CANADA IN WAR-PAINT

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MULES
(see page [26]) From a drawing by Bert Thomas.

CANADA
IN WAR-PAINT

By CAPT.
RALPH W. BELL

LONDON AND TORONTO
J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.
PARIS: J. M. DENT ET FILS
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO.

First Published in 1917

PREFACE

There is no attempt made in the little sketches which this book contains to deal historically with events of the war. It is but a small Souvenir de la guerre—a series of vignettes of things as they struck me at the time, and later. I have written of types, not of individuals, and less of action than of rest. The horror of war at its worst is fit subject for a master hand alone.

I have to thank the proprietors of The Globe for their courtesy in allowing the reproduction of “Canvas and Mud” and “Tent Music,” and of the Canadian Magazine for the reproduction of “Martha of Dranvoorde.”

Finally, I feel that I can have no greater honour than humbly to dedicate this book to the officers, N.C.O.’s and men of the First Canadian Infantry Battalion, Ontario Regiment, with whom I have spent some of the happiest, as well as some of the hardest, days of my life.

RALPH W. BELL.

December 11th, 1916.

CONTENTS

CANADA IN WAR-PAINT

CANVAS AND MUD!

To those men who, in days of peace, have trained on the swelling, lightly-wooded plains round about Salisbury, no doubt this portion of Old England may seem a very pleasant land. But they have not been there in November under canvas. When the old soldiers of the Canadian contingent heard that we were to go to “the Plains,” some of them said, “S’elp me!” and some a great deal more! It was an ideal day when we arrived. The trees were russet brown and beautiful under the October sun, the grass still green, and the winding road through picturesque little Amesbury white and hard, conveying no hint of that mud for which we have come to feel a positive awe.

At first we all liked our camp; it was high and dry, the tents had floor-boards, that traitorous grass was green and firm withal, and a balmy breeze, follower of the Indian summer, blew pleasantly over the wide-rolling land. We liked it after the somewhat arid climate of Valcartier, the sand and dust. Then it began to rain. It rained one day, two days, three days. During that time the camp named after the fabulous bird became a very quagmire. The sullen black mud was three inches deep between the tent lines, on the parade ground, on the road, where it was pounded and ridged and rolling-pinned by transports, troops, and general traffic; it introduced itself into the tents in slimy blodges, ruined the flawless shine of every “New Guard’s” boots, spattered men from head to foot stickily and persistently. The mud entered into our minds, our thoughts were turbid. Some enterprising passer-by called us mud-larks, and mud-larks we have remained.

Canadians think Salisbury Plains a hideous spot. Those who have been there before know better, but it were suicide to say so, for we have reached the rubber-boot stage. When the rain “lets up” we go forth with picks and spades and clean the highways and byways. Canadians do it with a settled gloom. If the Kaiser tries to land forces in England they hope he will come to Salisbury with his hordes. There they will stick fast. In the fine intervals we train squelchily and yearn for the trenches. What matters the mire when one is at the front, but to slide gracefully into a pool of turgid water, in heavy marching order, for practice only, is hardly good enough. Most Canadians think the concentration camp might preferably have been at the North Pole, if Amundsen would lend it, and we could occupy it without committing a breach of neutrality.

That brings us to the cold weather, of which we have had a foretaste. It was freezing a few days ago. The ground, the wash-taps, and we ourselves, all were frozen. A cheerful Wiltshireman passed along the highway. There was a bitter damp north wind; despite the frost everything seemed to be clammy. “Nice weather for you Canadians,” he shouted happily. Luckily we had no bayonets. It is quite natural that in this country it should be thought that Canadians love cold weather and welcome it. But there is cold and cold. The Salisbury Plains type is of the “and cold” variety! It steals in through the tent flaps with a “chilth” that damply clings. It rusts rifles, blues noses, hoarsens the voice, wheezes into the lungs. It catches on to the woollen filaments of blankets and runs into them, it seeks out the hidden gaps in canvas walls and steals within, it crawls beneath four blankets—when one has been able to steal an extra one—through overcoats, sweaters, up the legs of trousers, into under-garments, and at last finds gelid rest against the quivering flesh, eating its way into the marrow-bones. Like the enemy, it advances in massed formation, and though stoves may dissipate platoon after platoon it never ceases to send up reinforcements until a whining gale has seized on the tent-ropes, squeaks at the poles, draws in vain at the pegs, tears open loose flaps, and veering round brings back sodden rain and the perpetual, the everlasting mud. We know the hard, cold bite of “20 below,” the crisp snow, the echoing land, the crackling of splitting trees, even frost-bite. But it is a dry cold, and it comes: “Whish!” This cold of England’s creeps into the very heart. It takes mean advantages. “Give me the Yukon any old time,” says the hard-bitten shivering stalwart of the north-west. “This, this, it ain’t kinder playin’ the game.”

It must not be thought that Canadians are complaining, for they are not. But England’s climate is to them something unknown and unspeakably vile! One must have been brought up in it to appreciate and to anticipate its vagaries. Canadians feel they have been misled. They expected English cold weather to be a “cinch.” But it’s the weather puts the “cinch” on, not they! There will come a time when we shall be in huts, and the leaky old canvas tents that are now our habitat will have been folded and—we hope for the benefit of others—stolen away! Those tents have seen so much service that they know just as well how to leak as an old charger how to drill. They become animated—even gay—when the wind-beaten rain darkens their grimy flanks, and with fiendish ingenuity they drip, drip, drip down the nape of the neck, well into the eye, even plumb down the throat of the open-mouthed, snoring son of the maple-land.

No matter, we shall be old campaigners when the winter is over; old mud-larkers, as impervious to wet earth as a worm. Even the mud is good training for the time we shall have in the trenches!

TENT MUSIC

It is not often that Thomas Atkins of any nationality wears his heart upon his sleeve, and it is quite certain that the British Tommy but rarely does so, or his confrere of the Canadian Contingent. Perhaps he best shows his thoughts and relieves his feelings in song.

Salisbury Plains must have seen and heard many things, yet few stranger sounds can have been heard there than the chants which rise from dimly-lighted canvas walls, when night has shrouded the earth, and the stars gleam palely through the mist. It is the habit of the Canadian Mr. Atkins, ere he prepares himself for rest, to set his throat a-throbbing to many a tune both new and old. The result is not invariably musical—sometimes far from it, but it is a species of sound the male creature produces either to show his “gladness or his sadness,” and by means of which he relieves a heavy heart, or indicates that in his humble opinion “all’s well with the world.” On every side, from almost every tent, there is harmony, melody, trio, quartette, chorus, or—noise! It is a strange mixture of thoughts and things, a peculiar vocal photograph of the men of the Maple, now admirable, now discordant, here ribald, there rather tinged with the pathetic.

No programme-maker in his wildest moments, in the throes of the most conflicting emotions, could begin to evolve such a varied, such a startling programme as may be heard in the space of a short half-hour under canvas—in a rain-sodden, comfortless tent—anywhere on Salisbury Plains. It does not matter who begins it; some one is “feeling good,” and he lifts up his voice to declaim that “You made me love you; I didn’t want to do it!” The rest join in, here a tenor, there a bass or a baritone, and the impromptu concert has begun.

Never have the writers of songs, the composers of music, grave and gay, come more into their own than among the incorrigibly cheerful warriors of the Plains. The relative merits of composers are not discussed. They are all good enough for Jock Canuck as long as there is that nameless something in the song or the music which appeals to him. It is curious that we who hope to slay, and expect to be slain—many of us—should sing with preference of Killarney’s lakes and fells, “Sunnybrook Farm,” “Silver Threads Among the Gold,” rather than some War Chant or Patriotic Ode, something visionary of battle-fields, guns, the crash of shells. Is not this alone sufficient to show that beneath his tunic, and in spite of his martial spirit, Tommy “has a heart,” and a very warm one?

