Part 2 (2/2)
One day I drew German prisoners at Bailleul. They had just been captured, 3,500 in one cage, all covered with lice--3,500 men, some nude, some half-nude, trying to clean the lice off themselves. It was a strange business. The Boche at the time were sending over Jack Johnsons at the station, and these men used to cheer as each sh.e.l.l shrieked overhead.
It was at Ca.s.sel I first began to realise how wonderful the women of the working cla.s.s in France were, how absolutely different and infinitely superior they were to the same cla.s.s at home; in fact no cla.s.s in England corresponded to them at all. Clean, neat, prim women, working from early dawn till late at night, apparently with unceasing energy, they never seemed to tire and usually wore a smile.
I remember one girl, a widow; her name was Madame Blanche, who worked at the ”Hotel Sauvage.” She was about twenty-two years of age, and she owned a house in Ca.s.sel. A few months before I arrived there her husband had contracted some sort of poisoning in the trenches and had been brought back to Ca.s.sel, where he died. Madame Blanche interested me; she was very slim and prim and neat and tightly laced. Her fair hair was always very carefully crimped. She looked like a girl out of a painting by Metsu or Van Meer. I could see her posing at a piano for either, calm, gentle and silent; and could imagine her in the midst of all the refined surroundings in which these artists would have painted her. But now her surroundings were khaki, and her background was the wonderful Flemish view from the windows--miles and miles of country, (p. 034) with the old sausage balloons floating sleepily in the distance.
I must have looked at Madame Blanche a lot--perhaps too much. I remember she used to smile at me; but that was as far as our friends.h.i.+p could get--smiles, as I only knew about ten words of French, and she less of English.
But one day she surprised me, and left me thinking and wondering more of the strange, unbelievable things that happen to one in this world.
It was after lunch one Sunday: I had just got back to my room to work when there was a knock on the door, and in walked Madame Blanche, who, after much trouble to us both, I gathered wished me to go for a walk with her. Impossible! I, a major, a Field Officer, to walk at large through the streets of Ca.s.sel, 2nd Army H.Q., with a serving-girl from the ”Hotel Sauvage”! I succeeded in explaining this after some time; and then, to my amazement, she broke down and wept. The convulsive sobbing continued, and I thought and wondered, and in the end decided that I was crazy to make a woman weep because I would not go for a walk with her. So I told her I would do so; and she dried her eyes and asked me to meet her in the hotel yard in ten minutes.
When I got down to the yard the rain was coming down in torrents, and there she was, dressed in her widow's weeds and holding in her arms a ma.s.s of flowers. Solemnly we went out into the streets. Not a civilian, not a soldier, not even a military policeman was to be seen.
All other human beings had taken refuge from the deluge: we were quite alone. Right through the town we went and out to the little cemetery, into which she brought me and led to her husband's grave, on which she placed the ma.s.s of flowers, and then knelt in the mud and prayed for (p. 035) about half an hour in the pouring rain; after which we walked solemnly and silently back to the hotel, soaked through and through. It was a strange affair. I may be stupid, but I cannot yet see her reason for wis.h.i.+ng to take me out in the wet.
[Ill.u.s.tration: XII. _Soldiers and Peasants, Ca.s.sel._]
After working up there for about six weeks I began to feel very tired, and thought I would go for a change; so I decided to run away and go and see some ”Bases”--Dieppe, Le Havre and Rouen. The day after I reached Dieppe I received a telegram from the ”Colonel”: ”When do you return?” to which I replied: ”Return where, please?” to which apparently no reply could be made. But two days later I received a letter from him saying he was moving to another job, but would always remember the honour of his having had me working under him. This was a nasty one for me, and I had no answer to give. About the same time I received a telegram from Sir Philip Sa.s.soon: ”Where the devil are you?
_aaa_ Philip.” Months later he sent me a great parcel of correspondence as to whether this telegram, sent by the P.S. of the C.-in-C., could be regarded as an official telegram, its language, etc. The minutes were signed by Lieutenants, Captains, Majors, Colonels, all up to the last one, which was signed by a General, and ran thus: ”What the ---- h.e.l.l were you using this disgusting language for, Philip?”
After a week I went back to Ca.s.sel, packed up and went south to Amiens.
