New! Starting in 2025, I’ve decided to expand the scope from the self-imposed timeline of only posting the work of Greg and Jim from 1919-1948. This will include Jim’s comics from his start in 1910-1918 (where there are more editorial comics), and Greg’s work from 1913-1918, as well as his later work after Jim’s death. This will include Montreal Standard work from 1948-1950 and his Weekend Magazine work until his death in 1977.
The above comic appeared in the Calgary “Morning Albertan” and references locals discussing war strategy from World War 1. Lord Kitchener was British Secretary of State for War at the time. It originally appeared in the Star Weekly on January 16, 1915. It looks a little better in that printing and maintains his signature.
EVERY PASSENGER SHIP that sets out from Canada or Great Britain has stewardesses aboard, taking their chances along with the crew and passengers of being torpedoed, bombed or mined. War has increased their work as well as their danger for into their capable care have come hundreds of babies and young schoolchildren en route from Britain to America.
By Gregory Clark, January 18, 1941.
The Sea Might of Britain – instantly there springs to mind the thought of great gray ships, of captains and tars, of the navy trailing its smoke across the tumbling seas of all the earth.
But in our vision of the sea might of Britain we never remember the women who go down to the sea in ships: So this is to be some little account of the women, most of them in their 30’s up, who at this hour, all over the world, through every danger zone where men go, through submarine-infested zones, facing the same dread perils that the bravest of our navy seamen face, are serving the empire by carrying their share of the great sea tradition.
They are the stewardesses. Every passenger ship that sails the seas these days – and there are a great many of them and nearly all British – has its quota of stewardesses aboard. A good standard 20,000 tonner will carry 25 stewardesses even in these times. To the witless passenger, these women are maidservants in white. To the seasick, they are nurses. To the sea-frightened, they are companions and confidantes. To the discerning, they are a class of women unique in the world of women, and rank, in actual training and character, somewhere near the universally respected sisterhood of nurses. In peacetime, they are looked upon by the world at large as some kind of upper-class servant. But in wartime, when you see them as I have seen them on Canada-bound ships carrying hundreds of children, the rating of a stewardess rises somewhere in the direction of Florence Nightingale herself. Before this war is over, and when stories can be told, there will unquestionably be added to the sea saga of Britain the names of many women.
So far, no outstanding story of a seawoman’s heroism has been reported out of the war. But since every passenger ship that has been torpedoed or lost has had aboard its staff of stewardesses, it requires little imagination to picture the part they have played. Because naturally, the women now serving in the greatly reduced passenger traffic of the seas are the pick of their profession.
In my two crossings of the Atlantic in this war so far, the majority of the stewardesses I encountered were women of Lancashire and the West of England. They were also the wives, daughters, sisters, and in many cases, the widows of seafaring men. In all shipping companies, it is normal practice that when a man in their service dies, especially at sea, the widow is given preferment when she applies for a job as stewardess. A great many of the stewardesses you see on a ship are mothers of families.
In the Submarine Zone
On one crossing of the war Atlantic last winter, I talked with a stewardess of nearly 60 years of age whose entire family. was at sea. She came of a sea-going Liverpool family that had been in ships longer than the family records went. Her husband was lost at sea when she was a young woman of 27 with four children. She at once got a job as stewardess and supported the home while her mother raised the children. At the time I talked with this valiant woman who was trying to suppress her true age for fear of having to retire from the sea, she had two sons in the navy, one son a steward at sea and her only daughter a stewardess, also now at sea, whose husband was in the navy.
And talking to this magnificent, capable and kindly woman made me ashamed of the fears I felt as we plowed through the submarine zone. In two crossings of the Atlantic and no fewer than eight crossings of the English Channel during this war, I must confess that the greatest fear I have felt was on these ships – two days out from Britain either coming or going; and of course every minute of the time spent on the channel. The blitzkrieg in France in May never roused in me a single minute of the tension that grips every nerve for hours and days aboard a ship. German bombers, without any interception by British or French fighters, came and lobbed their terror all about. But the unseen terror that lurks in the sea has me ever on edge. Yet every day, every hour, there are ships plodding those seas around Britain. And in those ships, women, on duty.
In wartime, there is, according to three great steamship companies I have talked to, not the slightest difficulty getting stewardesses for whatever distance the voyage may be, or through whatever war zone.
“In Liverpool and Glasgow,” stated one company executive who outfits the ships, “and in almost every seaport in Britain, there are hundreds and possibly thousands of experienced stewardesses not merely with their names down on the steamship company lists, but calling every few days to try and get themselves aboard. There is no difference between the men and the women of the British navy and merchant marine. Did it ever strike you as funny that we should have no difficulty manning every ship that Britain can build? Then it should not strike you as odd that we should have trouble fending off these women trying to get jobs at sea.”
“A woman’s nervous system,” I submitted, is not as ruggedly wired as a man’s.”
“Rubbish,” said the company man who had one time been a chief steward on ships. “There are no nerves at sea.”
And that is probably right. On one of my crossings, I came on a ship that carried 1,200 passengers and crew, 400 of whom were children. Most of them unaccompanied children or, if accompanied, part of far too large a party for the sole exhausted individual woman or man who had undertaken the task. Little children, most of them, at the most helpless and help-demanding age.
At It Early and Late
Those of us who had travelled the sea knew the capacity of our ship’s boats. We knew, the first hour aboard before we left the pier, just what was fated if we should come to any grief. This crowded ship was no place for any man who was anxious about his own future.
One aisle of six cabins on that ship will forever remain in a picture in my memory. The stewardess who served it and the next adjoining aisle of six cabins was a tall, handsome woman of about 40, with auburn hair. She had bright, humorous, observing eyes. Her whole bearing was that of a spirited woman.
In this row of six cabins were – a young, terribly frightened, thin little woman with two babies, one about two years old, the other an infant of two months. Next cabin, two aged ladies who hardly left their cabin for eight days. Next, a very tidy, masterful, tweedy woman, accustomed to bossing people about, with two very tidy, tweedy, haughty little sons of about eight and ten.
Opposite side, a young woman, possibly a school teacher or governess, a gaunt, startled, doe-eyed little woman of 35 who occupied two cabins with seven children she was shepherding across to Canada. The seven were the most lawless youngsters imaginable, ranging in age from four to about nine. The last of the six cabins was occupied by two government men, technical men, in visiting whom I got my daily picture of that corridor full of riot and grief.
I wish I could tell you what sort of people occupied the adjoining corridor of six cabins that this one stewardess had to attend. It was doubtless much the same.
Let us call the stewardess Baxter. On a little sign in your cabin is given the names of your steward and stewardess. The smart thing, of course, among us upper classes who travel the sea, is to call both the stewardess and the steward by their last name, without prefix. But some of us are green and stay green all our lives, and we always call our stewardess Miss Baxter, much to her amusement. If you just call her Baxter, she can see through you and knows you’re a snob. And if you call her Miss Baxter, you’re a snob also. But since she’s a snob too, and since we’re all snobs, what’s the difference?
So it was a great pleasure to observe Miss Baxter, whose name was probably Mrs., and doubtless had sons in the navy, proving for eight days that at sea there are no nerves.
In the first cabin, when the tiny infant wasn’t squalling in that curious steam whistle tone of a new baby, the two-year-old was bellowing, and the poor, terrified little mother was popping in and out of the cabin every two minutes, carrying things, changing things, heating things, cooling things. Then she took seasick and stayed seasick six days. Miss Baxter took charge.
The two elderly ladies were seasick before they boarded ship. Ever little while you would catch a glimpse of a haggard elderly lady peering from behind the green cabin curtain, weakly crying, “Stewardess, stewardess,” and there were times when everybody, including both the elderly ladies, wished they were dead.