Picture to yourself a tent with grimy, sodden sides, lighted by three or four guttering candle-ends, stuck wherever space or ingenuity permits. An atmosphere tobacco laden, but not stuffy, rifles piled round the tent-pole, haversacks, “dunnage” bags, blankets, and oil-sheets spread about, and their owners, some of them lying on the floor wrapped in blankets, some seated, one or two perhaps reading or writing in cramped positions, yet quite content. Yonder is a lusty Yorkshireman, big, blue-eyed, and fair, who for some reason best known to himself will call himself an Irishman. We know him as “the man with three voices,” for he has a rich, tuneful, though uncultivated tenor, a wonderful falsetto, and a good alto. His tricks are remarkable, but his ear is fine. He loves to lie sprawled on his great back, and lift up his voice to the skies. All the words of half the old and new songs of two peoples, British and American, he has committed to memory. He is our “leading man,” a shining light in the concert firmament. We have heard and helped him to sing in the course of one crowded period of thirty minutes the following varied programme: “Tipperary,” “Silver Threads Among the Gold,” “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Fight the Good Fight,” “A Wee Deoch an’ Doris,” “When the Midnight Choochoo Leaves for Alabam,” “The Maple Leaf,” “Cock Robin,” “Get Out and Get Under,” “Where is My Wandering Boy To-Night,” “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” and “I Stand in a Land of Roses, though I Dream of a Land of Snow.” But there is one song we never sing, “Home, Sweet Home.” Home is too sacred a subject with us; it touches the deeper, aye, the deepest, chords, and we dare not risk it, exiles that we are.

Very often there are strange paradoxes in the words we sing, when compared with reality.... “I stand in a land of roses!” Well, not exactly, although Salisbury Plains in the summer time are, like the curate’s egg, “good in parts.” But the following line is true enough of many of us. We do “dream of a land of snow”; of the land, and those far, far away in it. Sometimes we sing “rag-time melodee,” but that is only pour passer le temps. There is something which prompts us to other songs, and to sacred music. It often happens that in our tent there are three or four men with voices above the average who take a real delight in singing. One of the most beautiful things of the kind the writer has ever heard was a quartette’s singing of “Nearer, My God, to Thee.” Fine, well-trained voices they possessed, blending truly and harmoniously, which rang out almost triumphal in the frosty night. They sang it once, and then again, and as the last notes died away the bugles sounded the “Last Post.”

Taa-Taa, Taa-Taa, Ta-ta-ti-ti-ti-ti-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta. Ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ti-ta-ta-ta-ta-taa, Taa-Taa, Taa-Taa, Taaa, Tiii!

Verily, even under canvas music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.

RATTLE-SNAKE PETE

Very tall, thin, and cadaverous, with a strong aquiline nose, deep-set, piercing black eyes, bushy eyebrows matching them in colour, and a heavy, fiercely waxed moustache, streaked with grey, he was a man who commanded respect, if not fear.

In spite of his sixty years he was as straight as the proverbial poker, and as “nippy on his pins” as a boy a third of his age. Two ribbons rested on his left breast—the long service ribbon and that of the North-West Rebellion. His voice was not harsh, nor was it melodious, but it could be heard a mile off and struck pure terror into the heart of the evil-doer when he heard it! Rattle-Snake Pete was, as a matter of fact, our Company Sergeant-Major.

Withering was the scorn with which he surveyed a delinquent “rooky,” while his eyes shot flame, and in the terrified imagination of the unfortunate being on whom that fierce gaze was bent his ears seemed to curve upwards into horns, until he recalled the popular conception of Mephistopheles! We called him—when he was safely beyond hearing—Rattle-Snake Pete, but that worthy bravo was far less feared than was his namesake.

First of all, the Sergeant-Major was a real soldier, from the nails in his boots to the crown of his hat. Secondly, he was a man of strong prejudices, and keen dislikes, and, lastly, a very human, unselfish, kind-hearted man.

Discipline was his God, smartness on parade and off the greatest virtue in man, with the exception of pluck. He ruled with a rod of iron, tempered by justice, and his keenness was a thing to marvel at. At first we all hated him with a pure-souled hate. Then, as he licked us into shape, and the seeds of soldiering were sown, we began to realise that he was right, and that we were wrong—and that, after all, the only safe thing to do was to obey!

One day a man was slow in doing what his corporal told him to do. As was his habit, the S.-M. came on the scene suddenly, a lean tower of steely wrath. After he had poured out the vials of his displeasure on the head of the erring one, he added: “I’ll make you a soldier, lad, or I’ll break your heart!” He meant it; he could do it; we knew he could, and it resulted in our company being the best in the regiment.

Shortly before we moved to France, a personage and his consort inspected us. He shook hands with Rattle-Snake, and spoke to him for several moments.

“How old are you?”

“Forty-five, Your Majesty.”

“Military age, I suppose?” queried the Personage with a kindly smile.

“Yes, sir.”

Never in his life was Rattle so happy as he was that day, and we felt rather proud of him ourselves.

Our Sergeant-Major had shaken hands with the King!

Those who had stood near enough to hear what had passed achieved a temporary fame thereby, and in tent and canteen the story was told, with variations suited to the imagination of the raconteur, for days after the event.

When we moved to France Rattle-Snake Pete came with us. I think the doctor saw it would have broken his heart not to come, although at his age he certainly should not have done so. But come he did, and never will the writer forget the day Rattle pursued him into an old loft, up a broken, almost perpendicular ladder, to inquire in a voice of thunder why a certain fatigue party was minus a man.

“Come you down out of there, lad, or you’ll be for it!” And, meekly as a sucking-dove, I came!

He was wounded at the second battle of Ypres, and, according to all accounts, what he said about the Germans as he lay on that battle-field petrified the wounded around him, and was audible above the roar of bursting Jack Johnsons.

They sent him to hospital in “Blighty,” an unwilling patient, and there he has been eating out his heart ever since, in the face of adamantine medical boards.

One little incident. We were billeted in an old theatre, years ago it seems now, at Armentières. We had marched many kilometres in soaking rain that afternoon, and we were deadly weary. Rattle, though he said no word, was ill, suffering agonies from rheumatism. One could see it. Being on guard, I was able to see more than the rest, who, for the most part, slept the sleep of the tired out. One fellow was quite ill, and he tossed and turned a good deal in his sleep. Rattle was awake too, sitting in front of the dying embers in the stove, his face every now and then contorted with pain. Often he would go over to the sick man and arrange his bed for him as gently as a woman. Then he himself lay down. The sick man awoke, and I heard his teeth chatter. “Cold, lad?” said a deep voice near by. “Yes, bitter cold.” The old S.-M. got up, took his own blanket and put it over the sick man. Thereafter he sat until the dawn broke on a rickety chair in front of the dead fire.

MULES

Until there was a war, quite a lot of people hardly knew there were such things as mules. “Mules?” they would say, “Oh, er, yes ... those creatures with donkey’s ears, made like a horse? or do you mean canaries?”

Nous avons changé tout cela! “Gonga Din” holds no hidden meaning from us now. We have, indeed, a respect for mules, graded according to closeness of contact.

In some Transports they think more of a mule than of a first-class, No. 1 charger. Why? Simply because a mule is—a mule. No one has yet written a theory of the evolution of mules. We all know a mule is a blend of horse and donkey, and that reproduction of the species is mercifully withheld by the grace of heaven, but further than that we do not go.

When the war began our C.O. was talking about mules. We had not crossed the water then. He said: “I will not have any mules. No civilised man should have to look after a mule. When I was in Pindi once, a mule ... Mr. Jenks”—our worthy Transport Officer—“there will be no mules in this regiment.” That settled it for a while.

Our first mule came a month after we had landed in Flanders. It was a large, lean, hungry-looking mule. It stood about 17 feet 2 inches, and it had very large floppy ears and a long tail: it was rather a high-class mule, as mules go. It ate an awful lot. In fact it ate about as much as two horses and a donkey put together. The first time it was used some one put it in the Maltese cart, and it looked round at the cart with an air of surprise and regret. We were on the move, and the Transport was brigaded, and inspected by the Brigadier as it passed the starting point. James—the mule—behaved in a most exemplary fashion until he saw the Brigadier. Then he was overcome by his emotions. Perhaps the red tabs reminded him of carrots. (James was a pure hog where carrots were concerned.) At all events he proceeded to break up the march. He took the bit between his teeth, wheeled to the left, rolled his eyes, brayed, and charged across an open ditch at the G.O.C. with the Maltese cart.

The G.O.C. and staff extended to indefinite intervals without any word of command.

James pulled up in a turnip patch and began to eat contentedly. It took six men and the Transport Officer to get him on to the road again, and the Maltese cart was a wreck.

After that they tried him as a pack-mule. He behaved like an angel for two whole weeks, and then some bright-eyed boy tried him as a saddle mule. After that the whole of the Transport tried him, retiring worsted from the fray on each occasion. One day the Transport Officer bet all-comers fifty francs on the mule. The conditions were that riders must stick on for five minutes. We used to think we could ride any horse ever foaled. We used to fancy ourselves quite a lot in fact, until we met James. Half the battalion came to see the show, which took place one sunny morning at the Transport lines. We looked James over with an appraising eye. We even gave him a carrot, as an earnest of goodwill. James wore a placid, far-away expression and, now and then, rolled his eyes sentimentally.

