A Padre in France Part 5

Private Buggins suffered from curvature of the spine. It was plain that he could not carry a pack for very long. Some one at home pa.s.sed Private Buggins fit and he came out with a draft. He was picked out of that draft at the base in France. At the end of a fortnight's strenuous labour (form filling), Private Buggins was sent back to England.

A fortnight after that he turned up again in France, one of another draft. Once more he was detached. Once more the wheels creaked round and Private Buggins went back to England. This time three weeks elapsed before he joined another draft and again submitted himself for medical examination in France. The result was the same. I do not wonder. I saw Buggins's spine once, and I hold strongly that "Blighty is the place for him."

After that I lost sight of Private Buggins, for I was moved to a new camp; but I have no reason to suppose the case is settled. He is still, in all probability, crossing and recrossing the English Channel. By this time I expect he has found out ways of living tolerably comfortably under the conditions of his nomadic military service. But he ought to be given a special medal when the war is over and he is allowed to settle down again somewhere.

A new draft also submits to kit inspection. I suppose kits are inspected in England before the start is made; but the British soldier has an amazing desire to get rid of the parts of his equipment which strike him as superfluous. He appears to shed kit as he goes along, and often succeeds in arriving at the end of the journey with only half the things he ought to have.

Yet he goes to war with few possessions. I am sure his pack is heavy enough to carry, but its contents look pitifully insufficient when spread out on a parade ground for inspection. A cake of soap, a razor, a small towel, two or three brushes, a spare pair of socks, a clean s.h.i.+rt--it seems little enough for a man to face an unknown world with, a man who is heir to the gifts of a complex civilisation.

Once thoroughly inspected, the draft ceases to be a draft, and is merged in the camp. The men settle down in the lines of their battalion, take their share in the life and work of their fellows until the day comes when they are joined to another draft and sent forth on a yet more adventurous journey.

Drafts coming to us from England arrived in the morning. Drafts going from us to the front departed at night. I suppose the numbers of those who came and of those who went balanced like the figures in a well-kept ledger. To me it always seemed that there were more going than coming--an illusion certainly, since our camp never emptied. But those who came were all strangers, while many of those who went were friends, and many more were acquaintances. Therefore, the going left gaps which the new-comers did not seem to fill.

The orders that a draft was to go to the front came to us in the morning from the Officer Commanding Reinforcements. So many officers and men of such-and-such a battalion were to proceed to such-or-such a place. Lists, nominal rolls, were prepared in the orderly-room. The men were warned. The officers rushed into town to complete their kit or add to it small articles likely to be useful. Trench boots, trench coats, tins of solidified methylated spirits, all sorts of odds and ends, were picked up at the ordnance stores or at French shops which dealt specially in such things. Advice was eagerly sought--and the most curious advice taken--by those who had never been up the line before. That last day at the base was busy and exciting. There was a spirit of light-heartedness and gaiety abroad. We laughed more than usual and joked oftener. Behind the laughter--who knows?

In the camp there was much going to and fro. Men stood in queues outside the quartermaster's stores, to receive gas masks, first field dressings, identification discs, and such things. Kits were once more inspected, minutely and rigorously. Missing articles were supplied.

Entries were made in pay books.

Later on the men crowded into the canteen or the Y.M.C.A. hut.

Letters were written, pathetic scrawls many of them. There was a feeling of excitement, tense and only half suppressed, among the men who were going. There was no sign of depression or fear; certainly no hint of any sadness of farewell.

For us who stayed behind it was different. I saw scores of these drafts depart for the unknown, terrible front. I never got over the feeling of awe. There are certain scenes which will abide in my memory to the end of my life, which I do not think I can possibly forget even afterwards, when my turn comes and I join those men who went from us, of whom we next heard when their names appeared in the lists of killed.

It was my custom to invite those who were going to "partake of the most comfortable sacrament of the body and blood of Christ" before they started. At first we used to meet in my hut; but that was too small for us, though only a few from each departing draft gathered there. Later on I used a room in a neighbouring house.

It was late in the afternoon, generally 6 o'clock, before the officers and men were ready to come. The shadows had gathered. The candles on my rude altar shone, giving the little light we needed.

About to face death these boys--to me and especially at that time they all seemed boys--kneeled to salute their King who rules by virtue of a sacrifice like theirs. They took His body and His blood, broken and shed for them whose bodies were also dedicated, just as His was, for the saving of the world. My hands trembled, stretched out in benediction over the bowed young heads. Did ever men do greater things than these? Have any among the martyrs and saints of the church's calendar belonged more clearly to the great fellows.h.i.+p of Christs crucified, whose splendid destiny it is to redeem the world?

