War Classics (24 page)

We wandered out of the cathedral and the Hut Lady shook her umbrella at the Boche soldiers labouring in the street. But for myself, I felt no anger as I looked as them: I felt something worse, as if they were, what the Corporal had said, unclean, and as if I ought to draw my skirts aside as I passed them.

The sunlight still held as we made our way along the street. We wished to find the English military cemetery, in the hope of discovering some graves we knew. It appeared there were two cemeteries and we had only time for one. We chose at random and I asked a passing soldier to direct us. He told us minutely and we were not long in arriving. It was the largest cemetery we had seen and its crosses stretched back, row upon row, like a great army. I gazed around in despair. It was hopeless to discover anyone in this host, and we knew only names and regiments. But there was order even here. ‘The men are in years, Miss,’ said a soldier who was digging there. ‘If you know when he died, you’ll find him with his year.’

The Hut Lady took one corner and I another and we walked slowly down the line. One or two soldiers, who chanced to be there, tried to help us, but with wonderful tact, quietly slipped away and left us once they had learned the names we sought. They made no attempt to pursue conversation here. I thought I should never come to an end of the long ranks of 1916 – and there were two years still to come. Latterly I glanced only at the date. In this cemetery there were no flowers and nothing green at all. It was just a sea of the sticky tawny mud, with the crosses planted stark in it. Presently, as I bent to read the names and dates, I became aware that my feet were plunging deeper and deeper into the slime. As 1917 and 1918 grew nearer, the crosses rose from pools of yellow water, like miserable shell holes. Some crosses even stuck out slantingly as if the mud had pushed them aside from their usual ramrod straightness. The mud clung like glue: one sank in it almost as in quicksands. The last rows of crosses in this forlorn place were beyond my reach. I was glad to think that others would soon come who would master the mud and water, so that these last ranks might have their visitors too.

We turned back wearily and silently. It felt a dead weight to pull our shoes out of the mud and the road was far away. The crosses lay between us and that. But we reached the town at last and our thought was to make our way back to the station. As we turned into the Grande Rue, the soldier who had directed us, came up.

‘Did you find the place all right, Miss?’

I told him we had, but he still lingered. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, Miss,’ he began again humbly, ‘I haven’t spoken to an English lady for nearly three years, and if you would just come and have a cup of tea at my billet, Miss,’ he glanced hesitatingly at us.

‘Thank you, we shall be delighted,’ I replied quickly, though I am sure the Hut Lady too felt we could hardly walk another step. And since three in the morning we had not been able to rest for a single moment. But our soldier wanted us to see the sights. Had we seen the Grande Place, or the Petite Place, or the wonderful cellars where the French people lived when the shelling was so bad?
11
We obediently looked at the first two, and then I asked casually if there was a YMCA canteen near. It appeared there was and we begged to be taken there first. Alas! it was only a rough square hall of a place, with a wholly unimaginative padre in charge. He told us before we even spoke to him, that we could get nothing to eat or drink till the counter opened. No – there were no Hut Ladies at Arras – he smiled grimly from his side of the counter; as far as he knew, there were no English ladies in Arras at all.

‘Is there an Officers’ Club?’ I asked with a forlorn hope. There was certainly that. ‘Then we will go there,’ I said determinedly, making up my mind that not even a Field Marshal should bar me from its cloakroom. Our guide conducted us there, and we found – oh joy! – water and solitude, the two things we craved most. Ten minutes later, as with powdered noses and clean hands, we marched to our private soldier’s billet, I felt I could cope with anything.

The billet was on the ground floor of a broken house. It was a small room with a wooden floor and many boxes thereon. We sat each on a box – never was seat so grateful – and the soldier set about lighting a stove in the corner. I did not care how long he took to get tea, provided he let me sit on my box. The Hut Lady – more valiant than I, who am no campaigner – did most of the talking and heard most of the family history of the soldier and much of interest about Arras too. I daresay I must have heard it all too, but I remember nothing now but the stray fact that a Divisional Footlights Company was giving an excellent performance in the theatre that night, and our friend was begging us to stay for it. He assured us we would be the only Englishwomen there – indeed the only women in the theatre and that we would bring the house down. I sigh now to think of what I might once have done, but then all I felt was relief when the Hut Lady announced that we had to get back to Amiens that night.

