One day things went wrong; they are always going wrong in the army,—that is part of the game. It takes a considerable portion of an officer's time correcting mistakes of brother officers; otherwise there wouldn't be much to do in peace times.
Well, as I was saying, things went wrong. We had been on the qui vive for two weeks, expecting a telegram from the war office to leave for France. We had everything ready to pack aboard the motor truck in one hour. Then, by diligent enquiry, we discovered that our truck was to go to France when a spare convoy of trucks went over.
The Colonel in charge at Bulford Camp said it would not be this week—there might possibly be a convoy going over the next week or the week after—or next month—he could not really say when. He had a letter from the war office on his desk about the matter and would notify us at the earliest possible moment.
We went away tearing our hair out, and we have no superfluous hair to lose. We held a council of war. We leaped into our trusty car and sped swiftly into Salisbury. The Canadian General, the object of our quest, had just left for Shorncliff and would be back, perhaps, in two or three days. We hunted for the A.A. & Q.M.G. of the 2nd Canadian Division. After searching the register of three hotels we ran across an officer who said that the A.A. & Q.M.G. had also gone to Shorncliff. We had arrived too late to obtain assistance from this quarter.
As it was now after 7 o'clock we had to have dinner. This was an ordeal for we hated the Salisbury hotels; they had been so crowded that winter with Canadian officers and their wives that the proprietors had lost their heads. They didn't care whether they served you or not. One of them even paid a "boots" to stand at the door and insult possible guests, the idea being to turn as many away as possible. The hotel keepers must have heaped up untold wealth that winter, and the abundance of custom had ruined their sense of hospitality.
So we discarded the idea of a hotel dinner. We referred to our chauffeur, who was "some chauffeur, believe me." "What about that little chop house ('The Silver Grill') which he had frequently lauded with fulsome praise?" He did not now wax enthusiastic—a point we noted, and of which we found the explanation—but he drove us there.
The Silver Grill was a curious old place, with winding stair-case, ancient beamed ceilings in the smoking-room, and a general appearance indicating that it had seen service at least two hundred years. Climbing to the attic, we entered a little dining room, perhaps twenty feet long, with room for about sixteen diners. The tables were occupied chiefly by officers, and we took the settee next the wall and ordered the chef d'œuvre—a steak smothered in onions, and French fried potatoes.
Norah, the one serving maid, a pretty little thing, was evidently a great favorite with the habituees of the place. The wife of the proprietor was a handsome big woman dressed in a close fitting black frock, with the figure of a Venus de Milo. She hovered about talking to the men and acting "mother" to them all. One officer was plainly "overseas". The landlady watched him like a sister, got him to put his hat and coat on properly and steered him past the smoking-room and bar to the front door, and she was careful to explain to us two, knowing we were Canadians, "I have never seen Captain X like that before. You know we have become very fond of the Canadians. Poor Lt.—who was killed last week came to wish me good-bye." And, dropping into a chair beside us, she talked of this and that Canadian officer; of how nearly all the medical men and veterinary officers had dined at the Grill; she told us also about her three children, including the baby which was now eight months old and could talk.
By this time all the diners had gone except one, a civilian, sitting in the farthest corner of the room. The land-lady had again begun to talk about the Canadians, when the civilian suddenly interrupted sneeringly "The Canadians! what good are they? An expense to the country. What have they done? If I had my way I'd hang every one of them."
For a moment we were petrified with anger. "What do you mean?" I finally managed to demand.
"Oh! you know" he sneered.
"No I don't" I returned; "that is strange talk; you will have to explain yourself."
"I don't need to explain anything" he said.
"Then allow me to tell you that you are a d—— liar" put in Captain E—— glaring at the man ferociously; "I say you are a d—— liar" repeated the Captain with greater emphasis and deliberation.
But the cad was very thick-skinned; he made not the slightest show of resentment at the opprobrious epithet. So we got up and walked over to him.
"You miserable shrimp" said Captain E—— as he stood over the fellow with hands a-twitching to take hold of him. "You mean, skulking coward, to talk like that of men who have come over to fight in the place of wretched gutter-snipes and quitters like you."
"Three of us here are Canadians" I added, "and if you will be so accommodating as to step outside, any one of us will be delighted to give you the darnedest licking you ever got in your life."
The skulker didn't even move. Captain E—— got worked up to the point of explosion as he watched the fellow unconcernedly keep on eating. "You snivelling cur I've a good mind to rub your face in that gravy, by G— I will rub it in that gravy!" exploded the Captain, and in the instant he seized the dinner-plate in one hand and the fellow's head in the other and brought them quickly together, rubbing the man's chin and nose briskly round and round in the mixture of congealing gravy and potatoes.
"Be very careful what you are about" sputtered the creature, looking up when Captain E—— had desisted, and wiping the streaming grease from his face with his pocket-handkerchief.
It was tremendously ludicrous; the utter spinelessness of the creature so at variance with the boastful scorn of his previous words and tone so obviously showed him to be a coward that all we could do was laugh and turn away. You could no more think of striking that weak, backboneless poltroon than of hitting a six months' old baby.
We tendered the landlady a sovereign in payment for our dinner, but she only kept eyeing with intense anger and disgust and shame this wretched specimen of a fellow-countryman who had wantonly insulted two of her colonial guests in her house and in her presence. During the gravy-rubbing performance she had run downstairs to tell her husband in case there should be a "scene," and he had retailed the story to the crowd of "select patrons" gathered in the little smoking-room. Again we called the lady's attention to the proffered coin, but in her agitation, it took her at least five minutes to total our bill correctly.
