A Padre in France

by George A. Birmingham

Royalties, I think, excited us most. We once had a visit from a king, temporarily exiled from his kingdom. He wore the most picturesque clothes I have ever seen off the stage and he was very gracious. All of our most strikingly wounded men—those who wore visible bandages—were paraded for his inspection. He walked down the line, followed by a couple of aides-de-camp, some French officers of high rank, an English general, our C.O., and then the rest of us. Our band played a tune which we hoped was his national anthem. He did not seem to recognise it, so it may not have been the right tune though we had done our best.

He stopped opposite an undersized boy in a Lancashire regiment who had a bandage round his head and a nose blue with cold. The monarch made a remark in his own language. He must have known several other languages—all kings do—but he spoke his own. Perhaps kings have to, in order to show patriotism. An aide-de-camp translated the remark into French. An interpreter retranslated it into English. Somebody repeated it to the Lancashire boy. I dare say he was gratified, but I am sure he did not in the least agree with the king. What his Majesty said was, “How splendid a thing to be wounded in this glorious war!”

It is easy to point a cheap moral to the tale. So kings find pleasure in their peculiar sport. So boys who would much rather be watching football matches at home suffer and are sad. Delirant reges. Plectuntur Achivi.

It is all as old as the hills, and republicans may make the most of it. Yet I think that that king meant what he said, and would have felt the same if the bandage had been round his own head and he had been wearing the uniform of a private soldier. There are a few men in the world who really enjoy fighting, and that king—unless his face utterly belies him—is one of them. Nothing, I imagine, except his great age, kept him out of the battles which his subjects fought.

The Con. Camp deserved the reputation which brought us those flights of distinguished visitors. I may set this down proudly without being suspected of conceit, for I had nothing to do with making the camp what it was. Success in a camp or a battalion depends first on three men—the C.O., the adjutant, and the sergeant-major. We were singularly fortunate in all three.

The next necessity is what the Americans call “team work.” The whole staff must pull together, each member of it knowing and trusting the others. It was so in that camp. The result was fine, smooth-running organisation. No emergency disturbed the working of the camp. No sudden call found the staff unprepared or helpless. So much, I think, any one visiting and inspecting the camp might have seen and appreciated. What a visitor, however intelligent, or an inspector, though very able, would not have discovered was the spirit which inspired the discipline of the camp.

Ours was a medical camp. We flew the Red Cross flag and our C.O. was an officer in the R.A.M.C. Doctors, though they belong to a profession which exists for the purpose of alleviating human suffering, are not always and at all times humane men. Like other men they sometimes fall into the mistake of regarding discipline not as a means but as an end in itself. In civil life the particular kind of discipline which seduces them is called professional etiquette. In the army they become, occasionally, the most bigoted worshippers of red-tape. When that happens a doctor becomes a fanatic more ruthless than an inquisitor of old days.

In the Con. Camp the discipline was good, as good as possible; but our C.O. was a wise man. He never forgot that the camp existed for the purpose of restoring men’s bodies to health and not as an example of the way to make rules work. The spirit of the camp was most excellent. Regulations were never pressed beyond the point at which they were practically of use. Sympathy, the sympathy which man naturally feels for a suffering fellow-man, was not strangled by parasitic growths of red-tape. We had to thank the C.O. and after him the adjutant for this. I met no officers more humane than these two, or more patient with all kinds of weakness and folly in the men with whom they had to deal.

They were well supported by their staff and by the voluntary workers in the two recreation huts run by the Y.M.C.A. and the Catholic Women’s League. The work of the C.W.L. ladies differed a little from that of any recreation hut I had seen before. They made little attempt to cater for the amusement of the men. They discouraged personal friendships between the workers and the men. They aimed at a certain refinement in the equipment and decoration of their hut. They provided food of a superior kind, very nicely served. I think their efforts were appreciated by many men.

On the other hand the workers in the Y.M.C.A. hut there as everywhere made constant efforts to provide entertainments of some kind. Three or four days at least out of every week there was “something on.” Sometimes it was a concert, sometimes a billiard tournament, or a ping-pong tournament, or a competition in draughts or chess. Occasionally, under the management of a lady who specialised in such things, we had a hat-trimming competition, an enormously popular kind of entertainment both for spectators and performers. Every suggestion of a new kind of entertainment was welcomed and great pains were taken to carry it through.