XVI MARCHING THROUGH FRANCE: Difference between revisions
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Latest revision as of 01:42, 19 September 2008
MARCHING THROUGH FRANCE
WE were on our way to the front; but from the general attitude
of the men you might have thought that we were on a cheap tour.
The "management" was subjected to much criticism. The
train was very far from being a train de luxe. We had boarded
it in the dark. Forty men with forty packs and forty rifles had
tumbled, no one quite knew how, into a pitch-dark van, and somehow
sat down. At first we most of us sat on each other; but by degrees,
and with much wriggling, we managed to separate ourselves more
or less, and squatted through long hours in cramped, contorted
attitudes. At length, in the small hours, the train stopped, and
we bundled out, to find ourselves in a diminutive French town.
There was nothing very interesting or sensational about it as
far as we could see. The houses were modern, and of a dull red
brick. The road was cobbled, and uncomfortable for marching. One
could not quite say why, but it certainly had an unfamiliar air
about it. It was somehow different to any English town. There
was an indefinable something about the architecture of the jerrybuilt
villas which betrayed the workings of a foreign mind. We were
cold and tired and stiff, and we decided then and there that France
was a failure, and that we should have done better to stay at
home. We marched through a dull flat country with occasional farms,
and avenues of trees appearing in ghostly fashion through the
early morning mist. They did not plant trees in avenues like that
in England, and we condemned the practice as inartistic.
Very, very tired, we at last arrived at a large barn, and entering
lay down in the thick straw, and were soon fast asleep. A short
sleep accomplished wonders. We woke to find the May sunlight streaming
in through the chinks of our barn. We felt a good deal less critical
than we had; in fact we were prepared to be rather excited at
the novelties that life was offering. The barn was big and airy,
and the straw clean and sweet. We felt encouraged to investigate
farther. Outside we found a meadow clothed in long green grass,
dotted with one or two big trees, and full of wild flowers. In
a corner was a pond of clear water. We stripped, found a bucket,
and poured water over ourselves, and then lay down in the long
grass and basked in the sun. We were tasting the joys of the simple
life---the life of the tramp, for instance; and we thought that
if it were always May, and if the sun always shone, there might
be a good deal to be said in its favor. We felt our British respectability
slipping away from us. The glamour of vagabondage caught us. When
we returned to our office in the City or our shop in the suburbs
we would take another holiday after this fashion, and wander down
English lanes one spring morning, with a rucksack on our back.
We would sleep in an English barn, or under an English hedge,
and bathe in the water of an English pool. What would Aunt Maria
say? A fig for Aunt Maria! We were losing our prejudices, and
becoming Bohemian in our tastes. We knew then, as we had never
known before, what it is to be young in the sweet springtime.
We had never felt like this, even at Brighton or Southend! There
was something exquisitely clean and wholesome about this picnic
life.
We stayed at the village for several days. In the morning we
would go for a walk round the country. It was rather amusing,
except that the "management" insisted on our carrying
all our luggage on our backs wherever we went. In the afternoon
we would go and bathe in a canal half a mile away. In the evening
we were free to roam about the village. It was not a bit like
an English village. There didn't seem to be any proper shops,
and nearly every cottage had something for sale. Large, flat,
round loaves, lovely fresh butter, and milk and eggs, delicious
coffee, weak beer, and cognac---these were obtainable almost anywhere,
at the farms and cottages alike. And these French villagers had
a wonderful way with them. Somehow you never felt like a customer.
You were made to feel like an old and valued friend of the family.
You went into a cottage marked "Estaminet," and you
ordered your glass of beer. You sat and sipped it en famille,
with Madame making coffee or cooking supper on the big stove,
Mamselle sewing in the corner, and Bébé playing
on the floor. Sometimes there was a Monsieur, too, but if so he
was an old gentleman who smoked his pipe, and smiled genially
at you. If you could talk any French, tant mieux. There
was plenty to talk about, and everyone joined in with an easy,
well-bred courtesy worthy of the finest gentleman. Ah, they were
wonderful people, those good villagers of ----- !
Somehow they had the faculty of being sociable and friendly
without any adventitious aids. The Englishman cannot be quite
at his ease with a stranger unless he has stood him a drink.,
or eaten with him. The English cannot sell you anything and at
the same time make you feel that you are a guest rather than a
customer. We felt that there was something to be said for the
French, after all.