We gathered up the reins, and vaulted on to his back. For a full two seconds James stood stock still. Then he emitted an ear-splitting squeal, laid back his ears, bared his teeth, turned round and bit at the near foot, and sat down on his hind legs. He did all these things in quick time, by numbers. The betting, which had started at 2-1 on James, increased to 3-1 immediately. However, we stuck. James rose with a mighty heave, then, still squealing, made a rush of perhaps ten yards, and stopped dead. We still stuck. The betting fell to evens, except for the Transport Sergeant, who in loud tones offered 5-1 (on James). That kept him busy for two minutes, during which time James did almost everything but roll, and bit a toe off one of my new pair of riding boots.

There was one minute to go, and there was great excitement. James gave one squeal of concentrated wrath, gathered his four hoofs together tightly, bucked four feet in the air, kicked in mid-ether, and tried to bite his own tail. When we next saw him he was being led gently away.

Since then we have had many mules. We have become used to them, and we respect them. If we hear riot in the Transport lines we know it is a mule. If we hear some one has been kicked, we know it is a mule. If we see one of the G.S. wagons carrying about two tons we know mules are drawing it. Old James now pulls the water-cart. He would draw it up to the mouth of the biggest Fritz cannon that ever was, but Frank Wootton could not ride him!

“OFFICE”

“Charge against No. 7762543, Private Smith, J.C.; In the field, 11.11.16, refusing to obey an order, in that he would not wash out a dixie when ordered to do so. First witness, Sergeant Bendrick.”

“Sirr! On Nov. 11th I was horderly sergeant. Private Thomas, cook, comes to me, and he says as ’ow ’e ’ad warned the pris— the haccused, sir, to wash out a dixie, which same the haccused refused to do. Hordered by me to wash hout the dixie, sir, the haccused refused again, and I places ’im under hopen arrest, sir.”

“Cpl. Townsham, what have you to say?”

“Sirr! On Nov. 11th I was eatin’ a piece of bread an’ bacon when I was witness to what took place between Sergeant Bendrick an’ Private Smith, sir. I corroborates his evidence.”

“All right; Private Thomas?”

“Sirr! I coboriates both of them witnesses.”

“You corroborate what both witnesses have said?”

“Yessir.”

“Now, Smith, what have you got to say? Stand to attention!”

“I ain’t got nothin’ to say, sir, savin’ that I never joined the army to wash dixies, an’ I didn’t like the tone of voice him”—indicating the orderly Sergeant—“used to me. Also I’m a little deaf, sir, an’ my ’ands is that cut with barbed wire that it’s hagony to put ’em in boilin’ water, sir! An’ I’m afraid o’ gettin’ these ’ere germs into them, sir. Apart from which I ain’t got anything to say, sir!”

After this Private Smith assumes the injured air of a martyr, casts his eyes up to heaven, and waits hopefully for dismissal. (The other two similar cases were dismissed this morning!)

The Captain drums his fingers on the table for a few moments. “This is your first offence, Smith.”

“Yessir!”

“But it is not made any the less serious by that fact.”

The gleam of joy in Smith’s eye departs.

“Disobedience of an order is no trivial matter. A case like this should go before the Commanding Officer.”

Long pause, during which the accused passes from the stage of hope deferred to gloom and disillusion, and the orderly Sergeant assumes a fiercely triumphant expression.

“Twenty-eight days Field Punishment number one,” murmurs the Captain ruminatively, “or a court-martial”—this just loud enough for the accused to hear. The latter’s left leg sags a trifle, and consternation o’erspreads his visage.

“In view, Smith,” says the Captain aloud, “in view of your previous good record, I will deal with you myself. Four days dixie washing, and you will attend all parades!”

Before Private Smith has time to heave a sigh of relief the C.S.M.’s voice breaks on the air, “Left turrn! Left wheel, quick marrch!”

“A good man, Sergeant-Major,” says the Captain with a smile. “Have to scare ’em a bit at times, what?”

Battalion Orderly Room is generally a very imposing affair, calculated to put fear into the hearts of all save the most hardened criminals. At times the array is formidable, as many as thirty—witnesses, escort, and prisoners—being lined up outside the orderly room door under the vigilant eye of the Regimental Sergeant-Major. It is easy to see which is which, even were not the “dress” different. The prisoners are in clean fatigue, wearing no accoutrements or equipment beyond the eternal smoke-helmet. The escort are in light marching order, and grasp in their left hands a naked bayonet, point upwards, resting along the forearm. The witnesses wear their belts. Most of the accused have a hang-dog look, some an air of defiance.

“Escort and prisoners.... Shun!”

The Colonel passes into orderly room, where the Adjutant, the Battalion Orderly Officer, and Officer witnesses in the cases to be disposed of await him, all coming rigidly to attention as he enters. In orderly room, or “office” as the men usually call it, the Colonel commands the deference paid to a high court judge. He is not merely a C.O., he is an Institution.

The R.S.M. hovers in the background, waiting for orders to call the accused and witnesses in the first case. The C.O. fusses with the papers on his desk, hums and haws, and finally decides which case he will take first. The Adjutant stands near him, a sheaf of papers in his hand, like a learnéd crown counsel.

Not infrequently the trend of a case depends on whether the C.O. lunched well, or if the G.O.C. strafed or complimented him the last time they held palaver. Even colonels are human.

“Charge against Private Maconochie, No. 170298, drunk,” etc., reads the Adjutant.

After the evidence has been heard the Colonel, having had no explanation or defence from the accused, proceeds to pass sentence. This being a first “drunk” he cannot do very much but talk, and talk he does.

“You were drunk, Thomkins. You were found in a state of absolutely sodden intoxication, found in the main street of Ablain-le-Petit at 4 P.M. in the afternoon. You were so drunk that the evidence quotes you as sleeping on the side-walk. You are a disgrace to the regiment, Thomkins! You outrage the first principles of decency, you cast a slur on your battalion. You deliberately, of set purpose, intoxicate yourself at an early hour of the afternoon. I have a good mind to remand for a Field General Court-martial. Then you would be shot! Shot, do you understand? But I shall deal with you myself. I shall not permit the name of this battalion to be besmirched by you. Reprimanded! Reprimanded! Do you hear, sir!”

(Voice of the R.S.M., north front.) “Right turn. Right wheel; quick marrch!”

OUR FARM

July 30th, 1916.

We are staying at a farm; quite an orthodox, Bairnsfather farm, except that in lieu of one (nominal) dead cow, we possess one (actual) portion of Dried Hun. The view from our doorway is somewhat extensive, and full of local colour! There are “steen” other farms all around us, all of which look as though they had been played with by professional house-wreckers out on a “beno.” “AK” Company—what there is left of it—has at present “gone to ground,” and from the lake to “Guildhall Manor” (we are very Toney over here!) there is no sign of life. A Fokker dropped in to call half an hour ago, but Archie & Sons awoke with some alacrity, and he has gone elsewhere. It is too hot even to write, and the C.O. of “AK” Coy., who will wash every day, is a disturbing influence. He splashes about in two inches of “wipers swill” as though he really liked it, and the nett result is that somewhere around 4 “pip emma” the rest of us decide to shave also, which ruins the afternoon siesta.

This is a great life. Breakfast at 2 A.M., lunch at noon, dinner at 4 P.M., and supper any old time.

Macpherson—one of those enthusiastic blighters—insisted on taking me for a walk this morning. Being pure Edinburgh, Mac collects rum, whisky, and miscellaneous junk of all descriptions. When he returns to Canada he intends to run a junk shop in rear of a saloon.

The Boche was in a genial mood this morning. As we squelched along Flossy way, “out for bear,” he began to tickle up poor old Paradise Wood with woolly bears, and Mount Sparrow with Minnies. Mac has no sense of humour, he failed to see the joke. “There is a pairfectly good pair of field-glasses to the left of Diamond Copse,” he said mournfully, “and we cannot get them.” Diamond Copse is the sort of place one reads about, and wishes one had never seen. It is about an acre and a half in extent, and was once a pretty place enough, with a few fine oak trees, and many young saplings. Nowadays, it can hardly show a live twig, while shell-holes, bits of shrapnel, stinking pools tinged with reddy-brown, and forlorn remnants of trench—not to speak of dead bodies—make it into a nightmare of a place.