We offered our apologies for our forcible language, but she considered no apology necessary. "You were insulted in my house" she said, "and I admire you for the stand you took. That man will never enter this place again." Following us downstairs she begged us to step into the smoking-room "just a minute, to see that all our customers are not like that one" and when she thought we were not going to accede to her request she laid a hand on my arm and almost beseeched me to come back and have a cup of coffee or something to drink.
Her husband, a fine looking, tall, curly-headed Englishman, seconded her invitation, and we went back to the smoking-room. As we entered, every man stood up and bowed, and several made room for us. They had heard the story, and, by their reception of us they tried to show that they strongly disapproved of their countryman's insult to the colonials.
A few minutes afterwards, the clock struck nine, and the doors were closed upon all but Captain Ellis and myself. Nothing was too good for us, and to the accompaniment of numerous cups of coffee, brought by Norah, we talked away till ten o'clock. Both the landlord and his wife walked out to our car with us, and continued to offer their regrets for the treatment which we had received.
By the time we got "home" we were fairly cooled off, and we went to bed that night with the proud feeling that we had saved the name of Canada.
Another time "things went wrong" was one Saturday afternoon when we took a half-day off. It was not that we needed the holiday from overwork, because, for two weeks, three of the four of us had been doing nothing. The fourth man, a captain of Highland descent, had, unlike the rest of us, really been working hard. Yet we all needed the holiday, for loafing anywhere is usually the hardest work in the world; but loafing on the edge of Salisbury Plain with little to see was work even harder than the hardest. Napoleon is said to have remarked that "war is made up of short periods of intense activity followed by much longer periods of enforced idleness" or something to that effect. Of the "intense activity" of war we as yet had had no experience but with "enforced idleness," we were all too distressingly familiar. In civilian life we had been very busy men; and here we had been plunged into a world where for months at a time there was almost nothing to do—and what was worse, there was no place to go to and forget about it.
So, after a hard two-week's work doing nothing, we studied the map and decided that the sea was within easy range of our four-cylinder thirty. Accordingly we struck out for the sea, followed the track of the little river Avon, which flows past Salisbury Plain, through Amesbury and the ancient city of Salisbury and empties into the British channel at Christchurch.
It was a glorious March afternoon, with intervals of brilliant sunshine; the roads were good, and we rolled along through the little English villages with their thatched-roofs, at a speed which quickly brought us to the New Forest. All of a sudden a strange, familiar tang in the air thrilled us. Every man sat instantly erect and gulped down, in wonderment at his own action, a succession of great, deep satisfying breaths: And then the explanation broke from two of us at the same moment, "Canada!" It was the familiar Canadian smell of the autumn forest fires that had for the moment penetrated from the outward senses to the inmost soul of each and it left us for the moment just the least bit homesick.
Less than an hour and a half brought us to the prosperous city of Bournemouth, filled with the omnipresent "Tommy." The sea looked mighty good to us, for we hadn't seen it since our landing in October, though we had seen plenty of water—rain water—since. We raced our car along the beach, got out and snapshotted one another, admired the views, and cut up generally like a gang of boys let loose from school. Then somebody said "tea," and we drove to a little rather suspicious looking "Pub" on the beach.
There we got tea and toast but we didn't stay long, for out of the window we could see the chauffeur under-cross-fire of a policeman, and in England that always means trouble.
An itinerant dog fancier had two diminutive "Norwegian truffle 'unters" which he was anxious to part with, but we couldn't wait to talk to him. Nor had we time to ask him whether truffle growing was an industry in Norway, or whether the substituting of dogs for pigs in hunting truffles was a recent innovation.
The Cop had been watching for us from across the way, and we were hardly out when he was already upon us. "Excuse me, sir, but you 'aven't a hidentification number on your car" said the Cop.
"We have not" I replied, "what is the sense of having a number?"
"To hidentify the car, sir," said the Cop.
"Can't you identify the car with that label on" I queried, pointing to the bonnet upon which was a label reading: Canadian Government; the car also had three O.H.M.S. signs upon it.
"Our orders is, sir, to see that all cars on 'is Majesty's service 'ave Hidentification numbers" persisted the Cop.
"We are very sorry," I replied, "that we had our identification all printed out so that you could read it, instead of getting a number; it was stupid of us."
"Orders is orders" said the Cop.
"You people make me sick" suddenly broke in Mac. "We came over here to fight for you and all you do for us is make it as damned disagreeable as possible; you are a miserable people."
"Pardon me, sir" said the Cop softly, "I thought I was speaking to a gentleman." During the controversy we had got into our car and without ceremony we drove off, leaving behind us a discomfited policeman. Fortunately Mac had not heard the parting remark of the policeman. Had he done so it is doubtful if we would have left Bournemouth that night, for heaven only knows what would have happened to that policeman. When I chaffed him by repeating the policeman's sally when we were a mile away, Mac was for a moment knocked speechless with anger, then he begged us to go back and help him find the policeman.
Having escaped the arm of the law we went for a little drive about town, with its wonderful shops: the shops of Bournemouth are the best I have seen in England, and are rivalled only by those of Glasgow. Then we drew up at the best hotel in town—"The Royal Bath Hotel," which, with its long low facade and its lack of upper stories looked more like a luxurious club house than a modern hotel.