CHAPTER V (p. 036)
THE SOMME IN SUMMER-TIME (AUGUST 1917)
Never shall I forget my first sight of the Somme in summer-time. I had left it mud, nothing but water, sh.e.l.l-holes and mud--the most gloomy, dreary abomination of desolation the mind could imagine; and now, in the summer of 1917, no words could express the beauty of it. The dreary, dismal mud was baked white and pure--dazzling white. White daisies, red poppies and a blue flower, great ma.s.ses of them, stretched for miles and miles. The sky a pure dark blue, and the whole air, up to a height of about forty feet, thick with white b.u.t.terflies: your clothes were covered with b.u.t.terflies. It was like an enchanted land; but in the place of fairies there were thousands of little white crosses, marked ”Unknown British Soldier,” for the most part. (Later, all these bodies were taken up and nearly all were identified and re-buried in Army cemeteries.) Through the ma.s.ses of white b.u.t.terflies, blue dragon-flies darted about; high up the larks sang; higher still the aeroplanes droned. Everything s.h.i.+mmered in the heat.
Clothes, guns, all that had been left in confusion when the war pa.s.sed on, had now been baked by the sun into one wonderful combination of colour--white, pale grey and pale gold. The only dark colours were the deep red bronze of the ”wire” and one black cat which lived in a shelter in what once was the main street of Thiepval. It was strange, this black cat living there all alone. No humans, or those of her own (p. 037) species, lived within miles of her. It took me days to make friends and get her to come to me; and when at last I succeeded, the friends.h.i.+p did not last long. No matter where I worked round that district, the black cat of Thiepval would find me, and would approach silently, and would suddenly jump on my knees and dig all her long nails deeply into my flesh, with affection. I stood it for a little time, and then gave her a good smack, after which I never saw my little black friend again.
[Ill.u.s.tration: XIII. _German Prisoners._]
Thiepval Chateau, one of the largest in the north of France, was practically flattened. What little mound was left was covered with flowers. Some bricks had been collected from it and marked the grave of ”An Unknown British Soldier.” Even Albert, that deadly uninteresting little town, looked almost beautiful and cheerful.
Flowers grew by the sides of the streets; roses were abundant in what were once back-gardens; a hut was up at the corner by the Cathedral and _Daily Mails_ were sold there every evening at four o'clock, and the golden leaning Lady holding her Baby, looking down towards the street, gleamed in the sun on top of the Cathedral tower.
A family had come back from Corbie and re-started their restaurant--a father and three charming girls. They patched up the little house by the station and did a roaring trade, and some few other families came back. Once more a skirt could be seen, even a few silk stockings occasionally tripping about.
Peronne was now like a polished skeleton--very clean, but very brittle: a little breeze, and whole houses would tumble to bits. I started painting, one day, a little picture from the hall of the College for Young Ladies. When I went the next day I found my point of view had been raised several feet: the top walls had come down. But (p. 038) here again they had patched up a great big house as a club. It was airy, not intentionally so, but on a hot day it was ideal, with its view down over the Somme. Bully-beef pie, cheese and beer--if one could only have had French coffee instead of that terrible black mixture imported from England, things would have been more perfectly complete.
About August, a burial party worked round Thiepval. Lieutenant Clark was in charge of it, a st.u.r.dy little Scot. During the month or so they worked there, they dug up, identified and re-buried thousands of bodies. Some could not be identified, and what was found on these in the way of money, knives, etc., was considered fair spoil for the burial party.
Often, coming down Thiepval Hill in the evening, everything golden in the sunlight, one would come across a little group of men, sitting by the side of the battered Hill Road, counting out and dividing the spoils of the day. It was a sordid sight, but for a non-combatant job, to be a member of a burial party was certainly not a pleasant one, and I do not think anyone could grudge them whatever pennies they made, and most of them would have to go back in the trenches when their burial party disbanded.
Down in the Valley of the Ancre, just beside the Thiepval Hill Road, there was a great colony of Indians. They were all Catholics, and were headed by an old padre who had worked in India for forty-five years--a fine old fellow. He held wonderful services each Sunday afternoon on the side of the Hill in the open air; he had an altar put up with wonderful coloured draperies behind it, which hung from a structure about thirty feet high. In the mornings, it was a very beautiful (p. 039) sight to see these nut-brown men was.h.i.+ng themselves and their bronze vessels among the reeds in the Ancre; one could hardly believe one was in France. And where was one? Surely in a place and seeing a life that never existed before, and never will again. The rapidity with which these Indians (they were a cleaning-up party) changed the whole face of Thiepval and that part of the Ancre Valley was incredible.
[Ill.u.s.tration: XIV. _View from the Old English Trenches. Looking towards La Boisselle._]
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