Tea came in the end and I woke up to see the thinnest bread and butter I had yet seen in France and a tea tray as immaculate and dainty as might be found in an English drawing room. Our host did not drink with us, but looking for snapshots, telling stories, answering the Hut Lady’s questions, set us completely at our ease with that marvellous thoughtfulness for others that the English private soldier always had. It was only towards the end of tea – when I was becoming interested again in my surroundings – that his eyes fell on my shoes. He gave a little cry of distress. ‘Oh, if only I had thought,’ he cried, ‘I would have brushed your shoes for you, before you went to the train. But there’s hardly time now,’ he added regretfully – then brightening, ‘unless you’ll wait for another train.’

The Hut Lady looked at my shoes too – severely. She had not waded and jumped in the cemetery as I had and you could still see she wore shoes. But up to my knees my feet were embedded in what felt like yellow plaster of Paris. I surveyed them against the box with quite considerable pride. ‘I should like to go home like this,’ I said. ‘Everybody’d know where I’d been then.’

‘You’ll be dead beat, walking in that,’ said the Hut Lady darkly.

I didn’t care – our day’s work was done and we were going back to Amiens and to bed. I felt that Heaven itself could only be expressed in terms of beds. A bed, moreover, where I could sleep till eight a.m. – if even the Archangel Michael were to waken me before then I should not get up.

Whilst these thoughts passed in my mind, we were on our way to the station, the Hut Lady and our soldier in front, I trudging along behind. At the station I presented our passes to Madame at the guichet. ‘
Militaire
,’ she said, quite civilly, but firmly, ‘
pas avant minuit
,’ and handed them back. I gasped. [‘Military, … not before midnight’]

‘
Mais il y a un train tout de suite
,’ [‘But there’s a train now’] I protested.

‘
Mais oui
,’ she agreed, but ‘
militaires
’ could not go by it. It required the permission of Monsieur le RTO français. I looked wildly round for him. She pointed out a little wooden hut, with a queue of blue uniforms outside. I dashed across; the train might come at any moment. Monsieur le RTO was busy – he was a fat man, with black eyes and a huge black moustache. He looked somewhat fearsome. A gallery of minor RTOs stood round him and I had boldly placed myself at the head of the queue.

‘
S’il vous plaît
,
monsieur
,’ I began falteringly, ‘
s’il vous plait
,’ … and stopped.

‘
Eh
,
bien
,
mademoiselle
,’ he encouraged me.

I handed him our passes, with my finger on the left-hand corner. ‘
Quelque chose de gentil ici-bas
,
s’il vous plaît
,
monsieur
,’ [Something kind here, please, monsieur’,] I wheedled, for it was a matter of minutes now. ‘
Qu’est-ce-que c’est
?’ [what’s this?’] he enquired blankly, at the same time scanning the document.

I explained how Madame at the
guichet
had said his signature was necessary. The blue uniforms listened with lively interest; the Staff directed a concentrated stare on me. There was a moment’s silence when you could have heard a pin fall. Then the Chief raised his eyes and fixed them on me, ‘
Vous n’avez pas le droit de l’avoir
,’ he told me and my heart sank to my boots, ‘
et je n’ai pas le droit de le faire
,
et
,’ he added, reaching for an enormous iron stamping machine and thumping it down, ‘
et je vais le faire!
’ [‘You don’t have any right to this … and I have no right to do this … and I’m going to do it!’] He handed me the passes and smilingly saluted.

I stared – then said, ‘
Mille remerciments
,
monsieur; je vous remercie de tout mon coeur
.’ [‘A thousand thank yous, monsieur, I thank you with all my heart.’] To which he replied, ‘
A votre service
,
mlle.
’ With a bow and a smile I ran from the hut. Not without quick laughter from the queue of
poilus
and a parting cry of ‘
Vive l’Angleterre
!’