The main lounge was something to marvel at. Apparently it had been given over to a band of decorators and furnishers gone delirious, for the evidence of their delirium was to be seen on every side. The walls were all broken up: One wall was covered with hangings; two parts of the remainder had an upper border of hand-painted men in battle array; a glass wall through which the dining-room could be seen made a third; and the fourth was occupied by a balcony from which one descended scarlet carpeted stairways into the room.
The woodwork was a hideous golden-oak. The ceiling was broken by a series of beams radiating unevenly from one annular space, in all directions, and with no apparent design. The furniture was rattan and plush, upholstered and plain, and was crowded together with a few writing tables scattered here and there. It was a discordant orgie of decorative effects and the result was unutterably depressing.
We sank into chairs and gazed about us in awe. No hotel had ever affected any of us like this before. At first we talked in whispers; then as our courage revived, we became critical. Then somebody thought of having a "Scoot"; tremulously he pressed the button for the waiter. The waiter came and they had two "Scoots" each. Then somebody made a funny remark and one of us laughed out loud. Suddenly the laugher stopped and said, "I feel as if I ought not to laugh; I feel that nobody ever laughed in this place before."
Dinner time approached. Old ladies in wonderful dresses began to appear, followed by old English gentlemen in dress clothes. The dining-room began to fill up. We decided to wait till the room was nearly full before going in so that we could get an idea of the fashionable watering place people of England. Somebody thought that it would be as well to reserve a table, and Captain R—— was deputed to do so. In fifteen minutes he came back twisting his black moustache and looking depressed.
"Nothing doing," he reported in disappointment.
"What!" we cried.
"Nothing doing" he repeated mechanically. "We may possibly get a table after 8.30."
"Do you mean to say" cried Mac, jumping from his chair in a rage, "that we can't get anything to eat?" Captain R—— nodded. "Let's leave this d—— morgue; I hate it anyway" stormed Mac, and we filed sadly out.
In the hall we had a try with the head clerk, and another with the head waiter, but it was no use. "Guests must be served first" was the only argument; pointing out that there were a dozen tables yet unset made no difference. Our chauffeur had gone, so we left our address for him, ordered a taxi, and drove to the Burlington Hotel two miles away. Before dismissing the taxi we took the precaution of seeing that we could get dinner, and finding that the hotel authorities agreed to furnish us with a meal we clambered out; after divesting ourselves of our overcoats we were ushered into a dining room crowded with beautiful women and, mostly, ugly men. There were some hummers among the women.
The relief at the change from the dismal, deliriously-decorated hotel to this bright, cheery room, was so great that we suddenly grew exceedingly gay and enjoyed ourselves hugely. A little concert afterwards added to the enjoyment, which was only slightly marred by a bill for forty-two shillings.
Our homeward journey was through little villages all asleep, and silent as the adjacent churchyards; and as we two tumbled into our cots at midnight we voted that we had spent "a fine day" in spite of the mischievous tendency of things "to go wrong."
Another of these "days" came later. We had been waiting at Bulford Cottage for three weeks for orders from the war office to leave for France, and we were growing decidedly fidgety. The fine weather feeling of Spring in the air may have had something to do with our restlessness. The buds were swelling on the great trees near by, and the leaves had actually broken from their bonds on some of the hedges. The air was full of bird songs; the lark in particular seemed to be mad with the joy of springtime. At Bulford Manor I had picked the first wall-flowers in bloom in the open garden; Roman Hyacinths, Daffodils, Snowdrops, English daisies, and another little unfamiliar white flower were in blossom, and even the Japonica was bursting into scarlet against the sunny walls.
It was a pleasant time for loafing and under any other circumstances we would have enjoyed it; but this was war time. Already our Canadian Division had been at the front for four weeks and here were we doing nothing, when we might have been making ourselves useful at the front. The war office was advertising for "one hundred sanitary officers who would be of vital service to the force in the field" and here were two of us, with long experience in practical sanitation and eager to make use of that experience, idling in the valley of the Avon on Salisbury Plain.
Our chief was in France, and in our impatience we concluded that something had gone wrong at the war office in regard to our little unit. The only way to find out was to go to London; so we set out,—the Medical Officer of Health of Ottawa, Captain Lomer; the provincial bacteriologist of Alberta, Captain Rankin; and myself. We left Bulford at eleven o'clock, or to be precise, at five minutes to eleven. We stopped twenty minutes at Andover to send a cablegram, and were held up at a level crossing for five minutes. At one thirty we passed the official centre of London, Hyde Park corner, and were having our dinner in the Marguereta Restaurant in Oxford Street at a quarter to two. We therefore had covered the distance of ninety-eight miles in two hours and fifteen minutes actual travelling time, or at an average speed of nearly forty-four miles an hour. At one time our indicator registered sixty-five miles an hour and for quite a number of miles we travelled steadily at fifty-six miles an hour. Of course this was in England, where roads are as smooth as asphalt and where raised or sunken culverts, the curse of motorists, are unknown.
We did enjoy that Bohemian dinner. We had all the things that one does not have in a military mess on Salisbury Plain. Hors d'œuvres, salad, fish, duck, and so forth. We were just finishing, and had lit our cigarettes while waiting for coffee, when the door porter came in and whispered to Captain Rankin that a policeman had our chauffeur in charge and wanted to see one of us. The doughty Captain went out, and came back in a minute to say that the cop wanted him to go to the police station and explain why we did not have a number on our motor. He also added that there was a number of people around the car. "What did you tell him?" I asked. "I said I would go after I had finished my dinner," said the Captain, which seemed to me quite Canadian and reasonable.
