II.
I think that when a new history of the Regiment comes to be written honourable mention should be made therein of a certain team of dark bays that pulled the same gun of the same battery for so many years. They served in England and in Ireland, in France and in the Low Countries; they thundered over the grassy flats of Salisbury Plain; they toiled up the steep rocky roads of Glen Imaal; they floundered in the bogs of Okehampton. They stood exposed in all weathers; they stifled in close evil-smelling billets, in trains, and on board ship. They were present at Mons; they were all through the Great Retreat; they swept forward to the Marne and on to the Aisne; they marched round to Flanders in time for the first battle of Ypres. They were never sick nor sorry, even when fodder was short and the marches long, even when there was no time to slake their raging thirsts. They pulled together in patience and in dumb, pathetic trust of their lords and masters, knowing nothing, understanding nothing, until at last Fate overtook them.
At the beginning of August 1914 the battery had just returned to its station after a month’s hard work at practice camp. Bilfred, a veteran now of more than seven years’ service, had probably never been in better condition in his life. Ordinarily he would have been given an easy time for some weeks, with plenty of food and just enough exercise and collar work to keep him fit for the strain of the big manœuvres in September.
But there were to be no 1914 manœuvres. About August 6 things quite beyond Bilfred’s comprehension began to happen. Strange men arrived to join the battery and in their ignorance took liberties with him which he resented. Every available space in the lines became crowded with unkempt, queer-looking horses, obviously of a low caste. Bilfred was shod a fortnight before his time by a new shoeing-smith, for whom he made things as unpleasant as possible. His harness, which usually looked like polished mahogany decorated with silver, was dubbed and oiled until it looked (and smelt) disgusting. When the battery went out on parade, all these absurd civilian horses with bushy tails (some even with manes!) went with it, and for a day or two behaved disgracefully. The whole place was in confusion and everybody worked all day long. Bilfred, ignorant of the term ‘mobilisation,’ was completely mystified.
A week or so later he was harnessed up in the middle of the night, hooked in and marched to the station. Now it had been his habit for years to object to being entrained. On this occasion he was doubly obstinate and wasted much precious time. Other horses, even his own team-mates, went in quietly in front of him; it made no difference, he refused to follow them. A rope was put round his quarters and he was hauled towards the truck. He dug his toes in and tried to back. Then, suddenly, his hind legs slipped and he sat down on his haunches like a dog, tangled in the rope and unable to move. In the dim light of the station-siding his white face and scared expression moved us to laughter in spite of our exasperation. He struggled to his feet again, the cynosure of all eyes, and the subject of many curses. Then, for no apparent reason whatever, he changed his mind and allowed himself to be led into the next truck, which was empty, just as though it was his own stall in barracks. And once inside he tried by kicking to prevent other horses being put in with him.
He continued in this contrary mood for some time and upheld his reputation for eccentricity. Some horses made a fuss about embarking. He made none. He showed his insular contempt for foreigners by making a frantic effort to bite the first French soldier he saw—a sentry on the landing quay, who, in his enthusiasm for his Allies, came too close. He got loose during the night we spent at the rest camp, laid flat about an acre of standing corn, and was found next morning in the lines of a cavalry regiment, looking wofully out of place.
On the railway journey up to the concentration area, he slipped down in the truck several times and was trampled on by the other horses. The operation of extricating him was dangerous and lengthy. When we detrained he refused food and water, to our great concern. But he took his place in the team during the twenty-mile march that followed and was himself again in the evening.
Where everybody was acutely conscious of the serious nature of the business during the first day or so, it was something of a relief to watch the horses behaving exactly as they normally did at home. We, Heaven help us! knew little enough of what was in store for us, but they, poor brutes, knew nothing. Oats were plentiful—what else mattered? Bilfred rolled over and over on his broad back directly his harness was removed, just as he always did; he plunged his head deep into his water and pushed his muzzle to and fro washing his mouth and nostrils; he raised his head when he had drunk, stretched his neck and yawned, staring vacantly into space as was his wont. For him the world was still at peace. Of course it was—he knew no better. But we who did, we whose nerves were on edge with an excitement half-fearful half-exultant, saw these things and were somehow soothed by them.
Bilfred’s baptism of fire came early. A few rounds of shrapnel burst over the wagon-line on the very first occasion that we were in action. Fortunately, the range was just too long and no damage was done. Some of the horses showed momentary signs of fear, but the drivers easily quieted them; and, besides, they were in a clover field—an opportunity too good to be wasted in worrying about strange noises. Bilfred, either because he despised the German artillery or because he imagined that the reports were those of his own guns, to which he was quite accustomed, never even raised his head. His curly tail flapped regularly from side to side, protecting him from a swarm of flies whilst he reached out as far as his harness would allow and tore up great mouthfuls of grass. He had always been a glutton, and it was as if he knew, shells or no shells, that this was to be his last chance for some time. It was; there followed four days of desperate strain for man and beast. Through clouds of powdery, choking dust, beneath a blazing August sun, parched with thirst, often hungry and always weary, Bilfred and his fellows pulled the two tons of steel and wood and complicated mechanism called a gun along those straight interminable roads of northern France. Thousands of horses in dozens of batteries were doing the same thing—and none knew why.
