Part 1 (2/2)

Waking up in the cool of the evening he heard the voices of another Second-Lieutenant and a reservist Subaltern talking about some people he knew near his home. It was good to forget about wars and soldiers, and everything that filled so amply the present and future, and to lose himself in pleasant talk of pleasant things at home.... The dinner provided by the French caterer was very French, and altogether the last sort of meal that a young gentleman suffering from anti-enteric inoculation ought to have indulged in. Everything conspired to make him worse, and what with the heat and the malady, he spent a very miserable time.

After about two days' stay, the Battalion moved away from the rest camp, and, setting out before dawn, marched back through those fatal streets of Havre, this time deserted in the moonlight, to a sort of shed, called by the French authorities a troop station. Here as usual the train was waiting, and the men had but to be put in. The carriages could not be called luxurious; to be frank, they were cattle-trucks. But it takes more than that to damp the spirits of Mr. Thomas Atkins. Cries imitating the lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep broke out from the trucks!

The train moved out of the depot, and wended its way in the most casual manner through the streets of Havre. This so amused Tommy that he roared with laughter. The people who rushed to give the train a send-off, with many cries of ”Vive les Anglais,” ”A bas les Bosches,” were greeted with more bleatings and brayings.

The journey through France was quite uneventful. Sleeping or reading the whole day through, the Subaltern only remembered Rouen, pa.s.sed at about midday, and Amiens later in the evening. The train had paused at numerous villages on its way, and in every case there had been violent demonstrations of enthusiasm. In one case a young lady of prepossessing appearance had thrust her face through the window, and talked very excitedly and quite incomprehensibly, until one of the fellows in the carriage grasped the situation, leant forward, and did honour to the occasion. The damsel retired blus.h.i.+ng.

At Amiens various rumours were afloat. Somebody had heard the Colonel say the magic word ”Liege.” Pictures of battles to be fought that very night thrilled some of them not a little.

Dawn found the Battalion hungry, s.h.i.+vering and miserable, paraded by the side of the track, at a little wayside station called Wa.s.signe. The train shunted away, leaving the Battalion with a positive feeling of desolation. A Staff Officer, rubbing sleep from his eyes, emerged from a little ”estaminet” and gave the Colonel the necessary orders. During the march that ensued the Battalion pa.s.sed through villages where the three other regiments in the Brigade were billeted. At length a village called Iron was reached, and their various billets were allotted to each Company.

The Subaltern's Company settled down in a huge water-mill; its Officers being quartered in the miller's private house.

A wash, a shave and a meal worked wonders.

And so the journey was finished, and the Battalion found itself at length in the theatre of operations.

I have tried in this chapter to give some idea of the ease and smoothness with which this delicate operation of transportation was carried out. The Battalions which composed the First Expeditionary Force had been spread in small groups over the whole length and breadth of Britain. They had been mobilised, embarked, piloted across the Channel in the face of an undefeated enemy fleet, rested, and trained to their various areas of concentration, to take their place by the side of their French Allies.

All this was accomplished without a single hitch, and with a speed that was astonis.h.i.+ng. When the time comes for the inner history of the war to be written, no doubt proper praise for these preliminary arrangements will be given to those who so eminently deserve it.

CHAPTER II

CALM BEFORE THE STORM

Peace reigned for the next five days, the last taste of careless days that so many of those poor fellows were to have.

A route march generally occupied the mornings, and a musketry parade the evenings. Meanwhile, the men were rapidly accustoming themselves to the new conditions. The Officers occupied themselves with polis.h.i.+ng up their French, and getting a hold upon the reservists who had joined the Battalion on mobilisation.

The French did everything in their power to make the Battalion at home.

Cider was given to the men in buckets. The Officers were treated like the best friends of the families with whom they were billeted. The fatted calf was not spared, and this in a land where there were not too many fatted calves.

The Company ”struck a particularly soft spot.” The miller had gone to the war leaving behind him his wife, his mother and two children.

Nothing they could do for the five officers of the Company was too much trouble. Madame Mere resigned her bedroom to the Major and his second in command, while Madame herself slew the fattest of her chickens and rabbits for the meals of her hungry Officers.

The talk that was indulged in must have been interesting, even though the French was halting and ungrammatical. Of all the companies' Messes, this one took the most serious view of the future, and earned for itself the nickname of ”Les Miserables.” The Senior Subaltern said openly that this calm preceded a storm. The papers they got--_Le Pet.i.t Parisian_ and such like--talked vaguely of a successful offensive on the extreme right: Mulhouse, it was said, had been taken. But of the left, of Belgium, there was silence. Such ideas as the Subaltern himself had on the strategical situation were but crude. The line of battle, he fancied, would stretch north and south, from Mulhouse to Liege. If it were true that Liege had fallen, he thought the left would rest successfully on Namur. The English Army, he imagined, was acting as ”general reserve,” behind the French line, and would not be employed until the time had arrived to hurl the last reserve into the melee, at the most critical point.

And all the while, never a sound of firing, never a sight of the red and blue of the French uniforms. The war might have been two hundred miles away!

Meanwhile Tommy on his marches was discovering things. Wonder of wonders, this curious people called ”baccy” tabac! ”And if yer wants a bit of bread yer awsks for pain, strewth!” He loved to hear the French gabble to him in their excited way; he never thought that reciprocally his talk was just as funny. The French matches earned unprintable names.

But on the whole he admired sunny France with its squares of golden corn and vegetables, and when he pa.s.sed a painted Crucifix with its cl.u.s.ter of flowering graves, he would say: ”Golly, Bill, ain't it pretty? We oughter 'ave them at 'ome, yer know.” And of course he kept on saying what he was going to do with ”Kayser Bill.”

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