He had not raised his cup to his lips when the same porter tapped him a second time on the shoulder, with "Beg pardon, sir, but the officer says he can't wait." We were grieved, and looked it.
"It's very unreasonable," said the Captain, "to disturb us at dinner like this."
"If we don't go now I guess it will take a good deal longer to get the car away from the police station," I said. "Besides, supposing Rad has cheeked them and they lock him up, we won't be able to get back till tomorrow. None of us can run the car well enough to get out of London without getting into a smash up." So saying, I put on my coat and sallied forth.
Before I got to the front door I could tell there was something doing, for the restaurant windows were filled with diners standing on chairs. Through a vacant space I could see a great crowd and two policemen's helmets standing up above the middle of the throng. They considerately opened a passage up for me to the two policemen who were standing beside the car with Rad at the wheel looking quite unconcerned.
"What is the matter?" I demanded.
"Your car has no number on it," said a policeman.
It was so similar to our experience the week before at Bournemouth that I smiled inwardly, and went through the same formula.
"Why should a government car have a number?" I asked.
"To identify it, sir, those are our orders, sir."
"Can't you identify that car?" I asked. "It says, written in big letters on the front, "Canadian Government, Divisional Headquarters," in case you can't read! The car belongs to the Canadian Government. We are waiting to go to France; we came into London less than an hour ago on business to the War Office. Is there anything more you want?"
"We would like the chauffeur's name," said the cub policeman, who had caused the trouble. I spelled it out to him three times; it sounded very German, but he said nothing.
Then in turn I took out my note book and took the numbers of the policemen. The crowd had listened with great interest, and were evidently against the policemen. A boy looked under a policeman's arm and grinned; I winked at him covertly, and he went into a paroxysm of laughter. Then with dignity I got into the car and we drove off to the bank, leaving behind the discomfited policemen and a crowd of several hundred people.
"Where did the cop get hold of you, Rad?" I enquired.
"Over on Bond Street," he said, "he insisted on my going to the police station with him. "All right," I said, "jump in," and he did so. I knew where the police station was in a street off Oxford Street, but when we got to the street I passed it. The officer called out, but I didn't hear him. At the next corner he yelled again, but I got in front of a convenient bus."
"Why didn't you turn there," he said.
"Then you would have had a real charge against me," I said, "for breaking the rules of traffic."
Finally he asked "Are you going to turn or not?" and I said "I guess we will turn here" and turned around, stopping in front of the Marguereta Restaurant.
"What are you stopping for?" he asked.
"The officers who are in charge of the car are in there at their dinner," I said, "you had better speak to them." Gee, he was mad."
All the rest of the afternoon I chuckled with delight at the picture of the anger of that cub six foot two policeman as he was being whirled along Oxford Street against his will, to a restaurant he did not want to go to, to meet people he didn't want to see.
At the War Office in London, in the autumn of 1914, I met Captain Sydney Rowland of the staff of the Lister Institute. He was a man who had made a reputation in the scientific world and had just been authorized by the British War Office to purchase a huge motor caravan to be equipped as a mobile laboratory. The caravan had been built originally by a wealthy automobile manufacturer at a cost of 5,000 pounds, and had been completely equipped for living in while touring the country. It even had a little kitchen, and the whole affair was lined with aluminium. Tiring of it, the builder had sold it to a bookmaker who used it for less legitimate purposes.
Captain Rowland had heard of this machine and finally located and purchased it. All the expensive interior was torn out and replaced with work benches and sinks, while shelves and racks were provided for glassware and apparatus. It was a beautifully equipped, compact machine, and he was justly proud of it.
When he took it over to France he drove it up to the army area himself, and told me that as he approached the front through villages and towns at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour he had an absolutely unimpeded road. After one look at this huge affair, which was about the size of one of our large moving vans, bearing down on them like a runaway house, people fled or took to the side roads. Captain Rowland described with great glee the sensation it had caused, and his enjoyment of that drive.
That was the first mobile laboratory, the beginning of the field laboratories and the model upon which all others were constructed. The list of equipment prepared and used by Captain Rowland was also used as the basis for the requirements for all mobile laboratories subsequently equipped. A second bacteriological laboratory and two hygiene laboratories were sent out before permission was obtained from the Director of the Canadian Medical Service, to send out a Canadian laboratory. For some unexplained reason the Canadian Government refused the necessary funds for the chassis so that we were compelled to pack our equipment in twenty-four numbered cases, all of which could be carried on a three-ton motor lorry. I had discovered that the officers in charge of these laboratories at the front had already found them too small to work in comfortably, and had removed and placed the equipment in some convenient house, using the lorry merely to carry their equipment. We were able to carry twice as complete an equipment, costing altogether less than $2,000 in a borrowed lorry, and saved the cost of $10,000 for the motor chassis.
When the first Canadian Division went to France, No. 1 Canadian General Hospital had been left behind on Salisbury Plain, to take care of the sick. It had been decided that I was to go to France in command of the Canadian Mobile Laboratory, and that I should take with me two officers and several men from the staff of that hospital. The Lozier car which had been given me by the Canadian Government was also to go as part of the equipment. After working in the office of the Director of Medical Services for a couple of weeks straightening out the records in regard to typhoid inoculation, and cerebro-spinal meningitis, and in purchasing the necessary equipment, I received word that the laboratory was to go to the front immediately. The Surgeon-General accordingly made all the necessary arrangements, and left for France, while I went down to Bulford to wait for the expected telegram which was to speed us on our way.