Then, on the fifth day, our turn came to act as rear-guard artillery. The horses, tucked away behind a convenient wood when we came into action just before dawn, had an easy morning—and there were many, especially amongst the new-comers received on mobilisation, who were badly in need of it. Now the function of a rear-guard is to gain time, and this we did. But, when at last the order to withdraw was given, our casualties were numerous and the enemy was close. Moreover, his artillery had got our range. The teams issuing from the shelter of their wood had to face a heavy fire, and it was at this juncture that the seasoned horses, the real old stagers, who knew as much about limbering up as most drivers and more than some, set an example to the less experienced ones. Bilfred (and I take him as typical of the rest) seemed with a sudden flash of intuition to realise that his apprenticeship and all his previous training had been arranged expressly that he might bear himself courageously in just such a situation as this. Somehow, in some quite inexplicable fashion, he knew that this was the supreme moment of his career. Regardless of bursting shells and almost without guidance from his driver he galloped straight for his gun, with ears pricked and nostrils dilated, the muscles rippling under his dark coat and his traces taut as bow-strings as he strained at his collar with every thundering stride. He wheeled with precision exactly over the trail eye, checked his pace at the right moment, and ‘squared off’ so as to allow the wheelers to place the limber in position. It was his job, he knew what to do and he did it perfectly. B was the first gun to get away and the only one to do so without a casualty....
More marching, more fighting, day after day, night after night; men were killed and wounded; horses, dropping from utter exhaustion, were cut loose and left where they lay—old friends, some of them, that it tore one’s heart to abandon thus. But there could be no tarrying, the enemy was too close to us for that.
Then came the day when the terrible retreat southwards ceased as abruptly and as unexpectedly as it had begun. Rejoicing in an advance which soon developed into a pursuit we forgot our weariness and all the trials and hardships of the past. And I think we forgot, too, in our eagerness, that for the horses there was no difference between the advance and the retirement—the work was as hard, the loads as heavy. For our hopes were high. We knew that the flood of invasion was stemmed at last. We believed that final victory was in sight. Reckless of everything we pushed on, faster and still faster, until our strength was nearly exhausted. It mattered not, we felt; the enemy retreating in disorder before us must be in far worse plight.
And then, on the Aisne, we ran up against a strong position, carefully prepared and held by fresh troops. Trench warfare began, batteries dug themselves in as never before, and the horses were taken far to the rear to rest. They had come through a terrible ordeal. Some were lame and some were galled; staring coats, hollow, wasted backs, and visible ribs told their own tale. A few, at least, were little more than skeletons for whom the month’s respite that followed was a godsend. Good forage in plenty, some grazing and very light work did wonders, and when the moment came for the move round to Flanders the majority were ready for a renewed effort. Compared with what they had already done the march was easy work. They arrived on the Yser fit and healthy.
But the first battle of Ypres took its toll. Bringing up ammunition one dark night along a road which, though never safe, had perforce to be used for lack of any other, the teams were caught by a salvo of high explosive shell and suffered heavily. Four drivers and nine horses were killed, seven drivers and thirteen horses were wounded. Bilfred escaped unhurt, but he was the only one in his team who did. A direct hit on the limber brought instantaneous death to the wheelers and their beloved driver. A merciful revolver shot put an end to Binty’s screaming agony. Bruno and Bacchus were fortunate in only getting flesh wounds from splinters. It was a sad breaking-up of the team which had held together through so many vicissitudes. It comforted us, though, to think that at least they had died in harness....
The winter brought hardship for horse as well as man. We built stables of hop-poles and sacking, but they were only a slight protection against the biting winds, and it was impossible to cope with the sea of slimy mud which was euphemistically termed the horse lines. In spite of all our precautions coughs and colds were rampant. About Christmas-time Bruno, always rather delicate, succumbed with several others to pneumonia, and a month later Bacchus strained himself so badly, when struggling to pull a wagon out of holding mud whilst the rest of the team (all new horses) jibbed, that he passed out of our hands to a veterinary hospital and was never seen again. Bilfred alone remained, and Nature, determined to do her best for him, provided him with the most amazingly woolly coat ever seen upon a horse. The robustness of his constitution made him impervious to climatic conditions, but the loss of Bacchus, his companion for so long, distressed him, and he was at pains to show his dislike of the substitute provided by biting him at all times except when in harness; then, and then only, was he Dignity personified.
The end came one day in early spring. The battery was in action in a part of the line where it was impossible to have the horses far away, for in those days we had to be prepared for any emergency. It so happened that the enemy, in the course of his usual morning ‘strafe,’ whether by luck or by intention, put an eight-inch howitzer shell into the middle of the secluded field where a few of our horses were sunning themselves in the warm air and picking at the scanty grass. Fortunately, they had been hobbled so that there was no stampede. The cloud of smoke and dust cleared away and we thought at first that no harm had been done. Then we noticed Bilfred lying on his side ten yards or so from the crater, his hind quarters twitching convulsively. As we went towards him, he lifted his head and tried to look at the gaping, jagged wound in his flank and back. There was agony in his soft brown eyes, but he made no sound. He made a desperate effort to get up, but could only raise his forehand. He remained thus for a moment, swaying unsteadily and in terrible distress. Then he dropped back and lay still. A minute later he gave one long deep sigh—and it was over.
Our old farrier, who in his twenty years’ service had seen many horses come and go and who was not often given to sentiment, looked at him sadly.
‘’E’s gone,’ he said. ‘A good ’oss—won’t see the like of him again in the batt’ry this trip, I reckon.’
And Bilfred’s driver, the man who had been with him from the start, ceased his futile efforts to stem the flow of blood with a dirty handkerchief.
‘Oh! Gawd!’ he muttered in a voice of despair, and turned his back upon us all to hide his grief.
We kept a hoof, to be mounted for the battery mess when peace comes, for he was the last of the old lot and his memory must not be allowed to fade. The fatigue party digging his grave did not grumble at their task. He was an older member of the battery than them all and a comrade rather than a beast of burden.