The tweedy woman, the competent, the accustomed, knew how to wring the most out of a stewardess. And she was also, as is characteristic of the feline tribe, anxious to teach her two haughty little boys how to wring the most out of stewardesses. One must become accustomed young, mustn’t one? That woman’s cool, level but excruciatingly penetrating voice cutting through the riot of that aisle will linger in my memory forever. Probably I will grow a prejudice as big as a piano against all women with that kind of voice.
But the spirited Miss Baxter never lost a twig of her red hair. Even her alive, darting eyes never showed sparks. “Yes, me lady,” she would say. And only she and the two government technicians and I shared the joke of that. A deep, smooth “Yes, me lady.” And me lady purred like a cat. And her two little boys thought up some more rude questions to ask Miss Baxter.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, right through the week and the day we were at sea, Miss Baxter never rested. Up at five in the morning and to bed whenever at last she could leave the situation to the elderly, stubborn and plodding night stewardess who was supposed to tend the wants of five or six aisles of cabins. I would be very surprised if Miss Baxter got to bed before midnight any night. But I know she was up at 5. Making tea for the two old ladies. Sweeping, arranging, swabbing, preparing, with the help of the steward on duty for the same series of cabins, for another day of riot.
The woman with the seven children, the governess, was of course completely helpless in two or three days at most. But Miss Baxter seemed to be doing as much for her as for any of the others.
I think she got £1 from the tweedy lady. The government men told me the transaction was very publicly and regally done. What the young woman with the two babies, what the governess or the two elderly women forked over, might have been 10 shillings or what have they? But if Miss Baxter got $1,000 for the trip from the company and gifts of precious gold from her passengers she would have been ill paid.
In Time of Emergency
In case of emergency, the duty of a stewardess is to go at once to the cabins to which she is appointed and see that her passengers are warned and assisted. When the seven blasts of the ship’s whistle – or the thud of explosion causes that anguished instant of silence on a ship, you will see the stewardesses, in their white uniforms and caps, suddenly and very swiftly appearing from every direction.
No running, no uplifted hands in feminine flutter. They set down the tray or whatever they are carrying. They pause to consider which of their charges should come first, in the ever-shifting conditions of the hours of the day at sea.
First they must see that every cabin is warned. If the lights have gone out, they must have their torches. If anybody acts silly they must quiet them.
“And the best trick of all,” admitted one stewardess, “is to ask the panicky one to help you.”
What a feminine trick! When every cabin has been visited and no one left asleep, or helpless with either illness, fear or actual injury, the next thing is to help them get properly clothed and carrying their life-belts.
“Many women,” said another stewardess, “instinctively will not obey the order to wear their heaviest clothes. They always, instinctively, grab for their newest or most fancied clothes. I’ve seen a woman head for the boat deck in her nightgown, clutching the evening gown she had worn that evening to dinner.”
The stewardess has been allotted the same lifeboat as the passengers she is assigned to. After getting them all on their way to the boat deck and their muster stations, she is supposed to follow along and see that they don’t try to dart back for something forgotten. She is supposed to check them over, when she, too, reaches her station, and if any are missing to do what she can to locate them.
They are the last women into the boats.
And when in the boats their duty as stewardess does not finish; it just begins. For they must lend aid, help, comfort and care to the women in the lifeboat and set an example of calmness and courage.
THANKS TO the ship’s stewardess, this little war guest arrives happy and smiling in Canada. Her parents in Britain could not have given her better care on the voyage than did the stewardess in whose care she was placed.
So on the ship I refer to, with the 400 children aboard, you can figure with what sort of courage the 25 stewardesses left their own homes and kissed their own children good-by for just another crossing…
On one of the Canadian passenger liners is the stewardess, Mrs. Riley. I do not know where in England she lives, or any detail of her family. She was at sea when I garnered this story, and the steamship officials did not know her domestic particulars.
But from Mrs. R. Code, of 512 Rideau Rd., Calgary, Alberta, there came to the offices of the steamship company at Montreal a letter addressed as follows:
“To the stewardess who looked after the Tredennick children when crossing on the Duchess of…
“Dear Stewardess:
“Do you remember Joy, Mary and Christopher Tredennick? They have mentioned you many times, and we realize what good care you took of them on board the ship. They got off at Winnipeg, where I met them. They stayed with me for 10 days and then I brought them to Calgary, where my daughter lives and where they are to make their home.
“When Joy reached Winnipeg she was so upset because she had forgotten her purse, but I told her it might be in Calgary, and that is where we found it. Thank you so much for seeing about it. The crossings with all those little people running about must be very trying. I marvel at how you manage at all.
“The children look much better; they are getting so brown and their appetites have quite returned. It will soon be time for the little girls to go to school. They have settled in very well and are very happy in their new home. My daughter never had any children, but she and her husband are very fond of them.
“We all wanted you to know how much we appreciated your care of the children; they send their thanks too.
“Joy wondered whether you knew anything about the bottom part of one of Christopher’s pyjama suits. It is a gray flannelette. I mention this only in case you may be wondering to whom they belong. You must have found it very difficult keeping track of their belongings, and we think you managed it very well. “I remain,
“Very sincerely.
“(Sgd.) G. C. Code
“Mrs. R. Code.”
The steamship company looked up the passenger list and found what cabin the Tredennick children had occupied. Then they checked the duty list and found it was Mrs. Riley. And they sent the letter off to Mrs. Riley, somewhere at sea or in England or Canada-bound; and also kept a copy for me and you.
Then they looked up the parcel of “lost articles” which is always sent ashore to the offices when a ship docks. And sure enough, among the lost articles, was a small pair of gray flannelette pyjama pants.
And they had been all neatly washed and pressed with an iron by Mrs. Riley before she sent them ashore.
So the pyjama pants were sent on to Calgary by the steamship company, and there is Christopher, all safe and sound in Canada, even to the bottom of his pyjamas.
And there is Mrs. Riley, complete with as nice a letter as ever came to an anonymous person. I don’t know, but that letter to Mrs. Riley and what happened in and around it somehow carries a better story of what a stewardess is and does than all my story.
When the ship docks, there is a good day or two days’ work for the stewardesses in attending to the ship’s laundry and cleaning everything up in preparation for the arrival of the passengers for the return trip. But the stewardesses come ashore and usually visit friends. You might be surprised how many Liverpool or Glasgow homes there are in New York or Montreal. Doubtless many a stewardess and many a steward has set up house in a foreign land when he tired of the sea. But they have all got friends to visit and stay with in the few days “off” between voyages. Certain hotels – not the big fashionable ones, but those pleasant, home-like hotels you find in all seaports are favorite hangouts for the stewardesses who have no friends to visit.
One odd thing about stewardesses is this, that they have to present very good credentials and must pass a strict examination before being admitted to the service of the company. With this remarkable result!
“I have never, in 40 years’ experience,” said the official of a steamship company, “known of a stewardess who got a job and made only two or three trips. When they join, they remain for a long period of years.”
Which may explain in some measure the fact that all over the perilous war seas today are British women following the sea and upholding the ancient tradition of our race’s maritime genius.
Once upon a time there were three wise men living in a hole in the ground.
The hole was deep and dark and cold. In the light of one guttering candle the walls of the hole shone wet. And down the steep, rotting, stairway ran little streams of icy water of melted snow. For it was winter, up above this hole in the ground.
In fact, it was Christmas Eve.
And the three wise men crouched close to an old tin pail, which was punched full of holes to be a brazier, and in it burned a feeble fire.
“Cold!” said the first wise man who was wise in the matter of bombs and knobkerries1 and of killing men in the dark.
“Bitter!” said the second, whose wisdom was of maps and places and distances: a man who was never known to be lost in the blackest night In Noman’s Land.
“Cold as Christmas!” added the third, who was wise in the way of food, who had never let himself or his comrades go hungry, but could always find food, no matter how bright the day or how watchful the eyes of quartermasters or French peasants.
