CHAPTER IV
THE ENGLISH SECTOR
The company filed off the boat, and crossing the dock stumbled into formation down the railroad track by the hospital train, and was introduced to a bit of backwash from the drive. Some English wounded were being carried from the train to the boat by German prisoners. We looked curiously at the latter. These were the Huns we were taught to hate, whom we were to kill. They were husky, blonde chaps, in faded greenish gray uniforms, with their little flat caps. They paid scant attention to us, but carried the English very carefully and gently. Maybe the Tommy who walked near by with fixed bayonet had something to do with it. At any rate, I didn’t feel any very lusty rage or horror at them, and though one or two of our men cursed at them under their breath, it didn’t seem at all convincing, but rather forced. Most of the wounded men whose faces I saw glared at us with the usual British “What the devil do you mean by looking at me, sir?” so I suppose they were officers. I don’t blame them for not liking to be stared at. One or two fellows couldn’t help groaning when their stretchers were lifted.
But “C” Co. is moving off, and we swing into column of squads and hike off behind them, our great heavy packs, religiously packed with all the items prescribed for us and much besides, getting heavier and heavier. It was a beautiful, sunny day. Calais was quiet; the cobbled streets apparently peopled only by a few little gamins of both sexes who greeted us with the cries that accompanied us through France—“Souvenir,” “Bis-keet,” “Chocolat.”
We passed through the outskirts of the town and into a dusty, sandy road between green dikes or ramparts dotted with anti-aircraft guns. Then we passed by a group of weather-worn barracks, dusty and dreary, labeled—doubtless by some wag, we thought—“Rest Camp,” surrounded by wire fences.
We cross a canal, turn to the left, and pass along to another—“Rest Camp No. 6.” The leading company turns in at a gate in the wire fence; we see American uniforms and campaign hats; one or two officers in overseas caps, strange looking to us then; then we pass in through the gate and realize that this is our temporary destination.
We were billeted in tents, about 12 feet in diameter—and about 20 men to a tent. Sand everywhere. A hideous open latrine next to the mess hall. After the usual hurly-burly and confusion, we finally kick other companies out of our tents, are in turn kicked out of theirs, and, after a long wait, get—“tea.” Oh, how Americans did love that word!
The officers were lodged in luxury—the five of us had a whole tent, with some boards to sleep on. We ate at the British officers’ mess, where meals and very good beer and wine were served by Waacs. The next thing was an officers’ meeting, and that night a talk by an English major. He cheered us up by telling us that very few ever came back, and narrated several choice tales of sudden death in unusual and gruesome forms. He was apparently bent on removing from our minds any impression that we were in for a pleasure trip. We afterwards heard that he was severely criticised by other British officers for trying to get our wind up first thing.
The next morning our equipment was cut down. We could only keep what we could carry on our backs. The contents of our barrack bags, the extra equipment, the complete outfit that had been subjected to so many inspections, upon which we had turned in reams upon reams of reports at Camp Dix, were ruthlessly collected, dumped into trucks and carted off to Heaven knows where by a Q. M. 2nd Lieutenant. No count was taken, no papers signed. The omniscient powers, who had deviled our lives out to collect this stuff, hadn’t told us anything about this little ceremony. So underwear, socks, extra pairs of shoes were a drug on the market; and we simply couldn’t give the cigarettes away. A great quantity were turned over to the Y. M. C. A. canteen. Of course, we never saw our barrack bags again.
The next day we formed with rifles, belts and bayonets, and marched about four miles out into the flat, flat country; past windmills and hedges and a little estaminet here and there, until we came to a British gas house. Here some English and Scotch sergeants issued English gas masks, and after a couple of hours gas mask drill we went through the gas house, and started back to camp. On our way we stopped by at an ordnance hut where our American Enfields were exchanged for English Enfields, with their stubby looking barrels and heavy sight guards. In our army issuing or exchanging any piece of ordnance property is like getting married, and when a rifle is involved it is like five actions at law and a couple of breach of promise suits. Here we filed in one door, shoved our rifle at a Tommy, beat it for the other door, grabbed an English weapon and bayonet, and the deed was done. I happened to be in command of the battalion that day, and somewhere I suppose the British government has a couple of grubby slips of paper on which I’ve signed for 1,000 gas masks, rifles and bayonets. The transaction would probably have been a fatal blow to a U. S. ordnance officer. Being only a reserve officer of infantry, it seemed to me pretty sensible.
Back in camp we were pretty much left alone, and some there were who lost no time making an acquaintance with the estaminets of Calais. In thirty-six hours we had learned enough English to discourse glibly of “tuppence ha’ penny,” and I even overheard Price offer to “Shoot you a bob,” and somebody promptly took “six penn ’orth of it.” But this was nothing compared to our excursions into the unexplored fields of the long suffering French language. By that evening most of the men seemed quite proficient in a few such indispensable phrases as “Vin rouge tout de suite” or rather “Van rooge toot sweet,” “Encore,” “Combien,” and “Oo la la, ma cherie.”