I like to imagine that Bilfred had a soul—not such a soul as we try to conceive for ourselves perhaps—but still I like to picture him in some heaven suitable to his simple needs, dwelling in quiet peacefulness among the departed of his race. What a company would be his and what tales he would hear!—Tales of the chariots of Assyria and Rome, of the fleet Parthians and the ravaging hosts of Attila; stories of Charlemagne and King Arthur, of the lists and all the pomp of chivalry. And so down through the centuries to the crossing of the Alps in 1800 and the grim tragedy of Moscow twelve years later. Would he stamp his feet and toss his head proudly when he heard of the Greys at Waterloo or the Light Brigade at Balaclava? But stories of the guns would delight him more, I think—Fuentes D’Onoro, Maiwand, Néry, and Le Cateau.
It pleases me to think of him meeting Bacchus and Binty and the rest and arguing out the meaning of it all. Does he know now, I wonder, the colossal issues that were at stake during that terrible fortnight between Mons and the Marne, and does he forgive us our seeming cruelty?
I hope so. I like to think that Bilfred understands.
THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE.
BY LIEUT. F. J. SALMON.
We had been away from our area for several days on a special mission and were the guests of the French Staff at X. The programme for the day included a visit to an observation post, the exact position of which was not known to our guide, and it was necessary to call at a French battery and pick up someone to show us the way. A very cheering description of the situation at Verdun by an officer who had just come from there had kept us rather later than usual at lunch, a fact to which we owed our escape from a very unpleasant bit of ‘strafing.’ We had still some 200 yards to go to reach the battery when the Huns started shelling it furiously. A few ‘overs’ came within about 100 yards of us and there was rather an unpleasant whirr of splinters, so we took refuge behind a house.
The crash of the first salvo had aroused a good woman and her baby and she came out, smiling, to see what was happening. Carrying the baby, she went out into the road and stood in the line of fire watching the fun. She occasionally dodged back behind the wall when the bits flew too near, just as a child would run from a snowball. She said her man was in the ‘Chasseurs Alpins’ and had been in the Vosges since the beginning—he was not afraid of the Boches, why should she be? A French ‘poilu’ passing by scolded her for exposing the child and she disappeared.
After five minutes of hot shelling the Huns stopped, and Lieutenant M., our guide, proposed that we should continue. The Hun usually caters for those people who ‘carry on’ at once, so we decided to visit a friend whose office was only two doors off. Lieutenant R. was delighted to see us. Yes, this particular Boche battery was ‘dégoûtant.’ It fired like a mitrailleuse, yes, and some of the ‘overs’ came this way. He had the honour to announce to us that ‘there was an unexploded 77-shell in his ceiling—no, it had not been there long and was probably still warm.’ Two more rounds battery fire then came over and we judged the trouble past for the time being. When we reached the battery we found they had had a bad time. It was an old territorial field battery—there was probably not a gunner less than forty in it. One of the guns had had a direct hit. The wheel and part of the carriage were smashed. Two of the other gun emplacements had been knocked in. The German battery responsible for this had been located, and the bearded old Frenchmen were getting ready for retaliation. Three of the guns were already ready for action, and efforts were being made to heave the broken one up on to a temporary carriage so that at least one more shot might be got out of it! A telephone message had been sent up from the brigade asking them to have a guide ready for us, but the matter had been forgotten. There was far more excitement about this than about the bombardment. Lieutenant M. called up the Sergeant-Major and ‘strafed’ him unmercifully. The Sergeant-Major was ‘désolé,’ but at the moment he had been ‘très occupé.’ He was ‘confus’ and would ‘mon capitaine’ accept his apology—the ‘cochons de Bosches’ were far more responsible than he was. Lieutenant M. said it was all right, called him ‘mon vieux,’ and we departed for our post with a fit-up guide who persisted that he did not know the way, but who nevertheless got us there in the end and we had a good look at the enemy lines and the country beyond. On our return we passed a small cottage which had been hit by something big. More than half of it had been blown away and there was no roof left at all. The chimney, however, was still there and it poured forth a defiant stream of smoke as the owner cooked his dinner in a temporary shelter near the fireplace.
The French Headquarters mess was more than usually cheery that evening. The enemy had had another setback at Verdun.
The British, too, were going to take over more line from the French, and this brought the subject round to Great Britain and what she was doing in the war. This was a point I should have preferred to have left undiscussed at a time when the French were engaged in perhaps the greatest struggle in the war with, apparently, no direct assistance from us. Our hosts, however, insisted that, under the circumstances, we were doing a good deal more than could be expected of us. They were unanimous that the most remarkable achievement of this greatest of all wars was the raising of our large Imperial army. It was one thing to make good use of a working organisation as the Germans had, but, as staff officers, they would have believed it impossible for any country to have done what we have done. Each one was able to show the insuperable difficulties that would have arisen in his own department, and there was nothing one could do but bow and agree with them.
Next morning we were off again on our rounds, this time with a different guide, Captain R.
We had a good view of the enemy’s lines from what had once been a child’s nursery. Poor kid! if she could see her playroom now! On the floor were a dismembered doll and part of a brick puzzle. The only furniture was a broken chair by the window and a toy cot in the corner of the room; the rest had been taken for some neighbouring billet. Near the window was a field telephone, and, on the wall near by, some printed instructions to artillery observers. The walls were decorated with numerous sketches, some of them quite well done, of French artillerymen and famous generals. A large hole in the wall and the familiar sickly smell of ‘tear shell’ showed that the enemy had detected the post and that it was no place to loiter in.
