was a man of few words, but in three sentences he had given me a
battle-picture as clearly visualised as a canvas of Verestchagin. The
reminiscences of the plumber provoked the paperhanger to further
recollections, more particularly the stunning effects of the French
shell-fire. He had found four dead Germans--they had been surprised by a
shell while playing cards in a billet. "They still had the cards in
their hands, monsieur, just as you see us--and they hadn't got a
scratch. They were like the statues in the Louvre."
"Yes," said the _sous-officier_, "I have seen them like that. I remember
I found a big Bosche--six feet four he must have been--sitting dead in a
house which we had shelled. His face was just like wax, and he sat there
like a wooden doll with his long arms hanging down stiff--yes! _comme
une poupée_. And I couldn't find a scratch on him--not one! And do you
know what he had on--a woman's chemise! _Écoutez!_" he added suddenly,
and he held up a monitory hand.
Echoing down the corridor outside there came nearer and nearer the beat
of a drum and with it the liquid notes of a fife. I recognised the
measure--who can ever forget it! It stirs the blood like a trumpet. The
door was kicked open and two convalescent soldiers entered, one wearing
a festive cap of coloured paper such as is secreted in Christmas
"crackers." He was playing a fife, and the drummer was close upon his
heels.
Every one rose in his bed and lifted up his voice:
Allons! enfants de la Patrie!
A strange electricity ran through us all. The card-players had thrown
down their cards just as the plumber was about to trump an ace. The
others had tossed aside their papers and laid down their cigarettes. The
Turco--"Muley Hafid" he was called, because those were the only words of
his any one could understand--who had been deploying imaginary troops,
with the aid of matches, upon the counterpane, as though he were a sick
child playing with leaden soldiers, recognised the tune, and in default
of words began to beat time with a soup spoon. Up and down the passage
way between the beds marched the fife and drum; louder beat the drum,
more piercing grew the fife. What delirious joy-of-battle, what poignant
cries of anguish, has not that immortal music both stirred and soothed!
To what supremacy of effort has it not incited? It has succoured dying
men with its _viaticum_. It has brought fire to glazing eyes. It has
exalted men a little higher than the angels, it has won the angels to
the side of men:
Tout est soldat pour vous combattre:
S'ils tombent, nos jeunes héros,
La terre en produit de nouveaux
Contre vous tout prêts à se battre.
Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons:
Marchons, qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons.
As I gently closed the door of the ward and stole out into the corridor
on tip-toe, I heard again the martial chorus swelling into a tumult of
joy:
Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
It was the note of the conqueror.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] German swine! Stinking Prussians!
[11] You speak German!
[12] Yes, I can no other, more's the pity!
XVI
PETER
My friend T---- and myself were smoking a pipe after dinner in his
sitting-room at the Base. He was a staff-captain who had done his term
as a "Political" in India, and had now taken on an Army job of a highly
confidential nature. He was one of those men who, when they make up
their minds to give you their friendship, give it handsomely and without
reserve, and in a few weeks we had got on to the plane of friends of
many years. As we talked we suddenly heard the sound of many feet on the
cobbles of the street below, a street which ran up the side of the hill
like a gully--between tall houses standing so close together that one
might almost have shaken hands with the inmates of the houses opposite.
The rhythm of that tramp, tramp, tramp, in spite of the occasional
slipping of one or another man's boots upon the greasy and precipitous
stones, was unmistakable.
"New drafts!" said T----. Instinctively we both moved to the window. We
knew that the Army authorities were rushing troops across the Channel
every night as fast as the transports could take them, and often in the
silence of the sleep-time we had heard them marching up the hill from
the harbour to the camps on the downs. As we opened our own window, we
heard another window thrown open on the floor above us. We looked down
and saw in the darkness, faintly illuminated by the light from our room,
the upturned faces of the men.
"Bonjour, monseer," they shouted cheerfully, delighted to air on French
soil the colloquialisms they had picked up from that _vade mecum_ (price
one penny) of the British soldier: _French, and how to speak it_. It was
night, not day, but that didn't matter.
"Good-night," came a piping treble voice from the floor above us.
"Good-night"--"Good-night, old chap"--"Good-night, my son"--the men
shouted back as they glanced at the floor above us. Some of them gravely
saluted.
"It's Peter," said T----; "he'll be frightfully bucked up."
"Let's go up and see him," I said. We ascended the dark staircase--the
rest of the household were plunged in slumber--turned the handle of the
bedroom door, and could just make out in the darkness a little figure
in pyjamas, leaning precipitously out of the window.
"Peter, you'll catch cold," said his father as he struck a match. The
light illuminated a round, chubby face which glanced over its owner's
shoulder from the window.