“Christmas!” exclaimed the first. “Why, let’s see! Why, to-morrow is Christmas. To-night, boys, is Christmas Eve.”
And the three wise men stared across the brazier silently at each other; so that only the crackle of the feeble fire and the trickle of the icy water down the stairway could be heard.
They stared and stared. Strange expressions came and went in their eyes. Tender expressions. Hard, determined expressions.
“Right now,” said the first man, finally, “my girl will be putting my two little kiddies to bed. And a hard time she is having. They want to stay down stairs to see what all the mysterious bustle is about.”
He paused to put his hands over the little glow of coals. Then added:
“I sent the boy one of them blue French caps, and the girl a doll I got in Aubigny2–“
The second, who had been staring into the glow intently, said softly:
“I haven’t any kids, but my mother will be hanging up one of my old black cashmere socks to-night. She’ll probably fill it with candies and raisins, and send it in my next box. She’s probably now sitting in the red rocking chair, with my picture resting on her knee, humming the way she used to–“
The third wise man, whose eyes were hard and bright, probably thinking of the Christmas dinners he had eaten of old, drew a sharp breath, stared about him at the wet earth walls, at the rotting stairway and the water and filth all around him.
“Christmas!” he cried, in a strained voice. “Think of it! Peace on earth, good will towards men. And here we are, like beasts in our cave, killers, man-hunters, crouching here in this vile, frozen hole until the word is passed and we go out into the night to creep and slay!”
“Steady,” admonished the first.
For the sound of someone slowly descending the rotting wet stairway could be heard.
And into the hole in the ground came a Stranger. He was dressed in plain and mud-spattered uniform. He wore no rank badges or badges of any kind. In fact, he had neither arms nor equipment, which was odd, to say the least, in the forward trenches.
“I heard you talking of Christmas,” he said, “so I just dropped in to wish you the compliments of the season.”
When he removed his helmet, they saw he was fine looking man with kindly face, but pale and weary.
“Thanks,” said the first, moving over. “Edge up to the fire. It ain’t much, but it’s warm, what there is–“
“What unit are you?” asked the second, as the Stranger knelt by the brazier.
“Oh, no particular unit,” replied the Stranger. “I just visit up and down.”
“A padre?” asked the third, respectfully but doubtfully, as he eyed the Stranger’s uniform, which was a private’s, and his fine, gentle face.
“Yes, something of the sort,” replied the Stranger. “You boys were talking about Christmas and home. Go on. Don’t stop for me. I love to hear that sort of thing, once in a while.”
And as he said it, he drew a breath as if in pain; and his face grew whiter.
“Here,” exclaimed the first wise man. “Let me give you a drop of tea. You’re all in.”
And he placed on the brazier his mess tin to warm over a little tea he had left.
“And eat a little, of this,” said the second wise man, handing the stranger a hard army biscuit. “Dry, but it’ll take away that faint feeling.”
“Say, here’s an orange,” said the third, producing a golden fruit from his side pocket. “The last of my loot, but you’re welcome to it.”
The Stranger accepted these gifts with a smile that touched the hearts of the three.
“I am hungry,” he admitted. “And weary. And sick, too, I expect.”
And as he ate and drank, the three wise men continued, with a somewhat more restraint, their talk of Christmas. The Stranger listened eagerly, drinking in each word, each bashful, chuckle of the three.
And at last, the third, reverting defiantly to his original theme, exclaimed:
“But think of it! Christmas, peace on earth; and here we are like wolves in our den! How can we be here, and yet celebrate Christmas? It is unthinkable. What do you say, sir?
And the Stranger, with an expression of pain and a light on his countenance replied:
“The ways of God are hidden from us. But remember this: out of all this suffering, by every divine law, good must come. On Christmases still to be, you men must recall to-night, so that the sacrifice be not forgotten, and a mocking world again betray those who died for ideals.”
The Stranger rose abruptly.
“I must be on my way,” he said. “I have a long way to go to-night.”
And he handed the first wise man the mess tin.
“Hello,” said the first, remarking an ugly scar on the Stranger’s hand. “I see you’ve been wounded.”
“A long time ago,” said the Stranger.
“On the head, too,” observed the second wise man, eyeing a series of small scars on the Stranger’s brow.
“My helmet,” replied the Stranger, “presses heavily.”
And he bade the three good-night.
But as he stepped up the rotting stairway, the three were staring speechless at one another.
“An hungered and ye gave me meat!3” whispered the first. “A stranger, and ye took me in!”
And the three leaped to the foot of the stairway.
But the Stranger had gone.
Editor’s Notes: This is an earlier version of the story published on December 23, 1939, The White Hand.
A knobkerrie is form of wooden club, used mainly in Southern Africa and Eastern Africa. ↩︎
This is from Matthew 25:35 in the Bible. The New International Version has it as: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.” I’m not sure what version has it as “an hungered”. ↩︎
The ghostly figure, with a boost from his two companions, climbed softly over the parapet beside Horse Alley.
Those who care to will remember that Christmas Eve of the year 1917, in France, was a perfect Christmas card.
When “stand-to” was passed along from dugout to dugout, the boys came up out of their deep dens, muffled and yawning, to find the evening glorious with softly falling snow.
Not a breath of wind disturbed the huge, feathery flakes as they dropped, silently twirling, straight to the ground. And the hideous pale chalk of that mangled Hill 70 region was hidden by a pure blanket that lay like a blessing under the soft evening sky.
Snowballs flew. Like a gang of boys released for recess, the clumsy figures emerging from dugout entrances into the trench scuffled with each other, their half-suppressed shouts rising into the silence. From across the white waste of No Man’s Land, from the German trench, came an interested shout:
“Hi!”
As much as to say: “Hi, you Canadians– don’t you know there is a war on?”
Weaving his way through the trench now rapidly filling with men, came the major, second in command of the battalion, on his regular nightly prowl, to oversee the formality of “stand- to.” the regiment’s awakening.
“Merry Christmas!” cried all the troops to him. He was a jovial favorite. A snowball clanked smartly off his tin hat.
“Merry Christmas, boys, dammit!” called the major.
At the junction of the main communication trench to the rear, the major halted. A dozen of the men were gathered there.
“How about Christmas?” said a corporal. “When do we go out, major, and are we going to celebrate this year?”
“Yes,” replied the major. “It’s all fixed. We will be out in Mazingarbe1 in three or four days, and the Christmas dinner will be held in the big red brick mine building there. Orders were sent back to the quartermaster this evening to have tables and benches got together in readiness, and he has been given leave to go back as far as he likes in search of pigs, turkeys, chickens, and so forth!”
“Jake!” muttered the boys, standing about. “Jake-aloo!2“
“We have the usual gift,” said the major, “of Christmas puddings from the Red Cross. There will be roast pork, roast fowl, vegetables, fruit and nuts. I have spent some of the canteen fund on a supply of bottled beer – Bass’s3…”
“Have you got it? Is it got?” asked the corporal, eagerly.
“The canteen sergeant is sitting up, getting no sleep at all, guarding it. One thousand bottles,” said the major.
“That’s one bottle all around and two for corporals,” said the corporal.
The Promised Dinner
“Go on, sir,” said another dark figure in the falling snow. You got as far as fruit and nuts.”
“Well,” said the major, “then will come Christmas pudding hot, with hot sauce on it.”
“Rum sauce?” asked a voice wistfully.
“No. We are saving the rum for punch made hot with lemons, oranges and red wine.”
“Put a little stout in it, major,” said a thick voice, “and it will have a little more body.”
The voice pronounced it “boady.”)
“The sergeants will be the waiters,” went on the major. “The regimental sergeant-major will be the head waiter, and when the punch is served the officers will come in to the big hall and drink the King’s health with the troops.”
“No officers present during the dinner?” exclaimed another.