After seeing many interesting things that one cannot write about we reached one of the big ruined towns near the line, where we were entertained to lunch by two French officers. This lunch was one of the most memorable of my experiences at the front.
These officers, being engaged on very special and important work, were persona grata in the town and had a free hand in the matter of billets. At the time of our visit they were living in a house that might have been in Park Lane. A marble hall and staircase, luxuriously furnished rooms and all modern appointments—central heating, electric light, electric bells. The dining-room had every aspect of peace, wealth, and comfort. The table linen and service were of the best. The captain’s servant had evidently been a chef in private life. There were four courses and a variety of the best wines. All this was within less than a mile of the German front line, a fact which it would have been impossible to realise had it not been for the occasional desultory crack of a rifle and the regular crash and swirl of the French batteries firing over our heads! Our hosts were excellent fellows, as amusing and full of ‘esprit’ as only the French can be. They had been in the town over a year and had been shelled out of two other billets. They showed us the remains of their last home which had been even more luxurious than the present one. One could only gather some vague idea of what it had been like from the carved oak mantel-piece showing over a pile of débris at the end of the drawing-room and the torn tapestry hanging from the walls. They had taken to the cellar just in time!
Experience had taught our friends to gauge the Hun’s intentions to a nicety. A shell would pass close to the house and burst on the other side of the road. ‘That’s all right—only a short one for such and such a public building.’ The Frenchmen put another tune on the gramophone and the next ‘marmite’ goes several streets away. On another occasion a heavy shell is heard coming over from another direction. It explodes with a resounding ‘crump’ a long way down the street. That comes from one of the batteries that shell this part of the town and our two officers have their coffee served in the cellar!
This knowing when to take to the cellar is a distinct characteristic of the French. They are not for taking any unnecessary risks as some of us are, but, when a dangerous job has to be done, they will go about it with a careless gaiety that is wholly unforced. It is this spirit which is holding up the French soldier to the admiration of the whole world; the spirit that has kept the German hordes out of Verdun, and that will continue to keep them at bay till the time is ripe for a concerted effort of the allied forces.
A WAR SAVING WORTH MAKING.
In theory we are all on saving bent just now, for it is only by saving that many of us can do anything towards winning the great fight; and that each one of us must do something, everyone agrees. Unfortunately, in practice, to us as a nation saving does not come easily: we have not the instinct to save. We know no more, indeed, than sparrows, of the art of making sixpence do the work of a shilling. Quite a fair number of the petty economies we pride ourselves on having effected, of late, are ending in something nearly akin to waste. Evidently we shall have to learn from other nations, nations more thrifty than ourselves, if we are ever to do anything really worth doing in the way of saving. And there is hardly a nation in Europe from which we might not learn if we would. The Germans are experts in all that concerns economy: were it otherwise the war would be nearer its end than it is. The Austrians, too, although by nature as wasteful as we are, have been driven by lack of means into cunning devices for making money go far. These are enemy nations, it is true; still, that is no reason, surely, why we should not learn from them, even though we may not buy with them, sell with them, or even talk.
Quite recently the Relief Committee in Strassburg issued a most instructive public notice. It is an appeal to parents to show their patriotism, as well as their thrift and care for public health, by seeing to it that their children go barefoot this summer. ‘By economising in boots you save leather, and thus render valuable service to your country,’ they are informed.
Now if our School Authorities could be induced to issue some such notice as this, and to address it imperatively to parents of all classes alike, not only would much leather be saved, and with it much money, but many poor little children would have a much better chance than they have, of living and thriving, while many poor mothers would be able to face the world more cheerily. It is safer by far to go barefoot, as everyone who has ever tried it knows, than to wear shoes unless they be good; and in normal times, for every child who wears good shoes, shoes into which water cannot make its way, there are legions who wear shoes that leak, that have gaps through which toes poke out, soles that serve no purpose. And the end of this is wet stockings, entailing coughs and colds, croup, and even pneumonia. Really good shoes are expensive, it must be remembered: to keep a family of sturdy, active youngsters well shod costs more than to keep them well dressed. ‘We should get along fine if it was not for the shoes,’ I am always being told by working-class mothers. ‘It’s the shoes that take all the money.’
‘Not a week goes by but there’s mending to be done, even if there’s no shoes to be bought,’ a very trustworthy woman assures me. ‘Blakies, it’s true, are a help; but one must have something to fasten them on to.’
‘It’s just heart-breaking work trying to keep them all dry-shod,’ a mother of five children declares. ‘They have always, one or other of them, their toes or heels sticking out.’
‘One might think lads had hoofs instead of feet from the way their shoes go,’ another mother once informed me. ‘These were new a fortnight ago, and just see! There’s hardly a bit of sole left.’ Tears came into her eyes as she held the shoes up for me to look at.
Among the respectable poor, not only of the hand-working class, but of the lower-middle class, and this is the poorer of the two in these war days, the great trouble in life is the finding of shoes, the hopeless struggle to keep children’s feet well covered. Year by year, in every town in England, women are worried into their graves, because, let them do what they will, one pair of shoes wears out before they have the wherewithal to buy another. In every town, too, women lose their health and strength because, when they ought to be asleep, they will persist in working, that they may have the money to pay the cobbler. To see their boys and girls going about without even a patch to hide the holes in their shoes, seems to be more than most mothers can bear. And the saddest part of the business is they are sacrificing themselves quite uselessly, to a mere fetish. For very few of them have any thought of hygiene in their heads, when they toil and moil, pinch and save, that their children may have shoes: their thought is all of respectability. They are firmly convinced that to let them go barefoot would be to rob them of all claim to rank with the respectable, would be to dub them little ragamuffins in fact, and thus render them pariahs. And better than that work all night, no matter what it may lead to.
