Chapter 6. Leisure Hours

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_ CHAPTER VI. LEISURE HOURS

The problem which faces the commandant of a base in France, or a camp at home, must be very like that which a public schoolmaster has to tackle. The business of instruction comes first. Men and officers must be taught their job, as schoolboys must be taught their lessons. Hardly less pressing is the problem of spare time. You cannot keep a soldier throwing bombs all day, and there is a limit to the time which can be occupied in route marching. The obvious solution of the problem is organised games and sports. Most men are keen enough on cricket and football. Most officers are glad to join tennis clubs. In some places in France there are plenty of outdoor amusements of this kind, and matches are arranged between different units which keep interest alive.

Where I was first stationed games were sternly discouraged. The theory, I think, was that the French people would be disgusted if they saw us playing. Perhaps the French people in that neighbourhood were more seriously minded than those in other parts of the country. Perhaps they were less friendly, and it was necessary to consider their feelings with particular care. I have no way of judging about that. Elsewhere the French seemed to take a mild interest in our passion for games; but in that district they may very well have been of a different mind.

Whether the official estimate of the French spirit was right or wrong, the result for us was that we were very badly off for outdoor games. Football and cricket were played, half-heartedly, for matches (on the plan of League matches at home) were not allowed. The formation of an officers' tennis club was forbidden.

On the other hand the men were very well off for indoor amusements. Every Y.M.C.A. hut ran concerts. There were two large cinema huts in the camps. Boxing was encouraged by many officers, and interesting competitions took place which were eagerly watched.

But as the days lengthened with the coming of spring, there were hours which hung very heavily on every one. The officers were slightly better off than the men. They could always go into the neighbouring town, some four miles off, and find a certain amount of amusement in walking about the streets. But it was a singularly dull town. The men could not leave the camps without permission, and a pass was not always, indeed not often, attainable.

Their favourite pastime was a game which they called "House," which was known to many of us when we were children as Loto. It is an exceedingly dull game, and I cannot believe that the men would have played it as they did if any other kind of game had been possible. There is a mild element of gambling about House. A small sum of money may be won, a very small sum lost. That I suppose was the attraction.

But it was rather a pitiful thing to walk through the camps on a fine afternoon and to see every waste piece of ground occupied by House players. There is no skill whatever in the game, and the players get no exercise. They sit on the ground with a pile of small pebbles before them, while one of them calls out a series of numbers. The French people, if they had seen us playing House, would have come to the conclusion that we are a nation of imbeciles. Bad as it may be to have as allies men light-hearted enough to play cricket, it must be several degrees worse to have to rely on imbeciles. However, the French did not see us playing House any more than they saw us boxing or attending concerts. They were not allowed into our camps.

For the men who did succeed in getting passes out of camp, the prospect was dreary enough, dreary or undesirable. Going into town in a crowded tram is an amusement which quickly palls. Various ill-defined portions of the town, when you got there, were out of bounds, and a man had need to walk warily if he did not want trouble with the military police.

And there were worse things than military police. On the roadway which led to the camp entrance there might be seen, any fine Sunday afternoon, a crowd of French girls waiting for the men who came out. They were, plainly, not the best girls, though no doubt some of them were more silly than vicious. There were eating-shops, or drinking-shops, of which ugly tales were told. Coffee, an innocent drink, was sometimes doped with brandy, and men found themselves half intoxicated without knowing that they had touched drink.

There were, of course, places where men could go safely. There was, for instance, the Central Y.M.C.A. hall, where excellent food was to be had, and where there were books, papers, games, and a kindly welcome. But one Y.M.C.A. recreation hut is very like another, and it seems rather waste of a hardly-won pass out of camp to spend the afternoon very much as it might be spent without leaving camp at all. What the men craved for was variety, interest, and--what was of course almost unobtainable--the society of decent women.

I cannot help feeling that in condemning ourselves to desperate dullness we paid too high a price for the good opinion of our French friends. If they were really shocked at our levity in playing games during the war, it would have been better to lacerate their feelings a little. They would very soon have got accustomed to our ways and come to regard our excitement over a League match as nothing worse than a curious form of eccentricity.

The officers were rather better off than the men. They could stay in town long enough to dine at a restaurant, and there is something rather exciting, for a short time, in dining at a French restaurant. There was a special officers' tram which brought us back to camp just in time to pass the sentries before 10.30 p.m. It was invariably over-crowded and we often had to stand, crowded together on the platforms of the driver and conductor. I have seen officers, of rank which gave dignity, clinging to the back of the conductor's platform with their feet planted insecurely on a buffer.