“Nary a one. And the band will be present throughout the show to play, they having their dinner afterwards with the sergeants.”
A silence fell. The still snow dropped in noiseless clouds.
“When’s this for?” asked a voice.
“The night after we go out – I hope, four days from now,” said the major. “Well, cheerio, and Merry Christmas, boys!”
“Merry Christmas,” said they all.
And the major, with his runner at his heels, crunched away down the white trench.
“I don’t believe it,” said one of the clumsy figures at the trench junction. “It will be just the same old skilly4.”
“No,” said the corporal. “I was here last Christmas and it certainly went over good. Half a platoon to a table. Turkey, roast pork, potatoes, carrots–no, no, them little cabbages, you know–“
“Brussels sprouts.”
“And pickles, fruit; they had oranges, apples and some tinned fruit,” said the corporal. “The padre had decorated the place, the band kept banging away, everybody was merry and the officers came in at the last – I remember Dunc McNeil made the major take a drink out of his glass.”
Again the boys stood silent, thinking of the prospect.
“Well, said one, suddenly. “It’s Christmas Eve!”
“All right,” exclaimed the corporal, recalling his duty. “Get back to your places; here comes the Captain.”
And, except for the spotless coverlet over all that desolate world in which they dwelt, the men went back to the old routine of standing in the trench in lonely pairs, one man up on the firestep5, gazing silently to the east, his partner down in the trench, stamping his feet, hunching his shoulders, and moodily waiting his turn to mount the fire step above.
But the snow, Christmas Eve, seventeen, was enough of a marvel in France, where they have slush, which they called neige – and that precisely describes it – to create an illusion of the Christmas spirit in the hearts of some seventy-five thousand Canadians manning the trenches and the guns, the Vickers and the Stokes, the telephone wires and the supply dumps in their little section of the Great War.
Captain Brings Disturbing News
The captain commanding the company, with his sergeant major, came through the trench. He met the officer of the platoon, and they stood listening.
“Quiet as a church,” said the lieutenant. “No patrols to-night, of course.”
“Yes. One,” replied the captain.
“What! On that white snow? Surely not,” exclaimed the lieutenant. “It couldn’t be done.”
“It’s got to be done,” said the captain. “You know that little concrete box they found, out from Horse Alley?”
“It can’t be done,” said the lieutenant, doggedly.
“There’s a listening set there, they believe.”
“A listening set?”
“The scout officer was out near it last night. He heard talking and sounds as of some one adjusting some sort of an instrument. They think it is some new type of listening set for intercepting either our wire messages or actually overhearing conversations in the trench. Anyway, they are going out to get it to-night.”
“They? Oh, that’s different.”
“Yes,” said the captain. “But we’ve got to give them a covering patrol.”
“Oh, but it’s folly! On this snow? They will be barn door targets.”
“They can sneak up the old trench, right to the concrete shanty. All we need is a couple of men out on the flanks.”
“And they,” said the lieutenant, “will be brought in flat, with their heels dragging. I know that game. For Heaven’s sake!”
“You provide four men to stand by for orders from the scout officer,” said the captain, in his official voice, starting to move off.
“Oh, say….” began the lieutenant. Then he stood alone in the white trench, stabbing his stick into the snow.
The hours wore on. Not a shell disturbed the silence of that Christmas card night. Not a rifle cracked. Faint sounds of singing could be heard far back in the German lines. A couple. of young officers from battalion headquarters returned the singing, as they moved, boisterously, from company headquarters to company headquarters in the maze of the battalion’s trenches, paying Christmas visits to the officers of the companies.
But so spread-out was Christmas in France, there was little evidence of it that might in any of the numerous deep caves in which the thousand soldiers of the battalion lived. Christmas parcels, mailed by loving folks at home in November, kept arriving in batches all through December. And as fast as they came, with their contents of cake, tinned and bottled dainties, shirts, gloves, sleeping caps, they were opened and their prizes disposed of. A few of the boys had saved bits of cake, bottles of peanut butter or pickles, for Christmas Day.
The Proposed Patrol
The men on watch in the trenches may have spent their loneliness dreaming somewhat grimly of other Christmas eves. Those down in the dugouts awaiting their turn on top, for the most part slept huddled in dirty blankets on the bare, damp boards of the dugout floor, in the dim, guttering light of a candle.
At midnight, a slim, quiet young officer from headquarters, known as scout or intelligence officer, the master of maps, the searcher of mysteries, the commander of patrols that required more expert knowledge than the ordinary company patrols could apply, appeared in the front line trench. He had two men with him, members of the battalion scout section, specialists in the job of securing information.
The scout officer sought out the captain of the company, and a messenger was sent to bring the platoon lieutenant with the four men he had been ordered to detail for covering patrol. They all assembled in the captain’s dugout, around the rough table lighted by candles set in empty bottles.
“Horse Alley,” said the scout officer, when all were gathered, “as you know, continues on out from our front line into No Man’s Land, but there it peters out, neglected and fallen in. We have found, as you also know, a mysterious concrete hut, about the size of a piano, out in that old trench. Some of you have been close to it. Last night, with these two scouts here, I got within a few feet of it. There were Germans talking in it, and sounds as if they were handling or adjusting some sort of instrument. We have now been ordered to raid that box. It will be simple. Such wire as there is in front of it can be got over with a piece of matting I have up in the trench. The actual raiding will be done by myself and my two scouts here. But we want to prevent anybody coming up the old trench from the German end, and catching us in the act. There may be – there will likely be – a couple of Heinies in their bit of the old trench, guarding whoever is in the concrete box. You will have to handle them.”
“How?” asked the lieutenant, “do you expect us to work in this white snow? We will show up like ink spots on a table cloth.”
“It is unfortunate,” said the scout officer. “We will be down in the old trench. You will have to get out on the sides, for we can’t use bombs in there. The door of the box is towards the Germans, and bombs would hit us as we work at that door. It will have to be a rifle and bayonet job.”
“Well, to be frank,” said the lieutenant, “I don’t see why we can’t put it off one night; for this snow will ten chances to one be gone tomorrow.”
“And again, it might last for a week,” said the scout officer.
One of the four men brought by the lieutenant, a comical, good-natured farmer by the name of Adair, begged pardon and asked if he might speak.
“Well, excuse me sir,” said he, “but if one man was able to hide himself, what I mean is, camouflage himself, couldn’t he do all the covering necessary for you scouts to do your job?”
“I had thought of camouflage,” said the scout officer. “But I was unable to get a thing.”
Private Adair’s Camouflage
“Well now,” said Adair, reddening and embarrassed, “I have a thing that would cover me from head to foot in white, and if I could get out there on the snow, beside that old trench, I could prevent anybody coming out to disturb you, and nobody could see me, and one man could do it as well as five.”
“What have you got, Adair?” asked the lieutenant.
“Well, sir, it’s just a thing I have; I’d rather not say, sir. But if you think one man, all in white, could get up there and do it, while I’ll do it.”
The scout officer sat thinking.
“All in white?” he said to Adair. “Head and all?”
“I can tie ordinary bandages around my head and boots and rifle,” said Adair.
“Of course!” cried the scout officer. By jove, I believe one man could do it, if he were not visible on the snow. I only counted on two, if it hadn’t been for the snow I admit it is a tough job, out there in the white.”
“May I go and get ready?” asked Adair.
“We’ll meet you in the trench in ten minutes,” said the scout officer, “and see if it will work.”
The group sat making their plans, agreeing that, in perfect silence, the scout officer would himself go first up the old trench, and if there were any signs of Germans on the watch he would rush the box, his two scouts with him, perhaps throw one bomb beyond the box, in doing so, and then swarm around or over it, loot it of whatever it contained, while the covering party would be responsible that nobody got out from the German end to disturb him. It was only to take a moment.
Then they went upstairs. And with two uproariously laughing companions stood Adair, a ghostly figure in snow-white from head to feet. The only dark spot on him was a slit where hist eyes showed.
“Ordinary shell dressing bandages on my head, feet, legs, hands and rifle,” said he in a muffled voice. “The rest is unmentionable.”
His companions chuckled.
“Great!” said the scout officer.
“Let me go out,” said Adair, through the bandages over his mouth, “and look the ground over. If you don’t hear any sound in ten minutes come on out to the trench. I will be up on top, near the box, and when you approach make a sound, and then if there are any watchers to shoot I will do the shooting.”
“You can be seen against the skyline,” warned the officer.
“It’s a gully in front,” replied Adair.
“Look out for our wire,” admonished the scout officer.
And without another word the ghostly figure, with a boost from his two companions, climbed softly over the parapet beside Horse Alley, and stooping over marched straight for Hunland.
“Hope it works,” said the lieutenant, stiffly. The moments passed. Not a sound came from in front. The scout officer was standing up, looking over the top.
“I’ve lost him,” he said. “Can’t see a sign of him.”
After ten full minutes of perfect stillness the scout officer, and his two scouts, with pistols drawn and cocked in their hands, and their roll of matting slung between them, slipped quietly into that piece of Horse Alley which, shallow and broken down, rambled across No Man’s Land to the Germans. A few feet behind followed the lieutenant and his three men.
Grandma Makes Him a Hero
Horse Alley twists, changing direction about every fifteen feet. At the last turn. of all, before coming upon the mysterious concrete box, the lieutenant stamped smartly on the frozen earth.
Instantly, ahead and a little to the right, a shot rang out. And instantly, from the same place, another.
And bending low the scout officer and his two men rounded the curve on the full jump. They had feared a sentry would have been peering over the top of the concrete box, as he had been the night before. That was but one of the chances of a scout officer’s life. But there was no opposition as the three flung, with practised swiftness, their piece of cocoanut matting across a tangle of wire this side of the box. In another instant they were upon and around the concrete box, where, on the far side, they found a little door, letting into the concrete. There, half out of it, was a German, clutching frantically in his arms a square box that seemed to be infinitely precious. Meantime a rifle, somewhere up above and to the right, continued to crack. And muffled shouts and cries came from the direction of the German trench.
“Ah,” said the scout officer, tapping the bended German on the cap with his pistol, “that little box is what we want. Up! Over! See, follow this man. I’ll carry your little box.”
Inside was another German, waiting his turn to get out. In his tight grasp were sundry ear phones and wires, coils and a flat leather case.
“Come out,” said the scout officer. “Make it snappy. I guess you speak English.”
And indeed the German seems to. With the long black nose of the scout officer’s pistol touching his teeth, the second German handed over his armful of gear to the waiting scout and clambered heavily after his comrade over the concrete box towards the Canadian lines.
The scout officer was bending down to take a quick survey of the interior of the box when a voice above him said:
“You had better get back now, there’s a bombing squad coming out.”
Looking up, he saw the ghostly form of Adair standing on the edge of the trench. And at that moment, a German bomb, with its unmistakable rending crash, burst out somewhere on the side.
“Where I was,” said Adair, stepping into the box, “but not where I is.”
He and the lieutenant scurried back down Horse Alley to the waiting group of the lieutenant and his three men.
“Coming down with bombs. Give ’em a few yourself and then come back in,” said the scout officer to the, lieutenant.
A mighty racket of conflicting bombs disturbed the beautiful quiet of that Christmas Eve. But not for long. The Germans found their cave deserted, a couple of dead sentries lying near it, shot through the head by an unseen foe, their two precious engineers with their more precious instruments spirited away. When the news reached High Command, back about fifteen miles, they ordered their guns to fire a little hate. So Christmas morning found a number of large, round, black and grey smears on the pure white garment of the snow.
Adair was the hero of the day.
“The credit,” said Adair, to the officers who were pouring him a friendly libation, “goes to my dear old grandmother, her affection for her soldier grandson, and her total ignorance of a soldier’s life. Her Christmas box first filled me with alarm, then fright, then shame. I hid what it contained in the very bottom of my packsack, wondering how to get rid of it. Now it has been the means of me being a hero. Dear old grandmother!”
And Adair was one of the feature performers at the Christmas banquet of the regiment, four nights later, in the mine building of Mazingarbe, when, amidst a storm of cheers and waving of steaming mugs, he rose on top of a table to make a speech, clad in a snow-white flannel night shirt.
Editor’s Notes: This is another variation of the night shirt story that was also written about in 1929 that was covered here.
Mazingarbe is a is a commune in the Pas-de-Calais area of France. ↩︎
Jake and Jake-aloo is a slang term that means something is excellent or great. ↩︎
Skilly is slang for a thin porridge or soup (usually oatmeal and water flavored with meat). ↩︎
A fire step was built into each trench, cut into its wall some two or three feet from the trench floor. It’s purpose was to enable each occupant of the trench to peer over the side of the trench through the parapet into No Man’s Land in the direction of the enemy trench line. ↩︎
“Jim,” I said, “don’t look now but there’s a rumor starting.”
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, October 21, 1939.
If you wear an Alpine hat or if your hair is cut like a Prussian officer’s, there’s no telling where you will end up
“Did you hear,” asked Jimmie Frise excitedly, “about the two Germans that…”
“Were caught,” I carried on sarcastically, “trying to poison the waterworks and were…”
“Shot,” cried Jimmie, “after they had been made to dig their own graves?”
“Yes,” I informed him, “I heard that one. And I heard the ones about the German with the bottle full of germs, and about the ones that were caught filing the struts of airplanes, and the one about the German that was poisoning candy. I’ve heard all the rumors.”
“Don’t you believe them?” demanded Jim indignantly. “Don’t you believe that there are hundreds of Germans locked up in Canada’s prisons and barracks? Every one of them caught in the act?”
“I suppose,” I retorted, “that it is our patriotic duty to believe rumors.”
“What else is there to believe?” sighed Jim. “When the censorship goes on, the rumors begin.”
“We can still submit to censorship,” I explained, “and not give way to every childish rumor that comes along. I’m willing to bet that every rumor we’ve heard about local people was started either in fun or in spite.”
“I doubt it,” said Jim darkly. “Those Germans.”
“I don’t hold any brief for any German1,” I admitted heartily. “In the last war, I used to read what the statesmen said about us fighting the kaiser and not the German people. And I always used to wonder who the heck that was across No Man’s Land shooting at me and heaving trench mortars over. Now they’re talking about us not fighting the German people but Hitler and his gang. I still think it’s the German people we’re fighting. And we’re fighting them because they’re such dang fools to let themselves be ruled by any old type of gangster that comes along, whether it’s a titled Hohenzollern or a house painter.”
“Now you’re talking,” agreed Jim.
“We’re fighting the German people,” I insisted, “so long as they follow these crackpot leaders who think they can conquer the world. We’ve got to keep fighting them until we teach them that they can’t go and conquer the world, no matter what kind of leader they follow.”
“I’ve known some good guys who came of German blood,” admitted Jim.
“That’s what I’m trying to get at,” I clinched. “Most of these people the rumors are about are the grandsons or great-grandsons of men who left Germany because they couldn’t stand the Germans. They came to this country for the same reasons we did. To escape from oppression or misfortune and to find a new life and new freedom in a new world. Probably these German grandparents left Germany for the same reasons we’re fighting Germany today.”
Growing Like a Snowball
“We had Germans in our battery in the last war,” admitted Jim.
“In my battalion,” I recounted, “we had dozens of men of German descent who were some of the best soldiers we had. I remember one especially. He could even talk German, though his grandmother came out from Germany as a child. One of the last things I ever saw him do was climb up the corner of a pill box at Passchendaele and drop Mills bombs down the air hole on 19 of his blood relations.”
“He was a Canadian all right,” agreed Jim.
“I used to take him out on listening patrols,” I recalled, “and we’d sit outside the German wire listening to them muttering and mumbling in their trench. And he translated.”
“It’s too bad to circulate rumors about people like him,” Jim submitted.
“Most rumors start,” I repeated, “in fun or out of spite. Just for fun, a man tells somebody a ridiculous tale about somebody else they both know. The story is repeated, all in fun. Pretty soon, somebody who doesn’t know the party hears the tale, and away it goes, getting bigger and bigger, like a snowball. All these rumors sooner or later get into the hands of some born story-teller. And he, looking at the rumor, says: ‘What a poor, puny little tale that is.” And he sets to work to make it dramatic, with a punch, with some quality to it. Lo, a rumor is born!”
“I can see that clearly,” said Jim. “In my own time, I’ve improved a story now and then.”
“The spite rumors are worse,” I pointed out. “For example, I know a German who is Canadian to the core. He is an athlete, and he makes his living teaching gymnastics and athletics. There are plenty of second-rate athletes who envy him his job. The war was not a week old before I heard rumors that this man had been caught putting acid on airplane wires up at one of the big airdromes. I helped trace this story back. It took two days. But we traced it right back to a second-rate athlete who thought he had a fair chance of stealing the German’s job, now that war was on.”
“Could Canadians hold jobs in Germany now?” demanded Jim.
“Probably not,” I confessed. “But that is not the point. The point is, this is not Germany. And this German is as Canadian as it is possible to be without being born here. I know lots of Canadians who were born here who are really less Canadian, in their hearts, than plenty of foreigners who have come here because they loved this country.”
“We can’t trust anybody, though, in time of war,” stated Jim. “If we go around with a sappy faith in everybody, we’ll get skunked sure as fate.”
“You can trust human nature, I decreed, “to see to it that no German will get away without some hostility, even to the third and fourth generation. For one of us who won’t believe rumors, there are twenty who will. For one of us who will be rational about foreigners, there are a hundred who will be irrational, who will see mischief in every angle of the foreigner, who will notify police, who will watch and guard. All I suggest is, that a few of us keep alive a little feeble flame of tolerance and common sense, so that it will be ready to stoke up again after the war is over. I’d hate to see the sacred fire die out.”
“But don’t let us get so innocent,” countered Jim, “that we let the country get overrun with Nazis.”
“And when I’m looking for Nazis,” I retorted, “I’m not going to confine my attention to people with German names.”
“Here’s a note from the editor,” said Jim. “He bawls us out for drawing all the soldiers in old-fashioned uniforms. He wants us to draw the troops in the new uniform.”2
“It makes them look like gas-station attendants,” I scoffed.
“They look like skiers,” snorted Jim. “Give me the good old army uniform, every time.”
“Imagine a Highlander done up in baggy pants and a blouse,” I submitted.
“Well, the editor is the editor,” sighed Jim. “And if he wants us to draw the troops in the new-fangled outfit, okay. We’ll have to see what the new uniform looks like.”
To See the New Uniform
“I’ve seen pictures of it,” I stated, “but I haven’t seen any of the boys wearing it.”
“We ought to go out and look around the armories,” suggested Jim.
“We can drop off at Exhibition Park on our way home,” I said.
Which we did. And I took along my little candid camera for some shots of any men we might see in the new uniform, to help Jimmie with his drawings.
But all we saw were squads and platoons of husky lads in the same uniform Jimmie and I wore twenty-five years ago.
“I suppose,” said Jim, “they’re wearing out all the old stuff first. But how about taking some snapshots to show the editor? We can write a nice sarcastic note back to him enclosing photos.”
So I moved about, choosing the best looking squads, and getting the sun behind me, and I shot some long range infinity snaps, and got a few close-ups as the squads marched near us. Jimmie got out his drawing pad and made some sketches, too. Jimmie can always make a soldier look more like a soldier than a soldier really is.
One of the squads that had marched past several times finally halted near us and the boys were standing idly watching us, when a civilian who had been observing us take pictures and draw sketches, hurried over to the sergeant drilling the squad and whispered to him.
I saw the sergeant eyeing us narrowly, and the civilian giving us a very hostile look.
“Jim,” I said, turning aside and trying to hide my camera, “don’t look now, but there’s a rumor starting.”
Jim glanced up and saw the sergeant bending his ear to the agitated civilian. Jim turned his back so as to conceal the drawing pad.
“Let’s go,” I offered.
We started to stroll away.
“Hye, there,” said the sergeant, striding towards us. The civilian trotted eagerly in the sergeant’s wake. “What are you two up to?”
“We’re a couple of newspapermen,” I explained. “We were just making some notes.”
“Look at his hat,” hissed the civilian. He was a baleful individual, with a long suspicious jaw.
“Why, it’s an ordinary alpine model…” I began.
“And look at the other fellow’s hair,” hissed the stranger to the sergeant. “Sticking straight up. Like Hindenburg’s! Why, it’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
“Have you any permission,” demanded the sergeant, cautiously, “to be on this parade ground making pictures and drawing plans?”
“Look,” said Jim. “Do you call those plans?”
The sergeant studied Jim’s sketches and the stranger looked over his shoulder.
“What do you call them?” demanded the sergeant. “Do you call those pictures of us? Is this an insult to the uniform?”
“Those are just rough sketches,” explained Jim, lamely. “Just ideas I can develop later.”
“If I was to show these to my boys,” said the sergeant, “you’d have something rough, all right.”
“Arrest them,” hissed the civilian. “Put them under guard. With bayonets.”
“I’ve a good mind to,” said the sergeant. “I certainly think the little bird has a German hat. And the hair on the tall guy certainly looks foreign to me.”
Suspicious Characters
It was then a movement in the squad caught my eye. One of the boys in the squad was bent double in agony, and three or four others were having a hard time to stand steady like soldiers. As the young man straightened up. I recognized him as a former office boy on The Star, and when he caught my eye, he waved a hand at me in gleeful derision.
“Here, sergeant,” I cried, “there’s a lad knows who we are. That fourth man in the front rank. Call him over.”
“Perkins,” commanded the sergeant.
And the boy fell out and came awkwardly over, saluting with his rifle because he remembered I used to be a major in all the war stories I used to tell the office boys in bygone years.
“Do you know these men?” demanded the sergeant.
“Why,” interrupted the civilian, when he saw Perkins, “this is the lad who called my attention to these two spies.”
“What’s this?” I cried. And the sergeant and Jimmie cried: “How’s that?”
“Why, only 10 minutes ago, over by that tree,” said the civilian, his long, suspicious jaw getting kind of black with blushes, “when this platoon was resting, this very same young man came over to me and pointed out these two spies and asked me to sneak around and see if they weren’t taking snapshots and making drawings. He said I was to tell the sergeant, if I saw that’s what they were doing.”
“Perkins!” said the sergeant.
“Why,” said the civilian, bitterly, “it was even him who pointed out the German hat the little man is wearing and the way the taller man’s hair sticks up.”
“Perkins,” repeated the sergeant sternly for Perkins was just standing there grinning from ear to ear.
“It was just a little joke,” said Perkins. “I know these two gentlemen very well indeed.”
And he introduced us to the sergeant, and the sergeant was very happy to meet us because his wife reads our stuff every week and his little boy wants to be a cartoonist some day, like Jimmie. In fact, the sergeant has a bunch of drawings the kid has done, and he would like to bring them down some day for Jimmie to have a look at.
Meanwhile, the stranger was slowly oozing away, trying to make his escape without being noticed.
“Hey,” called the sergeant, “just a second, mister. Don’t feel bad about this. Come here a minute.”
“No hard feelings,” said Jim. “It was just a joke on all of us.”
“I’ll attend to Perkins,” declared the sergeant grimly. “If there’s anything I hate in a platoon, it’s a witty guy. However, I’ll let him down easy, because he may be the means of me having a famous cartoonist for a son, some day, hey, Mr. Frise?”
“You bet,” said Jim, stowing his drawing pad with its rough notes, so as to spare the sergeant’s feelings.
“I only want to say to you, sir,” said the sergeant, tapping the suspicious civilian on the chest, “that you did quite right, sir. If you see or hear of anything suspicious, it is your duty to call it to the attention of the nearest authority, in this case, me.”
“As a matter of fact, sir,” replied the stranger firmly, “that is what I am doing, hanging around the parade grounds. I’m too old to be of much use to the country, but I can keep my eye peeled for suspicious characters.”
“That’s the idea, sir,” said the sergeant, waving the gentleman on.
So it all worked out just as it should. And we gave young Perkins, the scalawag, all our cigarettes to divvy up with the squad. And as we departed, I glanced back in time to see the sergeant get a handful of them.
Editor’s Note:
“Not to hold any brief” means not to support something. ↩︎
The uniform worn by soldiers in World War 2 was different than the first war. At the very start, there was not enough of the new uniform so some had to wear the old one until they could be produced. ↩︎
“EVERY STEP ON THE WAY in this awful flight was blazing with terror. The path before these refugees was filled with menace… They fled from one in the full knowledge that they were heading into unremitting horror…”
Writing from London after returning there from France and Belgium, Gregory Clark tells the tragic story of the millions of refugees who have been forced to flee from their native lands, from their homes-into an unknown filled with ever-present horror and peril
By Gregory Clark, June 8, 1940.
LONDON
Neither Attila the Hun nor Genghis Khan, who mercilessly exterminated all humanity they met in their paths for the same reason that we might exterminate grasshoppers in the west, ever had pleasure of seeing more human tragedy and disaster than we have seen in Belgium and France in the past few weeks.
The tragedy of the refugees was not fully told at its full tide because of the staggering character of other news. The speed of the German mechanized attack and unexpected twists of events stole the spotlight from what was after all a far greater tragedy–the bloody pilgrimage of several millions of people from their native lands, from their kind homes, into an unknown filled with ever present horror and peril. In what used to be called the Great War there also was tragic pilgrimage of Belgians, but at least they fled with the path fairly open before them.
In this awful flight every step of the way was blazing with terror. The path before them was filled with menace. They fled from the one horror in the full knowledge that they were heading into unremitting horror of the millions who took part, and are still taking part in that awful pilgrimage I feel sure I saw nearly 200,000 of them in the seven days I toiled my way from Brussels to the coast ahead of the rapidly advancing enemy. And this article will detail with such detachment as possible to an emotional man the main features of the picture that now must hang on the walls of humanity’s grand gallery along with the tragic murals of Caesar, Attila, Genghis Khan, Napoleon and all the great names of pride.
Like a Forest Fire
But do not console yourselves as you read this in thinking all this is over. It goes on. Where could these rivers of humanity go? Could they just sink into the ground? At the time of writing, the estimate is that 150,000 of them have perished and so sunk into the ground. But poor splendid France has taken them in their millions and is spreading them somehow all over her already crowded campagne. In my time I have heard my fellow countrymen speak critically of the French, saying they were too canny, too parsimonious, too greedy for money. Never again can I be silent before so vicious an opinion. For I have seen France with absolutely wide arms welcoming to her soil these tortured, laboring, penniless millions. Not with canniness, but with generosity sublime from the highest to the lowest, France has to her great military peril welcomed and made safe the path of these refugees. If France is canny about money it is because so many times each century France has to mother another million of the earth’s forsaken. To be so great a mother France must indeed be thrifty.
Many years ago when I was a boy camping on the Muskosh river in the Georgian bay, I saw a great forest fire. I witnessed that never-to-be-forgotten spectacle of the forest’s secret people, the deer, the birds, the squirrels, the fox, the slow, struggling porcupine fleeing before the crackling horror of fire.
When I stood on the road between Tournai and Brussels and watched the full tide of refugee columns I saw the gentle creatures of the wilds once more.
Here before me on the wide highway was an endless throng, in cars, in huge farm wagons, on bicycles, but far the greatest number just on foot, toiling, not fast but with exhaustion already two or three days old in terrible forward-bending agony. In a forest fire creatures do not race, they flee in little exhausted, bewildered spurts. So with these women and children and men in a never ending flood to the number of millions on all roads.
Allies Show Humanity
I first contacted the tragedy at Arras, where I arrived in the war area by train. The advance guard of the refugees were there–the fairly well off, who had good cars and experience of travel to enable them to make time. These were citizens of Holland and Belgium who had already experience of bombing in the larger cities of their native lands. The night I arrived Arras was bombed for the first time. It was set on fire, and hardly had flames started to leap, before out from hotels, private homes, sheds and shelters where they had taken refuge, emerged the tide of refugees to continue their tragic way.
“We cannot remain,” they told me. “We have already been bombed every place we have stopped since we left our homes. We must be on our way.”
“Where to?” I always asked and without one exception to that question the answer was ever the same. They did not know.
From the moment of my arrival until, along with all the rest of the war correspondents, I was marched by the officers in charge of us aboard a ship at Boulogne, already under intense bomb fire, there was no yard of road, no village however tiny, no field that was not filled with this awful tide of humble humanity. You must realize now, of course, that this refugee flood was a German weapon as coldly calculated and as viciously employed as any fifth column. In despatches to The Daily Star I called it the sixth column, and that describes it. The reason for the random bombing of cities and towns was merely to drive out of those places onto the roads again the pilgrim hordes to block and embarrass the roads for French and British armies. With heart in mouth, I watched from day to day for any sign that our armies might face the problem with an almost lawful necessity and drive the refugees from the roads. God be praised, whatever the net results of this first battle may be, both French and British treated these hopeless people with humanity that never lapsed.
Look at Your Canada
So much for argument of the case. Now for the evidence. If these be too cruel throw the paper aside, get to your feet and look out the window at your beloved Canada, and dedicate yourself to it anew. For there are no non-military objectives any more. Your sweetest child is today a military objective of first rank. For if that tender child be blasted before your eyes so rendering you and all who see it helpless, then surely is not that a military objective of greatest importance?
Near Enghien while watching Junker dive bombers methodically and very technically blasting that little town to radiant hell, I stood on the roadside while the refugee throng, hurried by this fury, went bending by. Two children, possibly three and four years old, hand in hand, their heads wobbling on necks so weary were they, struggled along behind their parents. The father pushed a barrow, the mother carried a great sheet bag of treasures. They got ahead of the toddlers following, when one Junker, having dropped its bombs on Enghien, banked around and followed the road, emptying machine-guns into the crowds. Three great Belgian horses drawing a heavy cart stampeded. Nobody had time to reach the children. They were trampled as little moths and crushed under foot.
I carne through Tournai in the morning and saw in the sunlit old Belgian town dense mobs of refugees trying to buy bread massed in the park and all along the curbs in family and village groups, while old men went foraging in vain. It was like a fair day. But on every face were terror and exhaustion. Eyes were glazed in the fight with sleep, for sleep was too deadly for a mother with their children lying in attitudes of endless weariness across their laps or clasped in their arms. There could be no sleep in this funeral march of a nation for at any minute out of blue summer sky might come howling death.
Seeing a City Die
On my way back through Tournai five hours later, after witnessing the death and destruction of cities and towns, I found that 29 bombers in precise formation had come over at 4.30 in the afternoon and dropped 200 high-explosive bombs at random into the fair-day-thronged town. No place of military importance had been hit; not the station, not the main road junctions in or around the town, no barracks, no defences. Just the streets, the parks, two churches, a convent. And how many died in that carnage of a summer afternoon has not been known.