We waited over three weeks for the message, growing more and more desperate every day. Finally we went up to London and found that somebody had made a mistake and that we were supposed to be in France long ago. We were instructed to leave on the second day following.
The men were all greatly excited at the good news. We had a farewell dinner that night at the mess, which assumed a somewhat convivial character, and when I left to drive two visitors into Salisbury, the hospital dentist was making a rambling, tearful plea to a few hilarious auditors, on behalf of Ireland, while the great majority were paying no more attention to him than if he did not exist.
Next morning with our equipment, men and car, we set out for Southampton, amid the envious farewells of our brother officers, whose call had not yet come. Everything was loaded on board the transport at noon, and late in the afternoon we left for Havre, accompanied by two torpedo boat destroyers.
MAJOR-GENERAL M.S. MERCER, C.B.
Former Officer Commanding Third Canadian Division.
Killed in action, June, 1916.ToList
After some delay at the Havre docks for petrol, we got away and reported our arrival at one of the rest camps on the outskirts of the city. Our elation at having finally arrived in France was marred only by the news that we would probably be detained at the base for two or three days. Having been informed that the Hotel Tortoni was the liveliest place in town to stay, and not to go there on any account, we went and concluded that we had been the victims of a practical joke, for we had not seen anything so dull in all our lives; it was as dull and as good as a hotel at Chautauqua. There was more "life" to be seen in an English hotel in a minute than one could see in the Hotel Tortoni in a month.
As there were no theatres or concerts to go to and nothing else to do, we went to bed in the chilliest bedrooms that I had ever been in up to that time. I soon learned that French hotel bedrooms in winter have the same cold, clammy feeling as the interior of refrigerator cars in summer. This accounts, perhaps, for the French being a hot-blooded people.
Of all the cities of the world that it has been my privilege to visit, the city of Havre is the dirtiest, the ugliest, and the least interesting. We could find no public buildings with even the slightest pretence to beauty, and the rest of the city was as dull and commercial as it is possible for a seaport town to be; one can say little more than that, in consideration of any city. With the exception of the docks and the casino there is nothing of interest, and even the casino, like all the casinos in France, had been converted into a hospital.
After two days of killing time, our orders came through to leave for the front, two of us to go by motor and the rest by train. Our experience with the British officer at the base had certainly been pleasant and proved to be a happy augury of our future relationships with them. The British officer in France is quite a different man from the same officer in England, and does not impress you with the fact that the war is being carried on by his individual efforts.
At the base we learned for the first time that we had been a great source of anxiety to some of the officials of the British army three weeks before, when the war office had announced our departure from England. When we had failed to report our arrival at Havre the authorities had assumed that we, being Canadians and more or less independent, had gone off on a little trip of our own into the interior of France. In their efforts to locate us they had telegraphed far and wide; consequently when we did arrive everybody knew of us as "The Lost Canadian Laboratory" and seemed to be quite pleased that we had been found. When anything goes astray in the army it causes a tremendous amount of consternation and trouble until it is located; the easiest thing to lose is a soldier in hospital but as he can talk this matter usually rights itself sooner or later.
The morning on which we set out on our first day's "march" to the front was misty and raw, and motoring was very cold. Even this early in the season—mid March, 1915—the fields were being ploughed, but the ploughing and harrowing was being done by women, old men and boys. Hardly one able-bodied man was to be seen, the contrast with England in this respect at that time being very marked. A crowd of schoolboys pleading for souvenirs were made to earn them and amuse us by running races while we had a tire replaced.
The banks on the roadside were yellow with the first primroses, and patches of golden daffodils could be seen in the woods, though spring seemed to be far enough away that chilly day. It was characteristic of one's experience in France that, as we sat down to dinner that evening in an Abbeville hotel I had beside me an officer in the British army who had been in Canada for a number of years and who had, during that time, been a frequent caller at my home in Toronto. The spontaneous manner in which the two of us rose and rushed at each other with outstretched arms would have done credit to native born Frenchmen.
As we approached the front, the long straight French roads gave way to winding narrow ways, frequently paved with cobble stones called pavé. The country became flat, and the roadside ditches were filled to the brim with water. That we were within the sphere of military operations became more and more evident. Motor cars carrying officers passed frequently; motor transports carrying food and fodder rumbled along the roads or were parked in the outskirts of villages or in village squares; motor ambulance convoys were drawn up in front of hospitals, and, in general, we felt that we were nearing the real seat of operations, the front line.
It was a drive of a hundred miles to the little town which was to be our headquarters for nine long months, and I remember the thrill that I had when we first saw the effects of shell fire—a hole about two feet in diameter in the bricks above the door of the Hotel de Ville. As we later discovered, the village authorities had decided not to repair that hole but to leave it as a memorial of the day when the Germans had been driven from the town and had fired some shells back into it, killing a dozen of the inhabitants.