If these mothers were forced to let their children go barefoot, things would of course be otherwise; and they would be forced, practically, were they called upon to do so for patriotism’s sake, for the sake of saving leather that the soldiers might have plenty of good shoes. There would be no loss of caste then in banishing shoes and stockings; on the contrary, it would be the correct thing to do, the ‘just so’; and they would do it right gladly, thankful that they could do it without exciting comment. And by doing it, they would both lighten immeasurably the heavy burden they themselves bear, and add to their children’s chance of developing into sturdy men and women, men and women able to do good work for their country, securing for themselves a fair share of life’s comfort and pleasure the while. For there is proof and to spare that boys and girls alike are better off all round, stronger, more vigorous, more active, without shoes than with them, unless the shoes be of better quality than those most of the respectable poor can afford to buy. Never would the Strassburg Committee have ventured to call upon parents to let their offspring go barefoot had they not known that, even so far as health was concerned, quite apart from the saving of leather, good, not harm, would result. For in Germany, whoever else may go on short commons, children, the Fatherland’s future defenders, are always well cared for. One of the reasons, indeed, that the Committee give for issuing their notice is that going barefoot is not only economical, and therefore, as things are, patriotic, but also hygienic. And that it is, most of us can see for ourselves.
There are districts both in Scotland and Ireland, to say nothing of Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland, where there is hardly a shoe to be found. Yet the people there are more stalwart than in any district in England where every foot has its shoe. The finest lads I have ever come across are certainly the Montenegrin; and not one in twenty of them has either a shoe or a stocking. The only reformatory I have known where the little inmates are physically quite on a par with other children, as strong, alert, and light-hearted as other children, is the Eggenburg Reformatory, in Lower Austria, where both boys and girls all go barefoot, in winter as well as in summer.
Eggenburg is the one public institution, so far as I know, where the going-barefoot experiment has been tried, on a large scale, for the express purpose of benefiting the health of the inmates. And it was tried there under conditions that were just about as unfavourable as any conditions the wit of man could have devised. For the Eggenburg children are for the most part of the poorest of the poor class, the most demoralised, the criminal or semi-criminal class; and such children almost always start life heavily handicapped physically, as well as morally. Everyone who goes to this Reformatory must have given proof, before he—or she—goes, that his natural bent is to do what is wrong; that he turns to the left rather than the right instinctively; that he takes to evil ways, in fact, just as a duckling takes to water. There were nearly 400 inmates the first time I was there; and among them, although the eldest was under sixteen, there were sixty convicted thieves, nine incendiaries, and a murderer. One boy had been forty times in the hands of the police before he went to Eggenburg; another, a tiny little fellow, was suffering from alcoholism when he arrived there. Nor was that all: very many of the children were being cruelly ill-treated, beaten, tortured, or starved, when the police took possession of them. Thus to try this experiment with such material as they were was to invite failure. And to try it in the Eggenburg district was certainly not to invite success. For the climate there is bitterly cold in winter. I have seen snow five feet deep around the Reformatory, and it lies there for months together. If folk can go barefoot there with impunity, they can assuredly go barefoot anywhere in England.
To make matters worse, the very officials who were told off to try the experiment were against it: they resented being called upon to try it, so sure were they that it was foredoomed. Not one among them was inclined, therefore, to do his best to render it a success. I very much doubt, indeed, judging by what they themselves told me later, whether anyone among them had even the wish that it should be a success. When Dr. Schöffel, the Provincial Home Minister, informed them that their charges were to go barefoot, every man in the institution, every woman too, rose up indignantly and denounced his project as quite wicked. The Directress of the girls’ wing stoutly refused to have lot or parcel with any such doings. If he chose to kill the boys, that was no concern of hers, but kill her girls he should not, she told him roundly. And to make them go barefoot would be to kill them, it would be downright murder, she declared; and she had never a doubt in her mind but that it would.
The storm spread from Eggenburg to Vienna, where public opinion was strongly on the side of the officials and against their Chief. The Viennese professed themselves quite shocked at his meanness. Questions were asked in the Landtag. ‘Is Lower Austria so poor that she cannot buy shoes for her own adopted children?’ member after member demanded indignantly. Dr. Schöffel stood his ground firmly, however. That the experiment should be tried, he was determined; and for the children’s sake, not the rate-payers’. He was responsible for the children; it was his duty to see that the best that could be done for them should be done; and the best was not being done, he declared. When they arrived at Eggenburg they were almost all physically below the average of children of their age; they were lacking in stamina even when not tainted with disease. That in itself was bad, he maintained; but, what was worse, most of them were still below the average when they left. These children must each one of them, while at the Reformatory, be put on a par so far as in them lay with other children, he insisted. Otherwise they would later, when out in the world, be handicapped in the struggle for life, unable, therefore, to hold their own and earn their daily bread. It was, as he told me himself, for the express purpose of trying to put them physically on a par with other children, and thus give them a fair chance of making their way in the world, that he had determined they should go barefoot.
Consumption is terribly prevalent among the very poor in Lower Austria, it must be remembered; and it was at that time very prevalent at Eggenburg. The doctors had long been insisting that the little inmates ought to live practically out of doors the whole year round, working on the land, tending cattle. Arrangements had already been made for them to do so, but a difficulty had arisen. Working on the land and tending cattle in deep snow meant wet feet, wet stockings as well as wet shoes; and that for many of them spelt disaster. Dr. Schöffel was convinced, however, that it was not the wet feet that did the harm, but the wet shoes and stockings; and many of the doctors whom he consulted agreed with him. It was with their warm approval that he had decided to banish stockings and shoes and leave feet to take care of themselves—to try the going-barefoot experiment, in fact.
