We have not yet reached France, but we have discovered England. It is a small island, and the visitor must be prepared for a primitive civilization—for instance, The Saturday Evening Post costs at least fifteen cents—but it offers a fruitful and interesting field for exploration.
Our debarkation was not attended by any marked popular demonstration. Some of us were inclined to resent the omission as savouring of insular aloofness. But now we know the real reason. We are not supposed to be here. We are a dead secret. The port in which we disembarked has no name. Its inhabitants are plunged into an official trance. Therefore it would hardly be reasonable to expect the insensible population of an anonymous city to proffer a civic welcome to American soldiers who are officially invisible anyway.
However, by a fortunate accident at the moment of our arrival, a band of musicians happened to be discoursing melody on the wharf, including such airs as “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Dixie.” Moreover, a group of British Staff Officers groped their way on board our imperceptible vessel and greeted us cordially. They furthermore presented to every man of us copies of a letter written by King George with his own hand, bidding us welcome to his realm and expressing a wish that it were possible for him to shake hands with each one of us in person. Scores of copies of that letter are now already on their way home to America—the first souvenir of the War.
Thereafter we were packed into a child’s train, drawn by a toy engine, and conveyed at a surprising pace through a country of green fields, cut up into checker-board squares by hedges and narrow lanes, populated mainly by contemplative cows and dotted with red-roofed farms and villages.
Occasionally we passed a camp. The tents were toylike and tidy, like the country. They fitted the landscape, just as a great four-square American Army tent, with its wooden walls and dust-coloured canvas top, fits in with a Texan horizon. In these camps were men in khaki—some drilling, some performing ablutions in buckets, some kicking a football. Mr. Joe McCarthy’s passion for being waved at was at length gratified.
Occasionally we stopped at the station of some town. These were always crowded, as were the trains. The strange little compartments in which the English confine themselves when travelling were packed with humanity—some of it standing up and clinging to the luggage-rack—all of it encumbered with much personal property in the shape of bundles and babies. Evidently the War has cut down transportation. At either end of these trains a seething mob contended, with surprising good temper, around a mountain of heavy baggage piled upon the platform beside the express-van.
“Ain’t they got no Red Caps in this country?” enquired Mr. McCarthy in disparaging tones.
“Their Red Caps are all wearing tin helmets over in France,” replied the well-informed Al Thompson. “Everybody here up to fifty is drafted. Folks have to tote their own grips. I notice quite a few women porters around. I guess their husbands are in France, and these are holding down their jobs for them.”
In which Al spoke no more than the truth.