I remember one very exciting run home. We started rather late from town. There was a thick fog. The driver was inclined to be cautious, very properly; but it was doubtful whether we could reach the camp in time. I had found a precarious place on the step of the driver's platform. Three subalterns, spirited boys, fresh from school, tried to speed things up by shouting, "Vite, Vite!" "Much viter than that!" to the driver, and banging violently on the gong which warned pedestrians of our coming. The driver remained unmoved and the car moved very slowly. Two of the boys seized the driver. The third took control of the tram. I do not know whether he had any practice beforehand in electric motor work; but he made that tram go. We rushed through the fog, bumping and rattling, making very heavy weather of the points at junctions. I do not think we killed any one. If we had we should have heard of it afterwards. We got back to camp in time. The French chauffeur when he recovered his first shock seemed to enjoy himself. Our driver was a very gallant boy. No risk daunted him. I hope he has been transferred into the Tank service. The work there would suit him exactly and I feel sure he would enjoy it.

I do not know that even the prospect of returning to camp by the officers' tram would have lured me to dine in that town very often. One French hotel is very like another, and I had dined at many before the war.

But there was one restaurant which was especially attractive. I should never have discovered it for myself, for I am not very adventurous or fond of exploring. It was situated in a slum and approached through an abominable alley. It was found first, I believe, by some A.S.C. officers permanently stationed in the town, who had time on their hands for exhaustive research. I was taken there by a friend who hoped to have the pleasure of shocking a parson by leading him into the sort of place a parson ought not to visit. As a matter of fact the place was perfectly respectable, and the only part of me which was shocked was my nose. The smells in the pitch-dark gullies which led to that eating-house were the worst I encountered in France.

It was a most unconventional restaurant. The proprietor, an elderly man, his wife, and three married daughters ran it. They were, whenever I entered the place, engaged in eating a meal of their own at a table near a large fire at one end of the room. When guests appeared they all rose, uttered voluble welcomes, and shook hands with the strangers. There were, besides the family table, four others, all of rough deal, much stained, far from clean and without table-cloths. The seats were narrow benches. If you leaned back you bumped the man at the next table. The floor was sanded and hens walked about picking up the fragments which the diners dropped. When I knew the place first it was patronised chiefly by sailors, Belgians, and the A.S.C. officers who discovered it.

Ordering dinner was an interesting business. There was no menu card. Monsieur and his family talked a kind of French which none of us could ever understand. Also they talked at a terrific speed and all at once, circling round us. We knew that they were naming the kinds of food available, for we caught words like potage and poisson now and then. Our plan was to sit still and nod occasionally. One of the daughters made a note of the points at which we nodded, and we hoped for the best. The soup was generally ready. Everything else was cooked before our eyes on the fire behind the family table.

Madame did the cooking. The rest of the party sat down again to their own meal. Monsieur exhorted his wife occasionally. The daughters took it in turn to get up and bring us each course as madame finished cooking it. In this way we got a hot and excellent dinner. A good digestion was promoted by the long gaps between the courses. It was impossible to eat fast. Monsieur offered his guests no great choice in wine, but what he had was surprisingly good.

When dinner was over and the bill, a very moderate one, paid, the whole family shook hands with us again and wished us every kind of happiness and good luck. Monsieur then conducted us to a back door, and let us loose into an alley quite as dark and filthy as the one by which we entered. He was always firm about refusing to allow us to go by the way we came. I have no idea what his reasons were, but the plan of smuggling us out of the establishment gave us a pleasurable feeling that we had been breaking some law by being there. There is nothing that I ever could find in King's Regulations on the subject, so I suppose that if we sinned at all it must have been against some French municipal regulation.

That restaurant may be quite popular now; it was getting better known even in my time. But if it becomes popular it will lose its charm. Monsieur and his family will no longer be able to shake hands with every guest. There may be table-cloths. The hens--I always thought they were the poulets we ate fattened before our eyes--will be banished, and some officious A.P.M. will put the place out of bounds, suspecting it to be a haunt of vice. Its look and its smell, I admit, would arouse suspicion in the mind of any conscientious A.P.M., but Monsieur's patrons, if rough, were respectable people. Even the A.S.C. officers were above reproach. They looked like men who were satisfied at having discovered the best and cheapest dinner to be got in that town. I doubt whether they had even appreciated the eccentricities of the service.

In spite of our want of games and amusements, life in those camps was pleasant and cheerful. We all had work to do, and not too many hours of idleness. For me there were long walks with M., best and cheeriest of comrades, whose spirits and energy never failed or flagged. We saw a great deal of each other in those days until the time came at the end of April, when he moved off to a cavalry brigade; a post into which he was thrust because good horsemen are rare among chaplains. There was always excellent company in my own mess and others. Nowhere else have I met so many different kinds of men.

The regular soldiers, some of them old men, held themselves as a separate caste a little aloof from the rest of us. It is not to be wondered at. They were professionals, with a great tradition behind them. We were amateurs, and, at times, inclined to be critical of old customs and old ways. We came from every conceivable profession, and before the war had been engaged in a hundred different activities. Among us were men of real ability, who had made good in their own way. I think the regular soldiers were a little bewildered sometimes. They, almost as completely as we, were plunged into a new world. The wonder is that they stood us as patiently as they did.

