War Classics (5 page)

To the nicest of all the pippins

Who sleeps near La Bassée.

I have been asked whether this book is true. To maintain that it is so is not, as Socrates said once long ago, worthy of a wise man. It would take a fool, as you will agree, to write it. And for its truth? I can only remind you of what Bismarck did, when he wished not to be believed. He always told the truth.

Christina Keith

Our little hour, – how swift it flies

When poppies flare and lilies smile;

How soon the fleeting minute dies,

Leaving us but a little while

To dream our dream, to sing our song,

To pick the fruit, to pluck the flower.

The Gods – They do not give us long, –

One little hour.

(by Leslie Coulson, 1889–8 October 1916, in
From an outpost and other poems
, published in 1917 by his father)

O
f all the sideshows run by the British Army in the field, the most entertaining – as it is in general the least known – was surely its system of education. Lest ‘entertaining’ be misunderstood, I hasten to add that the War Office itself places education under the head of Amusements. Much has been heard – and deservedly – of the canteens that fed the men and gave them games and cinemas, of the concert parties and dramatic parties that performed at every base and at most of the camps behind the lines, but early in 1918 there came a glut of all these. The men were not satisfied with being merely fed and amused. And then there dawned the ‘preposterous’ idea of education. Why should the men not be taught something when they came weary out of the trenches, or when they lay at rest camps, or in their leisure hours at the Bases? No idea could seem more ridiculous at first sight than that Thomas Atkins and his officers should go back to school again in the intervals of their fighting. But go back again they did – many of them at least – and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

So curiously interwoven are mind and body that for intense physical strain the only true reaction is a mental one. If the balance of mind and body is to be preserved, the mind too must work. Mere amusement does not grip the mind sufficiently to provide a counter-balancing strain.

Not that the soldier or his officer ever argued the point. The keynote of the Army Education System in France was its voluntariness. And a second point was that the great majority of the staff who carried out the education were women. Some might question how a woman – other than a nurse – could be attached to an army and still remain respectable. Yet while it lasted, it was both a respectable and a thrilling life. These brief notes will endeavour to show how it was both.

It was summer 1918 before we began. I suppose we were one of the freak stunts of the War. You have probably never heard of us and would not have believed us true if you had.

‘No doubt you will be giving us Latin exercises to do in the trenches,’ said the Army brother bitterly, on the news of my appointment, ‘and improving our grammar by the way.’
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‘I haven’t been told yet what my duties will be,’ I rejoined cautiously.

‘Sort of Hush Hush Department, eh?’ he growled sarcastically.

That and an intense mystification on the part of those who had been there, were the usual results of the information that I was being sent to France. ‘Whatever for?’ I was asked more than once, with somewhat discomfiting bluntness. I took refuge in the statement of the Authorities. ‘They call me,’ I quoted, ‘Staff Lecturer on Education on the Lines of Communication.’

‘
My Hat!’ – ‘Eyewash!’ – ‘You don’t say so!’ – ‘They do think of everything, don’t they?’ – were some of the many irreverent comments this drew forth. As we lived in the neighbourhood of a big Naval station, I was exhibited triumphantly to passing Naval officers by the SNO’s wife [Senior Naval Officer] as the latest freak that was going to France.
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Over their teacups they looked at me with silent bewilderment. I flatter myself that I provided an interesting topic of conversation in the gunroom of more than one battleship in August 1918. ‘Would the Navy be the next to be educated?’ was the dismaying thought in most minds, but it was usually dismissed with scorn. Who would want an educated Navy?

September came and I was still at home – not one step nearer France. Voluminous correspondence, even occasional telegrams passed between London and myself. They wanted to know if I had received their previous letter – if not, this was what it said. Was I quite content to be Staff Lecturer? Did I like my salary? Would I prefer it to be more or less? Please get the uniform at once.

Myself – to London, by return. Had received and replied to their former letter. Was quite content with salary, title, etc. What was the uniform and when did they want me?

London – to me. Yes the salary was quite nice but on the whole they thought they would halve it. Please get the uniform at once – underlined.

