In its summer dress Flanders indeed is very fair. Behind the firing-line the wind and the birds have done the work of man. The fields are all asway with wheat and barley and oats, sprung up of themselves, splashed with great stains of scarlet and blue where poppies and cornflowers nod in the breeze. Nature has scattered with a liberal hand these most English of flowers, suggestive of all that is most beautiful in the English countryside, wherever the sappers’ pick has thrown up the clods of earth, be it from a trench, be it from a grave. In the little gardens about the shattered homesteads, where abandoned equipment, ends of hospital dressings, scattered cartridges, and empty ammunition boxes tell of the war that has passed that way, the scarlet ramblers still scramble with flaming petals athwart the blasted walls, in and out of the empty window-frames. The red roofs of the farms nestling in masses of swaying greenery, the roses in the village gardens, the blooming hedgerows—all this is the beauty of summer England, surest cure for home-sickness and ennui.
Very wisely the military authorities out here have always encouraged the playing of games by the men in their periods of recreation. They have recognized that games keep the men physically fit, and also take their minds off the dangers and hardships of their life at the front. Games keep the men from brooding over the perils they have escaped as over the dangers that may stand before. Games keep them out of mischief, from loafing about the villages and clandestine drinking, which so often leads to unreflected acts. It is in no spirit of frivolity, but in the spirit of the old maxim, “Mens sana in corpore sano,” that our men while away their leisure hours with cricket and football and sing-songs. I am anxious to reaffirm this, to all Englishmen, self-evident truth because (there is no object in cloaking the matter) the French have shown at times a tendency to be scandalized at the recreations of our army in the field. As time has gone on, and they have come to know us even better than before, they have begun to understand that the Englishman, in taking his games with him into the field of war, is only carrying on our great system of national hygiene which has turned out all our great fighters of history from Francis Drake to the Grenfells.
Therefore, fair weather or foul, our army in the field contrives to amuse itself in its leisure hours, sparse though they may be. In winter it played football. The ground was always rough, and sometimes pitted with shell-holes. Four of the black and white posts which the signallers use for laying their field telegraph wires served as goal. But the ball was tight and firm, blown up by some kindly A.S.C. driver with his tyre-pump, the players were hard and keen. I have seen many a good game played not a mile behind the firing-line, always liable to be disturbed by sporadic outbursts of German “frightfulness.”
“Daily Mail” phot.
Cricket at the Front.
Summer brought cricket and rounders. Real cricket bats were seldom seen, but quite a serviceable substitute can be fashioned out of a packing-case, which will also supply both stumps and bails. With a composition ball and willing and eager fielders many excellent games were played in all kinds of surroundings, on every imaginable—and unimaginable—sort of wicket. A brigade of the Indian Cavalry had a rounders team of which great things were said. The Machine Gun School introduced badminton. The war correspondents’ mess invented a weird kind of pseudo-cricket played with a broomstick and a soft ball.
During the winter two concert parties had a great vogue. The one, “The Follies,” was run by the 4th Division, and consisted of army talent assisted by two charming young ladies, one a refugee from Lille, the other, I believe, a daughter of an estaminet keeper at Armentières, where “The Follies” performed several times a week for months. I never heard them, but I am told that their “show” was excellent, and attracted spectators from far down our line. The pièce de résistance was, I believe, the singing of “Sister Susie’s Sewing Shirts for Soldiers” by the young female refugee, a considerable feat if you remember that the young person did not know a word of English. Most of “The Follies” are dead by now, killed in action in the spring. Thus does cruel war break up pleasant partnership. The two young ladies were absorbed in the second concert party, “The Fancies,” which also had a successful career.
In an existence which, save for the spells of fighting, is comparatively monotonous, the weekly baths arranged for the men are quite an event. The danger of vermin as the transmitters of disease aroused the medical authorities, at an early stage of the campaign, to the necessity of providing regular bathing facilities for the men in the firing-line. The numerous large buildings in this part of France afforded ideal wash-houses, and “bathing-stations,” as they are called, are now established in all divisional areas. Here, while the men are enjoying a good scrub-down with plenty of soap in huge vats and tubs filled with hot water, their uniform is disinfected and their soiled shirts, underwear, and socks are replaced by clean ones. On bathing days, which are mostly every day, these bathing-stations are a sight that does the heart good, so delighted are the men to get their bodies clean, to have the feel of clean underwear next their skin. If needs be, the British soldier will put up with any amount of discomfort. But the discomfort he resents most of all is to be deprived of his soap and water. “Cleaning up” morning and evening is as much a rite with our army in the field as the morning and evening prayer of the Moslem.
The installation of these bathing-stations was the idea of a young officer of the R.A.M.C. It frequently happens in our army in the field that, if a man happens on a good idea, he is told to go “ahead with it.” This young doctor’s idea was a very happy one, and he “went ahead with it” to such good purpose that it was copied, and, as I have said, “bathing-stations” were arranged throughout the army. They are now show-places to which the distinguished visitor is invariably conducted. It is whispered that sometimes, when these visits have been arranged at short notice, bathers are not available, so a squad of men, who perhaps had had their bath the day before, are ordered to the bath and are solemnly washed again. Though perhaps on these occasions the clothing and bodies of the men seem surprisingly clean, the visitors to the “star” bathing-station, where personages of note are always conducted, can see “the real thing” in the shape of a lamentable garment preserved between two sheets of glass. It is known as “The Lousy Shirt,” and is an indisputably genuine relic of winter, literally covered with the cremated remains of hundreds of this most unconventional insect. The doctor in charge of the bathing-station declares his intention of presenting the shirt to the United Service Museum after the war.
In many parts of the line, where the German rarely desists from “frightfulness,” the troops waiting their turn in the trenches live entirely in dug-outs, as such houses as are still standing are not safe owing to shell-fire. A dug-out is, as its name implies, a shelter scraped out of the ground, the earth being laid on timbers placed crosswise on top. A dug-out will afford adequate cover against bullets and shrapnel and splinters of shell. It will not as a rule, unless quite exceptionally solid, resist a direct hit by a shell. If a dug-out is struck fair and square in this way, its occupants seldom escape. Some of the dug-outs I have seen were models of neatness and ingenuity. One in particular, used as regimental headquarters in a village that had been totally destroyed—the 2nd Worcesters, the heroes of Gheluvelt, were there when I visited it in June—was reached by a neat flight of wooden steps and had practicable casement windows. Walls and roof were papered in an artistic shade of green, linoleum was on the floor, a mirror and coloured prints of General Joffre and Sir John French hung on the walls, and there were tables and chairs in addition to a camp-bed in a corner. A pigeon-hole with a slide in one wall gave access to a second room, “the office.” The place was dry and well ventilated. It had a great local reputation as the “super-dug-out.” A framed notice on the wall proudly attested the fact that it had been visited by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales.