CHAPTER X.

THE COMFORTS OF THE FORCE—SPIRITUAL AND OTHER.

The Padres—The semi-religious organisations—E.F.C. Comforts—Studying the Fighting man—The Great Beer Save.

"There has never been an army that had more chaplains, or that needed them less." That was the verdict of one American observer on the British Army—a sound one. The British Army was notably well supplied with chaplains—"padres" as the soldier knows them; but this was not in answer to a call for spiritual leaders to combat a special degree of wickedness. Quite the contrary. The Army was a very well-behaved, sober-minded institution on the whole, as if it recognised the solemnity of its task and fitted its conduct accordingly. To this fact the French population can bear witness. The French villagers among whom the British soldiers have been quartered came to a view of them which was once eloquently expressed: "They are lions in the trenches and lambs in the villages."

So the padre went out for duty with the troops having no task of leading a forlorn hope against ramping wickedness. His trouble was rather in the other direction. "I don't see how I can have the 'front' to preach to these men," said a padre attached to an Artillery Division one day: "I'd rather they preached to me."

It really was a difficult task—that of the padre at the Front, and only the best type of clergyman made a success of it. His attitude to life had to be manly, his character brave. But the padre who ran risks just for the sake of running them was often more of a bother than a help. The best padre's spirit was that of the careful soldier who will face any danger that comes in the way of duty, but will not go looking for danger in a spirit of bravado. The padre could make two mistakes. He could take things too easily and just be a parson available to conduct Divine service when he was wanted to; or he could try to do too much, to interfere too much and become a nuisance in the fighting line. The good padre struck the happy mean. He had the knack of being there when he was wanted, but he recognised that the Army's first duty was to fight, and he did not get in the way of its fighting activities. Above all he did not try to arrange a church parade for the morning after tired troops from the line had reached rest billets.

One of the most successful padres in France was known as "the Lost Sheep." He had a Mess to which he was properly attached and this Mess was responsible for having a comfortable billet for him. But he was rarely "At home." He wandered all over the district, picking up a meal here and there and sleeping wherever he found himself after dinner. At first it was thought to be fecklessness on his part. As a matter of fact it was artfulness. Moving about as he did, taking a meal and a bed anywhere, he got to know everybody and found out who needed him as padre.

The actual organisation of the padre service was a little difficult for the layman to understand. The "Principal Chaplain" with the Forces was a Presbyterian clergyman, the Rev. J. M. Simms. Under him came all the padres, including Roman Catholic priests, except the padres of the Church of England, who had a separate organisation under a Deputy Chaplain General, Bishop Gwynne, who had been Bishop of Khartoum before the war. What was the exact reason for the division of authority I could never quite make out. There was no ill-feeling at all or jealousy between the various padres. The Principal Chaplain had his headquarters at Montreuil and was a regular visitor to the Officers' Club. The Deputy Chaplain General had his headquarters at Paris Plage.

Of the typical padre it was said that he was responsible for at least as many sports meetings in rest camps as Divine services, but was a genuinely spiritual man withal. There was credited to one the aphorism that the men did so much worshipful work in the trenches that in rest camps the first thing to be rightly thought of was relaxation.

G.H.Q. Staff I fear were poor Church-goers. The Commander-in-Chief set a good example by attending Divine Service almost every Sunday at Montreuil, but most of the Staff Officers followed the maxim "laborare est orare" and were at their desks on Sunday. The padres understood the position and there were no reproaches.

At meals at the Officers' Club there were always a few padres. We were not expected to make too much concession to "the cloth" in the way of conversation, and the average padre stood his chaffing with the best of them.

I noted one, who had a rather pontifical manner (though he was a thoroughly good fellow at heart), take a hard hit in a sporting fashion. The conversation had turned on Lord Roberts' campaign before the war to try to arouse the British people to a sense of the imminence of the war and the necessity of preparation. The padre blundered in with:

"It seems to me that Lord Roberts and his friends must have been singularly lacking in clearness of argument and persuasiveness seeing that, knowing the truth as they did yet they were not able to convince the people."

"Yes," retorted an officer, "arguing on the same lines, quite a number of excellent gentlemen seem to have been singularly lacking in clearness of argument and persuasiveness for nearly 2,000 years, seeing that, knowing the greatest truth of all, they have not yet been able to convince the world."

The padre took it in the right spirit and owned that it is not necessarily a reflection on a preacher if his hearers will not listen. Lord Roberts' name was venerated by most officers, and the Army was glad that when the time came for the good old man to lay down his sword it was from among old comrades at G.H.Q. that he passed away.

In addition to the padre service the British soldier in the field had a great number of semi-spiritual organisations looking after him. These followed a sound rule, generally, of providing hot coffee and harmless recreation as the best missionary work. G.H.Q. recognised the Y.M.C.A., the Church Army and the Salvation Army as semi-religious agencies, and all these bodies did excellent work in providing rest huts and reading and recreation rooms for the troops, and thus keeping them out of mischief when they had idle times. Satan, when he came roaming round, found the British Army well dug in, and plenty of wire out.

To some proposed forms of guarding the welfare of the soldier G.H.Q. had to refuse sanction. There were many cranks with very curious notions on this point. Perhaps the most remarkable proposal was that which came from a lady, the goodness of whose intentions was obvious but who had "a marked moral strabismus," as a Scots doctor pawkily observed. She wanted to form an organisation of ladies (and said she could do so) to meet soldiers at the ports of disembarkation and take them to homes where would be provided all the comforts of domesticity. I believe that some such organisation once actually existed in an Eastern country whilst it was at war. But so far as the B.E.F. was concerned it had to be discouraged.

