“We don’t want no —— parsons here.”
Somebody in a far corner of the room protested mildly.
“Language, language,” he said.
I did not really object much to the language. I had heard the British soldiers’ favourite word too often to be shocked by it. What did hurt and embarrass me was the fact that I was not welcome; and no one made any attempt to reassure me on that point.
Indeed when the same unpleasant fact that I really was not welcome was conveyed to me without obscenity in the next camp and with careful politeness in the third I found it even more disagreeable than it was when the stretcher-bearer called me a —— parson. The officers in the convalescent camp, the centre camp in my charge, were all kindness in their welcome, but the sergeant-major ——. We became fast friends afterwards, but the day we first met he looked me over and decided that I was an inefficient simpleton. Without speaking a word he made his opinion plain to me. He was appallingly efficient himself and I do not think he ever altered his perfectly just opinion of me. But in the end, and long before the end, he did all he could to help me.
The worst of all the snubs waited me in Marlborough Camp, and came from a lady worker, afterwards the dearest and most valued of the many friends I made in France. I shall not soon forget the day I first entered her canteen. She and her fellow-worker, also a valued friend now, did not call me a “—— parson”; but they left me under the impression that I was not wanted there. Her snub, delivered as a lady delivers such things, was the worst of the three.
For my reception in the Stretcher-bearers’ Camp I was prepared.
“You’ll find those fellows a pretty tough crowd,” so some one warned me.
“Those old boys are bad lots,” said some one else. “You’ll not do any good with them.”