After reporting to the corps headquarters in town, we were instructed to attach ourselves to No. 7 Clearing Hospital, where we were made most welcome by the commanding officer and his staff. Colonel Wear found billets for us in the town, and a splendid room for a laboratory in the Hotel De Ville. This room, 22 × 36 feet, had been the banquet hall and band room, and was well lighted by windows and gas. When equipped as a laboratory it presented a most imposing appearance, and from it we had a fine view of the village square, commonly called the Grande Place. As everything going through the town had to pass by our windows in order to cross the bridges over the canals, we could view a continuous panorama of never-failing interest whenever we had the leisure to look down upon it.
Captain Rankin found his billet at the top of a house on the opposite side of the square from the laboratory; Captain Ellis found his in a house in the corner of the square, and mine proved to be a little room over a grocery shop on another corner of the square. My room was reached by passing through the shop, up a very steep staircase, and through a storeroom filled with boxes of soap, biscuits, bundles of brooms, and other staples. The room itself was clean but without heat, and I usually fell asleep after a couple of hours of shivering in the depths of a damp, cold, feather mattress. Eleven crucifixes and two glass cases of artificial flowers, together with portraits of the pope and local curé, constituted the decorations of the room, and was typical of the region, for this part of France was thoroughly Catholic.
Our equipment did not arrive for three days, so that we had some opportunity to look around and get our bearings in the area in which we were to work. The Director of Medical Services of the army had called just after we arrived, and had given us instructions. Like all the British officers we met in the field, he treated us with the greatest kindness and consideration. Faultless in dress, precise in manner, with monocle and carefully trimmed hair and moustache, he gave one the impression of just having stepped from his dressing room after a bath. And yet his knowledge of the military game as it applied to the medical service was just as accurate, precise and complete as his external appearance indicated. He was a tremendous worker and efficient to the last degree, as his record since has demonstrated.
The following day we drove over to Estaires, five miles away, to see the first Canadian division coming back into rest after a month in the trenches. As we passed the infantry on the road it was pleasant to see broad smiles spreading over the faces of the men who recognized us as having been with them at Valcartier and Salisbury Plain. Fit and rugged they looked as they swung along with the confident air which newly arrived troops often seem to possess. Their officers were pleased with them, and were satisfied that the division needed only an opportunity to make good. The division had been on the left at the battle of Neuve Chappelle, and had had no real fighting as yet; but it had received an excellent month's training in trench warfare, and was now well broken into the new game.
The division remained for a week in that neighborhood resting, and we had several opportunities of visiting our friends. On Sunday three of us called on my old friend General Mercer of the first brigade, and had tea with him and Majors Van Straubenzie and Hayter of his staff. General Mercer expressed himself as being delighted with the men and as having the highest confidence in them.
We also had dinner with Colonel (now General) Rennie and our old friends of the third (Toronto) battalion who were located in a little peasant cottage in Neuf Berquin. In a room adjoining Captain Haywood, the medical officer of the battalion, lay on a pile of straw with symptoms of appendicitis. He was not too sick to give some extremely graphic descriptions of his first experiences in the trenches, while we all sat around and smoked. The room was lighted by a single stable lantern which also smoked and we sat on boxes; I have seldom passed a more pleasant evening in my life than that spent in the little peasant cottage with my soldier friends, Captains George Ryerson, Muntz, Wickens, Major Allan (all since dead), Major Kirkpatrick (now a prisoner in Germany), Captains Hutchison, Bart Rogers, George, Lyne-Evans, Robertson, (of the first battalion) and others. Some of these chaps I knew well in Canada and we talked of home and the old times, all the while realizing that some of us would never again get back. The feeling was now fast settling down upon us that we were actually at war, and that soon some of the men we had grown to admire and love would have to pay the price.
During the evening two stocky little French girls came in and sang "Eet's a longa, longa wye to Teeperaree" in English for the "seek Capitan."
The Canadian division was in rest during those early April days when the cold, long-drawn out spring became almost imperceptibly warmer and the buds were beginning to swell on the trees and bushes.
On the first day of April, Bismarck's birth-date, we were expecting something unusual along the front and were not disappointed. While driving up to the Clearing Station to breakfast, we noticed a couple of Hun aeroplanes being shelled by our "Archibalds." When we returned to the town half an hour later we found that the place had been bombed.
One bomb had gone right through Rankin's billet, exploded in the workshop on the ground floor and blown out all the windows; another had fallen in the square about twenty yards in front of my billet and had failed to explode, while six others had fallen in different parts of the town, half of which were "duds." Nobody was hurt and no other damage was done.
Bittleson, Captain Rankin's batman, who happened to be looking out of the top window at the time, swore that the bomb which went through the roof beside him had grazed his forehead.
The bomb which had failed to explode in the square was taken possession of by our staff sergeant and placed on my laboratory table as a souvenir. A staff officer from headquarters, fortunately, came along before we returned and bore it off to his chief after promising to return it. Needless to relate it never came back, much to my relief and to the disgust of the staff sergeant who on several occasions referred to the iniquity of this high handed action.
On Easter Sunday we were invited to some sports by the divisional cavalry. As we drove up to the orchard specified in the invitation a crowd of typical big western cowboys with their broad brimmed Stetson hats came streaming up the road from a nearby farm where they had been foregathering.
A clear stretch of turf was selected, a ring formed by the crowd and the first event was announced—a cock fight between Von Kluck and Joffre. Cock fighting is the native sport of the countryside in that region where nearly every farmer keeps a couple of game cocks and fights them on Sunday afternoons, incidentally betting on the results.