The last line of entrenchments against ennui and discomfort was provided by that wonderful organisation the Expeditionary Force Canteens. It provided for officers and men cheap shops, good rest and recreation centres, and for officers excellent hotels. The officer thus had never to wander to strange places. From the Expeditionary Force Canteens during the greater part of the time you could buy cigars, cigarettes, chocolate, sweets, all kinds of canned goods and so on, duty free, and at prices far lower than those of the London shops. Whisky and beer could be bought, too, duty free, under some restrictions. The E.F.C. was, in short, the great comfort-bringer to the soldier at the front. I say comfort-bringer, for all necessities were supplied by rations.

Just consider what Tommy got from the country he was serving: an ample supply of meat (fresh meat in the main), and bacon and cheese, of bread, and of biscuit; a fair supply of vegetables, of butter, of jam, of tea, milk and sugar; a moderate supply of tobacco and cigarettes; a small ration of rum. I know from my own experience that one could live excellently on the men's rations. Nothing was actually needed to supplement them. But comforts, well, they were comforting; and the E.F.C. by bringing them almost up to the front trenches (as they did) helped materially to win the war.

The Expeditionary Force Canteens organisation was formed early in 1915 for the supply of canteen facilities to the troops in the field. Its operations commenced in France, but were subsequently extended to all theatres of war. The undertaking was from its commencement conducted by Sir Alexander W. Prince and Colonel F. Benson, both of whom patriotically gave their services. In due course the organisation took on various other functions, but its canteen business alone made it by far the biggest shopping concern in the world. The "supplies and shipping" department of the E.F.C. had for canteens alone an average annual turnover of approximately 500,000,000 francs. From three to four thousand lines appeared on the stock sheets, ranging from a packet of pins to officers' equipment.

The tonnage handled was enormous, and during the month of November, 1918, it reached nearly twelve thousand tons, representing 320,000 cases. But the record week was that ending March 16th, 1918, just prior to the great German offensive, when 3,643 tons of canteen supplies were landed, and a turnover amounting to 10,586,407 francs was reached. The tonnage off-loaded for the year 1918 was 121,000 tons, and comprised over three million packages.

Here is a table of figures of total sales at canteens and depôts:—

Half-year endedFrancs.
June, 19153,283,641
December, 191518,207,427
June, 191648,629,071
December, 1916104,288,430
June, 1917150,786,105
December, 1917191,063,817
June, 1918223,931,847
December, 1918223,247,454
Total to end of December, 1918 963,437,792

The E.F.C. was in business for the good of the troops, not to make profits for anyone. All profits that were earned will go back to the soldiers. But profits were kept to a strict minimum. By a happy decision prices for the same goods were the same on every Front. You bought a tin of tobacco at Baghdad for the same price as at Boulogne. Thus the soldier on the more comfortable nearer-home Fronts was able to feel that the little percentage of profit charged to him was helping his mate in Mesopotamia.

Yet another fine feature of the E.F.C. work was that it served the man in the front line first and the man at the Base second. In 1917-1918 the shipping position was so bad that economies had to be effected in every possible direction. E.F.C. supplies had to suffer with the rest, and the complaint came that what supplies did come over were largely absorbed at Base and on Lines of Communication, and the men in the front line got very little. The Q.M.G. got rid of that complaint very simply. An order went out that: (1) certain luxuries which were in very short supply should go only to front area canteens and not at all to the Base; (2) other goods should go in the proportion of four to front areas and one to the Base. As a consequence our Montreuil canteens were very poorly stocked, for G.H.Q. of course did not count as a front area. But the simple justice of the step was recognised.

In 1918, the Home Government was forced to the conclusion that the shipping position was so bad that no more beer could be consigned to the troops. Beer was a very bulky article and its shipping space must be saved. G.H.Q. did not like the prospect of stopping the soldiers' beer just at a time when they had plenty of other troubles. Perhaps G.H.Q. remembered a much earlier B.E.F. in Flanders in the reign of Henry VIII., which did very badly until that great War Minister, Cardinal Wolsey, took the matter of supplies in hand and saw that the Army was well supplied not only with arrows but with beef and beer. Thereafter that early B.E.F. retrieved its reputation. It occurred to G.H.Q., B.E.F., 1918, that whilst beer is a very bulky article, most of the bulk is water. Accordingly the Q.M.G. took over, in part or in whole, breweries in our Army areas and arranged to brew beer locally, importing only from England the malt and the hops, which were not particularly bulky.

I do not know whether the decision of the Home Government was in part a concession to teetotalism and in part only governed by shipping considerations. If so the teetotallers were disappointed. The British Army in 1918 continued to number beer among its comforts.

On the whole ours was the most comforted and comfortable Army in the Field, as all liaison officers from allied units agreed. The Americans were as well off in most respects, but being a "dry" Army interfered somewhat with the comfort of its majority. The average American was not a teetotaller and did not object to wine and beer or even an occasional whisky. At his own canteens he had to be. The French of course always had a wine ration, but in other respects their "comforts" were not up to our standard. The privilege that was extended to French liaison officers of dealing at our canteens was very highly appreciated.