“There is a sniper in Paradise Wood, and I do not like him,” Mac announced gravely, after the fifth bullet, so we dodged over a grave, under a fallen oak, and into a shell-wrecked dug-out full of torn web equipment, machine-gun belts, old bully-beef, biscuits, a stained blanket, and a boot with part of the wearer’s leg in it. The horse-flies were very annoying, and a dead donkey in a narrow street of Cairo would be as violets to patchouli compared with the smell. Mac kept nosing around, and finally retrieved a safety razor and a box of number nine pills from an old overcoat. “There is some one over there in need of burial,” he said, “I can see the flies.” The flies were incidental, but Mac is that kind of chap.

We found what was left of the poor fellow near by. There was nothing but bone and sinew, and torn remnants of clothing. It was impossible to identify the man, and equally impossible to move him. By his side lay a bunch of letters, dirty and torn, and in a pocket which I opened gingerly with a jack-knife, a photograph of a girl—“With love, from Mary.” The letters had no envelopes, and all began, “Dear Jimmy.” Mac read one, and passed it over to me: “Dear Jimmy,—Enclosed you will find a pair of socks, some chewing gum, and a pair of wool gloves I knitted myself. The baby is well, and so am I. Peraps you will get leeve before long. Take care of yourself, Jim dear. The pottatoes have done good, an’ I am growing some tommatos. My separashun allowence comes reglar, so don’t worry. You will be home soon, Jim, for the papers say the Germans is beaten. I got your letter written in May. Alice is well. Your lovin’ wife, Mary.” “Och, it’s a shame,” said Mac, not looking at me. “A Tragedy, and but one of thousands.”

We covered poor Jim over with old sand-bags, as best we might, and his letters and photograph with him. Then we came back to our farm to lunch.

AEROPLANES AND “ARCHIE”

There is something fascinating about aeroplanes. However many thousands of them one may have seen, however many aerial combats one may have witnessed, there is always the desire to see these things again, and, inwardly, to marvel.

Ten thousand feet above, round balls of black smoke appear in the blue sky, coming, as it were, out of the nowhere into here. After long listening you hear the echo of the distant explosion, like the clapping together of the hands of a man in the aisle of an empty church, and if you search very diligently, you will at last see the aeroplane, a little dot in the ether, moving almost slowly—so it appears—on its appointed course. Now the sun strikes the white-winged, bird-like thing as it turns, and it glitters in the beams of light like a diamond in the sky. Now it banks a little higher, now planes down at a dizzy angle. Suddenly, short, sharp, distinct, you catch the sound of machine-gun fire. Quick stuttering bursts, as the visible machine and the invisible enemy circle about each other, seeking to wound, wing, and destroy. Ah! There it is! The Fokker dives, steep and straight, at our machine, and one can clearly see the little darts of flame as the machine-guns rattle. Our man quite calmly loops the loop, and then seems almost to skid after the Fokker which has carried on downwards, evidently hit. He swoops down on the stricken plane, pumping in lead as he goes. The twain seem to meet in collision, then—yes, the Fokker is plunging, nose-diving, down, down, at a terrific rate of speed. Our aviator swings free in a great circle, banks, and at top speed makes back to his air-line patrol, while the German Archies open up on him with redoubled violence, as, serenely confident, he hums along his way.

It is truly wonderful what a fire an aeroplane can pass through quite unscathed as far as actual hinderance to flight is concerned. Many a time you can count nearly two hundred wreathing balls of smoke in the track of the machine, and yet it sails placidly onward as though the air were the native element of its pilot and the attentions of Archie nonexistent.

It is Tommy who first gave the anti-aircraft gun that euphonious name. Why, no one knows. It must be intensely trying to be an Archie gunner. Rather like shooting at driven partridges with an air-gun, though far more exciting. The shells may burst right on the nose of the aeroplane, to all intents and purposes, and yet the machine goes on, veering this way or that, dropping or rising, apparently quite indifferent to the bitter feelings it is causing down below. It is the most haughty and inscrutable of all the weapons of war, to all outward appearances, and yet when misfortune overtakes it, it is a very lame duck indeed.

Archie is very much like a dog, his bark is worse than his bite—until he has bitten! His motto is “persevere,” and in the long run he meets with some success. Halcyon days, when he wags his metaphorical tail and the official communiqués pat him on the head. He does not like other dogs, bigger dogs, to bark at him. They quite drown his own bark, so that it is useless to bark back, and their highly explosive nature forces him to put his tail between his legs and run for it, like a chow pursued by a mastiff. No common-sense Archie stops in any place long after the five-nines and the H.E. shrapnel begin to burst around it. In that case discretion is indubitably the better part of valour.

Aeroplanes have a nasty habit of “spotting” Archies, whereby they even up old scores and prove their superiority. For even the lordly aeroplane does not charge an Archie barrage by preference.

It is when the planes come out in force, a score at a time, that poor Archibald has a rough time, and, so to speak, scratches his ear desperately with his hind leg. The planes do not come in serried mass, but, wheeling this way and that, diving off here and down yonder, so confuse poor Archie that he even stops barking at all, wondering which one he ought to bark at first! By this time most of the planes have sidled gracefully out of range, rounded up and driven down the iron-cross birds, and, having dropped their “cartes de visite” at the rail-head, are returning by ways that are swift and various to the place whence they came. All of which is most unsettling to the soul of Archibald.

In the evening, when the west is pink and gold, Archie’s eyes grow wearied. He sees dimly many aeroplanes, here and there, going and coming, and he has been known to bark at the wrong one! Wherefore the homing aeroplane drops a star-signal very often to let him know that all is well, and that no German hawks menace the safety of the land over which he is the “ethereal” guardian, in theory, if not always in practice.

At night Archie slumbers profoundly. But the birds of the air do not always sleep. Many a night one hears the throb and hum of a machine crossing the line, and because Archie is asleep we pay him unconscious tribute: “Is it ours, or theirs?”

Once, not a mile from the front line, Archie dreamed he saw a Zeppelin. He awoke, stood to, and pointed his nose straight up in the air. Far above him, many thousands of feet aloft, a silvery, menacing sphere hung in the rays of the searchlights. And he barked his loudest and longest, but without avail, for the distance was too great. And the imaginative French folk heaped unintentional infamy upon him when they spoke quite placidly of “Archie baying at the moon!”

STIRRING TIMES

At the corner of the Grande Route de Bapaume near the square, stands the little old Estaminet of La Veuve Matifas.

It is only a humble Estaminet, where, in the old days, Pierre Lapont and old Daddy Duchesne discussed a “chope,” and talked over the failings of the younger generation, but nowadays it bears a notice on the little door leading into the back room, “For officers only.” The men have the run of the larger room, during hours, but the little parlour in rear is a spot sacred to those wearing from one star upwards.

Madame Matifas is old, and very large.

“Mais, Monsieur le Capitaine, dans ma jeunesse.... Ah! Alors!”—and she dearly loves a good hearty laugh. She also sells most excellent champagne, and—let it be murmured softly—Cointreau, Benedictine, and very rarely a bottle of “Skee” (“B. & W.” for choice). She has twinkling brown eyes, fat comfortable-looking hands, and we all call her “Mother,” while she calls those of us who please her “Mon brave garçon.”

But La Veuve Matifas is not the sole attraction of the Bon Fermier nor are even her very excellent wines and other drinks, that may inebriate. She has two children: Cécile and Marie Antoinette. The former is, strange to say, “petite” and “mignonne”—she is also very pretty and she knows all the officers of our Division; most of the young and tender ones write to her from the trenches. You may kiss Cécile on the cheek if you know her well.

Marie Antoinette is of the tall, rather rich coloured, passionate type. She was engaged to a “Little Corporal” of the 77th Infantry of the Line. Alas, he died of wounds seven months ago. She wears mourning for him, but Marie is now in love with the Senior Major, or else we are all blind! (Uneasy rests the arm that wears a crown!) However, that is neither here not there. We like the widow Matifas, and we all admire her daughters, while some of us fall in love with them, and we always have a “stirring time” when we reach rest billets within walking distance of the “Estaminet du Bon Fermier,” or even gee gee distance.

In defiance of the A.P.M. we float into town about 8 “pip emma” (the O.C. signals will bring “shop” into every-day conversation) and stealthily creep up the little back alley which leads to the back door of the Estaminet. We gather there—four of us, as a rule—and we tap thrice. We hear a fat, uneven walk, and the heavy respiration of “Maman,” and then:

“Qui est là?”

“C’est nous, Mère Matifas!”

The door is unbolted, and we enter. Scholes invariably salutes Maman on both cheeks, and we—if we have the chance—salute her daughters. Then we carry on to the parlour. Pelham—who thinks all women love his goo-goo eyes—tries to tell Marie Antoinette, in simply rotten French, how much he loves her, and Marie gets very business-like, and wants to know if we want Moët et Chandon at 12 frcs. a bottle or “the other” at six.