We had our mild jokes, and it was wonderful how long the mildest jokes will last in circumstances like ours. There was a story of an unfortunate private who was dragged before his colonel for failing to salute a general, a general who should have been unmistakable. In defence he said that he did not know it was a general.

"But," said the colonel, "you must have seen the red band round his hat."

"Yes, sir," said the man, "but I thought that was to show he was a Salvation Army captain."

The whole camp chuckled over that story for a week. Whether any one ever told it to the general I do not know.

Another private, an Irishman, arrived in the camp one day from the firing-line. Ours was the remotest base; two days' journey from the nearest trench. Between us and the fighting men was what seemed an impassable entanglement of regulations, guarded at every angle by R.T.O.'s and military police. It was, any one would agree about this, a flat impossibility for an unauthorised person to travel through the zone of the army's occupation.

Yet this man did it, and did it without in the least intending to. Up to a certain point his account of himself was clear. He had been sent off, one of a party under charge of an officer. He did not know--few people in the army ever do know--where he was going. He became detached from his party and found himself, a solitary unit, at what seems to have been a railhead. The colonel who dealt with him questioned:

"Why didn't you ask the R.T.O. where you were to go?"

"I did ask him, sir. The first thing ever I did was to ask him."

"And what did he say?"

"What he said, sir, was 'Go to the devil out of this.'"

The colonel checked a smile. He probably sympathised with the R.T.O.

"And what did you do then?" he asked.

"I got into the train, sir, and sure, here I am."

That particular colonel's temper was notoriously a little soured by long command. It was felt that the soldier had, after all, made a fair attempt to obey the orders of the R.T.O.

Another private--less innocent, I fear--caused me and a few other people some mild excitement. I was summoned to the orderly-room to answer a telephone call. I was told by some one, whose voice sounded as if he was much irritated, that he had caught the man who stole my shirt. No one, thanks to my servant's vigilance, had stolen any shirt of mine. I said so.

"Grey flannel shirt," said the voice, and I gathered that he was irritated afresh by my extreme stupidity. I disclaimed all knowledge of any stolen shirt, flannel or other.

An explanation followed. A deserter had been arrested. It was discovered that he was wearing four flannel shirts and three thick garments under them. "That," I said, "is good prima facie evidence that he really is a soldier." I thought that a useful thing to say, and true. No one in the world except a British soldier would wear four shirts and three jerseys at the same time. The British soldier--it is one of his characteristics--puts on all the clothes he can get in any weather.

The voice at the other end of the wire swore--unnecessarily, I think. Then it told me that one of the shirts was marked with my name and that I must identify it and the man. I refused, of course. The voice offered to send the shirt round for my inspection. I did not in the least want to inspect a shirt that had been worn, probably for a long time without washing, along with six other thick garments by a deserter; but I consented to look at the thing from a distance.

In the end I did not even do that. The unfortunate man confessed to having stolen the shirt from an officer in the trenches near Ypres. How it came to have my name on it I do not yet know. I did miss a couple of shirts from my store of civilian clothes when I got home. But I am sure no officer stole them. Indeed I do not see how any officer could.

That voice--I do not know that I ever met its owner--had a wonderful power of language, strong, picturesque, and highly profane language, suitable for expressing violent emotion over a telephone wire. It was once rebuked by a very gentle captain with a remark that was widely quoted afterwards. The language had been unusually flamboyant and was becoming worse. "Hold on a minute," said the listener, "and let the line cool. It's nearly red hot at this end."

When life failed to provide a joke or two we fell back on rumours and enjoyed them thoroughly. They say that Fleet Street as a breeding-ground for rumour is surpassed only by the drawing-rooms of the wives of ministers of state. I have no experience of either; but a base camp in France would be hard to beat. The number of naval battles declared by the best authorities to have been fought during the early months of 1916 was amazing. We had them once a week, and torpedo-boat skirmishes on off days.

Men in "the signals"--all rumour goes back to the signals in the end--had lively imaginations. We mourned the loss of Kut months before General Townshend was forced to surrender. We revelled in extracts from the private letters of people like the Brazilian ambassador in Berlin. We knew with absolute certainty the English regiments which were taking part in the defence of Verdun. The Guards, by a sudden move, seized the city of Lille, but owing to faulty staff work were cut off, hemmed in, and at last wiped out, the entire division. The last men, a mixed batch of Grenadiers, Coldstream, Scots, Irish, and Welsh, perished in a final glorious bayonet charge. It was a Guardsman who told me the story first, and he had it from what really was unimpeachable authority.

But there is no reason for railing against Rumour. She is a wild-eyed jade, no doubt, with disordered locks and a babbling tongue. But life at a base in France would be duller without her; and she does no one any real harm. _

Read next: Chapter 7. Coming And Going

Read previous: Chapter 5. Khaki

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