These eucharists are among the scenes which it is impossible ever to forget. There are also others, no less impressive, in the recurring drama of the departing drafts.

The day closes early in these great camps. At half-past eight the recreation huts close their doors. Concerts and entertainments are over. The men stream back to their tents along muddy roads, laughing, chatting, singing. Lights appear in the tents, and a glow, red or white, s.h.i.+nes through the canvas. One after another these are extinguished. The "Last Post" sounds from a dozen bugles. The mult.i.tudinous noises of camp life die away. The rifle-fire which has crackled all day on the ranges has long ceased. The spluttering of machine guns in the training camps vexes the ear no more. The heavy explosions of sh.e.l.l testing are over for another day. Save for the sharp challenge of a sentry here and there, and the distant shriek of a railway engine, there is almost unbroken silence for a while.

At half-past nine perhaps, or a little later, men come silently from the tents and a.s.semble on the parade ground. They fall in, small detachments from four or five regiments, each forming its own lines of men. They carry rifles. Their packs are on their backs. Their haversacks, mess tins, and all the kit of marching infantry are strung round them. A draft from this camp and many drafts from all this great collection of camps are going "up the line" to-night.

"Up the line." The phrase means a long railway journey, very many hours of travelling perhaps, for the train moves slowly. The journey will end where the railway stops short of the firing-line, and these men will join their comrades, filling the gaps in many battalions.

Some of them are fresh from home, young soldiers. Others, recovered from wounds or sickness, are going back to perils and hards.h.i.+p which they already know. For all of them this is the last parade in safety for many a long day. Henceforth, till the coming of peace releases them, or a wound sends them back to rest, or death puts an end to their soldiering, they will go in peril day and night, will endure incredible hards.h.i.+ps constantly.

They stand silent. At the head of the waiting columns are men with lanterns in their hands, faint spots of light in the surrounding gloom. Down the hill from his quarters the colonel comes. The adjutant and the sergeant-major leave the orderly-room. A little group of officers stands back in the shadow. They are there to see their comrades off. A sharp order is given. There is a rattle of arms and accoutrements. The waiting men stand to attention. The colonel makes his progress up and down the line of men, taking a last look at their equipment. An orderly carrying a lantern goes before him. He inspects each man minutely. Now and then he speaks a few words in a low tone. Otherwise the silence is complete.

The inspection is over at last. He takes his place at the head of the column. Certain formal orders are read out by the adjutant. There is something about the unexpended portion of the day's rations. There cannot be much "unexpended" at 10 o'clock at night; but the military machine, recklessly prodigal of large sums of money, is scrupulously n.i.g.g.ardly about trifles. But it does not matter. No one at the moment is concerned about the unexpended portion of his ration. There is a stern injunction against travelling on the roof of railway carriages. "Men," the order explains, "have been killed owing to doing so." We suppose vaguely that those men were better dead. No one in his right senses would willingly travel on the top of a railway carriage at dead of night in a snowstorm. And as we stand on the parade ground it begins to snow. There is much else, but the reading stops at last. The colonel speaks. He wishes all good fortune to those who go. He reminds them that they are the guardians of the honour of famous regiments. He a.s.sures them that the hearts of those who stay behind go with them. He is himself one of those who stay behind; but there is something in the way he speaks which makes us sure that he would gladly go. He does not say this. It is not his way to talk heroics. But more certainly than if he had said the words the men know that it is not of his own choice that he stays behind.

It is my turn to speak, to pray. Surely never to any minister of G.o.d has such opportunity been given. But what words can I find? What supplication fits the time and place? I beg the men to pray, to seek from above courage, strength, patience, inward peace. I make my prayer for them, that G.o.d will lighten the surrounding darkness and deliver us all from the perils of "this night." I am feeble, helpless, faithless, without vision; but at least I can give the benediction. "The Peace of G.o.d----" Even war cannot take that from the heart of him who has it.

From a neighbouring camp comes the sound of men singing as they tramp down the muddy road. Another draft is on its way. From a camp still farther off we hear the skirl of bagpipes. There, too, men have said good-bye to security and are on their way. A sharp order rings out.

Then another. The men on the parade ground spring to attention, turn, march.

They begin to sing as they go. "Tipperary," in those days was losing its popularity. "If I were the only boy in the world" had not come to its own. For the moment "Irish eyes are smiling" is most popular. It is that or some such song they sing, refusing even then to make obeisance to heroic sentiment. The little group of officers, the sergeants, the orderlies with the lanterns, stand and salute the columns as they pa.s.s.