So far we have never dared to try “the other,” for fear that we appear “real mean”! Maman bustles about, and calls us her brave boys, and never says a word about the war, which is a real kindness to us war-weary people.

Cécile makes her entrance usually after the second bottle; probably to make her sister envious, because she always gets such a warm welcome. In fact there is an almost scandalous amount of competition for the honour of sitting next to her.

La Veuve Matifas stays until after the third bottle. She has tact, that woman, and a confidence in ourselves and her daughters that no man who is worthy of the name would take advantage of.

Last time we were there an incident occurred which literally took all our breaths away. We were in the middle of what Allmays calls “Close harmony” and Allmays was mixing high tenor, basso profundo, and Benedictine, when suddenly the door opened in a most impressive manner. That little plain deal door felt important, and it had the right to feel important too.

The C.O. came in.

We got up.

The C.O. turned to Cécile, who was sitting far too close to Pelham, in my estimation (for I was on the other side), and said, “Cécile, two more bottles please!” Then to us, “Sit down, gentlemen, carry on.” We were all fairly senior officers, but Maman nearly fainted dead away when we conveyed to her the fact that a real, live, active service Colonel was in her back parlour at 9.15 “pip emma,” ordering up the bubbly.

He stayed a whole hour, and we had to sing. And then he told us that he had been offered a Brigade, and was leaving us. We were all jolly sorry—and jolly glad too—and we said so. We told the girls. “Un Général!” cried Cécile. “Mon Dieu!” and before we could stop her she flung her arms round the C.O.’s neck and kissed him. We all expected to be shot at dawn or dismissed the service, but the C.O. took it like a real brick, and Pelham swears he kissed her back—downy old bird that he is!

After he had left we had a bully time. Marie Antoinette was peeved because she had not kissed the Colonel herself, and Cécile was sparkling because she had kissed him. Which gave us all a chance. Mère Matifas drank two whole glasses of champagne, and insisted on dancing a Tarantelle with Allmays, whom she called a “joli garçon,” and flirted with most shamelessly. Pelham got mixed up with a coon song, and spent half an hour trying to unmix, and Scholes consoled Marie Antoinette. As for me, well, there was nothing for it—Cécile had to be talked to, don’t you know!

Mother “pro-duced” a bottle of “B. & W.” also. In fact we had a most stirring time!

We still go to see La Veuve Matifas. She never speaks to us without saying at least once, “Ah! Mais le brave Général, image de mon mari, où est il?”

I have a photograph of Cécile in the left-hand breast pocket of my second-best tunic. Scholes says he is going to marry Marie Antoinette, “Après la Guerre,” in spite of the Senior Major!

SICK PARADE

“The Company,” read the orderly Sergeant, “will parade at 8.45 A.M., and go for a route march. Dress: Light marching order.”

A groan went up from the dark shadows of the dimly-lighted barn, which died down gradually on the order to “cut it out.” “Sick parade at 7.30 A.M. at the M.O.’s billet Menin-lee-Chotaw,” announced the O.S. sombrely. “Any of you men who wanter go sick give in your names to Corporal Jones right now.”

Yells of “Right here, Corporal,” “I can’t move a limb, Corporal,” and other statements of a like nature, announced the fact that there were quite a number of gentlemen whose pronounced view it was that they could not do an eight-mile route march the next day. Corporal Jones emerged, perspiring, after half an hour’s gallant struggle. Being very conscientious he took full particulars, according to Hoyle: name, number, rank, initials, age, religion, and nature of disease. The last he invariably asked for by means of the code phrase, “wossermarrerwiyou?”

Having refused to admit at least half a dozen well-known scrimshankers to the roll of sick, lame, and lazy, he finished up with Private Goodman, who declared himself suffering from “rheumatics hall over. Me legs is somethin’ tur’ble bad.”

There were thirteen names on the report.

Menin-le-Château being a good three kilometres distant, the sick fell in at 6.30 A.M. the next day. The grey dawn was breaking in the East, and a drizzling rain made the village street even more miserable-looking than it was at all times. As on all sick parades, all the members thereof endeavoured to look their very worst, and succeeded admirably for the most part. They were unshaven, improperly dressed, according to military standards, and they shuffled around like a bunch of old women trying to catch a bus. Corporal Jones was in a very bad temper, and he told them many things, the least of which would have made a civilian’s hair turn grey. But, being “sick,” the men merely listened to him with a somewhat apathetic interest.

They moved off in file, a sorry-looking bunch of soldiers. Each man chose his own gait, which no injunctions to get in step could affect, and a German under-officer looking them over would have reported to his superiors that the morale of the British troops was hopeless.

At 7.25 A.M. this unseemly procession arrived in Menin-le-Château. In the far distance Corporal Jones espied the Regimental Sergeant-Major. The latter was a man whom every private considered an incarnation of the devil! The junior N.C.O.’s feared him, and the Platoon Sergeants had a respect for him founded on bitter experience in the past, when he had found them wanting. In other words he was a cracking good Sergeant-Major of the old-fashioned type. He was privately referred to as Rattle-Snake Pete, a tribute not only to his disciplinary measures, but also to his heavy, fierce black moustachios, and a lean, eagle-like face in which was set a pair of fierce, penetrating black eyes.

“If,” said Corporal Jones loudly, “you all wants to be up for Office you’ll walk. Otherways you’ll march! There’s the Sergeant-Major!”

The sick parade pulled itself together with a click. Collars and the odd button were furtively looked over and done up, caps pulled straight, and no sound broke the silence save a smart unison of “left-right-left” along the muddy road. The R.S.M. looked them over with a gleam in his eye as they passed, and glanced at his watch.

“’Alf a minute late, Co’poral Jones,” he shouted. “Break into double time. Double ... march!” The sick parade trotted away steadily—until they got round a bend in the road. “Sick!!!” murmured the R.S.M. “My H’EYE!”

A little way further on the parade joined a group composed of the sick of other battalion units, some fifty in all. Corporal Jones handed his sick report to the stretcher-bearer Sergeant, and was told he would have to wait until the last.

In half an hour’s time the first name of the men in his party was called—Lance-Corporal MacMannish.

“What’s wrong?” asked the doctor briskly.

“’A have got a pain in here, sirr,” said MacMannish, “an’ it’s sair, sorr,” pointing to the centre of his upper anatomy.

“Show me your tongue? H’m. Eating too much! Colic. Two number nine’s. Light duty.”

Lance-Corporal MacMannish about-turned with a smile of ecstatic joy and departed, having duly swallowed the pills.

“What did ye get, Jock?”

“Och! Light duty,” said the hero with the air of a wronged man justified, “but you’ll be no gettin’ such a thing, Bowering!”

“And why not?” demanded the latter scowling. However, his name being then called put an end to the discussion.

“I have pains in me head and back, sir,” explained Mr. Bowering, “and no sleep for two nights.” The doctor looked him over with a critical, expert eye.

“Give him a number nine. Medicine and duty. Don’t drink so much, Bowering! That’s enough. Clear out!”

“He’s no doctor,” declared the victim when he reached the street. “Huh! I wouldn’t trust a cat with ’im!”

The next man got no duty, and this had such an effect on him that he almost forgot he was a sick man, and walloped a pal playfully in the ribs on the doorstep, which nearly led to trouble.

Of the remaining ten, all save one were awarded medicine and duty, but they took so long to tell the story of their symptoms, and managed to develop such good possible cases, that it was 8.45 before the parade fell in again to march back to billets, a fact which they all thoroughly appreciated!

Wonderful the swinging step with which they set forth, Corporal Jones at the head, Lance-Corporal MacMannish, quietly triumphant, bringing up the rear. They passed the Colonel in the village, and he stopped Corporal Jones to inquire what they were.

“Your men are marching very well, Corporal. ‘A’ Company? Ah, yes. Fatigue party, hey?”

“No-sir, sick-parade-sir!”

“Sick Parade! God bless my soul! Sick! How many men were given medicine and duty?”

“Nine, sir.”

“Nine, out of thirteen.... ‘A’ Company is on a route march this morning, is it not?”

“Yessir.”

“My compliments to Major Bland, Corporal, and I would like him to parade these nine men in heavy marching order and send them on a nine-mile route march, under an officer.”

“Very good, sir!”

Next day there were no representatives of “A” Coy. on sick parade!