The experiment had long passed the experimental stage when I paid my first visit to Eggenburg; for, by that time, the inmates had already been going barefoot for some ten years. From the first it had proved a marked success, the very officials who had done everything they could to prevent its being tried, frankly admitted; so marked a success, indeed, that they had all become hearty supporters of the new system. Even the Directress of the girls’ wing, who had almost broken her heart when the change was made, and would have resigned her post forthwith but for her devotion to her charges, spoke enthusiastically of the good it had wrought among them. Most of them were at a trying age, between twelve and sixteen; and most of them were delicate, never free from coughs and colds. She was as sure as of life itself, therefore, the first day they went barefoot, that they would all be ill in bed on the morrow. To her amazement, however, as she told me, when the morrow came, there was no sign of special illness among them. On the contrary, instead of coughing more than usual, they coughed less, and were in less urgent need of pocket-handkerchiefs. Before a week had passed the great majority of them had ceased coughing at all, and not one of them had a cold in her head.
The Director told me much the same tale; as it was with the girls so was it with the boys. By banishing shoes and stockings, he declared, Dr. Schöffel had practically banished colds with all their attendant evils. Under the new system, it was a rare thing for any boy to develop a cold after being at Eggenburg a week. The general health of all the children had improved quite wonderfully, both he and the Directress assured me, since going barefoot had become the order of the day. And what they said was confirmed by what I heard from every doctor I came across who knew Eggenburg; was confirmed, too, by what I saw there with my own eyes. For a finer set of youngsters than the boys and girls there I have never seen in any institution, and have not often seen anywhere else.
I had hardly crossed the threshold of Eggenburg before I heard, what I rarely hear in institutions, peal after peal of hearty laughter; and I saw little urchins flying as the wind in pursuit of something, I could not tell what. The very way they threw up their heels as they ran, the speed with which they went, showed the stuff of which they were made, the strength of their legs and backs; while the cries they raised left no doubt as to the strength of their lungs. There was not a laggard among them, not a weakling. Some of them, it is true, would have been all the better for more flesh on their bones, I found when I came to examine them; and some few were not quite so well grown as they ought to have been. Still they were a wonderfully vigorous set, considering the handicap with which they had started in life; and they were as alert as they were vigorous. They swarmed up poles and twirled themselves round bars, in quite professional style; and went through their drill with head erect and soldierly swing. Evidently they were not troubled with nerves at all, nor had they any fear at all of strangers. They met my advances in the most friendly fashion; and answered my questions intelligently without hesitation, looking at me straight the while. Their eyes, I noticed, were not only bright, but, oddly enough, full of fun, many of them. They were a light-hearted set, it was easy to see, bubbling over with delight at being alive; they were a kindly sociable set, too, on good terms with themselves, one another, and even the officials.
This Eggenburg experiment certainly proves that both boys and girls are the better, not the worse, for going barefoot. Why, then, should they wear shoes? The wearing of them is sheer waste, surely; and in war days waste of any sort is unpatriotic, especially waste in shoes. For leather is none too plentiful, and is becoming scarcer and scarcer from day to day; while it is only by straining every nerve that shoemakers can keep the men at the Front even decently well shod. Were all the children in England to go barefoot, even if only for the next three months, our soldiers would many of them have much better shoes than they have. And most children would be delighted to go barefoot; and very many mothers would be delighted to save the money they now spend on shoes, if only the School Authorities, by appealing to them to do so for their country’s sake, would give them the chance of doing so without offence to their fetish, respectability. Unfortunately, many of these Authorities seem to prefer the worst of leaking, toe-crippling shoes to bare feet.
I once asked a certain Head Master to let a little Gipsy, who was sojourning in his district, go to his school without shoes. She had never worn them and did not wish to wear them. He was quite shocked. Such a thing was impossible, he assured me. The tone of the whole school would be lowered were a barefoot child to cross its threshold!
Edith Sellers.
LONG ODDS.
BY BOYD CABLE.
This story belongs to an officer of the Canadians who at the time of its happening was playing a part in the opening months of the war as a private in the French Foreign Legion. In that capacity he saw a good deal of the men of our first Expeditionary Force, and although he is full of good stories of their amazing doings, he tells this particular one as perhaps the best and most typical example he met of the cold-blooded contempt of certain death, the calm indifference to consequences, the matter-of-fact tackling of the impossible which were such commonplaces with the old Regular Army in the first days, and which perhaps were the main factors in the performance of so many historic feats of arms.
It was during the Retreat, in the middle of that constant series of forced marches and hard fighting, when the remnants of retiring regiments were inextricably mixed, when the wounded were left behind, and the unwounded who were unable to keep up with their column or who strayed from it in the darkness found themselves blundering about the countryside, dodging groups of enemy cavalry and columns of enemy infantry, being fed and guided by the French villagers, working always towards the sound of the guns and struggling to rejoin their own army, that three just such stragglers after a careful reconnaissance ventured into the outskirts of a tiny French hamlet. One, the Canadian (who had been in Paris on the outbreak of war and, fearing that it would be months before a British force could take the field, had signed on in the French Foreign Legion and so made sure of an early and ample dose of the fighting), wore the picturesque dress of a private of the Legion; another was a French infantry of the Lines-man, and the third a private of a British infantry regiment. The ‘khaki,’ for no particular reason, except that he apparently took it for granted that it should be so, more or less took command of the party, while the Canadian, who spoke fluent French, acted as interpreter both between the party and the French ‘civvies,’ as the local inhabitants were indiscriminately described by the Englishman, and in conveying the orders of the self-appointed C.O. to the non-English-speaking ‘piou-piou.’
