The War on All Fronts: England's Effort / Letters to an American Friend

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

But on the last morning before we start we mount to the plateau above the reinforcement camp, where the snow lies deep and the wind blows one of the sharpest blasts of the winter. Here are bodies of men going through some of the last refinements of drill before they start for the front; here are trenches of all kinds and patterns, revetted in ways new and old, and planned according to the latest experience brought from the fighting line. The instructors here, as at other training-camps in France, are all men returned from the front. The men to whom they have to give the final touch of training—men so near themselves to the real thing—are impatient of any other sort.

As we stand beside the trenches under the bright sun and piercing wind, looking at the dark lines of British soldiers on the snow, and listening to the explanations of a most keen and courteous officer, one's eyes wander, on the one side, over the great town and port, over the French coast and the distant sea, and on the other side, inland, over the beautiful French landscape with its farms and country houses. Everything one sees is steeped in history, a mingled history, in which England and France up to five centuries ago bore an almost equal share. Now again they are mingled here; all the old enmities buried in a comradeship that goes deeper far than they, a comradeship of the spirit that will surely mould the life of both nations for years to come.

How we grudged the snow and the low-sweeping clouds and the closed motor, on our drive of the next day! I remember little more of it than occasional glimpses of the tall cliffs that stand sentinel along the river, a hasty look at a fine church above a steeply built town, an army lorry stuck deep in the snow-drifts, and finally the quays and ships of another base port. Our escort, Colonel S., pilots us to a pleasant hotel full of officers, mostly English, belonging to the Lines of Communications, with a few poor wives and mothers among them who have come over to nurse their wounded in one or other of the innumerable hospitals of the base.

Before dinner the general commanding the base had found me out and I had told my story.

"Oh, we'll put some notes together for you. We were up most of last night. I dare say we shall be up most of this. But a little more or less doesn't matter." I protested most sincerely. But it is always the busiest men who shoulder the extra burdens; and the notes duly reached me. From them, from the talk of others spending their last ounce of brain and energy in the service of the base, and from the evidence of my own eyes, let me try and draw some general picture of what that service is: Suppose a British officer speaking:

Remember first that every man, every horse, every round of ammunition, every article of clothing and equipment, all the guns and vehicles, and nearly all the food have to be brought across the English Channel to maintain and reinforce the ever-growing British Army, which holds now so important a share of the fighting line in France. The ports of entry are already overtaxed by the civil and military needs of France herself. Imagine how difficult it is—and how the difficulty grows daily with the steady increase of the British Army—to receive, disembark, accommodate, and forward the multitude of men and the masses of material!

You see the khaki in the French streets, the mingling everywhere of French and English; but the ordinary visitor can form no idea of the magnitude of this friendly invasion. There is no formal delimitation of areas or spaces, in docks, or town, or railways. But gradually the observer will realise that the town is honeycombed with the temporary locations of the British Army, which everywhere speckle the map hanging in the office of the Garrison Quartermaster. And let him further visit the place where the long lines of reinforcement, training and hospital camps are installed on open ground, and old England's mighty effort will scarcely hide itself from the least intelligent. Work, efficiency, economy must be the watchwords of a base. Its functions may not be magnificent—but they are war—and war is impossible unless they are rightly carried out.

When we came back from the Loire in September, after our temporary retreat, the British personnel at this place grew from 1,100 to 11,000 in a week. Now there are thousands of troops always passing through, thousands of men in hospital, thousands at work in the docks and storehouses. And let any one who cares for horses go and look at the Remount Depot and the Veterinary Hospitals. The whole treatment of horses in this war has been revolutionised. Look at the cheap, ingenious stables, the comfort produced by the simplest means, the kind quiet handling; look at the Convalescent Horse Depots, the operating theatres, and the pharmacy stores in the Veterinary Hospitals.

As to the troops themselves, every Regiment has its own lines, for its own reinforcements. Good food, clean cooking, civilised dining-rooms, excellent sanitation—the base provides them all. It provides, too, whatever else Tommy Atkins wants, and close at hand; wet and dry canteens, libraries, recreation huts, tea and coffee huts, palatial cinemas, concerts. And what are the results? Excellent behaviour; excellent relations between the British soldier and the French inhabitants; absence of all serious crime.

Then look at the docks. You will see there armies of labourers, and long lines of ships discharging horses, timber, rations, fodder, coal, coke, petrol. Or at the stores and depots. It would take you days to get any idea of the huge quantities of stores, or of the new and ingenious means of space economy and quick distribution. As to the Works Department—camps and depots are put up "while you wait" by the R.E. officers and unskilled military labour. Add to all this the armies of clerks, despatch riders, and motor-cyclists—and the immense hospital personnel—then, if you make any intelligible picture of it in your mind, you will have some idea of what bases like these mean.