A Padre in France

by George A. Birmingham

As it appeared in the end I might just as well have had three or four more days quietly at H. and started comfortably. I arrived at my destination, a little breathless, to find I was not wanted for a week. My new senior chaplain was greatly surprised to see me. My predecessor had not given up the post I was to fill. There was nothing for me to do and nowhere for me to go. I spent several days, most unprofitably, in B. which I might have spent usefully in H. But this is the way things are done in the army, sometimes; in the Chaplains’ Department generally. And “’Tis but in vain for soldiers to complain.”

I fully expected to make a bad start on my new journey. Having been fussed I was irritable. I had spent a long day trying to do twenty things in a space of time which would barely have sufficed for ten of them. I had been engaged in an intermittent struggle with various authorities for permission to take my servant with me, a matter which my colonel arranged for me in the end.

I was in the worst possible mood when I reached the station from which I had to start—a large shed, very dimly lit, designed for goods traffic, not for passengers. Oddly enough I began to recover my temper the moment I entered the station. I became aware that the whole business of the starting of this great supply train was almost perfectly organised, so well organised that it ran more smoothly, with less noise and agitation, than goes to the nightly starting of the Irish mail from Euston.

The train itself, immensely long, was drawn up the whole length of the station and reached out for a distance unknown to me into the darkness beyond the station. There were passenger coaches and horse waggons. Every waggon was plainly labelled with the number of men to go in it and the name of the unit to which they belonged. The windows of every compartment of the passenger coaches bore the names of four officers. A fool could have been in no doubt about where he had to go. The fussiest traveller could have had no anxiety about finding a seat. Each party of men was drawn up opposite its own part of the train. The men’s packs and arms were on the ground in front of them. They waited the order to take their places. Competent N.C.O.’s with lanterns walked up and down the whole length of the station, ready with advice and help when advice and help were needed.

It was my good fortune that I had to visit in his office the R.T.O., the organising genius of the start. My servant arrived at the last moment, an unexpected traveller for whom no provision had been made. The order which permitted him to accompany me reached him only after I had left the camp. I fully expected to be snubbed, perhaps cursed, by that R.T.O. I was an utterly unimportant traveller. I was upsetting, at the very moment of starting, his thought-out arrangements. He would have been fully justified in treating me with scant courtesy.

I found him cool, collected, complete master of every detail. He was friendly, sympathetic, ready with an instant solution of the difficulty of my servant. He even apologised—surely an unnecessary apology—for the discomfort I was likely to suffer through having to spend the night in a compartment with three other officers. I do not know the name of that R.T.O. I wish I did. I can only hope that his abilities have been recognised and that he is now commander-in-chief of all R.T.O.’s.

The night was not very unpleasant after all. My three fellow-travellers were peaceable men who neither snored nor kicked wildly when asleep. I slumbered profoundly and did not wake till the train came to a standstill on an embankment. There was no obvious reason why the train should have stopped in that particular place for half an hour or why it should have spent another three-quarters of an hour in covering the last mile which separated us from the station. But I know by experience that trains, even in peace time, become very leisurely in approaching that particular city. They seem to wander all round the place before finally settling down.

In peace time, travelling as a tourist, one does not complain. The city is rich in spires and there are nice views to be got from the railway carriage windows. We got rather too much of those views that morning. Even Wordsworth, though he did write an early morning sonnet on Westminster Bridge, would not have cared to meditate on “Houses Asleep” for an hour and a quarter before he got a wash or anything to eat.

I interviewed the R.T.O. when I reached the station and found that I could not continue my journey till 5 o’clock in the afternoon. I was not altogether sorry to have the whole day before me in a town which I had never visited. I recollected that I had a cousin stationed there and made up my mind to rely on him, if I could find him, for entertainment.