The War on All Fronts: England's Effort / Letters to an American Friend

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

III

It was with this railway-station canteen that my latest memories of the great base are concerned. All the afternoon of our second day at —— was spent in seeing a fine Red Cross hospital, and then in walking or driving round the endless reinforcement and hospital camps in the open country. Everywhere the same vigourous expanding organisation, the same ceaselessly growing numbers, the same humanity and care in detail. "How many years have we been at war?" one tends to ask oneself in bewilderment, as the spectacle unrolls itself. "Is it possible that all this is the work of eighteen months?" And I am reminded of the Scotch sergeant's reply to his German captive, who asked his opinion about the duration of the war. "I'll tell you what—it's the furrst five years that'll be the worst!" We seem—in the bases—to have slipped through them already, measuring by any of the ordinary ratios of work to time. On my return home, a diplomat representing one of the neutral nations, told me that the Military Secretary of his staff had been round the English bases in France, and had come back with his "eyes starting out of his head." Having seen them myself, the phrase seemed to me quite natural.

Then, last of all, as the winter evening fell, we turned toward the canteen at the railway-station. We found it going on in an old goods' shed, simply fitted up with a long tea and coffee bar, tables and chairs; and in some small adjacent rooms. It was filled from end to end with a crowd of soldiers, who after many hours of waiting, were just departing for the front. The old shabby room, with its points of bright light, and its shadowy sides and corners, made a Rembrandtesque setting for the moving throng of figures. Some men were crowding round the bar; some were writing letters in haste to post before the train went off; the piano was going, and a few, gathered round it, were singing the songs of the day, of which the choruses were sometimes taken up in the room. The men—drafts going up to different regiments on the line—appeared to me to come from many parts. The broad Yorkshire and Cumbrian speech, Scotch, the cockney of the Home Counties, the Northumberland burr, the tongues of Devon and Somerset—one seemed to hear them all in turn. The demands at the counter had slackened a little, and I was presently listening to some of the talk of the indefatigable helpers who work this thing night and day. One of them drew a picture of the Canadians, the indomitable fighters of Ypres and Loos, of their breathless energy, and impatience of anything but the quickest pace of life, their appetites!—half a dozen hard-boiled eggs, at 3d each, swallowed down in a moment of time; then of the French-Canadians, their Old World French, their old-world Catholicism, simple and passionate. One of these last asked if there was any chance of his being sent to Egypt. "Why are you so anxious to go to Egypt?" "Because it was there the Holy Family rested," said the lad shyly. The lady to whom he spoke described to him the tree and the Holy Well in St. Georgius, and he listened entranced.

Sometimes a rough lot fill the canteen, drawn from the poorest class, perhaps, of an English seaport. They hustle for their food, shout at the helpers, and seem to have no notion that such words as "please" and "thank you" exist. After three or four hours of battling with such an apparently mannerless crew one of the helpers saw them depart to the platform where their train was waiting for them, with very natural relief. But they were no sooner gone, when a guardsman, with the manners, the stature, and the smartness of his kind, came back to the counter, and asked to speak to the lady in charge of it. "Those chaps, Miss, what have just gone out," he said apologetically, "have never been used to ladies, and they don't know what to say to them. So they asked me just to come in and say for them they were very much obliged for all the ladies' kindness, but they couldn't say it themselves." The tired helper was suddenly too choky to answer. The message, the choice of the messenger, as one sure to do "the right thing," were both so touching.

But there was a sudden movement in the crowd. The train was up. We all surged out upon the platform, and I watched the embarkation—the endless train engulfing its hundreds of men. Just as I had seen the food and equipment trains going up from the first base laden with everything necessary to replace the daily waste of the army, so here was the train of human material, going up to replace the daily waste of men. After many hours of travelling, and perhaps some of rest, these young soldiers—how young most of them were!—would find themselves face to face with the sharpest realities of war. I thought of what I had seen in the Red Cross hospital that afternoon—"what man has made of man"—the wreck of youth and strength, the hideous pain, the helpless disablement.

But the station rang with laughter and talk. Some one in the canteen began to play "Keep the Home Fires Burning"—and the men in the train joined in, though not very heartily, for as one or two took care to tell me, laughingly—"That and 'Tipperary' are awfully stale now!" A bright-faced lad discussed with D—— how long the war would last. "And shan't we miss it when it's done!" he said, with a jesting farewell to us, as he jumped into the train which had begun to move. Slowly, slowly it passed out of sight, amid waves of singing and the shouting of good-byes....