"All right, Dad. I say," he exclaimed joyfully, "did you see? They
saluted me! Did _you_ see?" he said, turning to me.
"I did, Major Peter."
"You're kidding!"
"Not a bit of it," I said, saluting gravely. "They've given you
commissioned rank, and, the Army having spoken, I intend in the future
to address you as a field-officer. Of course your father will have to
salute you too, now."
This was quite another aspect of the matter, and commended itself to
Peter. "Right oh!" he said. And from that time forward I always
addressed him as Major Peter. So did his father, except when he was
ordering him to bed. At such times--there was a nightly contest on the
matter--the paternal authority could not afford to concede any
prerogatives, and Peter was gravely cashiered from the Army, only to be
reinstated without a stain on his character the next morning.
"Come up to the Flying-Ground to-morrow, will you?" said Peter. "I know
lots of officers up there. I'll introduce you," he added patronisingly.
Peter had been a bare fortnight at the Base, it being holiday at his
preparatory school at Beckenham, and he had already become familiar and
domestic with every one in authority from the Base Commandant downwards.
"Thank you," I said. "I will." He clambered back into bed at a word from
his father. By the side of the bed was a small library. It consisted of
_The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes_, _The Cock-House at Fellsgarth_, and
Newbolt's _Pages from Froissart_. Peter was rather eclectic in his
tastes, but they were thoroughly sound. On the table were the contents
of Peter's pockets, turned out nightly by the express orders of his
father, for this is war-time, and the wear and tear of schoolboys'
jackets is a prodigious item of expenditure. I made a rapid mental
inventory of them:
(1) A button of the Welsh Fusiliers.
(2) Some dozen cartridge-cases from a Lewis machine-gun
requisitioned by Peter from the Flying-Ground.
(3) A miniature aeroplane--the wings rather crumpled as though the
aviator had been forced to make a hurried descent.
(4) A knife.
(5) Several pieces of string.
(6) A coloured "alley."
(7) Some cigarette-card portraits, highly coloured, of Lord
Kitchener, Sir John French, and General Smith-Dorrien.
(8) A top.
(9) A conglomerate of chocolate, bull's-eyes, and acid drops.
For the kit of an officer of field rank in His Majesty's Army it was
certainly a peculiar collection, few or none of these articles being
included in the Field Service regulations. Still, not more peculiar than
some of the things with which solicitous friends and relatives encumber
officers at the Front.
The next morning we ascended the downs above the harbour, and Peter
piloted me to the Flying-Ground. Here we came upon a huge hangar in
which were docked half a dozen aeroplanes, light as a Canadian canoe and
graceful as a dragon-fly. Peter calmly climbed up into one of them and
proceeded to move levers and adjust controls, explaining the whole
business to me with the professional confidence of a fully certificated
airman.
"Hulloa, that you, Peter?" said a voice from the other side of the
aeroplane. The owner wore the wings of the Flying Corps on his breast.
"It's me, Captain S----," said Peter. "Allow me to introduce my friend
----" he added, looking down over the side of the aeroplane. "He's
attached to the staff at G.H.Q.," he added impressively. For the first
time I realised, with great gratification, that Peter thought me rather
a personage.
The Captain and I discussed the merits of the new Lewis machine-gun,
while Peter went off to give the mechanics his opinion on biplanes and
monoplanes.
"That kid knows a thing or two," I heard one of them say to the other in
an undertone. "Jolly little chap." Peter has an undoubted gift for
Mathematics, both Pure and Applied, and his form master has prophesied a
Mathematical Scholarship at Cambridge. Peter, however, has other views.
He has determined to join the Army at the earliest opportunity. He is
now ten years of age, and the only thing that ever worries him is the
prospect of the war not lasting another seven years. When I told him
that the A.A.G. up at G.H.Q. had, in a saturnine moment, answered my
question as to when the war would end with a gloomy "Never," he was
mightily pleased. That was a bit of all right, he remarked.
Peter, it should be explained, belongs to one of those Indian dynasties
which go on, from one generation to another, contributing men to the
public service--the I.C.S., the Army, the Forest Service, the Indian
Police. Wherever there's a bit of a scrap, whether it's Dacoits or
Pathans, wherever there's a catastrophe which wants tidying up, whether
it's plague, or famine, or earthquake, there you will find one of
Peter's family in the midst of it. One of his uncles, who is a Major in
the R.F.A., saved a battery at X---- Y----. Another is the chief of the
most mysterious of our public services--a man who speaks little and
listens a great deal, who never commits anything to writing, and who
changes his address about once every three months. For if you have a
price on your head you have to be careful to cover up your tracks. He
neither drinks nor smokes, and he will never marry, for his work demands
an almost sacerdotal abnegation. Peter knows very little about this
uncle, except that, as he remarked to me, "Uncle Dick's got eyes like
gimlets." But Peter has seen those eyes unveiled, whereas in public
Uncle Dick, whom I happen to know as well as one can ever hope to know
such a bird of passage, always wears rather a sleepy and slightly bored
expression. Uncle Dick, although Peter does not know it, is the
counsellor of Secretaries of State, and one of the trusted advisers of
the G.H.Q. Staff. Of all the staff officers I have met I liked him most,
although I knew him least. Some day, if and when I have the honour to
know him better, I shall write a book about him, and I shall call it
_The Man behind the Scenes_.