BATMEN

This war has produced a new breed of mankind, something that the army has never seen before, although they have formed a part of it, under the same name, since Noah was a boy. They are alike in name only. Batmen, the regular army type, are professionals. What they don’t know about cleaning brass, leather, steel, and general valeting simply isn’t worth knowing. They are super-servants, and they respect their position as reverently as an English butler respects his. With the new batman it is different. Usually the difficulty is not so much to discover what they do not know, as what they do! A new officer arrives at the front, or elsewhere, and he has to have a batman. It is a rather coveted job, and applicants are not slow in coming forward. Some man who is tired of doing sentry duty gets the position, and his “boss” spends anxious weeks bringing him up in the way he should go, losing, in the interval, socks, handkerchiefs, underwear, gloves, ties, shirts, and collars galore! What can be said to the wretched man when in answer to “Where the —— is my new pair of socks?” he looks faint and replies: “I’ve lost them, sir!” Verily, as the “professional” scornfully remarks, are these “Saturday night batmen!”

Yet even batmen are born, not made. Lucky is he who strikes on one of the former; only the man is sure to get killed, or wounded, or go sick! There is always a fly in the ointment somewhere. The best kind of batman to have is a kleptomaniac. Treat him well and he will never touch a thing of your own, but he will, equally, never leave a thing belonging to any one else!

“Cozens, where did you get this pair of pants?”

“Found them, sir!”

“Where did you find them?”

“Lying on the floor, sir,” with an air of injured surprise.

“Where!”

“I don’t justly remember, sir.”

Voice from right rear: “The Major’s compliments, sir, and have you seen his new pants?”

“Cozens!”

“Yessir.”

“Give me those pants.... Are those the Major’s?”

“Yes, sir, them’s them.”

Cozens watches the pants disappear with a sad, retrospective air of gloom.

“You ain’t got but the one pair now, sir.” This with reproach.

“How many times have I got to tell you to leave other people’s clothes alone? The other day it was pyjamas, now it’s pants. You’ll be taking somebody’s boots next. Confound it. I’ll—I’ll return you to duty if you do it again!... How about all those handkerchiefs? Where did they come from?”

“All yours, sir, back from the wash!” With a sigh, one is forced to give up the unequal contest.

Albeit as valets the batmen of the present day compare feebly with the old type, in certain other ways they are head and shoulders above them. The old “pro” refuses to do a single thing beyond looking after the clothing and accoutrements of his master. The new kind of batman can be impressed to do almost anything. He will turn into a runner, wait at table, or seize a rifle with gusto and help get Fritz’s wind up. Go long journeys to find souvenirs, and make himself generally useful. He will even “bat” for the odd officer, when occasion arises, as well as for his own particular boss.

No man is a hero in the eyes of his own batman. He knows everything about you, even to the times when your banking account is nil. He knows when you last had a bath, and when you last changed your underwear. He knows how much you eat, and also how much you drink; he knows all your friends with whom you correspond, and most of your family affairs as revealed by that correspondence, and nothing can hide from his eagle eye the fact that you are—lousy! Yet he is a pretty good sort, after all; he never tells. We once had a rather agéd sub. in the Company whose teeth were not his own, not a single one of them. One night, after a somewhat heavy soirée and general meeting of friends, he went to bed—or, to be more accurate, was tucked in by his faithful henchman—and lost both the upper and lower sets in the silent watches. The following morning he had a fearfully worried look, and spake not at all, except in whispers to his batman. Finally, the O.C. Company asked him a question, and he had to say something. It sounded like “A out mo,” so we all instantly realised something was lacking. He refused to eat anything at all, but took a little nourishment in the form of tea. His batman was to be observed crawling round the floor, perspiring at every pore, searching with his ears aslant and his mouth wide open for hidden ivory. We all knew it; poor old Gerrard knew we knew it, but the batman was faithful to the last, even when he pounced on the quarry with the light of triumph in his eye. He came to his master after breakfast was over and asked if he could speak to him. Poor Gerrard moved into the other room, and you could have heard a pin drop. “Please, sir,” in a stage whisper from his batman, “please, sir, I’ve got hold of them TEETH, sir! But the front ones is habsent, sir, ’aving bin trod on!”

The biggest nuisance on God’s earth is a batman who spends all his spare moments getting drunk! Usually, however, he is a first-class batman during his sober moments! He will come in “plastered to the eyes” about eleven o’clock, and begin to hone your razors by the pallid rays of a candle, or else clean your revolver and see if the cartridges fit! In his cups he is equal to anything at all. Unless the case is really grave the man wins every time, for no one hates the idea of changing his servant more than an officer who has had the same man for a month or so and found him efficient.

Not infrequently batmen are touchingly faithful. They will do anything on earth for their “boss” at any time of the day or night, and never desert him in the direst extremity. More than one batman has fallen side by side with his officer, whom he had followed into the fray, close on his heels.

Once, after a charge, a conversation ensued between the sergeant of a certain officer’s platoon and that officer’s batman, in this fashion:

“What were you doin’ out there, Tommy?”

“Follerin’.”

“And why was you close up on his heels, so clost I could ’ardly see ’im?”

“Follerin’ ’im up.”

“And why wasn’t you back somewhere safe?” (This with a touch of sarcasm.)

“Lord, Sargint, you couldn’t expect me to let ’im go out by ’isself! ’E might ha’ got hurt!”

RATIONS

“Bully-beef an’ ’ard-tack,” said Private Boddy disgustedly. “Bully-beef that’s canned dog or ’orse, or may be cats, an’ biscuits that’s fit for dawgs.... This is a ’ell of a war. W’y did I ever leave little old Walkerville, w’ere the whiskey comes from? Me an’ ’Iram we was almost pals, as you may say. I worked a ’ole fortnight in ’is place, at $1.75 per, an’ then I——” Mr. Boddy broke off abruptly, but not soon enough.

“Huh!” broke in a disgusted voice from a remote corner of the dug-out, “then I guess you went bummin’ your way till the bulls got you in Windsor. To hear you talk a chap would think you didn’t know what pan-handlin’ was, or going out on the stem.”

“Look ’ere,” said Boddy with heat, “you comeralong outside, you great long rubberneck, you, an’ I’ll teach you to call me a pan-’andler, I will. You low-life Chicago bum, wot never did ’ave a better meal than you could steal f’m a Chink Chop Suey.”

“Say, fellers,” a quiet voice interposed, “cut it out. This ain’t a Parliament Buildings nor a Montreal cabaret. There’s a war on. If youse guys wants to talk about rations, then go ahead, shoot, but cut out the rough stuff!”

“Dat’s what I say, Corporal,” interrupted a French-Canadian. “I’m a funny sort of a guy, I am. I likes to hear a good spiel, widout any of dis here free cussin’ an’ argumentation. Dat ain’t no good, fer it don’t cut no ice, no’ d’un ch’en!”

“Talkin’ of rations,” drawled a Western voice, “when I was up to Calgary in ’08, an’ was done gone busted, save for two bits, I tuk a flop in one of them houses at 15 cents per, an’ bot a cow’s heel with the dime. You kin b’lieve me or you needn’t, but I tell you a can of that bully you’re shootin’ off about would ha’ seemed mighty good to me, right then, an’ it aren’t so dusty naow.”

Private Boddy snorted his contempt. “An’ the jam they gives you,” he said, “w’y at ’ome you couldn’t give it away! Plum an’ happle! Or wot they call plain happle! It ain’t never seed a plum, bar the stone, nor a happle, bar the core. It’s just colourin’ mixed up wiv boiled down turnups, that’s what it is.”

“De bread’s all right, anyways,” said Lamontagne, “but dey don’t never git you more’n a slice a man! An dat cheese. Pouff! It stink like a Fritz wot’s laid dead since de British takes Pozières.”

Scottie broke in.

“Aye, but hold yerr maunderin’. Ye canna verra weel have aught to clack aboot when ’tis the Rum ye speak of.”

“Dat’s all right,” Lamontagne responded, “de rum’s all right. But who gets it? What youse gets is one ting. A little mouthful down de brook wot don’t do no more than make you drier as you was before. What does de Sargents get? So much dey all is so rambunctious mad after a feller he dasn’t look dem in de face or dey puts him up for office! Dat’s a fine ways, dat is! An’ dem awficers! De limit, dat’s what dat is. I was up to de cook-house wid a—wid a rifle——”—“a dirty rifle too, on inspection, by Heck,” the Corporal supplemented—“wid a rifle, as I was sayin’,” continued Lamontagne, with a reproachful look in the direction of his section commander, “an’ I sees wot was in de cook-house a cookin’ for de awficers” (his voice sunk to an impressive whisper). “D’ere was eeggs, wid de sunny side up, an’ dere was bif-steaks all floatin’ in gravy, an’ pottitters an’ beans, an’ peaches an’ peyers.”