Far down the road we hear a shouted jest, a peal of laughter, a burst of song.

In what mood, with what spirit does the soldier, the man in the ranks, go forth into the night to his supremely great adventure? We do more than guess. We know. We chaplains are officers, but we are something more than officers. We are, or ought to be, the friends of men and officers alike. We have the chance of learning from the men's own lips what their feelings are. Hardly ever do we get the least suggestion of heroic resolve or hint of the consciousness of great purpose. Very often we hear a hope expressed--a hope which is really a prayer for G.o.d's blessing. But this is almost always for those left at home, for wife and children, parents, brothers, friends. It is as if they and not the men who fight had dangers to face and trials to endure.

From his intimate talk we may guess that the soldier thinks very little about himself and very much about those he has left behind. He says little of what his life has been, less still about that to which he looks forward. His mind is altogether occupied with the little affairs of his home life, with the marriage of this friend, the wages earned by son or daughter, the thousand details of life in some English village or some great city. Sometimes we hear an expression of pleasure at the thought of joining again comrades by whose side the writer has fought. Sometimes an antic.i.p.ation from a young soldier of seeing in the fighting-line some friend who has gone there before him.

It is not thus that an imaginative writer would represent the talk of soldiers who say farewell. I suppose that those who speak as these men do are lovers of peace and quiet ways, have no great taste for adventuring, find war not a joy but a hard necessity. Yet as we know, as all Europe knows now, there are no better fighters in the world than these citizen soldiers whose blood the bugle stirs but sluggishly, whose hearts are all the time with those whom they have left at English firesides.

CHAPTER VIII

WOODBINE HUT

I knew many recreation huts, Y.M.C.A. huts, Church Army huts, E.F.

canteens, while I was in France. I was in and out of them at all sorts of hours. I lectured in them, preached in them, told stories, played games, and spent in the aggregate many hours listening to other people singing, reciting, lecturing. It was always a pleasure to be in these huts and I liked every one of them. But I cherish specially tender recollections of Woodbine Hut. It was the first I knew, the first I ever entered, my earliest love among huts. Also its name was singularly attractive. It is not every hut which has a name.

Many are known simply by the number of the camp they belong to, and even those which have names make, as a rule, little appeal to the imagination. It is nice and loyal to call a hut after a princess, for instance, or by the name of the donor, or after some province or district at home, whose inhabitants paid for the hut. One is no way moved by such names.

But Woodbine! The name had nothing whatever to do with the soldier's favourite cigarette, though that hut, or any other, might very well be called after tobacco. I, a hardened smoker, have choked in the atmosphere of these huts worse than anywhere else, even in the cabins of small yachts anch.o.r.ed at night. But cigarettes were not in the mind of the ladies who built and named that hut. Afterwards when their hair and clothes reeked of a particularly offensive kind of tobacco, it may have occurred to them that they were wiser than they knew in choosing the name Woodbine.

But at first they were not thinking of tobacco. They meant to make a little pun on their own name like the pun of the herald who gave "_Ver non semper viret_" to the Vernons for a motto; a.s.sociating themselves thus modestly and shyly with the building they had given, in which they served. Also they meant the name to call up in the minds of the soldiers who used the hut all sorts of thoughts of home, of English gardens, of old-fas.h.i.+oned flowers, of mothers' smiles and kisses--the kisses perhaps not always mother's. The idea is a pretty one, and the English soldier, like most cheerful people, is a sentimentalist, yet I doubt if ten of the many thousands of men who used that hut ever a.s.sociated it with honeysuckle.

When I first saw "Woodbine" over the door of that hut, the name filled me with astonishment. I knew of a Paradise Court in a grimy city slum, and a dilapidated whitewashed house on the edge of a Connaught bog which has somehow got itself called Monte Carlo. But these misfits of names moved me only to mirth mingled with a certain sadness. "Woodbine" is a sheer astonishment. I hear the word and think of the rustic arches in cottage gardens, of old tree trunks climbed over by delightful flowers. I think of open lattice windows, of sweet summer air. Nothing in the whole long train of thought prepares me for or tends in any way to suggest this Woodbine.

It is a building. In the language of the army--the official language--it is a hut; but hardly more like the hut of civil life than it is like the flower from which it takes its name. The walls are thin wood. The roof is corrugated iron. It contains two long, low halls. Glaring electric lights hang from the rafters. They must glare if they are to s.h.i.+ne at all, for the air is thick with tobacco smoke.

