Page:Ian Hay - What We Owe To France - The Times - 1918-07-15.jpg



The sense of indebtedness to France which most soldiers cherish, and will always cherish most deeply, is human and personal. A frontline battalion is not always in the front line; it spends many weeks, in the aggregate, in the civilian zone that lies in the background of the theatre of war. That is where our memories linger. Over four million British soldiers have crossed the Straits of Dover during the past four years, and of those who come back there will be few who will not cherish some pleasant memory of life behind the line, in rest billets among people—poor people; chiefly women, children, and old men—whose amazing faculty for cheerful companionship no anxiety could depress, and no suffering abate. As for those who are not coming back, you may rest assured that their graves will never be neglected.

Here is an average billet as most of us recollect it.

A farmhouse, accommodating some 200 British soldiers and their officers. The men sleep in the barn, their meals being prepared for them upon the company cooker, which stands in the muddy road outside. The officers occupy any room which may be available within the farmhouse itself. The company commander has the best bedroom—a low-roofed, stone-floored apartment, with a very small window and a very large bed. The subalterns sleep where they can—usually in the grenier, a loft under the tiles, devoted to the storage of onions and the drying, during the winter months, of the family washing, which is suspended from innumerable strings stretched from wall to wall.

For a mess, there is usually a spare apartment of some kind. If not, you put your pride in your pocket, and take your meals at the kitchen table. A farm kitchen in Northern France is a scrupulously clean place—the whole family gets up at half-past 4 in the morning and sees to the matter—and despite the frugality of her home menu, the fermière can produce you a perfect omelette at any hour of the day or night.

Then, the family. First, Angèle. She may be 25, but is more probably 15. She acts as adjutant to madame, and rivals her mother as a deliverer of sustained and rapid recitative. She milks the cows, feeds the pigs, and dragoons her young brothers and sisters. But though she works from morning till night, she has always time for a smiling salutation to all ranks. She also speaks English quite creditably—a fact of which madame is justly proud. "Collège!" explains the mother, full of appreciation for an education which she herself has never known, and taps her learned daughter affectionately upon the head.

Next in order comes Emile. He must be about 14, but war has forced manhood on him. All day long he is at work, bullying very large horses, digging, hoeing, even ploughing. He is very much a boy, for all that, whistles excruciatingly—usually English music-hall melodies—grins sheepishly at the officers, and is prepared at any moment to abandon the most important tasks in order to watch a man cleaning a rifle or oiling a machine-gun. We seem to have encountered Emile in other countries than this.

After Emile, Gabrielle. Her age is probably seven. If you were to give her a wash and brush-up, dress her in a gauzy frock, and exchange her thick woollen stockings and wooden sabots for silk and dancing slippers, she would make a very smart little fairy. Last of the bunch comes Petit Jean, a chubby and close-cropped youth of about six. Petit Jean is not his real name, as he himself indignantly explained when so addressed. "Moi, z'ne suis pas Petit Jean; z'suis Maurrrice!" He is an enthusiast upon matters military. He possesses a little wooden rifle, the gift of a friendly "Ecossais," tipped with a flashing bayonet cut from a biscuit-tin; and spends most of his time out upon the road, waiting for some one to salute. If his salute is acknowledged—as it nearly always is—Petit Jean is crimson with gratification.

Last of all we arrive at the keystone of the whole fabric—Madame herself. She is one of the most wonderful women in the world. Consider. Her husband and her eldest son are away—fighting, she knows not where, amid dangers and privations which can only be imagined. During their absence she has to manage a considerable farm, with the help of her children and one or two hired labourers of more than doubtful use or reliability. In addition to her ordinary duties as a parent and fermière, she finds herself called upon, for months on end, to maintain her premises as a combination of barracks and almshouse. Yet she is seldom cross—except possibly when the soldats collect her fallen apples and pelt the pigs with the cores—and no accumulations of labour can sap her energy. She is up by half-past 4 every morning yet she never appears anxious to go to bed at night. The last sound which sleepy subalterns hear is Madame's voice, uplifted in steady discourse to the circle round the stove. She has been doing this day in, day out, since the combatants settled down to trench warfare. Every few weeks brings a fresh crop of tenants, with fresh peculiarities and unknown proclivities; and she assimilates them all.

The only approach to a breakdown comes when, after paying her little bill, and wishing her "Bonne chance!" ere you depart, you venture on a reference, in a few awkward, stumbling sentences, to the absent husband and son. Then she weeps copiously, and it seems to do her a world of good. All hail to you. Madame—the finest exponent, in all this war, of the art of carrying on! We know now why France is such a great country.

To-day the enemy, by what we hope is his final convulsion, has overrun yet another strip of French soil. A mile or two of territory more or less matters little. The real tragedy of the last German advance is that the folk with whom we lodged in Armentières and Albert and Bailleul, and a thousand hamlets and farms of the Pas de Calais—folk who had lived secure for more than three years behind the bulwark of the British trenches, accommodating soldiers and refugees with a hospitality which no mere considerations of cubic space seem able to limit—are now refugees themselves. This to the British soldier is again a personal matter. He has taken it deeply to heart. He feels somehow that he has failed in his trust towards his good friends; and we know that when the great day comes, and the Boche is finally relegated to his proper place in the animal kingdom, not the least of the joys of the home-coming soldier will be the certainty that he is leaving behind him those simple, kindly, voluble hosts of his restored once and for all to their own hospitable roof-tree.