Myself, hastily – why halve it?

They, apologetically – sorry, they’d sent the wrong letter that time. Posts were so uncertain. Purely an official mistake, they meant double it. I could take 100lbs of luggage.

Myself, by telegram – what is the uniform?

They, at length, sent a fascinating picture of the uniform and an imperative telegram to depart at once. ‘Should I ever be like that elegant young woman in the picture?’ I wondered with a sigh as I packed my small belongings for the longed-for land of France. For once I felt almost as big a fool as all my friends believed me. Who but a fool gave up the comfort of a feather bed and a quiet home for all the dangers of France? But the neighbourhood believed me a heroine of the first water. Old ladies, with tears in their eyes, implored me not to be too rash in the firing line, and the Laird of the district sent his own motor car to convey me to the Station. So – not knowing in the least what I was going to do, where I was going, with only my telegram of summons, the uniform and a pink chiffon frock which, as a forlorn hope, I had packed at the last moment – I set forth.

1
.  ‘The Army brother’ was Christina’s brother, David Barrogill Keith, known in the family as Barr. Two years younger than she was, he served with the Scottish Rifles during the war and was awarded the Military Cross.

2
.  Scapa Flow, just north of Christina’s Thurso home, was the UK’s chief naval base during the First World War.

F
irst stop London, that was clear enough. The Department airily explained they had only meant ‘come to
London
at once’. I could not possibly get to France for another four weeks yet.

Myself – aghast – where could I stay?

They – vaguely – oh! That hadn’t occurred to them, but if I made a point of it, there was a hostel down Islington way. I could try there. But first of all – this with great firmness – I must be photographed. Tottenham Court Road – top floor – Jew – at once.

As I laboured up endless flights of dark and dirty stairs, I still found one subject for thankfulness. What a mercy the folk at home couldn’t see me now! At the top I was taken charge of by a metallic looking woman. ‘Passport,’ she snapped. ‘3/6d. – Hat off, full face, keep still,’ – all at once like a machine gun. I had never been so photographed before. No brush! No comb! No mirror! A blinding flash, then her voice again. ‘Ready in three hours. Goodbye.’ I reflected it was just as well I had been accepted for France before people saw my photograph!

Islington I had never visited, but in the daylight it was not so hard to find. Yes, I could be taken in on Saturday for a fortnight. That was the men’s section next door – they had all sorts, from a Catholic bishop down to a chimney sweep, all together. The women were nearly as mixed. I loved the brown walls, the quaint cretonne curtains, and the cups and saucers – orange-and-black patterned on a background of cream. The windows looked out on to a quiet old market square. Islington must have been delicious when it was a village.

Had I been inoculated? Vaccinated? No – then both at once. Mayfair was the best place. So away I trudged. The Mayfair waiting room reminded me of Maple’s showroom, and the doctor, I decided, must be treated with remoteness and severity. He looked as if he might wish to flirt.

At length – weary and rather cross – I betook myself to a friendly boarding house in Willesden Green. France seemed years away and I thought it strange of the Department to send me to live in a slum and to be inoculated in Mayfair. But I did not know Departments yet – it was my first day in London.

H
ow hard it is to leave London when one has been there even for only four weeks! I love it, I love it, I love it, from the people in the buses to the waitresses in the tearooms. Talk about the Navy being mystified about why I was going to France! Why, everyone here looks on me as perfectly wonderful because I happen to be going at all. Even in the dull old boarding house – how did I ever think it dull? What interesting people there were! A newspaper woman who wants me to write on ‘Thrilling Days in France’, a diminutive medical student who tells me how best to nurse my arm when the inoculation begins to throb, a self-denying barrister – quite good looking – who stays nearly three hours late from the Admiralty in the mornings just to comfort me on these same occasions, another woman who actually told me that all the men think I’ll be a great success in France (they haven’t seen me in my uniform yet) and last but not least a grim old Scotsman who gave me a packet of lozenges when he heard me cough. ‘Leave me your address,’ said he, ‘and I’ll send ye a tin of oatcakes when ye get oot bye. It’ll mind ye o’ Scotland.’ And Plum-Leaf Villa, said the landlady herself, would always have a room for me, when I was passing through on leave. Not bad for four days in a totally unknown boarding house!

