A Padre in France

by George A. Birmingham

When spring and early summer came to us we rejoiced in the result of our labours, frequently fantastic, sometimes as nearly ridiculous as flowers can be. There were beds of daffodils and hyacinths in which it was possible, when the designer acted as showman, to recognise regimental crests. The French flag came out well, if the flowers of the tricolour consented to bloom at the same time. A sergeant, who professed to be an expert, arranged a bed for me which he said would look like a Union Jack in June. Unfortunately I left the place early in May, and I have heard nothing since about that Union Jack. I suppose it failed in some way. If it had succeeded, some one would have told me about it. A fellow-countryman of mine designed a shamrock in blue lobelia. The medical Red Cross looked well in geraniums imported from England at great expense.

Generally our efforts were along more conventional lines. I remember a rose-garden with a sundial in the middle of it. The roses, to preserve them from frost, were carefully wrapped in sacking during severe weather, and an irreverent soldier, fresh from the trenches, commented on the fact that “These blighters at the base are growing sandbags.”

We were short of implements, but we dug. I have seen table forks and broken dinner knives used effectively. I have seen grass, when there was grass, clipped with a pair of scissors. Kindly people in England sent us out packets of seeds, but we were very often beaten by the names on them. We sowed in faith and hope, not knowing what manner of thing an antirrhinum might be.

I do not believe that it was any form of nostalgia, any longing for home surroundings, which made gardeners of the most unlikely of us. Heaven knows the results we achieved were unlike anything we had ever seen at home. It was not love of gardening which set us digging and planting. Men gardened in those camps who never gardened before, and perhaps never will again. At the bottom of it all was an instinctive, unrealised longing for colour. We knew that flowers, if we could only grow them, would not have khaki petals, that, war or no war, we should feast our eyes on red and blue.

Newspapers and politicians used to talk about this as “the war to end war,” the last war. Perhaps they were right. We may at least fairly hope that this is the world’s last khaki war. It is not indeed likely that when men next fight they will revert to scarlet coats and shining breastplates. We have grown out of these crude attempts at romanticism.

But it is very interesting to note the increase of attention given to camouflage. It occurred to some one—the wonder is that it did not occur to him sooner—that a mud-coloured tiger, a tiger with a khaki skin, would be more visible, not less visible, than a tiger with its natural bright stripes. It was our seamen who first grasped the importance of this truth and began to paint ships blue, yellow, and red, with a view to making it difficult for submarine commanders to see them. There are, I believe, a number of artists now engaged in drawing out colour schemes for steamers. I have seen a mother ship of hydroplanes which looked like a cubist picture.

Landsmen are more conservative and slower to grasp new ideas. But even in my time in France tents were sometimes covered with broad curves of bright colours. They looked very funny near at hand; but they are—this seems to be established—much less easily seen by airmen than white or brown tents. It seems a short step to take from colouring tents to colouring uniforms. In the next war, if there be a next war, regiments will perhaps move against the enemy gay as kingfishers and quite as difficult to see. Fighting men will look to each other like ladies in the beauty chorus of a revue. By the enemy they will not be seen at all. War will not, in its essentials, be any pleasanter, however we dress ourselves. Nothing can ever make a joy of it. But at least those who take part in it will escape the curse of khaki which lies heavily on us.

We suffered a good deal from want of music when I went out to France, though things were better then than they had been earlier. They certainly improved still further later on. Music in old days was looked upon as an important thing in war. The primitive savage beat drums of a rude kind before setting out to spear the warriors of the neighbouring tribes. Joshua’s soldiers stormed Jericho with the sound of trumpets in their ears. Cromwell’s men sang psalms as they went forward. Montrose’s highlanders charged to the skirl of their bagpipes. Even a pacifist would, I imagine, charge if a good piper played in front of him.

Our regiments had their bands, and many of them their special marching tunes. But we somehow came to regard music as part of the peace-time, ornamental side of soldiering. The mistake was natural enough. Our military leaders recognised, far sooner than the rest of us, that this war was going to be a grim and desperate business. Bands struck them as out of place in it. Music was associated in their minds with promenades at seaside resorts, with dinners at fashionable restaurants, with ornamental cavalry evolutions at military tournaments. We were not going to France to do musical rides or to stroll about the sands of Boulogne with pretty ladies. We were going to fight. Therefore, bands were better left at home. It was a very natural mistake to make; but it was a mistake, and it is all to the credit of the War Office, a body which gets very little credit for anything, that it gradually altered its policy.