A Padre in France

by George A. Birmingham

Our French neighbours did not take much notice of these alarms. The row of lamps in the little railway station near the camp shone cheerfully while we were plunged in gloom. The inhabitants of the houses on the hill at the far side of the valley did not even take the trouble to pull down their window blinds. Either the French are much less afraid of Zeppelins than we are or they never heard the alarms which caused us so much inconvenience. These scares became very frequent in the early spring of 1916 and always worried us.

After a while some one started a theory that there never had been any Zeppelins in our neighbourhood and that none were likely to come. It was possible that our local Head-Quarters Staff was simply playing tricks on us. An intelligent staff officer would, in time, be almost sure to think of starting a Zeppelin scare if he had not much to occupy his mind. He would defend his action by saying that an alarm of any kind keeps men alert and is good for discipline.

But staff officers, though skilful in military art, are not always well up in general literature. Ours, perhaps, had never read the “Wolf, wolf,” fable, and did not anticipate the result of their action. As time went on we took less and less notice of the Zeppelin warnings until at last the whole thing became a joke. If a Zeppelin had come to us towards the end of March it would have had the whole benefit of all the lights which shone through our tents and windows, whatever that guidance might be worth.

The Zeppelins which did not come caused us on the whole more annoyance than the submarines which did. It was, of course, irritating when the English post did not arrive at the usual hour. It always did arrive in the end—being carried by some other route, though our own proper steamer neither went in nor out.

But if we, the regular inhabitants of the place, suffered little inconvenience from the submarines, the officers and men who passed through the town on their way home on leave were sometimes held up for days. The congestion became acute. Beds were very difficult to obtain. The officers’ club filled up and the restaurants reaped a harvest.

The authorities on these occasions behave in a peculiarly irritating way. They will not, perhaps cannot, promise that their steamer will sail at any particular hour or indeed on any particular day. Nor will they give an assurance that it will not sail. The eager traveller is expected to sit on his haversack on the quay and watch, day and night, lest the ship of his desire should slip out unknown to him. It is, of course, impossible for any one to do this for very long, and an M.L.O.—M.L.O.’s are sometimes humane men—will drop a hint that the steamer will stay where she is for two or even four hours. Then the watchers make a dash for club, hotel, or restaurant, at their own risk, of course; the M.L.O. gives no kind of promise or guarantee.

There was at that time, probably still is, a small shop not far from Base Head-Quarters which had over its door the words “Mary’s Tea,” in large letters. The name was an inspiration. It suggested “England, home, and beauty,” everything dearest to the heart of the young officer in a strange land. As a matter of fact there was nothing English about the place. The cakes sold were delightfully French. The tea was unmistakably not English. The shop was run by five or six girls with no more than a dozen words of English among them. When the leave boat was held up “Mary’s Tea” was crammed with young officers.

I remember seeing a party of these cheery boys sitting down to a square meal one afternoon. They were still wearing their trench boots and fighting kit. They were on their way home from the front and they were hungry, especially hungry for cakes. There were four of them. “Mary”—they called all the girls Mary, the name of the shop invited that familiarity—brought them tea and a dish piled high with cakes, frothy meringues, pastry sandwiches with custard in the middle, highly ornamental sugary pieces of marzipan, all kinds of delicate confectionery. After the fare of the trenches these were dreams of delight, but not very satisfying. The dish was cleared. The spokesman, the French scholar of the party, demanded more. “Mary”—he did not translate the name into “Marie”—“encore gâteaux, au moins trois douzaine.” Mary, smiling, fetched another dish. I suppose she kept count. I did not, nor I am sure did the feasters. They finished those and repeated the encore. The au moins trois douzaine was a ridiculous under-estimate of their requirements. It might have been multiplied by five.

In the end there were no more gâteaux. The stock was sold out. It was not a large shop and many others had drunk tea there that afternoon. The boys paid their bill and left, still astonishingly cheerful. I cannot remember whether the boat sailed that night or not. I hope it did. I hope the sea was rough. I should not like to think that those boys—the eldest of them cannot have been twenty-one—suffered from indigestion during their leave. Nothing but a stormy crossing would have saved them.