So, too, with our mess. The dream here consisted of a jolly little parlour that was the envy of all the other company messes. As usual, the rooms led into one another, the kitchen into the parlour, the parlour into a bedroom; I might almost continue, and say the bedroom into a bed! For the four-poster, when curtained off, is a little room in itself. It was a good billet, but best of all was Madame herself. Suffice it to say she would not take a penny for use of crockery; and she would insist on us making full use of everything; she allowed all our cooking to be done in her kitchen; and on cold nights she would insist on our servants sitting in the kitchen, though that was her only sitting-room. Often have I come in about seven o’clock to find our dinner frizzling merrily on the fire under the supervision of Gray, the cook, while Madame sat humbly in the corner eating a frugal supper of bread and milk, before retiring to her little room upstairs. Ah, Madame! there are many who have done what you have done, but few, I think, more graciously. If we tried to thank her for some extra kindness, she had always the same reply “You are welcome, M. l’Officier. I have heard the guns, and the Germans passed through Amiens; if it were not for the English, where should we be to-day?”
So we settled down for our “rest,” for long field days, lectures after tea, football matches, and week-ends; I wrote for my Field Service Regulations, and rubbed up my knowledge of outposts and visual training. But scarcely had I been a week at Montagne when off I went suddenly, on a Sunday morning, to the Third Army School. I had been told my name was down for it, a few days before, but I had forgotten all about it, when I received instructions to bicycle off with Sergeant Roberts; my kit and servant to follow in a limber. I had no idea what the “Third Army School” was, but with “note-book, pencil, and protractor” I cycled off at 11.0 a.m. “to fields and pastures new.”
Most people, I imagine, have had the following experience. They have a great interest in some particular subject, yet they have somehow not got the key to it. They regret that they were never taught the elements of it at school; or it is some new science or interest that has arisen since their schooldays, such as flying or motoring. They are really ashamed of asking questions; and all books on the subject are technical and presuppose just that elementary knowledge that the interested amateur does not possess. Then suddenly he comes on a book with those delicious phrases in the preface promising “to avoid all technical details,” apologising for “what may seem almost childishly elementary,” and containing at the end an expert bibliography. These are the books written by very wise and very kind men, and because they are worth so much they usually cost least of all!
Such was my delightful experience at the Army School. I will confess to a terrible ignorance of my profession—I did not know how many brigades made up a division; “the artillery” were to me vague people whom the company commander rang up on the telephone, and who appeared in gaiters in Béthune; a bomb was a thing I avoided with a peculiar aversion; and as to the general conduct of the war I was the most ignorant of pawns. The wildest things were said about Loos; the Daily Mail had just heard of the Fokker, and I had not the remotest idea whether we were hopelessly outclassed in the air, or whether perhaps after all there were people “up top” who were not so surprised or disconcerted at the appearance of the Fokker as the Northcliffe Press. Moreover, I had been impressed with the reiteration of my C.O., that my battalion was the finest in the Army, and that my division was likewise the best. Yet I had always felt that there were other good battalions, and that “K.’s Army” was, to say the least of it, in a considerable majority when compared with the contemptible little original which I had had the luck to join!
Imagine my delight, then, at finding myself one of over a hundred captains and senior subalterns representing their various battalions. Regulars, Territorials, and Kitcheners, we were all there together; one’s vision widened like that of a boy first going to school. Here at least was a great opportunity, if only the staff was good. And any doubt on that question was instantly set at rest by the Commandant’s opening address, explaining that the instructors were all picked men with a large experience in this war, that in the previous month’s course mostly subalterns had been sent and this time it had been the aim to secure captains only (oh! balm in Gilead this!) and that apologies were due if some of the lectures and instructions were elementary; that bombing experts, for instance, must not mind if the bombing course started right at the very beginning, as it had been found in the previous course that it was wrong to presume any military knowledge to be the common possession of all officers in the school. Those who understood my simile of the expert’s kind book to the amateur will understand that there were few of us who did not welcome such a promising bill of fare.
I do not intend to say much about the instruction at the Army School—a good deal of what I learnt there is unconsciously embodied in the rest of this book—but it is the spirit of the place that I want to record. I can best describe it as the opposite of what is generally known as academic. Theories and text-books about the war were at a discount: here were men who had been through the fire, every phase of it. It was not a question of opinions, but of facts. This came out most clearly in discussions after the lectures; a point would be raised about advancing over the open: “We attacked at St. Julien over open ground under heavy fire, and such and such a thing was our experience” would at once come out from someone. And there was no scoring of debating points! We were all out to pool our knowledge and experience all the time.
The Commandant inspired in everyone a most tremendous enthusiasm. His lectures on “Morale” were the finest I have ever heard anywhere. “Put yourself in your men’s position on every occasion; continually think for them, give them the best possible time, be in the best spirits always;” “long faces” were anathema! No one can forget his tale of the doctor who never laughed, and whom he put in a barn and taught him how to! “‘Hail fellow well met’ to all other officers and regiments” was another of his great points. “Give ’em a d—d good lunch—a d—d good lunch.” “Get a good mess going.” “Ask your Brigadier into lunch in the trenches: make him come in.” “Concerts?—plenty of concerts in billets.” “An extra tot of rum to men coming off patrol.” All this was a “good show.” But long faces, inhospitality, men not cheerful and singing, officers not seeing that their men get their dinners, after getting into billets, before getting their own; officers supervising working-parties by sitting under haystacks instead of going about cheering the men; brigadiers not knowing their officers; poor lunches—all these things were a “bad show, a d—d bad show!” These lectures were full of the most delicious anecdotes and thrilling stories, and backed up by a huge enthusiasm and a most emphatic practice of his preaching. We had a concert every Wednesday, and every Saturday the four motor-buses took the officers into Amiens, and the sergeants on Sundays—week-ends were in fact “good shows.”
Then there were the lectures. The second week, for instance, was a succession of lectures on the Battle of Loos. These lectures used to take place after tea, and the discussion usually lasted till dinner. First was a lecture by an infantry major of the Seventh Division (who needless to say had been very much in it!). Then followed one by an artillery officer, giving his version of it; then followed an R.E. officer. There was nothing hidden away in a corner. It was all facts, facts, facts. An enlarged map of our own and the German trenches was most fascinating to us who had for the most part never handled one before. I remember the Major’s description of the fighting in the Quarries; it was one of the most vivid bits of narrative I have ever heard. Then there were other fascinating lectures—Captain Jefferies, the big game hunter, on Sniping: the Commandant again on Patrol work and discipline, and Dealing with prisoners: two lectures from the Royal Flying Corps, perhaps most fascinating of all.
We drilled hard with rifles: we took a bombing course and threw live bombs: we went through the gas, and had a big demonstration with smoke bombs: we went to a squadron of the R.F.C., inspected the sheds, saw the aeroplanes, and had anything we liked explained: we went out in motor-buses and carried out schemes of attack and defence: we did outpost schemes: drew maps: dug trenches and revetted them. In short, there was very little we did not do at the School.
It was, in fact, a “good show.” The School was in a big white château on the main road—a new house built by the owner of a factory. The village really lies like a sediment at the bottom of a basin, with houses clustering and scrambling up the sides along the high road running out of it east and west, getting thinner and fewer up the hill, to disappear altogether on the tableland. The jute factory was working hard night and day: we used to have hot baths in the long wooden troughs that are used for dyeing long rolls of matting, and I know no hot baths to equal those forty-footers!