Enquiry of the villagers brought the information that there were no Germans in the hamlet, that a party of Uhlans had ridden through towards the south an hour before, and that nothing had been seen of any Germans since.
‘Good enough,’ said the khaki man on hearing this. ‘I’m just about ready for a shut-eye myself after trekkin’ all last night. We’d better lie up till it’s gettin’ dark again, and then shove on an’ see if we can get the touch with our own push. You might ask ’em if this dorp has anythin’ goin’ in the way o’ rations—rooty an’ cheese an’ a pot o’ beer would just suit my present complaint.’
But the village did better than bread and cheese. The village—women, old men, and children—escorted the three warriors to the estaminet in the main street and with voluble explanations handed them over to the estaminet keeper.
‘Food? But assuredly yes—soup, good strong soup, and all ready and hot; an omelette, a very large omelette for three, to be ready the moment the soup was finished with; and then a veal stew, and cream cheese, and wine—wine white or red, whichever messieurs preferred.’
‘Fust class. Canada, tell ’er fust bloomin’ class. I’ll give up dinin’ at the Carlton an’ Savoy an’ come ’ere reg’lar in future, tell ’er. An’ how long before the bugle sounds for dinner?’
At once, they were told. If they would enter, the soup would be served as soon as they were seated. But the khaki demurred at that. ‘I must ’ave a wash first,’ he declared. ‘I ’aven’t ’ad a decent wash for days. Just ask ’er if she’ll show me where the pump is.’ He extracted soap and a very dirty towel from his haversack and followed his conductress out to the back, whence presently came the sound of pumping water, a vigorous splashing and mighty blowing.
‘Come on, Tommy,’ said the Canadian when the other appeared again clean, save for the stubble on his chin, glowing and rosy. ‘We’ve started the soup. Good goods too. Pitch in.’
‘That looks good,’ said Tommy sniffing hungrily. He pulled down his shirt-sleeves and carefully deposited in the corner near his chair the rifle, haversack, and ammunition-pouches he had carried with him out to the pump and in again. ‘But we don’t want them Oo-lans ’oppin’ in an’ spoilin’ the dessert. There ain’t enough o’ us to post proper pickets an’ outposts, but wot’s the matter wi’ enlistin’ some o’ them kids for temporary duty? I’ll bet they’d spot a Oo-lan a mile off an’ tip us the wink if they was comin’ this way.’
There were plenty of volunteers for the duty, and half a dozen of the old men of the village hobbled off to post themselves at various points, each with several enthusiastic small boy gallopers in attendance to carry urgent despatches as required.
Then Tommy sat down, and the three ate and drank ravenously. They devoured the soup, the omelette, and the stew, and were proceeding with the cheese when they heard the patter and rush of flying feet outside. Next instant one boy burst into the room, another followed in a whirlwind rush, and the two broke into breathless and excited speech.
The first dozen words were enough for the Canadian. ‘They’re coming,’ he said abruptly to the others and jumped from his seat. ‘Very many Germans, the kid says. Come on, we must hustle out of this quick.’
He ran to the door and looked out, the small boys following, still talking rapidly and pointing and gesticulating. The Canadian took one look and stepped back instantly under cover, the French piou-piou, who had followed close on his heels, doing the same. ‘They’re not in sight yet, but from what the kids say they should be round the corner and in sight in minutes. They’re coming from the north, so we’d better slide out south—or hike out into the fields and find a hole to hide up in.’
‘Comin’ from the north, eh?’ said the Englishman. He was quickly but methodically stowing the remains of the long loaf in his haversack, and that done slipped quickly into his accoutrements. ‘That means they’re goin’ on the way we was tryin’ to stop ’em goin’, an’ pushin’ up into the firin’ line.’
The Canadian and the piou-piou were engaged in rapid talk with the landlady and a few other women and a couple of old men who had hurried in. Tommy walked over to the door, stepped outside, and had a careful look round. ‘Look ’ere,’ he said calmly, stepping back into the room. ‘There’s a good ditch on both sides o’ the road. You an’ Froggy ’ad better take a side each. I’ll take the middle o’ the road, an’ there’s a barrel outside I can roll out there for cover.’
The Canadian stared at him blankly. ‘What d’ you mean?’ he said. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Why, we’re goin’ to stop them, of course,’ said Tommy, looking at him with an air of slight surprise. ‘You said they was Germans an’ goin’ south. That means they’re goin’ to reinforce their firin’ line, so we’ll ’ave to stop their reinforcin’ game. Come on, you two ’ad better take cover, an’ we’ll give ’em socks as they come round the corner.’
He walked outside and proceeded to roll the empty barrel into the middle of the road a little way down from the estaminet, which was the last house of the village. He left an utterly dumbfounded Canadian and an impatient and non-comprehending Frenchman who was rapidly reduced to a state of incredulous amazement by the information which the Canadian, after a long breath and a longer pause, proceeded to impart to him.
Now the Canadian, who is responsible for this story, openly confesses that the last thing on earth he should have thought of attempting was any resistance of the German advance, and more than that, that it was with the greatest possible reluctance he did finally join the imperturbable Tommy in the impossible task. He tried first to point out the folly of it.
‘See here, Tommy,’ he called from the inn door. ‘You don’t rightly understand. There’s hundreds of these chaps coming, thousands of ’em for all I know, but at least a regiment from what the old man says who saw them. We can’t do anything to a lot like that. We’d far better get off the grass while we’ve a chance.’