“Quit yer fool gabbin’,” said Chicago. “H’aint you got no sense in that mutt-head o’ yourn? That’s food them ginks BUYS!”

Boddy had been silent so long he could bear it no longer.

“’Ave a ’eart,” he said, “it gives me a pain ter fink of all that food the horficers heats. Pure ’oggery, I calls it. An’ ter fink of th’ little bit o’ bread an’ biscuit an’ bacon—wot’s all fat—wot we fellers gets to eat. We does the work, an’ the horficers sits in easy chairs an’ Heats!! Oh w’y did I join the Harmy?”

At this moment, Private Graham, who had been slumbering peacefully until Lamontagne, in his excitement, put a foot in the midst of his anatomy, added his quota to the discussion. Private Graham wore the King and Queen’s South African medal and also the Somaliland. Before drink reduced him, he had been a company Q.M.S. in a crack regiment. His words were usually respected. “Strike me pink if you Saturday night soldiers don’t give me the guts-ache,” he remarked with some acerbity. “In Afriky you’d ha’ bin dead an’ buried months ago, judgin’ by the way you talks! There it was march, march, march, an’ no fallin’ out. Little water, a ’an’ful o’ flour, an’ a tin of bully wot was fly-blowed two minutes after you opened it, unless you ’ad eat it a’ready. An’ you talks about food! S’elp me if it ain’t a crime. Rations! W’y, never in the ’ole ’istory of the world ’as a Army bin better fed nor we are. You young soldiers sh’d learn a thing or two afore you starts talkin’ abaht yer elders an’ betters. Lord, in th’ old days a hofficers’ mess was somethin’ to dream abaht. Nowadays they can’t ’old a candle to it. Wot d’yer expec’? D’yer think a horficer is goin’ to deny ’is stummick if ’e can buy food ter put in it? ’E ain’t so blame stark starin’ mad as all that. You makes me sick, you do!”

“Dat’s what I say,” commented Lamontagne!

From afar came a voice crying, “Turn out for your rations.”

In thirty seconds the dug-out was empty!

OUR SCOUT OFFICER

We have a certain admiration for our scout officer; not so much for his sleuth-hound propensities, as for his completely dégagé air. He is a Holmes-Watson individual, in whom the Holmes is usually subservient to the Watson.

Without a map—he either has several dozen or none at all—he is purely Watson. With a map he is transformed into a Sherlock, instanter. The effect of a new map on him is like that of a new build of aeroplane on an aviator. He pores over it, he reverses the north and south gear, and gets the magnetic differential on the move; with a sweep of the eye he climbs up hills and goes down into valleys, he encircles a wood with a pencil-marked forefinger—and asks in an almost pained way for nail-scissors. Finally, he sends out his Scout Corporal and two men, armed to the teeth with spy-glasses and compasses (magnetic, mark VIII), to reconnoitre. When they come back (having walked seventeen kilometres to get to a point six miles away) and report, he says, wagging his head sagely: “Ah! I knew it. According to this map, 81×D (parts of), 82 GN, south-west (parts of), 32 B¹, N.W. (parts of), and 19 CF, East (parts of), the only available route is the main road, marked quite clearly on the map, and running due east-north-east by east from Bn. H.Q.”

But he is a cheerful soul. The other day, when we were romancing around in the Somme, we had to take over a new line; one of those “lines” that genial old beggar Fritz makes for us with 5.9’s. He—the Scout Officer—rose to the occasion. He went to the Commanding Officer, and in his most ingratiating manner, his whole earnest soul in his pale blue eyes, offered to take him up to his battle head-quarters.

This offer was accepted, albeit the then Adjutant had a baleful glitter in his eye.

After he had led us by ways that were strange and peculiar through the gathering darkness, and after the Colonel had fallen over some barbed wire into a very damp shell-hole, he began to look worried. We struck a very famous road—along which even the worms dare not venture—and our Intelligence Officer led us for several hundred yards along it.

An occasional high explosive shrapnel shell burst in front and to rear of us, but, map grasped firmly in the right hand, our Scout Officer led us fearlessly onwards. He did not march, he did not even walk, he sauntered. Then with a dramatic gesture wholly unsuited to the time and circumstances, he turned and said: “Do you mind waiting a minute, sir, while I look at the map?” After a few brief comments the C.O. went to earth in a shell-hole. The Scout Officer sat down in the road, and examined his map by the aid of a flash-light until the Colonel threw a clod of earth at him accompanied by some very uncomplimentary remarks. “I think, sir,” said the Scout Officer, his gaunt frame and placid countenance illumined by shell-bursts, “that if we cross the road and go North by East we may perhaps strike the communication trench leading to the Brewery. Personally, I would suggest going overland, but——” His last words were drowned by the explosion of four 8.1’s 50 yards rear right. “Get out of this, sir! Get out of this DAMN quick,” roared the C.O. The Scout Officer stood to attention slowly, and saluted with a deprecating air.

He led.

We followed.

He took us straight into one of the heaviest barrages it had ever been our misfortune to encounter, and when we had got there he said he was lost. So for twenty minutes the C.O., the Adjutant, nine runners, and, last but not least, the Scout Officer, sat under a barrage in various shell-holes, and prayed inwardly—with the exception of the Scout Officer—that he (the S.O.) would be hit plump in the centre of his maps by a 17-inch shell.

It were well to draw a veil over what followed. Even Holmes-Watson does not like to hear it mentioned. Suffice to say that the C.O. (with party) left at 5.30 P.M. and arrived at battle head-quarters at 11.35 P.M. The Scout Officer was then engaged in discovering a route between Battle H.Q. and the front line. He reported back at noon the following day, and slept in a shell-hole for thirteen hours. No one could live near the C.O. for a week, and he threatened the S.O. with a short-stick MILLS.

If there is one thing which the Scout Officer does not like, it is riding a horse. He almost admits that he cannot ride! The other day he met a friend. The friend had one quart bottle of Hennessey, three star. The Scout Officer made a thorough reconnaissance of the said bottle, and reported on same.

A spirited report.

Unhappily the C.O. ordered a road reconnaissance an hour later, and our Scout Officer had to ride a horse. The entire H.Q. sub-staff assisted him to mount, and the last we saw of Holmes-Watson, he was galloping down the road, sitting well on the horse’s neck, hands grasping the saddle tightly, rear and aft. Adown the cold November wind we heard his dulcet voice carolling:

“I put my money on a bob-tailed nag!...

Doo-dah ... Doo-dah!

I put my money on a bob-tailed nag;

... Doo-dah! ... Doo-dah!! ... DEY!!!”

MARTHA OF DRANVOORDE

Martha Beduys, in Belgium, was considered pretty, even handsome. Of that sturdy Flemish build so characteristic of Belgian women, in whom the soil seems to induce embonpoint, she was plump to stoutness. She was no mere girl; twenty-seven years had passed over her head when the war broke out, and she saw for the first time English soldiers in the little village that had always been her home. There was a great deal of excitement. As the oldest of seven sisters, Martha was the least excited, but the most calculating.

The little baker’s shop behind the dull old church had always been a source of income, but never a means to the attainment of wealth. Martha had the soul of a shop-keeper, a thing which, in her father’s eyes, made her the pride of his household.

Old Hans Beduys was a man of some strength of mind. His features were sharp and keen, his small, blue eyes had a glitter in them which seemed to accentuate their closeness to each other, and his hands—lean, knotted, claw-like—betokened his chief desire in life. Born of a German mother and a Belgian father, he had no particular love for the English.

When the first British Tommy entered his shop and asked for bread, old Beduys looked him over as a butcher eyes a lamb led to the slaughter. He was calculating the weight in sous and francs.

That night Beduys laid down the law to his family.

“The girls will all buy new clothes,” he said, “for which I shall pay. They will make themselves agreeable to the English mercenaries, but”—with a snap of his blue eyes—“nothing more. The good God has sent us a harvest to reap; I say we shall reap it.”

During the six months that followed the little shop behind the church teemed with life. The Beduys girls were glad enough to find men to talk to for the linguistic difficulty was soon overcome—to flirt with mildly, and in front of whom to show off their newly-acquired finery. From morn till dewy eve the shop was crowded, and occasionally an officer or two would dine in the back parlour, kiss Martha if they felt like it, and not worry much over a few sous change.

In the meantime old Hans waxed financially fat, bought a new Sunday suit, worked the life out of his girls, and prayed nightly that the Canadians would arrive in the vicinity of his particular “Somewhere in Belgium.”

In a little while they came.

