14
A train-load of Royal Engineers came into one of the stations where I happened to be waiting (my memory of those days is filled with weary hours on station platforms). It was the first time I was able to talk to British Tommies in France, and to shake their hands, and to shout out "Good luck!" to them. It was curious how strong my emotion was at seeing those laughing fellows and hearing the cockney accent of their tongues. They looked so fine and clean. Some of them were making their toilet in the cattle trucks brushing their hair as though for, a picnic party, shaving before little mirrors tacked up on the planks. Others, crowding at the open doorways of the trucks, shouted with laughter at the French soldiers and peasants, who grabbed at their hands and jabbered enthusiastic words of welcome.
"Funny lingo, Bill!" said one of the men. "Can't make out a bit of it. But they mean well, I guess!"
It was impossible to doubt that they meant well, these soldiers of France greeting their comrades of England. One man behaved like a buffoon, or as though he had lost his wits. Grasping the hand of a young engineer he danced round him, shouting "Camarade! camarade!" in a joyous sing-song which was ridiculous, and yet touching in its simplicity and faith. It was no wonder, I thought, that the French people believed in victory now that the British had come. A Jingo pride took possession of me. These Tommies of ours were the finest soldiers in the world! They went to war with glad hearts. They didn't care a damn for old Von Kluck and all his hordes. They would fight like heroes, these clean-limbed chaps, who looked upon war as a great game. Further along the train my two friends, the Philosopher and the Strategist, were in deep conversation with different groups. I heard gusts of laughter from the truck-load of men looking down on the Philosopher. He had discovered a man from Wapping, I think, and was talking in the accent of Stratford-atte-Bow to boys from that familiar district of his youth. The Strategist had met the engineers in many camps in England. They were surprised at his knowledge of their business. And what were we doing out here? Newspaper correspondents? Ah, there would be things to write about! When the train passed out, with waving hands from every carriage, with laughing faces caught already by the sun of France, with farewell shouts of "Good luck, boys!" and "Bonne chance, camarades!" three Englishmen turned away silently and could not speak for a minute or two. Why did the Philosopher blink his eyes in such a funny way, as though they smarted at specks of dust? And why did the Strategist look so grave all of a sudden, as he stood staring after the train, with his cap in his hand, so that the sunlight gleamed on his silver-grey hair?
15
So the British Army had come to France, and a strange chapter was being written in the history of the world, contrasting amazingly with former chronicles. English battalions bivouacked by old French houses which had looked down upon scenes of revolution in 1789, and in the shadow of its churches which rang for French victories or tolled for French defeats when Napoleon's generals were fighting English regiments exactly one hundred years ago. In seaport villages and towns which smell of tar and nets and absinthe and stale wine I saw horses stabled in every inn-yard; streets were littered with straw, and English soldiers sauntered about within certain strict boundaries, studying picture postcards and giving the "glad eye" to any little French girl who peeped at them through barred windows. Only officers of high rank knew where they were bound. The men, devoid of all curiosity, were satisfied with the general knowledge that they were "on the continong," and well on the way to "have a smack at the Germans." There was the rattle and rumble of English guns down country highways. Long lines of khaki-clad men, like a writhing brown snake when seen from afar, moved slowly along winding roads, through cornfields where the harvest was cut and stacked, or down long avenues of poplars, interminably straight, or through quaint old towns and villages with whitewashed houses and overhanging gables, and high stone steps leading to barns and dormer-chambers. Some of those little provincial towns have hardly changed since D'Artagnan and his Musketeers rode on their way to great adventures in the days of Richelieu and Mazarin. And the spirit of D'Artagnan was still bred in them, in the France of Poincaré, for they are the dwelling- places of young men in the cuirassiers and the chasseurs who had been chasing Uhlans through the passes of the Vosges, capturing outposts even though the odds were seven to one.
The English officers and men will never have to complain of their welcome in France. It was overwhelming—even a little intoxicating to young soldiers. As they marched through the towns peasant girls ran along the ranks with great bouquets of wild flowers, which they thrust into the soldiers' arms. In every market square where the regiments halted for a rest there was free wine for any thirsty throat, and soldier boys from Scotland or England had their brown hands kissed by girls who were eager for hero worship and had fallen in love with these clean-shaven lads and their smiling grey eyes. In those early days there seemed no evil in the worship of the women nor in the hearts of the men who marched to the song of "Tipperary." Every man in khaki could claim a hero's homage for himself on any road in France, at any street corner of an old French town. It was some time before the romance wore off, and the realities of human nature, where good is mixed with evil and blackguardism marches in the same regiment with clean-hearted men, destroyed some of the illusions of the French and demanded an iron discipline from military police and made poor peasant girls repent of their abandonment in the first ecstasy of their joyous welcome.
16
Not yet did the brutalities of the war spoil the picture painted in khaki tones upon the green background of the French countryside. From my notebook I transcribe one of the word pictures which I wrote at the time. It is touched with the emotion of those days, and is true to the facts which followed:
"The weather has been magnificent. It has been no hardship to sleep out in the roads and fields at night. A harvest moon floods the country with silver light and glints upon the stacked bayonets of this British Army in France when the men lie down beneath their coats, with their haversacks as pillows. Each sleeping figure is touched softly by those silver rays while the sentries pace up and down upon the outskirts of the camp. Some of the days have been intensely hot, but the British Tommy unfastens his coat and leaves his shirt open at the chest, and with the sun bronzing his face to a deeper, richer tint, marches on, singing a cockney ballad as though he were on the road to Weybridge or Woking. They are young fellows, many of them—beardless boys who have not yet been hard-bitten by a long campaign and have not received their baptism of fire. Before they have been many days in the fields of France they will not look so fresh and smart. Those grey eyes of theirs will be haunted by the memory of battlefields at night, when the stretcher-bearers are searching for the wounded who lie among the dead. Not yet do these boys know the real meaning of war. But they belong to the same breed of men who a hundred years ago fought with Wellington in the Peninsula. There is no possible need to doubt that they will maintain the old traditions of their regiments and add new records to their colours. Before this war is finished these soldiers of ours, who are singing on their way, in dapper suits of khaki, will be all tattered and torn, with straw tied round their feet, with stubby beards on their chins, with the grime of gunpowder and dust and grease and mud and blood upon their hands and faces. They will have lost the freshness of their youth: but those who remain will have gained—can we doubt it?—the reward of stubborn courage and unfailing valour."
17
Not many days after these words were written, I came upon a scene which fulfilled them, too quickly. At a French junction there was a shout of command in English, and I saw a body of men in khaki, with Red Cross armlets, run across a platform to an incoming train from the north, with stretchers and drinking bottles. A party of English soldiers had arrived from a battle at a place called Mons. With French passengers from another train, I was kept