The next event was the Islington Hostel. After much labour in the total darkness I reached it and found I had staggered up with my bag to the men’s section. ‘First to the right,’ came a cultured Oxford voice in greeting, ‘and I will take your bag.’ At any rate I had not struck the chimney sweep, I reflected, and wondered if it was the Bishop. But, Bishop or chimney sweep, I guilelessly confided my bag. To my surprise a very substantial dinner – when dinners were hard to get – awaited me in the women’s section, and sent the women flying up in my estimation. After long and painful experience of College life, I had ceased to expect from any purely female establishment a decent dinner.

After dinner, however, came a heart-to-heart talk. I suppose it had to be. I discovered that nobody but myself in the company was going out for Educational work. We included a serious and spectacled young person who’d done Rescue Work for nine years and looked it (I’d rather be on the streets than be rescued by her!), an ex-Music Hall star who’d been out with a Lena Ashwell party and had the widest vocabulary I have ever heard, a Canadian VAD [Voluntary Aid Detachment] – six months’ service in Salonika and disillusioned about all mankind (capital ‘M’), an Irish mother and daughter going to run girls’ clubs in a Naval port (lucky Naval port!), one dear nurse invalided home from Mespot – best of the bunch she was – a Chaplain’s wife carrying on for the Chaplain and taking no Bible lessons from anyone, thank you!, and a very pretty runaway from Cornwall dying to go to France.
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She and the Chaplain’s wife had cubicles next to mine, and the heart-to-heart talk found and left us, from diverse reasons, dumb. But after the first night we became great friends. It was all through my hot-water bottle which burst at midnight and in bed the very first night we were there. Shivering in my nightgown, I surveyed the damage. I had always been told it imperilled one’s life to sleep in a damp bed, and mine was swimming. But don’t you believe it ever again. Oh, the things I had to learn when I went to France! Squeeze the blankets, lie on the pillow and bury the sheets and you’ll sleep better than you ever did before.

Well, in this zoo for a fortnight on end we were lectured on things we ought to know in France. Not me, of course – nobody knew what I was going to do, so how could they tell me what I ought to know? Still, the others might have to do pretty nearly everything, it appeared. Stock and run a canteen, hold an impromptu religious service to suit any variety of denomination, umpire all games from football to billiards, work a cinema lantern, lecture on and settle all or any labour disputes. They learnt it all in a fortnight though you mightn’t think it, and I with them.

The only part I remember was ‘How to treat the Army’ for that was where I began to take notice. ‘Always back up the CO,’ said the Sergeant, ‘and never salute him. Whatever he says tell him it will be done. Don’t bother so much about the Adjutant, he don’t matter so much.’ I saved that one up for the Army brother, an Adjutant himself.

‘Always be neat and tidily dressed, no matter what you’re doing.’ I remembered this when I was called upon to sweep a chimney. ‘The men have got to be neat and tidy and they’ll think less of you if you’re not. Never grouse. Do everything you’re told.’ It sounded like the Ten Commandments.

‘And when the men grouse to you, don’t let ’em run the War Office down. As long as you’re in France; whatever you think, it’s the best of all possible War Offices. And, drunk or sober,’ the Sergeant finished his address, ‘the men are top-hole men.’

At the time, the idea of any man being top-hole when drunk was new and alarming. But I’ve learnt better now. The Canadian VAD was sitting next to me. ‘I like that – drunk,’ she commented. ‘A drunk Officer spoke to me the other day in Piccadilly. I spoke back to him and took him home. I’m going to have tea with him this afternoon if he turns up – I told him he’d have to be sober, though.’ I gasped; speak to a man in the street! Only girls who were not nice did such a thing. She looked at me. ‘You can take this from me. When a man speaks to you in the street, always answer back. If you don’t, the other kind will.’ Well, I hope I’ve learned that lesson too.