After everybody had been warned not to move, the two birds were placed gently on the ground on opposite sides of the circle. Carelessly, and without apparently having noticed one another, the roosters walked about picking at the grass but gradually getting nearer to one another. When they got within a yard of each other they became more wary, though still feigning carelessness, until one seeing an opportunity, sprang into the air and struck at the head of the other with the curved wire nails attached to his legs in place of spurs. The other dodged and counter attacked and the action became general.
Using beak, wings and spurs they jumped, flew and struck at one another as opportunity afforded, until Joffre got a strangle hold on Von Kluck and buried his spurs again and again into the prostrate body until he finally struck a vital spot and the combat was over. Then, stretching himself, the victor flapped his wings once or twice as if to say "bring on the next" and went on picking at the grass as before.
It was the first time that I had ever seen a cock fight and I hope it will be the last. The concentration on the faces of those men as they watched the cruel "sport" and the play of expression passing over them was intensely interesting to me; you could almost tell what some of them were saying within their minds and it was pleasant to know that to the great majority of them the game was as repulsive as it was to us. It was obviously unsuited to the taste of our new country and men who might themselves be dead in the course of a week or two.
One other cock fight was put on and then we turned to a game much more suited to our men—a wrestling bout on horseback. Four men on each side mounted on horses, without saddles or bridles, were drawn up at opposite sides of the field. The men were dressed in trousers and shirts only; the horses were guided solely by a halter.
At a given signal the two parties approached one another at a trot, each man selecting as his antagonist the one opposite him. In the first crash a couple were dismounted almost instantly, and the battle resolved itself into several separate encounters.
The horses seemed to enter into the spirit of the thing and backed up, wheeled, side-stepped and did their best to help their owners win.
Meanwhile the riders, grasping one another by body, arm or leg, did their utmost to tear one another off their horses. When it became three against two, the two would tackle one opponent and it was the task of the single man to try to keep the two others on the same side so that they could not grasp him on both sides at once. It was exciting enough to see one man being pulled by one arm from one side, while another man was trying to throw his opposite leg over the horse. Even when they succeeded in accomplishing this he clung to the horse's neck and it was only with the greatest difficulty that his feet were made to touch the ground and he was thereby put out of the game.
One or two obstreperous animals who objected to the game ran away with their riders and tried to brush them off on the apple trees. The contestants were all as hard as nails and could stand any amount of rough usage such as they received in this gladiator-like contest.
After the games were over we adjourned to the Colonel's billet for afternoon tea and music. The Colonel was exceedingly fond of his gramophone, and, being troubled somewhat with insomnia, would sometimes rise in the middle of the night and put on a few of his favorite records, much to the annoyance of the rest of the staff billeted in the same house. Knowing this, one did not think it so strange as it might otherwise have seemed, that, during the course of a move of the division, the gramophone fell from a wagon and was run over by six other wagons. What did seem mysterious was the fact that none of the drivers had seen the gramophone in the road until it had been crushed as flat as a board.
When I visited the divisional cavalry a few months later the Colonel was still carrying forty dollars' worth of records with him but had not yet ordered a new gramophone.
Gradually the Canadian division moved on. One night we found them in the neighborhood of Winnizeele and Oudezeele, hamlets near the Belgian border. In searching for a battalion headquarters we asked one soldier sitting in front of a barn what village this was and received the not uncommon answer "I don't know." It was astonishing how frequently that answer was given. Apparently some men were quite content to be moved about like pawns in a game of chess without question as long as they were fed and clothed; they seemingly had adopted the attitude of the Mohammedan, "It is the will of Allah."
We had dinner with Colonel Rennie and his staff that night, and a pleasant dinner it was. I remember yet how envious we were of Major Kirkpatrick who took us up to his room and there opened up a box just received from his wife in England—a box containing cigarettes, chocolates, taffy, gum, magazines and other things so greatly appreciated by the soldier in the field, and so liberally shared by them with less fortunate ones. Some men were very lucky in having wives who seemed to spend a great deal of thought—and money—in things that would be appreciated by their husbands in France. The Major was taken a prisoner a fortnight later and I sincerely hope that he was as lucky in having his boxes come through to him in Germany.
After dinner we accompanied some of the younger officers to a mysterious place called "The Club"—an Estaminet in the village, operated by a French woman and recently "out of bounds" for several days because of failure to observe the early closing law.
The scene in that little French "Pub" that evening might have been from a comedy written of the period of one hundred years ago. In the common room were a number of officers playing cards at little tables. The air was blue with smoke and numerous bottles of wine stood on the tables.
A young French woman sat over in a corner chatting confidentially in French to a Canadian officer who thought he was replying in the same language. Neither understood a word that the other said, though both were obviously delighted at their success in making themselves understood, so what was the difference?
The scene, which grew more and more interesting as the evening advanced, was brought to a sudden conclusion by the entrance of a Lieutenant, who announced that nine o'clock had struck; in a moment the room was emptied, lights were out and we were all wending our ways homeward.
The first impressions of a soldier at the front are invariably the most vivid. A week after we had settled down to routine work we had occasion to visit one of the advanced dressing stations in our area. Leaving our little town by motor we crossed the canal by the lift-bridge after waiting to allow three Dutch barges to pass through. These lift bridges are hinged about one third of the way from one end and are raised by means of stout cables hitched to the other end and passing back to towers. They are so balanced that little effort is required to raise or lower them.
