The boat, due to steam off at eleven, left at noon,—a creditable performance as leave-boats go. On this occasion there was good reason for the delay, as we ceded the right of way to a hospital ship and waited while a procession of ambulance cars drove along the quay and unloaded their stretcher cases. The Red Cross vessel churned slowly out of the harbour, and we followed at a respectful distance.
Passengers on a Channel leave-boat are quieter than might be expected. With the country of war behind them they have attained the third degree of content, and so novel is this state after months of living on edge that the short crossing does not allow sufficient time for them to be moved to exuberance. One promenades the crowded deck happily, taking care not to tread on the staff spurs, and talks of fighting as if it were a thing of the half-forgotten past.
But there is no demonstration. In a well-known illustrated weekly a recent frontispiece, supposedly drawn "from material supplied," depicts a band of beaming Tommies, with weird water-bottles, haversacks, mess-tins, and whatnots dangling from their sheepskin coats, throwing caps and cheers high into the air as they greet the cliffs of England. As the subject of an Academy picture, or an illustration for "The Hero's Homecoming, or How a Bigamist Made Good," the sketch would be excellent. But, except for the beaming faces, it is fanciful. A shadowy view of the English coast-line draws a crowd to the starboard side of the boat, whence one gazes long and joyfully at the dainty cliffs. Yet there is no outward sign of excitement; the deep satisfaction felt by all is of too intimate a nature to call for cheering and cap-throwing. The starboard deck remains crowded as the shore looms larger, and until, on entry into Dovstone harbour, one prepares for disembarkation.
The Front seemed very remote from the train that carried us from Dovstone to London. How could one think of the wilderness with the bright hop-fields of Kent chasing past the windows? Then came the mass-meeting of brick houses that skirt London, and finally the tunnel which is the approach to the terminus. As the wheels rumbled through the darkness of it they suggested some lines of stray verse beginning—
"Twenty to eleven by all the clocks of Piccadilly;
Buy your love a lily-bloom, buy your love a rose."
It had been raining, and the faint yet unmistakable tang sniffed from wet London streets made one feel at home more than anything else. We dispersed, each to make his interval of heaven according to taste, means, and circumstances. That same evening I was fortunate in being helped to forget the realities of war by two experiences. A much-mustached A.P.M. threatened me with divers penalties for the wearing of a soft hat; and I was present at a merry gathering of theatrical luminaries, enormously interested in themselves, but enormously bored by the war, which usurped so much newspaper space that belonged by rights to the lighter drama.
Curtain and interval of ten days, at the end of which I was offered a place as passenger in a machine destined for my own squadron. The bus was to be taken to an aircraft depôt in France from Rafborough Aerodrome. Rafborough is a small town galvanised into importance by its association with flying. Years ago, in the far-away days when aviation itself was matter for wonder, the pioneers who concerned themselves with the possibilities of war flying made their headquarters at Rafborough. An experimental factory, rich in theory, was established, and near it was laid out an aerodrome for the more practical work. Thousands of machines have since been tested on the rough-grassed aerodrome, while the neighbouring Royal Aircraft Factory has continued to produce designs, ideas, aeroplanes, engines, and aircraft accessories. Formerly most types of new machines were put through their official paces at Rafborough, and most types, including some captures from the Huns, were to be seen in its sheds. Probably Rafborough has harboured a larger variety of aircraft and aircraft experts than any other place in the world.
My friend the ferry-pilot having announced that the carriage waited, I strapped our baggage, some new gramophone records, and myself into the observer's office. I also took—tell this not in Gath, for the transport of dogs by aeroplane has been forbidden—a terrier pup sent to a fellow-officer by his family. At first the puppy was on a cord attached to some bracing-wires; but as he showed fright when the machine took off from the ground, I kept him on my lap for a time. Here he remained subdued and apparently uninterested. Later, becoming inured to the engine's drone and the slight vibration, he roused himself and wanted to explore the narrowing passage toward the tail-end of the fuselage. The little chap was, however, distinctly pleased to be on land again at Saint Gregoire, where he kept well away from the machine, as if uncertain whether the strange giant of an animal were friendly or a dog-eater.
It was a morning lovely enough to be that of the world's birthday. Not a cloud flecked the sky, the flawless blue of which was made tenuous by sunlight. The sun brightened the kaleidoscopic earthscape below us, so that rivers and canals looked like quicksilver threads, and even the railway lines glistened. The summer countryside, as viewed from an aeroplane, is to my mind the finest scene in the world—an unexampled scene, of which poets will sing in the coming days of universal flight. The varying browns and greens of the field-pattern merge into one another delicately; the woods, splashes of bottle-green, relieve the patchwork of hedge from too ordered a scheme; rivers and roads criss-cross in riotous manner over the vast tapestry; pleasant villages and farm buildings snuggle in the valleys or straggle on the slopes. The wide and changing perspective is full of a harmony unspoiled by the jarring notes evident on solid ground. Ugliness and dirt are camouflaged by the clean top of everything. Grimy towns and jerry-built suburbs seem almost attractive when seen in mass from a height. Slums, the dead uniformity of long rows of houses, sordid back-gardens, bourgeois public statues—all these eyesores are mercifully hidden by the roofed surface. The very factory chimneys have a certain air of impressiveness, in common with church towers and the higher buildings. Once, on flying over the pottery town of Coalport—the most uninviting place I have ever visited—I found that the altered perspective made it look delightful.
A westward course, with the fringe of London away on our left, brought us to the coast-line all too soon. Passing Dovstone, the bus continued across the Channel. A few ships, tiny and slow-moving when observed from a machine at 8000 feet and travelling 100 miles an hour, spotted the sea. A cluster of what were probably destroyers threw out trails of dark smoke. From above mid-Channel we could see plainly the two coasts—that of England knotted into small creeks and capes, that of France bent into large curves, except for the sharp corner at Grisnez. Behind was Blighty, with its greatness and its—sawdust. Ahead was the province of battle, with its good-fellowship and its—mud. I lifted the puppy to show him his new country, but he merely exhibited boredom and a dislike of the sudden rush of air.