Such was Peter's family. It may help you to understand Peter, who, if he
feared God, certainly regarded not man. Now the Flying Corps captain had
promised Peter that he would let him see the new Lewis machine-gun. It
is a type of gun specially designed for aircraft, rather big in the
bore, worked by a trigger-handle, and it makes a noise like the
back-firing of a motor-car of 100 horse-power. It plays no great part in
this story, except that it was the cause of my obtaining a glimpse of
Peter's private correspondence. For, after the Captain had discharged
his gun at a hedge and made a large rabbit-burrow in it, Peter proceeded
to pick up the cartridge-cases, which lay thick as catkins. This
interested me, as Peter already had a pocketful.
"What do you want all those for, Major Peter?" I asked.
"Well, you see," said Peter, "the kids at school"--Peter now calls other
boys of the same age as himself "kids," on the same principle that a
West African negro who is rising in the world refers to his fellows as
"niggers"--"keep on bothering me to send them things, and a fellow must
send them something."
He pulled a crumpled letter, to which some chocolate was adhering with
the tenacity of sealing-wax, out of his pocket. "That's from Jackson
minor," he said. "Cheek, isn't it?"
I began reading the letter aloud.
DEAR OLD PAN--You must be having a ripping time. I see
your letter is headed "The Front" ...
I looked at Peter. He was blushing uncomfortably.
... so I suppose you've seen a lot. The whole school's fritefully
bucked up about you, and we're one up on Fenner's....
"What's Fenner's?" I said to Peter.
"Oh, that's another school at Beckenham. They're stinkers. Put on no end
of side because some smug of theirs won a schol' at Uppingham last term.
But we beat them at footer."
We met them at footer the other day, and I told that little bounder
Jenkins that we had a fellow at the Front. He said, "Rot!" So I
showed him the envelope of your letter with "Passed by the Censor"
on it, and one of those cartridge-cases you sent me, and I said,
"That's proof," and he dried up. He did look sick. I hope you'll
get the V.C. or something--the Head'll be sure to give us a
half-holiday. Young Smith, who pretends to read the Head's
newspaper when he leaves it lying about--you know how he swanks
about it--said the Precedent or General Joffre had given a French
kid who was only fourteen and had enlisted and killed a lot of
Huns, till they found him out and sent him back to school, a legion
of honours or something. Smith said it was a medal; I said that was
rot, and that it meant they'd given him a lot of other chaps to
command, and I showed him what the Bible said about a legion of
devils, and I got hold of a crib to Caesar and proved to him that
legions were soldiers. That shut him up. So, Pan, old man, mind you
get the French to let you bring us other fellows out, or if you
can't bring it off, then come home with a medal or something.
"Peter," I called out. Peter had turned his back on me and was
pretending to be absorbed in a distant speck in the sky.
"Major Peter," I said ingratiatingly, with a salute. Peter turned round.
He was very red.
"I didn't mean you to read all that rot," he said. "I meant what he says
at the end."
I read on--this time in silence:
I say, have you killed any Huns yet? Very decent of the Head to
tell your governor you could have an extra week. We miss you at
center forward. So hurry up, but mind you don't get torpeedod--we
hope they'll just miss you. It would be rotten luck if you never
saw one. We've given up German this term--beastly language; it's
just like a Hun to keep the verb till the end, so that you never
know what he's driving at.
Then followed a sentence heavily underlined:
_By the way I'll let you have that knife you wanted me to swop last
term if you'll bring me a bayonet. Only mind it's got some blood on
it, German blood I mean_.--Yours to a cinder,
ARTHUR JACKSON.
I handed this priceless missive back to Peter.
"Cheek, isn't it?" said Peter rather hurriedly. "His old knife for a
bayonet!"
"But if you put 'the Front' at the top of your letters, Major Peter, you
can't be surprised at his asking for one, you know."
Peter blushed.
"Well, I heard Dad say we were the back of the Front, and the fellows
wouldn't think anything of me if I hadn't been _near_ the Front," he
said, apologetically. "Hullo, they're going up!"