Of course there were no young or even middle-aged men in the
village. They were all---well, making a tour in Belgium and Eastern
France. That evidently made a difference. Imagine an English village
visited by a number of young Frenchmen. If there were no young
Englishmen about, but only women and old men, no doubt they would
be received with open arms. The young women would mildly flirt
with them, the older women would mother them, and the old men
would be quite paternal. But imagine the effect if the English
youths suddenly returned. Then there would be jealous lovers,
jealous sons, jealous husbands. The women would have to curb their
hospitable inclinations. The youths of the two nations would look
down their noses at each other, and find each other "gesticulating
monkeys" or "mannerless boors." Each would try
to feel the better race, and would turn to the women as judges
of their quarrel. No, perhaps it was just as well that at -----
there were no young Frenchmen. As it was we were regularly fêted,
and being on our best behavior felt that we were a success. What
could be more pleasant or gratifying?
We did not stay at ----- very long. Soon we were en route
for Belgium. This time we marched, which would have been very
pleasant if we had not had to carry all our own luggage. As it
was, the marches proved very tiring. The only advantage of a pack
is that it makes a very comfortable pillow if you do get a chance
to lie down. Every hour we had a short halt, and lay flat on our
backs by the side of the road, with our packs under our heads,
and were happy. We marched through several nice little French
towns, with fine old churches and hotels de ville, and
generally a pleasant square in the center, full of seductive-looking
auberges and cafés. Unfortunately the "management"
did not elect to let us linger in these jolly little towns, but
hurried us on to some sequestered farm on the confines of a small
village, and billeted us in a barn. We got to know quite a lot
about barns. They are very nice if they are clean; but when they
have been slept in by about fifty successive parties in a few
months they begin to lose their charm. The straw loses its sweetness,
and the water of the pond, its crystal clearness. Often we would
crowd into a barn in the semi-darkness, and, having with difficulty
found six feet of floor space for ourselves and our belongings,
discover beneath our heads a little trove of decaying bully, or
damp, moldy biscuits. We got used to it; but it was objectionable
at first. On the whole, though, we did not fare too badly. There
was generally a hospitable little estaminet to visit in
the evening, and a cup of lovely hot coffee to be had at the farm
in the morning. The sun was always shining, the grass green, and
the wild flowers blooming. We said that France was not a bad place
to be in in the springtime.
To our destination we gave never a thought. Such is the way
of youth. What was the good of worrying? We would take things
as we found them. But when we got into Belgium the stern realities
of war began to obtrude themselves. The towns which we passed
through were half empty. Broken windows, holes in the roof, and
here and there the whole front of a house missing, told their
story of when the war had swept that way. The people in the villages
were no longer genially hospitable. They wore an anxious look,
and were obviously out to make money if they could. Our beer was
badly watered, and our chocolate cost us more. We did not like
Belgium very much.
Finally we came to the trenches themselves, and all around
was desolation and ruin. There are few more mournful spectacles
than a town or village lately reduced to ruins. The ruins of antiquity
leave one cold. The life that they once harbored is too remote
to excite our sympathies. But a modern ruin is full of tragedy.
You see the remains of the furniture, the family portraits on
the wall, a child's doll seated forlornly on a chair, a little
figure of the Virgin under a glass case. In the middle of the
little square is a little iron bandstand, and you can almost see
the ghosts of the inhabitants walking up and down, laughing, chatting,
and quarreling, with no sense of the disaster overshadowing them.
You wonder what became of them. The girl whose rosary lies on
yonder dressing-table, and who doubtless prayed every night be
fore that little figure of the Virgin, was she raped by some bloodstained
Uhlan? Or did she escape in time to relations or friends at a
safe distance? And to what purpose were all these homes sacrificed?
Why are all these good people scattered and beggared and fugitive?
Cui bono? On the Day of Judgment someone will have
to answer. As we thought of the pleasant towns and villages that
we had left behind, with their honest, kindly inhabitants, we
set our teeth and resolved that, if we could prevent it, the receding
tide should never return over the fair lands of France.
So long we stayed in these scenes of desolation that we almost
forgot what a live town looked like. It is hard to describe the
delights of the journey home, made in far other fashion than the
journey out. As we sat in the comer of our carriage in the train
de luxe, and watched the busy life of the towns through which
we passed, we felt as if we had awakened from a nightmare. But
that was many months ago, and now that we are sound of limb again
we hear the call of desolate Belgium and threatened France, and
long to do our bit once more to hasten that slowly receding tide
of devastation.