With many thanks to the English soldier, we whirled into the waiting express. It was crammed full, and passing along the corridor, we found a compartment of American soldiers with only the corner seats taken. They gave us no greeting, made no effort to dispose their kit more comfortably for us, and after about half an hour, neither the Hut Lady nor I could very well keep our eyes open as we sat bolt upright in the centre. During all our sojourn in France this incident stands out as the only instance we ever met with of lack of thoughtfulness to us from soldiers. They were, I repeat, American. Despite our uniforms, the mud on our shoes and the weariness of our attitudes, they let us sit the whole way, while, fresh from Paris leave, they lolled in their corners. At Longueau, where we had to get out, the carriage door would hardly open and when it did, there was a very considerable leap to the ground. But it was a middle-aged Frenchman who came to our aid there. The Americans sat fast and did nothing. And so back to Amiens and our Australian friend, who sauntered up to us at the station and carried our souvenirs home. He was like an old friend now, instead of an acquaintance of a few days. And then to bed, without sheets, in grey Army blankets – the best bed of all!

Next morning, with reluctant faces, we set out for the Base and everyday life again. It was like bidding farewell to a dreamworld, where everything happened after the heart’s desire on a background of infinite horror. Never again shall I visit the zone of the Armies, first because to see a land so wronged by the hand of man, shames one to the soul. Indeed, it leaves no soul, but shame.

‘I feel as if I ought to apologise to somebody for this country,’ said a prosaic-looking English officer uneasily, as we passed Albert. But somehow it demanded an apology to God. For another reason too, I shall not go there again. If human nature had been at its worst, it had also been at its best. Side by side with ruined Péronne, with desolate Arras, with unearthly Thiepval, there walks in my mind the perfect memory of the men we knew there; welcoming English voices, kindly act and generous thought went with us all the days while we were there, without one jarring discord. We were set about with love. And so it comes that even had I the courage to face that land again, I could not bear the strange faces and the natural indifference that I should encounter now, where once I had met perfection. Plodding down to the Lines of Communication I pictured again the open country and the wide horizons of Vimy, and was glad that the boys who came so far, had found such a lovely place to lie in. May the earth lie light – be light – under the wooden crosses.

Yet Life is no respecter of moods – it delights in contrasts. And even as I stood waiting at the junction for Dieppe, with my thoughts far away, the last of all the RTO’s Corporals stood before me.

‘Excuse me, Miss,’ he was saying, ‘you’ve come from up the line, haven’t you? And I was thinking, if you wouldn’t mind, that I might give a clean to your shoes before you go to the Base.’

‘But I can’t take them off,’ I protested. ‘I’ve nothing else to wear.’

‘I’ll clean them here,’ he volunteered, and sure enough he did, with what seemed to me an entire battalion looking on with interest. It certainly filled in the time while we were waiting for the train, but I was rather sorry all the same. I should have liked the Chief to see how we had come from the Trenches.

It was about two o’clock when the train pulled up slowly at the Base and we set out to lug our suitcases to the billet. But even then our luck held. The Ladies’ Car was just returning from its round of the huts, and it held only one lady, who beckoned us excitedly. The steadiest of all our drivers – and at the Base we had a great variety, including one who was known as ‘Sudden Death’ – gripped our luggage, and we were landed safe and sound at our billet door. In a way I was glad to be back – for here too was a Bed – I thought of it with a capital B now – and the prospect of hours and hours of sleep before me. It was without a care in the world that I laid me down one hour later. But just as it was growing dusk, I was awakened. The Chief had called – our singing class was giving an exhibition at the local theatre – he desired my presence in his box.

  
1
.  The floor and benches of the station waiting room were crammed with French soldiers dressed in their blue uniforms. As she looked at them, Christina was reminded of a painting by Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier (1815–91), who painted many military scenes, and was known for his small-scale detail.

  
2
.  ‘The Virgin has fallen.’ The statue of the Virgin Mary atop Albert Cathedral became one of the icons of this stretch of the Front. From 1915 as a result of German shellfire the statue hung at a precarious angle. The legend developed among British troops that the fall of the Virgin would signify the end of the war, while German troops were said to believe that whoever brought down the statue would lose the war. In spring 1918 the British shelled the cathedral in order to prevent the Germans using the tower as a lookout, and the statue was destroyed.