Inside the halls are gathered hundreds of soldiers. In one corner, that which we enter first, the men are sitting, packed close together at small tables. They turn over the pages of ill.u.s.trated papers. They drink tea, cocoa, and hot milk. They eat buns and slices of bread-and-b.u.t.ter. They write those letters home which express so little, and to those who understand mean so much. Of the letters written home from camp, half at least are on paper which bear the stamp of the Y.M.C.A.--paper given to all who ask in this hut and scores of others. Reading, eating, drinking, writing, chatting, or playing draughts, everybody smokes. Everybody, such is the climate, reeks with damp. Everybody is hot. The last thing that the air suggests to the nose of one who enters is the smell of woodbine.

In the other, the inner hall, there are more men, still more closely packed together, smoking more persistently, and the air is even denser. Here no one is eating, no one reading. Few attempt to write.

The evening entertainment is about to begin. On a narrow platform at one end of the hall is the piano. A pianist has taken possession of it. He has been selected by no one in authority, elected by no committee. He has occurred, emerged from the ma.s.s of men; by virtue of some energy within him has made good his position in front of the instrument. He flogs the keys, and above the babel of talk sounds some rag-time melody, once popular, now forgotten or despised at home. Here or there a voice takes up the tune and sings or chants it.

The audience begin to catch the spirit of the entertainment. Some one calls the name of Corporal Smith. A man struggles to his feet and leaps on to the platform. He is greeted with applauding cheers. There is a short consultation between him and the pianist. A tentative chord is struck. Corporal Smith nods approval and turns to the audience. His song begins. If it is the kind of song that has a chorus the audience shouts it and Corporal Smith conducts the singing with waving of his arms.

Corporal Smith is a popular favourite. We know his worth as a singer, demand and applaud him. But there are other candidates for favour.

Before the applause has died away, while still acknowledgments are being bowed, another man takes his place on the platform. He is a stranger and no one knows what he will sing. But the pianist is a man of genius. Whisper to him the name of the song, give even a hint of its nature, let him guess at the kind of voice, ba.s.s, baritone, tenor, and he will vamp an accompaniment. He has his difficulties. A singer will start at the wrong time, will for a whole verse, perhaps, make noises in a different key; the pianist never fails. Somehow, before very long, instrument and singer get together--more or less.

There is no dearth of singers, no bashful hanging back, no waiting for polite pressure. Every one who can sing, or thinks he can, is eager to display his talent. There is no monotony. A boisterous comic song is succeeded by one about summer roses, autumn leaves, and the kiss of a maiden at a stile. The vagaries of a ventriloquist are a matter for roars of laughter. A song about the beauties of the rising moon pleases us all equally well. An original genius sings a song of his own composition, rough-hewn verses set to a familiar tune, about the difficulty of obtaining leave and the longing that is in all our hearts for a return to "Blighty, dear old Blighty." Did ever men before fix such a name on the country for which they fight?

Now and again some one comes forward with a long narrative song, a kind of ballad chanted to a tune very difficult to catch. It is about as hard to keep track with the story as to pick up the tune.

Words--better singers fail in the same way--are not easily distinguished, though the man does his best, clears his throat carefully between each verse and spits over the edge of the platform to improve his enunciation. No one objects to that.

About manners and dress the audience is very little critical. But about the merits of the songs and the singers the men express their opinions with the utmost frankness. The applause is genuine, and the singer who wins it is under no doubt about its reality. The song which makes no appeal is simply drowned by loud talk, and the unfortunate singer will crack his voice in vain in an endeavour to regain the attention he has lost.

Encores are rare, and the men are slow to take them. There is a man towards the end of the evening who wins one unmistakably with an inimitable burlesque of "Alice, where art thou?" The pianist fails to keep in touch with the astonis.h.i.+ng vagaries of this performance, and the singer, unabashed, finishes without accompaniment. The audience yells with delight, and continues to yell till the singer comes forward again. This time he gives us a song about leaving home, a thing of heart-rending pathos, and we wail the chorus:

"It's sad to give the last hand-shake, It's sad the last long kiss to take, It's sad to say farewell."

The entertainment draws to its close about 8 o'clock. Men go to bed betimes who know that a bugle will sound the reveille at 5.30 in the morning. The end of the entertainment is planned to allow time for a final cup of tea or a gla.s.s of Horlick's Malted Milk before we go out to flounder through the mud to our tents.