But Tommy had planted his empty barrel fairly in the middle of the road and was settling himself snugly at full length behind it, his legs spread wide and left shoulder well advanced after the approved fashion of his musketry instructor. ‘They’re goin’ south,’ he called back. ‘An’ we come over ’ere to stop ’em going south. So we’ll just ’ave to stop ’em.’ And he commenced to lay cartridges in a convenient little pile at his elbow and push a clip into his rifle magazine.
Even then the Canadian hesitated. The whole thing was so utterly mad, such a senseless throwing away of their three lives that he was still inclined to clear out and away. But that prone figure in the road held him. He felt, as he puts it himself, that he couldn’t decently leave the beggar there and run away. And a call from outside settled the matter by the calm assurance it held that the two of them were going to stand by and see the game through. ‘You two ’ad better be jildi.[3] I can see the dust risin’ just round the corner.’
The Canadian flung a last hurried sentence to the piou-piou, ran out and across the road and dropped into the ditch in line with the barrel. The Frenchman looked round at the women and old men, shrugged his shoulders and laughed shortly. ‘These mad English,’ he said hopelessly, ‘but, name of a name, what can a Frenchman do but die along with them?’ and he too ran out and took his place in the nearer ditch in line with the others.
Tommy looked over his shoulder at him and nodded encouragingly. ‘Good man, Froggy,’ he said loudly, and then turning to the Canadian and lowering his voice to a confidential undertone, ‘I’m glad to see Froggy roll up, for the credit of ’is reg’ment’s sake—whatever ’is reg’ment may be. ’E was so long, I was beginnin’ to think ’e was funkin’ it.’ The Canadian admits to a queer relief that he himself had not ‘funked it,’ but he had little time to think about it.
A thin dust rose slowly from the road at the distant bend, and ‘’Ere they come,’ said Tommy. ‘Don’t begin shootin’ till I do. We want to get into the brown of ’em before we start, an’ we haven’t cartridges enough to keep goin’ long. I think about four ’undred should be near enough the range, but I’ll try a sightin’ shot first at that an’ you’ll see where it lands.’
For long interminably dragging minutes the three lay there, and then suddenly, in a bang that made him jump, the Canadian heard the soldier’s first shot. ‘Just short,’ said Tommy coolly. ‘Better put your sights four fifty an’ take a fine sight. Come on, let ’em ’ave it.’
The three rifles opened in a crackle of rapid fire, and far down the road a swirl of dust and a stampede of grey-coated figures to the sides of the road showed the alarm that the sudden onslaught had raised. It took several minutes for the crowd to get to any sort of cover, and before they did so they evidently began to understand how weak was the force opposed to them. The grey mass dropped to the road and next minute a steady drum of rifle fire and a storm of bullets came beating down on the three. The road was pavé, floored with the flat cobble-stones common on first-class French roads, and on these the bullets cracked and smacked with vicious emphasis, ricochetted and rose with ugly screams and whirrs and singings. A dozen times in that first minute the hollow barrel banged to the blow of a bullet, but the figure behind it kept on firing steadily and without a pause. And presently the Germans, impatient of the delay perhaps, or angered by the impudence of the attack of such a handful as they were now sure blocked the way, began to climb over the fence along the roadside and move along the fields firing as they came, while another group commenced to trot steadily straight down the road. ‘Now then, Canada,’ called Tommy, ‘pick your target an’ tell Froggy we’ll fire in turns. We can’t afford to waste shots.’
So the three commenced to fire steadily and in turn, each waiting after the other’s shot to see if a man fell, each calling to the others in triumph if a man went down after their shot, growling angrily if the shot missed. They made good shooting amongst them, the man in the middle of the road an unmistakable best and the Canadian second. Their shooting in fact was so good that it broke the attack down the road, and presently the remainder of this force ran crouching to the ditches, jumped into them, and stayed there.
But because the ammunition of the three was almost gone the affair was almost over, and now there appeared a new factor that looked like ending it even before their cartridges gave out. Back in the ranks of the main body three or four men grouped about a machine-gun opened a rapid fire, and the hailing bullets clashed on the walls of the estaminet, swept down on to the stones of the pavé, found their range and began drumming and banging on the barrel. The soldier beside it quietly laid down his empty rifle and looked towards the Canadian. ‘I’m done in,’ he called. ‘Punctured ’arf a dozen places.... You two better keep down ... let ’em come close, then finish it ... wi’ the bayonet.’
That struck the Canadian as the last word in lunacy; but before he could speak, he saw the barrel dissolved in splintering wreckage about the figure lying on the road. Tommy raised his head a little and called once more, but faintly. ‘Good fight. We did all we could ... to stop ’em. We did stop ’em all a good time ... an’ we stopped a lot for good.’ A gust of bullets swept lower, clattered on the stones, set the broken barrel staves dancing, hailed drumming and thudding on the prone figure in the road.
Both the Canadian and the Frenchman were wounded severely, but they still had the strength to crawl back along the ditch, and the luck to emerge from it amongst the houses in time to be hidden away by the villagers before the Germans arrived. And that night after they had passed through and gone, the Canadian went back and found the body of the soldier where it had been flung in the ditch—a body riddled and rent to pieces with innumerable bullet wounds.
The Canadian had the villagers bury the body there close outside the village, and wrote on a smooth board the number and name he took from the identity disc about the dead man’s neck. And underneath it he wrote in indelible pencil ‘A good fighting man,’ and the last words he had heard the fighter gasp—‘We did all we could to stop them; stopped them all a good time, and stopped a lot for good.’
And as the Canadian said afterwards, ‘That same, if you remember their record and their fate, being a fairly close fitting epitaph for the old Contemptible Little Army.’