A "Temporary Gentleman" in France. A. J. Dawson
make brutes and bullies of 'em. Warm their blood—and, mind you, you can do it easily enough, even with a football in a muddy field, when they've been on carrying fatigues all day—and, by Jove! there's plenty of devil in 'em. God help the men in front of 'em when they've bayonets fixed! But withal they're English sportsmen all the time, and a French child can empty their pockets and their haversacks by the shedding of a few tears.
But I run on (and my candle runs down) and I give you no news. This is our last night here, and I ought to be asleep in my flea-bag, for we make an early start to-morrow for our first go in the trenches. But it's jolly yarning here to you, while the whole village is asleep, and no chits are coming in, and the Battalion Orderly Room over the way is black and silent as the grave, except for the sentry's footsteps in the mud. I'm in rather good quarters here, in the Mayor's house. When we left that first village—I'm afraid I haven't written since—we had three days of marching, sleeping in different billets each night. Here in this place, twelve miles from the firing line, we've had five days; practising with live bombs, getting issues of trench kit, and generally making last preparations. To-morrow night we sleep in tents close to the line and begin going into trenches for instruction.
But, look here, before I turn in, I must just tell you about this household and my hot bath last night. The town is a queer little place; farming centre, you know. The farm-houses are all inside the village, and mine—M. le Maire's—is one of the best. From the street you see huge great double doors, that a laden wagon can drive through, in a white wall. That is the granary wall. You enter by the big archway into a big open yard, the centre part of which is a wide-spreading dung-hill and reservoir. All round the yard are sheds and stables enclosing it, and facing you at the back the low, long white house, with steps leading up to the front door, which opens into the kitchen. This is also the living-room of M. le Maire and his aged mother. Their family lived here before the Revolution, and the three sturdy young women and one old, old man employed on the farm, all live in the house.
M. le Maire is a warm man, reputed to have a thorough mastery of the English tongue, among other things, as a result of "college" education. So I gather from the really delightful old mother, who, though bent nearly double, appears to run the whole show, including the Town Hall opposite our Battalion Headquarters. I have never succeeded in inducing the Mayor to speak a word of English, but he has a little dictionary like a prayer-book, with perfectly blinding print, and somehow carries on long and apparently enjoyable conversations with my batman (who certainly has no French), though, as I say, one never heard a word of English on his lips.
I know what the newspapers are. They pretend to give you the war news. But I'll bet they'll tell you nothing of yesterday's really great event, when the Commander of No. 1 Platoon took a hot bath, as it were under municipal auspices, attended by two Company Headquarters orderlies, his own batman, and the cordially expressed felicitations of his brother officers, not to mention the mayoral household, and the whole of No. 1 Platoon, which is billeted in the Mayor's barns and outbuildings. Early in the day the best wash-tub had been commandeered for this interesting ceremony, and I fancy it has an even longer history behind it than the Mayor's pre-Revolution home. It is not definitely known that Marie Antoinette used this tub, bathing being an infrequent luxury in her day; but if she had been cursed with our modern craze for washing, and chanced to spend more than a year or so in this mud-set village of M——, she certainly would have used this venerable vessel, which, I gather, began life as the half of a cider barrel, and still does duty of that sort on occasion, and as a receptacle for the storing of potatoes and other nutritious roots, when not required for the more intimate service of M. le Maire's mother, for the washing of M. le Maire's corduroys and underwear, or by M. le Maire himself, at the season of Michaelmas, I believe, in connection with the solemn rite of his own annual bath, which festival was omitted this year out of deference to popular opinion, because of the war.
The household of the Mayor, headed by this respected functionary himself, received me at the portals of his ancestral home and ushered me most kindly and graciously, if with a dash of grave, half-pitying commiseration, to what I thought at first was the family vault, though, as I presently discovered, it was in reality the mayoral salon or best parlour—as seen in war time—draped in sacking and year-old cobwebs. Here, after some rather embarrassing conversation, chiefly gesticulatory on my side—my conversational long suit is "Pas du tout! Merci beaucoup," and "Mais oui, Madame," with an occasional "Parfaitement," stirred in now and again, not with any meaning, but as a kind of guarantee of good faith, because I think it sounds amiable, if not indeed like my lambs in their billets, "Bien gentil," and "Très convenable, Monsieur." It is thus they are invariably described to me when I go inspecting. As I was saying, here I was presently left alone with the household cat, two sick rabbits in a sort of cage which must once have housed a cockatoo or parrot, my own little towel (a torn half, you know, designed to reduce valise weight), my sponge (but, alack! not my dear old worn-out nail-brush, now lying in trenches on Salisbury Plain), and the prehistoric wash-tub, now one quarter filled by what the Mayor regarded, I gathered, as perhaps the largest quantity of hot water ever accumulated in one place—two kettles and one oil-can full, carried by the orderlies.
The cat and the rabbits watched my subsequent proceedings with the absorbed interest of an intelligent mid-Victorian infant at its first pantomime. The cat, I blush to say, was female, and old enough to know better, but I trust the rabbits were of my own sex. Anyhow, they were sick, so perhaps it doesn't matter. The entire mayoral household, with my batman and others, were assembled in the big kitchen, separated from the chamber of my ablutions only by a door having no kind of fastening and but one hinge. Their silence was broken only by an occasional profound sigh from the Mayor's aged mother, and three sounds of reflective expectoration at considerable intervals from the Mayor himself. So I judged my bathing to be an episode of rare and anxious interest to the mayoral family.
My feet I anointed copiously with a disgusting unguent of great virtue—it's invaluable for lighting braziers when one's only fuel is muddy coke and damp chits—called anti-frostbite grease, that is said to guard us from the disease known as "Trench Feet," rumoured prevalent in our sector by reason of the mellow quality and depth of its mud, which, whilst apparently almost liquid, yet possesses enough body and bouquet—remember how you used to laugh at our auction catalogue superlatives in cellar lots?—to rob a man of his boots at times. For my hands—chipped about a bit now—I used carbolated vaseline. (Do you remember the preternaturally slow and wall-eyed salesman, with the wart, in the Salisbury shop where we bought it?) And then, clothed most sumptuously in virginal underwear, I crawled into my flea-bag, there to revel from 10.40 P.M. to 6 A.M., as I am about to do now, less one hour in the morning. How I wish one could consciously enjoy the luxury of sleep while sleeping! Good night and God bless you! God bless all the sweet, brave waiting women of England, and France, and Russia; and I wish I could send a bit of my clean comfort to-night to as many as may be of our good chaps, and France's bon camarades, out here.
When next I write we shall have seen a bit of the trenches, I hope, and so then you should have something more like real news from your
"Temporary Gentleman."
THE TRENCHES AT LAST
You must forgive my not having sent anything but those two Field Service post cards for a whole week, but, as our Canadian subaltern, Fosset, says, it really has been "some" week. My notion was to write you fully my very first impression of the trenches, but the chance didn't offer, and perhaps it's as well. It couldn't be fresher in my mind than it is now, and yet I understand it more, and see the thing more intelligently than on the first night.
We are now back in the village of B——, three miles from our trenches. We are here for three days' alleged rest, and then, as a Battalion, take over our own Battalion sub-sector of trenches. So far, we have only had forty-eight hours in, as a Battalion; though, as individuals, we have had more. When we go in again it will be as a Battalion, under our own Brigade and Divisional arrangements, to hold our own Brigade front, and be relieved later by the other two Battalions of our Brigade.
"A" Company is, I am sorry to say, in tents for these