It was late that evening, when after much talk with various officers, I went up to my room to try and write, bewildered by a multitude of impressions—impressions of human energy, human intelligence, human suffering. What England is doing in this country will leave, it seems to me, indelible marks upon the national character. I feel a natural pride, as I sit thinking over the day, in all this British efficiency and power, and a quick joy in the consciousness of our fellowship with France, and hers with us. But the struggle at Verdun is still in its first intensity, and when I have read all that the evening newspapers contain about it, there stirs in me a fresh realisation of the meaning of what I have been seeing. In these great bases, in the marvellous railway organisation, in the handling of the vast motor transport in all its forms, in the feeding and equipment of the British Army, we have the scaffolding and preparation of war, which, both in the French and English Armies, have now reached a perfection undreamt of when the contest began. But the war itself—the deadly struggle of that distant line to which it all tends? It is in the flash and roar of the guns, in the courage and endurance of the fighting man, that all this travail of brain and muscle speaks at last. At that courage and endurance, women, after all, can only guess—through whatever rending of their own hearts.

But I was to come somewhat nearer to it than I thought then. The morrow brought surprise.

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V

Dear H.

Our journey farther north through the deep February snow was scarcely less striking as an illustration of Great Britain's constantly growing share in the war than the sight of the great supply bases themselves. The first part of it, indeed, led over solitary uplands, where the chained wheels of the motor rocked in the snow, and our military chauffeur dared make no stop, for fear he should never be able to start again. All that seemed alive in the white landscape were the partridges—sometimes in great flocks—which scudded at our approach, or occasional groups of hares in the middle distance holding winter parley. The road seemed interminably long and straight, and ours were almost the first tracks in it. The snow came down incessantly, and once or twice it looked as though we should be left stranded in the white wilderness.

But after a third of the journey was over, the snow began to lessen and the roads to clear. We dropped first into a seaport town which offered much the same mingled scene of French and English, of English nurses, and French poilus, of unloading ships, and British soldiers, as the bases we had left, only on a smaller scale. And beyond the town we climbed again on to the high land, through a beautiful country of interwoven downs, and more plentiful habitation. Soon, indeed, the roads began to show the signs of war—a village or small town, its picturesque market-place filled with a park of artillery wagons; roads lined with motor lorries with the painted shell upon them that tells ammunition; British artillerymen in khaki, bringing a band of horses out of a snow-bound farm; closed motor-cars filled with officers hurrying past; then an open car with King's Messengers, tall, soldierly figures, looking in some astonishment at the two ladies, as they hurry by. And who or what is this horseman looming out of the sleet—like a figure from a piece of Indian or Persian embroidery, turbaned and swarthy, his cloak swelling out round his handsome head and shoulders, the buildings of a Norman farm behind him? "There are a few Indian cavalry about here," says our guide—"they are billeted in the farms." And presently the road is full of them. Their Eastern forms, their dark, intent faces pass strangely through the Norman landscape.

Now we are only some forty miles from the line, and we presently reach another town containing an important British Headquarters, where we are to stop for luncheon. The inn at which we put up is like the song in "Twelfth Night," "old and plain"—and when lunch is done, our Colonel goes to pay an official call at Headquarters, and my daughter and I make our way to the historic church of the town. The Colonel joins us here with another officer, who brings the amazing news that "G.H.Q."—General Headquarters—that mysterious centre and brain of all things—invites us for two days! If we accept, an officer will come for us on the morning of March 1st to our hotel in Boulogne and take us by motor, some forty miles, to the guest-house where G.H.Q. puts up its visitors. "Accept!" Ah, if one could only forget for a moment the human facts behind the absorbing interest and excitement of this journey, one might be content to feel only the stir of quickened pulses, of gratitude for a further opportunity so tremendous.

As it was, I saw all the journey henceforward with new eyes, because of that to which it was bringing us. On we sped, through the French countryside, past a great forest lying black on the edge of the white horizon—I open my map and find it marked Bois de Crecy!—past another old town, with Agincourt a few miles to the east, and so into a region of pine and sand that borders the sea. Darkness comes down, and we miss our way. What are these lines of light among the pine woods? Another military and hospital camp, which we are to see on the morrow—so we discover at last. But we have overshot our goal, and must grope our way back through the pine woods to the sea-shore, where a little primitive hotel, built for the summer, with walls that seem to be made of brown paper, receives us. But we have motored far that day, and greet it joyfully.