Blossoming forth like a vine well fertilised at the roots, the little shop became more and more pretentious as the weekly turnover increased. Any day that the receipts fell below a certain level old Beduys raised such a storm that his bevy of daughters redoubled their efforts.

Martha had become an enthusiastic business woman. Her fair head with its golden curls was bent for many hours in the day over a crude kind of ledger, and she thought in terms of pickles, canned fruits, chocolate, and cigarettes. The spirit of commerce had bitten deep into Martha’s soul.

More and more officers held impromptu dinners in the back parlour. Martha knew most of them, but only one interested her. Had he not shown her the system of double entry, and how to balance her accounts? He was a commercial asset.

As for Jefferson, it was a relief to him, after a tour in the trenches, to have an occasional chat with a moderately pretty girl.

One rain-sodden, murky January night, very weary, wet, and muddy, Jefferson dropped in to see, as he would have put it, “the baker’s daughter.”

Martha happened to be alone, and welcomed “Monsieur Jeff” beamingly.

Perhaps the dim light of the one small lamp, perhaps his utter war weariness, induced Jefferson to overlook the coarseness of the girl’s skin, her ugly hands, and large feet. Perhaps Martha was looking unusually pretty.

At all events he suddenly decided that she was desirable. Putting his arm around her waist as she brought him his coffee, he drew her, unresisting, on to his knee. Then he kissed her.

Heaven knows what possessed Martha that evening. She not only allowed his kisses, but returned them, stroking his curly hair with a tenderness that surprised herself as much as it surprised him.

Thereafter Martha had two souls. A soul for business and a soul for Jefferson.

The bleak winter rolled on and spring came.

About the beginning of April old Beduys received, secretly, a letter from a relative in Frankfurt. The contents of the letter were such that the small pupils of the old man’s eyes dilated with fear. He hid the document away, and his temper for that day was execrable. That night he slept but little. Beduys lay in bed and pictured the sails of a windmill—HIS windmill—and he thought also of ten thousand francs and his own safety. He thought of the distance to the mill—a full two kilometres—and of the martial law which dictated, among other things, that he be in his home after a certain hour at night, and that his mill’s sails be set at a certain angle when at rest. Then he thought of Martha. Martha of the commercial mind. Martha the obedient. Yes! That was it, obedient! Hans Beduys rose from his bed softly, without disturbing his heavily-sleeping wife, and read and re-read his brother’s letter. One page he kept, and the rest he tore to shreds, and burned, bit by bit, in the candle flame.

High up on the hill stood the windmill—the Beduys windmill. Far over in the German lines an Intelligence Officer peered at it in the gathering dusk through a night-glass. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the sails of the mill turned, and stopped for a full minute. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, they turned again, and stopped again. This happened perhaps twenty times. The German made some notes and went to the nearest signalling station.

Five minutes later a salvo of great shells trundled, with a noise like distant express trains, over to the left of the mill.

There were heavy casualties in a newly-arrived battalion bivouacked not half a mile from the baker’s shop. The inhabitants of the village awoke and trembled. “Hurrumph-umph!” Again the big shells trundled over the village, and again. There was confusion, and death and wounding.

In his bed lay Hans Beduys, sweating from head to foot, while his brain hammered out with ever-increasing force: “Ten thousand francs—Ten Thousand Francs.”

In the small hours a shadow disengaged itself from the old mill, cautiously. Then it began to run, and resolved itself into a woman. By little paths, by ditches, by side-tracks, Martha reached home. She panted heavily, her face was white and haggard. When she reached her room she flung herself on her bed, and lay there wide-eyed, dumb, horror-stricken, until the dawn broke.

Jefferson’s Battalion finished a tour in the trenches on the following night. Jefferson marched back to billet with a resolve in his mind. He had happened to notice the windmill moving the night before, as he stood outside Company head-quarters in the trenches. He had heard the shells go over—away back—and had seen the sails move again. The two things connected themselves instantly in his mind. Perhaps he should have reported the matter at once, but Jefferson did not do so. He meant to investigate for himself.

Two days later Jefferson got leave to spend the day in the nearest town. He returned early in the afternoon, put his revolver in the pocket of his British warm coat, and set out for the windmill. He did not know to whom the mill belonged, nor did that trouble him.

An Artillery Brigade had parked near the village that morning. Jefferson got inside the mill without difficulty. It was a creaky, rat-haunted old place, and no one lived within half a mile of it. Poking about, he discovered nothing until his eyes happened to fall on a little medallion stuck between two boards on the floor.

Picking it up, Jefferson recognised it as one of those little “miraculous medals” which he had seen strung on a light chain around Martha’s neck. He frowned thoughtfully, and put it in his pocket.

He hid himself in a corner and waited. He waited so long that he fell asleep. The opening of the little wooden door of the mill roused him with a start. There was a long pause, and then the sound of footsteps coming up the wooden stairway which led to where Jefferson lay. The window in the mill-face reflected the dying glow of a perfect sunset, and the light in the mill was faint. He could hear the hum of a biplane’s engines as it hurried homeward, the day’s work done.

A peaked cap rose above the level of the floor, followed by a stout, rubicund face. A Belgian gendarme.

Jefferson fingered his revolver, and waited. The gendarme looked around, grunted, and disappeared down the steps again, closing the door that led into the mill with a bang. Jefferson sat up and rubbed his head.

He did not quite understand.

Perhaps ten minutes had passed when for the third time that night the door below was opened softly, closed as softly, and some one hurried up the steps.

It was Martha. She had a shawl over her head and shoulders, and she was breathing quickly, with parted lips.

Jefferson noiselessly dropped his revolver into his pocket again.

With swift, sure movements, the girl began to set the machinery of the mill in motion. By glancing over to the window, Jefferson could see the sails move slowly—very, very slowly. Martha fumbled for a paper in her bosom, and, drawing it forth, scrutinised it tensely. Then she set the machinery in motion again. She had her back to him. Jefferson rose stealthily and took a step towards her. A board creaked and, starting nervously, the girl looked round.

For a moment the two gazed at each other in dead silence.

“Martha,” said Jefferson, “Martha!”

There was a mixture of rage and reproach in his voice. Even as he spoke they heard the whine of shells overhead, and then four dull explosions.

“Your work,” cried Jefferson thickly, taking a stride forward and seizing the speechless woman by the arm.

Martha looked at him with a kind of dull terror in her eyes, with utter hopelessness, and the man paused a second. He had not known he cared for her so much. Then, in a flash, he pictured the horrors for which this woman, a mere common spy, was responsible.

He made to grasp her more firmly, but she twisted herself from his hold. Darting to the device which freed the mill-sails, she wrenched at it madly. The sails caught in the breeze, and began to circle round, swiftly and more swiftly, until the old wooden building shook with the vibration.

From his observation post a German officer took in the new situation at a glance. A few guttural sounds he muttered, and then turning angrily to an orderly he gave him a curt message. “They shall not use it if we cannot,” he said to himself, shaking his fist in the direction of the whirring sails.

In the little village part of the church and the baker’s shop lay in ruins. Martha had sent but a part of her signal, and it had been acted upon with characteristic German promptitude.

In the windmill on the hill, which shook crazily as the sails tore their way through the air, a man and a woman struggled desperately, the woman with almost superhuman strength.

Suddenly the earth shook, a great explosion rent the air, and the mill on the hill was rent timber from timber and the great sails doubled up like tin-foil.

“Good shooting,” said the German Forward Observation Officer, as he tucked his glass under his arm and went “home” to dinner.

COURCELETTE

“It was one of the nastiest jobs any battalion could be called on to perform; to my mind far more difficult than a big, sweeping advance. The First Battalion has been in the trenches eighteen days, on the march four days, and at rest one day, until now. No men could be asked to do more, and no men could do more than you have done. I congratulate you, most heartily.”

In the above words, addressed to the men and officers of the First Canadian Infantry Battalion, Western Ontario Regiment, Major-General Currie made it plain to all that among the Honours of the First Battalion few will take higher place than that which will be inscribed “Courcelette.”

On the night of September 20th, 1916, the First Battalion moved up from support to the firing-line, beyond the ruins of the above-mentioned little hamlet. For the past few days it had rained incessantly, and all ranks had been working night and day, in mud and slush, carrying material of all kinds to the front line. The men were soaked to the skin, caked with mud, and very weary, but they went “up-along” with an amazing cheeriness, for rumour had whispered that the regiment was to attack, and the men were in that frame of mind when the prospect of “getting their own back” appealed to them hugely. Although the enemy opened up an intense barrage during the relief, casualties were comparatively few, and by morning the First Battalion was, Micawber-like, “waiting for something to turn up.”