Turning to the left we struck into a pavé road which led for some distance along the canal bank. Pavé is not a bad road when kept in good repair as this one was, and when you get used to the vibration of the car bouncing from one cobble stone to another; when, however, it is not kept in repair, depressions form which rapidly increase as cart and motor wheels fall into them and hammer them deeper and deeper.
A little grey tug boat, painted the regulation battleship grey, slipped quietly along through the canal towing several barges loaded with road metal and lumber.
A buzz like a huge bee approaching us across the fields attracted our attention, and we looked up to see an aeroplane, like a gigantic dragon fly bearing directly down upon us. A hundred yards away it left the ground and passed over our heads climbing steadily in a great spiral into the sky. Another aeroplane, and another followed till there were five circling above us, getting smaller and smaller as they soared into the heaven, looking like herons in flight among the clouds. They then made off towards different parts of the German lines to their daily task of reconnaissance.
The women, old men and children, were busy on the farms ploughing, harrowing and putting in the seed. Though the men were away there was no dearth of labour on the farms and everything was going on as it should. The silly-looking, heavily-built, three-wheeled carts, empty or loaded with manure, bumped along behind the broad-backed Flemish horses, guided solely by a frail looking piece of string. The driver, seated crosswise on a projecting tongue of wood, guides the horse by mysterious signals conveyed through jerks of the piece of string, and steers the cart by leaning over and shoving the small front steering wheel to the right or left by hand. The Flemish horses are very placid and are never startled by motors, gun fire, or anything else.
Away to the right we could see the spires of a church in a little village nestling among the trees. Our road took its tortuous course through fields as flat as a board. Tall trees flanked the roadside which was separated from the fields by ditches three or four feet wide, serving to drain both road and fields and ultimately emptying into some canal or creek. In this particular part of Flanders hedges were not in universal use for fences. In one place we execrated the Germans for having cut down dozens of the roadside trees, only to discover later that the British themselves had cut them down in order to clear the course for aeroplanes ascending and descending to the aerodrome close by.
We overhauled a trotting dog team dragging a heavy little milk cart and driven by a boy who ran alongside. At the sound of the motor horn the dogs turned sharply to the right without waiting for orders from the boy, ran over his foot, and nearly upset the cart. One judged that they had had some previous and possibly not pleasant experiences with motor cars, and were taking no chances. What the boy said to them was shameful, judged even by our limited knowledge of French and the short time we were within hearing of him.
Coming into the little town of La Gorgue we could see to our right a chateau in quite pretentious gardens—a chateau in which the German Crown Prince is said to have been staying when a British shell crashed through the roof and made him move on the double quick. This town like our own was intersected by a canal which was used both as a sewer and source of water supply for washing purposes. The streets in this town are dirty and ill kept; the stores uninteresting, and the houses squalid; it ran into the next town of Estaires by the continuation of the main street.
Canadian soldiers were everywhere in evidence, wandering along the roads in the manner so characteristic of them. Canadians have never been over fond of saluting officers, and have never quite accepted the statement that it is the uniform of the representative of the King they are called upon to salute—not the man.
The first story I heard was about a chauffeur I had had in Valcartier. He had been standing at the doorway of a store trying to talk to a French girl when a couple of British officers passed. The man did not see them till they were just going by and drew himself up to a sort of a half attention. The officers passed, halted, and came back.
"Why didn't you salute?" queried one officer.
"I didn't see you," replied the man.
"Oh, yes, you did; you came to a kind of sloppy attention as we passed," said the officer.
"Yes," said the man. "I did as you were almost past; but anyway we don't salute much in our army."
"What?" said the officer, "are you a Canadian?"
"Yes, sir," said the chauffeur proudly, and the British officers went on laughing heartily.
The officers we came to see were out and we seized the opportunity to run over for a look at the shell-shattered town of Laventie—the first battered town we had seen. To us, at that time, it was an awe-inspiring spectacle, though nowadays it would be considered a comparatively undamaged town.
The houses on the outskirts were quite intact, but as we approached the centre of the town, shattered windows, pitted walls, and scarred woodwork indicated that the town had been heavily shelled. Near the church the buildings were wrecked; roofs were lifted off, windows blown out, and walls were frequently half down or had great holes in them, while the block right around the church was a heap of rubbish.
The church itself had been hit scores of times, and the walls though still standing were perforated like a sieve. The stones in the foundation of the church were fractured by the force of the exploding shells into tiny fragments, still pressed together with the weight of the material above them. So crushed were they that if removed, a tap with a hammer would make them fall into thousands of splinters.
The houses round about the church had been completely razed to the ground. Those adjacent were partly unroofed, with perhaps a wall blown out showing an upstairs with a stairway swinging from the floor, beams from the roof fallen over the iron bedstead, sheets of wall paper dangling from the walls, and every other imaginable combination of wreckage. And yet a few doors away down the street where the houses had not been very badly damaged they were occupied by civilians who tried to eke out an existence by selling candy and foodstuffs.
It is a never-failing source of wonder to see people in such places which were being shelled daily, hanging on desperately to the old homes, not knowing when a shell might come through the roof and kill them all. That was brought home to me later on when, as I passed through a village one afternoon, I saw three women being dug out of the cellar of a house in which a shell had exploded a minute before. On another occasion in a village close by a mother with her babe at her breast, three children of various ages, the husband and the grandmother, were all killed in one room by a German shell, the walls, ceiling and floor being splattered with blood and brains. And so it goes on day after day among the civilians in the shelled area in France. Most of them escape but many of them pay the price.