The following morning we woke to a silvery sunlight, with, at last, some promise of spring over a land cleared of snow. The day was spent in going through a camp which has been set down in one of the pleasantest and healthiest spots of France, a favourite haunt of French artists before the war. Now the sandy slopes, whence the pines, alack, have been cut away, are occupied by a British reinforcement camp, by long lines of hospitals, by a convalescent depot, and by the training-grounds, where, as at other bases, the newly arrived troops are put through their last instruction before going to the front. As usual, the magnitude of what has been done in one short year filled one with amazement. Here is the bare catalogue: Infantry Base Depots, i.e. sleeping and mess quarters, for thousands of men belonging to the new armies; 16 hospitals with 21,000 beds, 3 rifle ranges; 2 training-camps; a machine-gun training-school; a vast laundry worked by Frenchwomen under British organisation, which washes for all the hospitals, 30,000 pieces a day; recreation huts of all types and kinds, official and voluntary; a Cinema theatre, seating 800 men, with performances twice a day; nurses' clubs; officers' clubs; a Supply Depot for food; an Ordnance Depot for everything that is not food; new sidings to the railway, where 1,000 men can be entrained on the one side, while 1,000 men are detraining on the other; or two full ambulance trains can come in and go out; a Convalescent Depot of 2,000 patients, and a Convalescent Horse Depot of 2,000 horses, etcetera. And this is the work accomplished since last April in one camp.

Yet, as I look back upon it, my chief impression of that long day is an impression, first, of endless hospital huts and marquees, with their rows of beds, in which the pale or flushed faces are generally ready—unless pain or weariness forbid—as a visitor ventures timidly near, to turn and smile in response to the few halting words of sympathy or inquiry which are all one can find to say; and, next, of such a wealth of skill, and pity, and devotion poured out upon this terrible human need, as makes one thank God for doctors, and nurses, and bright-faced V.A.D.'s. After all, one tremblingly asks oneself, in spite of the appalling facts of wounds, and death, and violence in which the human world is now steeped, is it yet possible, is it yet true, that the ultimate thing, the final power behind the veil—to which at least this vast linked spectacle of suffering and tenderness, here in this great camp, testifies—is not Force, but Love? Is this the mysterious message which seems to breathe from these crowded wards—to make them just bearable. Let me recollect the open door of an operating theatre, and a young officer, quite a boy, lying there with a bullet in his chest, which the surgeons were just about to try and extract. The fine, pale features of the wounded man, the faces of the surgeon and the nurses, so intent and cheerfully absorbed, the shining surfaces and appliances of the white room—stamp themselves on memory. I recollect, too, one John S——, a very bad case, a private. "Oh, you must come and see John S——," says one of the Sisters. "We get all the little distractions we can for John. Will he recover? Well, we thought so—but"—her face changes gravely—"John himself seems to have made up his mind lately. He knows—but he never complains." Knows what? We go to see him, and he turns round philosophically from his tea. "Oh, I'm all right—a bit tired—that's all." And then a smile passes between him and his nurse. He has lost a leg, he has a deep wound in his back which won't heal, which is draining his life away—poor, poor John S——! Close by is a short, plain man, with a look of fevered and patient endurance that haunts one now to think of. "It's my eyes. I'm afraid they're getting worse. I was hit in the head, you see. Yes, the pain's bad—sometimes." The nurse looks at him anxiously as we pass, and explains what is being tried to give relief.

This devotion of the nurses—how can one ever say enough of it! I recall the wrath of a medical officer in charge of a large hospital at Rouen. "Why don't they give more Red Crosses to the working nurses? They don't get half enough recognition. I have a nurse here who has been twelve months in the operating theatre. She ought to have a V.C.!—It's worth it."

And here is a dark-eyed young officer who had come from a distant colony to fight for England. I find him in an officer's hospital, established not long after the war broke out, in a former Casino, where the huge baccarat-room has been turned into two large and splendid wards. He is courteously ready to talk about his wound, but much more ready to talk about his Sister.

"It's simply wonderful what they do for us!" he says, all his face lighting up. "When I was worst there wasn't an hour in the day or night my Sister wasn't ready to try anything in the world to help me. But they're all like that."

Let me here gratefully recall, also, the hospitals organised by the Universities of Chicago and Harvard, entirely staffed by American Sisters and Doctors, each of them providing 34 doctors and 80 nurses, and dealing with 1,040 patients. Harvard has maintained a general hospital with the British Force in France since July, 1915. The first passages and uniforms were paid for by the British Government, but the University has itself paid all passages, and provided all uniforms since the start; and it is proposed, I am told, to carry on this generous help indefinitely.

Twenty thousand wounded!—while every day the ambulance trains come and go from the front, or to other bases—there to fill up one or other of the splendid hospital ships that take our brave fellows back to England, and home, and rest. And this city of hospitals, under its hard-pressed medical chief, with all its wealth of scientific invention, and painsaving device, and unremitting care, with its wonderful health and recovery statistics, has been the growth of just twelve months. The mind wavers between the two opposing images it suggests: war and its havoc on the one hand—the power of the human brain and the goodness of the human heart on the other.