CHAPTER II.
Broken car springs on February 1st took me to Poperinghe, where a Belgian carriage-maker made a villainous repair for a considerable charge.
Motor car repairs were fearfully and wonderfully executed at the front in the earlier stages of the war. The G.H.Q. shops were not bad, and once in a while I found clever, conscientious young chaps in charge of a road-side repair shop attached to a division, an ammunition supply column, or some such unit, who had managed to organise a very creditable "first-aid and emergency hospital" for the ills a car was heir to.
All too often some A.S.C. officer in charge, however, knew as little of the mechanism of an automobile and how to put it in order as one could well imagine. I remember one youth, possessed of a wonderful opinion of his own efficiency, whose mechanical experience had been gained in a railway workshop. He ordered repairs to be done in weird fashion at times. As soon as he had delivered his dictum and departed, his chief non-commissioned officer would put the men right, generally by a complete reversal of the youngster's orders, and all would go happily until he might again put in an appearance, when the work would suffer proportionately to the time he spent in its vicinity.
Stories of the excellence of the performance of individual cars were often marvellous. One big limousine, which had been "out since the first of the show," was ever the boast of the Major to whom it was assigned and of his faithful chauffeur. At tea one day it transpired that the car, which the Major was always ready to declare had run sans repaire et sans reproche during the whole campaign, was in the repair park for its "initial derangement." Calling at the repair lorry early next morning, I was astounded to hear the A.S.C. sergeant-major in charge say to the major's chauffeur: "So you have done in the old girl again, have you? Let's see, that's the third time this month, ain't it? Why the Major hasn't sent the bally old wreck in months ago to get her put in decent shape, I don't know. Not a bit of use tinkering at her all the time. She's given us more bother than any car in the division."
How we did chip the Major! Motorists' yarns bear some odd relationship to fishermen's stories, so I have heard.
Taken generally, the British cars at the Front ran most creditably. The conditions could not have been more trying, and the Daimlers and Rolls-Royces lived up to their reputations in fine style. Cars of half a score of makes were attached to the 1st Cavalry Division while I was with it, and I studied their performances with close attention. For reliability and lack of trouble a large Daimler easily bore away the honours.
Cold forges and a disinclination on the part of the smith to light them on an afternoon necessitated my spending a night in Poperinghe. The town was crowded with Belgian inhabitants and refugees, and with French troops of the 16th Corps, which was at that time being relieved from the trench work by British soldiers, and was mobilising in Poperinghe to be sent south and east, detachment after detachment, to its own dear France.
A winter in Flanders, particularly in Flemish trenches, is not a happy experience. The French were therefore openly delighted at the prospect of departure to more pleasant and congenial climes.
I should have had to sleep in my car but for the kindly offices of a French Staff officer, who procured for me a clean, soft bed in the Hotel La Bourse.
An evening among French soldiers, though they might be tired, trench-stained and campaign worn, was sure to be a pleasurable one. Songs from chansons d'amour to grand opera, from poor Harry Fragson's "Marguerita," to swinging marching airs of older wars, were sung with a vim.
The French troopers possessed a suspicion of the grand air when drinking a toast, carolling a love-ditty, or roaring out a rousing chorus. One or two veterans I met in Poperinghe might have stepped from a volume of Dumas. An elder one was a bachelor of arts and science, a man of studious and thoughtful mien. His comrade was a true Gascon, and a third of the group was blessed with powers of mimicry that made us laugh long and loud before the night was over.
Every man of them was proud and fond of his British allies.
French soldiers did not pay the same attention to cleanliness of uniform and kit that was given to such details by the British Tommy. An English battalion, relieved from muddy trenches, at once smartened its external appearance to a degree that had to be seen to be believed. Tommy worked wonders in a day.
The long-tailed blue coats of the French infantry were difficult to clean, once they became mud-caked.
The amount of equipment, and its variety, that the average French foot-soldier strapped upon his back, was wonderful. I saw one black-bearded "poilu," with a typical load, start off with his company for a long, long march, with literally as much as he could pack about him, fastened securely by ingenious means. Over either shoulder was a strap supporting two good-sized canvas haversacks, one on each hip, both bulging with food. To his belt were attached two ample cartridge-pouches, one in front and one behind. A water-bottle dangled against a haversack. His principal pack, hung at the shoulder, was, he told me, full of spare clothing. A blanket, rolled in a sheepskin jacket, surmounted this and towered above his cap. A cooking-pot adorned the back of his pack, while to one side of it was strapped a tin cup of ample dimensions, and to the other a loaf of bread, already become soggy in the steady drizzle. A bundle of firewood at his side, and a roll of clothing, holding an extra shirt or two, at the other, flanked him.
My examination of his equipment concluded, he said he must be off, and picked up his rifle with a cheery smile. A comrade rushed up and handed him a sort of leather portmanteau. He grabbed it without a word, threw the strap over his head, settled his various pieces of baggage into place with a strenuous shake, and stamped away sturdily, with a firm step and head held high.
He left me wondering that this sort of soldier should make marching records of which any army in the world might be proud, yet such was undeniably the case.
In billets, the British cavalry were having a thorough course of instruction in the work of the foot soldier. Dismounted attack, trench digging, musketry instruction, bomb-throwing classes, and all manner of miscellaneous tutelage progressed steadily.
I had a look at Ypres one morning. It was again peopled with a sufficient number of civilians to give me a sense of forgetfulness as to its proximity to the German gun positions.
Of all the attributes of the Belgian people, their persistence in making back to their homes in a shelled area, as soon as the shells ceased falling, was the most prominent.
Many of the peasants pursued their daily round of labour under shell-fire. Many others left the bombarded fields or villages, albeit reluctantly, only to return as soon as the shell splinters had ceased to spatter about.
What feeling actuated them was a psychological study. They were phlegmatic as a people. I have seen Russian soldiers perform feats that were described by different observers of the same episode as bravery or stupidity, according to the reading of the onlooker. Was the Belgian who drifted back to his own or some other man's home in shell-ruined Ypres brave or thick-headed? I left one opinion for another, only to abandon it in turn. A study of various types in Flanders helped me but little.
Hard-worked toilers, whose lives have been one continual round of labour, are, more often than not, fatalists. Such lives produce men and women who accept conditions blindly and uncomplainingly. A peculiar love of the soil which they have tilled, and from which they have sprung, seemed to take the place in many Flemish peasants of the more definite and definable Anglo-Saxon or Gallic spirit of intense patriotism. Many poor folk seemed possessed of a blind instinct that "home" was safest, and once "home" was lost, nothing worthy of preservation remained. Their attitude toward death bordered on indifference.
Motor-buses were bringing the 28th Division to the Ypres Salient as I passed on my homeward journey.
Rumours of an attack on the