On the Fringe of the Great Fight

by George Gallie Nasmith

The old Bear Hotel was one of the famous old coaching houses of former days; it had seen much life in ye olden times when it had been the chief stopping place of the bloods of London en route to the famous City of Bath and the historic Pump Room. It was a homey-looking old place, with the usual appearance of comfort pertaining to an English Inn, and the maximum amount of discomfort as judged by our modern standards. The food was good, and the fire places looked bright and cheery, like the bar maid behind the polished bar. It was mostly in looks. No wonder that the British people fortify themselves with copious draughts of stimulants to help keep out the cold. There were some magnificent pieces of old furniture and Sheffield plate in the halls—pieces that many a collector had tried in vain to purchase. My room lit by two candles in earthenware candlesticks; and with a fire in a corner grate—at a shilling a day extra—looked cozy enough but the bedroom furniture was ancient and uncomfortable.

The officers of the Artillery Headquarters lived at the hotel, and I took my meals with them. Col. Burstall, the officer commanding, gave me every assistance and issued orders to his officers to aid in every possible way in the campaign.

My object was to educate all the artillery and cavalry units on the danger of using impure water, on typhus fever and how it was conveyed by lice, and on the value and necessity of anti-typhoid inoculation.

The following day I gave my first talk in a large shed in the town, to about 700 artillery men of the first artillery brigade. It was a unique experience, standing on a great stack of boxes of loaded ammunition beside Colonel Morrison and the medical officer Lt.-Col. McCrae, talking to the brigade drawn up at attention around us. It was an attentive audience; the men had to listen, though as a matter of fact, they really seemed interested. When paraded next day 370 uninoculated were discovered and given the treatment; the few who refused were sent to the base depot and replaced by others.

The campaign begun so successfully was carried on from day to day. Arrangements were made by telephone or wire with the O.C.'s of the various units, to have their men paraded for my lectures. The weather was frequently wet, and the talks were given in farm yards, village squares, churches, schools, hay-lofts, and open fields. In some instances the units, broken up into small sections, were scattered about the country so that I would have to talk to 50 men at once instead of several hundred.

One of the most unique occasions was the Sunday when I addressed the 3rd Artillery brigade, after church parade in the market square of Market Lavingdon. We arrived early and sat and listened while, from the little stone church high up on the hill above us, drifted the sound of soldiers singing. It was unutterably sad to me to hear the full mellow soldier chorus swelling out on "Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching as to War." One felt that the words must have had to all of them a meaning that they never had had before.

Then the brigade formed up and was played by the village band to the market place where they were drawn up into a square with some gun carriages in the centre. When all was ready I mounted a gun carriage and gave my talk with all the earnestness I could muster, while the villagers congregated at one side, stood and gaped, and wondered what it was all about.

My talk had settled down into a 20-minute discourse, and I gave variations of it as often as four times in an afternoon at places 10 miles apart. In this way one saw a good deal of the Wiltshire scenery in the late winter season. It was a never-failing source of wonder and pleasure to me to see the ivy covered banks, the ivy clad trees and the rhododendrons and holly trees in green leaf in the middle of the winter. In the garden at the back of the famous old Elizabethan house in Potterne—a perfect example of the old Tudor timbered style of architecture—cowslips and pansies were in full blossom, and I was told the wild violets were in flower in the woods. The trim, well kept gardens, hedges and fields of the country side and village were a continual delight to a native of Canada where everything in comparison looks so unfinished and in need of trimming. The winter wheat was as green as the new grass of spring time, and many of the meadows also were fairly green. Some shrubs, and in particular an unknown yellow-flowered, leafless vine, were in blossom. I heard afterwards that it was the Jasmine.

During those January days when the sun shone fitfully, some wonderful atmospheric effects were to be seen at times on the plains. For the painter who wanted atmosphere and light and vivid contrasts, that was the place to be, for never did I see elsewhere such wonderful pastel effects; never such vivid-colored banks of spray and fog.

The little straw-thatched farm houses with their small paned windows frequently filled with flowers in bloom, nestling in gardens and shrubberies and orchards, had a more or less comfortable and homey look during the day time; but at dusk when the light was failing and the lamp light shone through the windows, these farm houses took on a wonderfully attractive and romantic appearance. It made you feel like going to the door and asking for a glass of new milk or a cup of cider; and you had visions of blazing fires in the great fireplace, and brass utensils, hanging from the walls; comfy ingle nooks, old beam ceilings and ancient oak furniture; hams suspended from the kitchen ceilings, and old blue willow pattern plates on the walls. That nothing can give a house such a homelike appearance as a thatched roof and leaded panes, I am perfectly convinced.