Eighteen months in the war zone

by Kate John Finzi

May 16th. At a certain canteen recently a splendid, strapping fellow has been much in evidence. A fine all-round sportsman of good breeding, always ready to lend a hand where required, he made himself beloved by men and canteen-workers alike. In particular he endeared himself to the man in charge of the canteen, to whom he would talk of his wife and children and sports prowess in days gone by.

Over his fighting experiences, however, a veil was drawn; and seeing that even to hint a question about it was to bring a look of unutterable terror, of trench-haunted madness into his eyes, the subject was left in abeyance.

Being neither wounded nor sick, nor attached to the regiment at the base, it was usually assumed that he was an officer's servant, which assumption was corroborated by the amount of spare time on his hands, for he seemed always at the canteen.

One day he came to the man in charge with the request that he should find him some remunerative work. Amazed, the civilian asked, "Why? Aren't you drawing your pay?" Then the truth leaked out. Months back, during an infantry advance, in a fit of madness he had boarded a passing ambulance and found himself at the base. In plain words, he was a deserter. For weeks he had lived, evading the canny A.P.M.'s minions by the skin of his teeth, sleeping one night in a barn, the next in a railway truck, the third on the sands, and always feeding at the canteen. A dozen times he had thought the game was up. The strain was beginning to tell, and now that he was down to his last sou there was nothing left for it but to give himself up or cut and run.

Well, for the sake of the wife he was going to risk it.

He did so. But the authorities who scrutinise those little seemingly useless papers on the boat were too sharp for him, and he passed for ever out of the life of the only civilian who knew his story—to be exact, out of the lives of all his friends.

And is not slackness at home all the more reprehensible when one realises the penalties to which men O.A.S. are liable? Is it to be wondered at that we in France would gladly hear the death-sentence passed on every one of those traitor strikers?

May 17th. Far, far out, the fisher-folk, their hair and faces white with brine, are shrimping. So far out is the tide that they are mere dark specks against the red glow. Farther along the coast a number of A.V.C. officers from remount camps are enjoying a chukker of polo on the firm sands. The sound of heavy firing that had been so audible during the afternoon in the Dover-Calais direction has ceased. The friends who had come out to visit the invalids have departed by the last tram, on which a tall Sikh was busy teaching the French conductor to talk English. The result may be better pictured than described. When they set to work to do a little bartering, ransacking each other's pockets for souvenirs, exchanging two pencils for a cigarette, a penny for a halfpenny, it was interesting to note that the businesslike Frenchman—the bargainer par excellence—had met his match at last.

And to-morrow a month's sick leave in Blighty! Baths unlimited! Beef that is beef and not horse! Lamb that is lamb and not goat! Every fibre aches for civilisation.