With heart shut tight and eyes half closed against the horror, we went through Tournai, its flames rising in four great pillars of smoke for the spectacled professors on high in their planes to note and check. In the streets and alleys and doorways the dead had been already laid aside by the doggedly toiling Belgian police, firemen and emergency crews. In one convent four nuns at prayer were killed and 20 wounded and their mother superior, a princess of Belgium 67 years of age, was marshalling what was left of her Benedictine daughters to flee and join the sleepless army on the road.
In Amiens we arrived to find a city with street cars and traffic and busy shops not unlike a decent residential area of Paris. The following morning bombs were falling, and the city was dying under our eyes, with shops and homes deserted. Amiens, crammed with refugees at nightfall, was by morning light a city of the dead, with all its people and all its refugees joined in that strange, slow toiling flood, that slow stampede if such a thing is imaginable. Near Amiens I saw a car laden on the roof with mattresses packed with family and bags and with a dead child tied on a running board seeking a burial place and an hour’s respite for the last rites. Hundreds of young people had bandaged heads and bodies. Older people injured simply gave up and quit the flight.
I saw a company of Belgian boy scouts on bicycles in scout uniform, three of them with bandaged wounds pull up where a bomb had fallen near the road to render first aid to 10 or 15 people laid out in fields. A scoutmaster about 20, who was superintending work of his refugee scouts, said rather hopelessly to me, “The trouble is these poor souls want to die. We haven’t been able to do much good this past week because the minute they get hit they take it for an excuse to go and die under a hedge. Maybe I will be the same when my turn comes.”
I saw this same scoutmaster in Boulogne later and three of his boys were killed in bombing at Arras while working in the inferno there, rescuing wounded. Three boys I had seen stacking bicycles on the roadside to leap to the help of others.
Use Refugees as Screen
The thing to remember amidst all this of which I only give most terribly sketchy glimpses of what I, one man, was able to see at any tiny given instant at one tiny spot in wide France, is that amidst it all, the British and French armies had to try to organize defence against the on-rushing enemy. All savage tribes shove a screen of prisoners ahead of them in attacking. Nobody who witnessed that first terrible week in Belgium and Northern France can ever be persuaded that the Germans did not use with complete heartlessness the screen of millions of refugees behind which to make their attack.
But do not think of the refugees as having found rest now at last. Millions of them are in France and a haven has to be found for them. Millions with only what they could carry of their earthly goods. Few of them without some member of their little flock lost.
They are members now of that ancient and noble brotherhood embracing all races and all ages of the martyrs of innocent and trampled humanity.
Editor’s Note: Greg arrived as a war correspondent just in time to see the early retreats and fall of France during World War 2.
But the sailor just put his knee under me and lifted me loose from the hold I had on the upright bars.
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, May 12, 1945.
“War,” remarked Jimmie Frise, is always followed by a sissy period.”
“Ridiculous,” I asserted.
“The last war,” recalled Jim, “if you remember, was immediately followed by the jazz age. Every war in history has been followed by a sort of reaction, a sort of let-down. You would think the return of the soldiers would result in the whole country being revitalized and masculinized by the reception of so many tough old soldiers back into the community. But it isn’t the fact.”
“I don’t believe it,” I protested.
“Just cast your memory back to the last war,” said Jim. “Don’t you recollect how we slid almost without a ripple back into civilian life? It stands to reason. After five years of army life the boys can’t get too much of the soft things of civilian life. Besides, their womenfolk pamper them. The government, the city fathers, the big business organizations, everybody is making a big fuss about reestablishment. The first thing you know our big, rough, tough soldiers are cuddled right down into civilian life. And you’d never know they had ever left off a firecracker in their lives.
“It won’t be that way this time,” I asserted firmly. “This has been a different war from all others…”1
“Wait and see,” smiled Jim. “Everything is being planned. The skids are being greased. The downy beds are being prepared. The fullest preparations are being made to smother the returning soldier in comfort.”
“After the last war,” I cried, “it was a scandal the way the veteran was treated. Why, don’t you remember the Great War Veterans’ associations2 and the mass meetings to protest the way the poor devils were being mistreated…”
“That was only a handful,” stated Jim. “The vast majority of returned men were skillfully snuggled away, so that the veterans’ associations never could get enough strength to make any real disturbance.”
“The boys will be wiser this time,” I insisted.
“Wait and see,” repeated Jim darkly. “If there is one thing governments fear – and I mean all governments, including city and county councils and provincial governments – it is the return of a solid body of soldiers from a war. Caesar said it was easy to raise an army, but an awful job to disband one. It has been true throughout the centuries. Not only do governments fear the return of a solid block of troops, but business and industry and finance also fear it. Trade unions fear it. Bankers fear it. The whole civilian organization of a nation gets into a panic at the thought of the majority of its first-class manhood returning from war in a solid mass. After a big war, Caesar always used to contrive a series of little wars so that he could disband his army little by little and scatter it to various parts of the empire rather than let it, come home to Rome en masse.”
“Why should they fear the return of the nation’s best manhood?” I demanded indignantly.
“Look,” said Jim. “If you had spent your whole life and a vast amount of money fixing the world up the way you like it, how would you like to see a tidal wave of strong, healthy, hungry, ambitious young men coming sweeping your way? Especially if you felt a sense of immense obligation to those same healthy, hungry, ambitious young men?”
“I think,” I submitted, “that the end of a war ought to be celebrated by a nation-wide epidemic of resignations. There should be set aside, three months after Victory Day, a special day of national resignation, on which all presidents, managers, superintendents and foremen should publicly hand in their resignations to their various businesses. All public men should resign. All mayors, ministers of government, members of parliaments. All directors of businesses. And all these jobs would automatically be given to the logical choice among the returning veterans of the victorious war. Among the generals, brigadiers, colonels and senior officers of the army are men qualified in almost every line of business and every profession to take over. Among the junior officers, sergeant-majors and non-commissioned officers of the three services are young men from practically every kind of business and industry who could step right into the jobs of foreman and superintendent.”
A Conspiracy Afoot
“A fat chance of that,” laughed Jim. “That’s just what I am trying to tell you. It is the fear of all these well-placed and comfortably situated people all over the nation, that constitutes this widespread conspiracy now afoot to bring the soldiers home in dribs and drabs and smother them in kindness and comfort. Not only does nobody want to resign. They want to see 500,000 ex-servicemen come back home and sink into the scheme of things-as-they-are without so much as a ripple.”
“What do you mean by conspiracy?” I inquired sharply.
“Well, all this stuff you read in the papers and hear on the radio,” said Jimmie, “advising people how to handle their boys when they get home. You would think, to listen to these lectures, that all our boys are going to be a little wacky when they get home. Unbalanced. Suffering from their terrible experiences, they are likely to be quite irrational.”
“Well?” I said.
“Don’t you see,” cried Jimmie, “what a lovely scheme that is to discredit the boys when they get home? If they have any disturbing ideas, their families will think they are just a little shell-wacky and soothe them and pay no attention. The madder the boys get, the more their families will try to smother them with kindness and comfort, thinking they are unbalanced.”
“Oho,” I said.
“Suppose the boys,” went on Jim, “have worked out some pretty sound and advanced ideas about what is wrong with the world. They’ve seen Europe. They’ve learned at first hand what a lot of the things that are wrong with the world really consist of. But the minute they try to express these ideas, their families and friends will have been advised to pay no attention – the dear boys are just a little bomb-biffy.”
“What a dirty scheme!” I snorted.
“Just wait,” gloated Jim, “and see the jazz age the real owners of this world will stage for the boys on their return this time. Last war there were no subversive beliefs rampant in the world. You couldn’t call the leaders of the Great War Veterans of the last war bolsheviks. That word hadn’t been popularly introduced in those days. This time there are a lot of subversive ideas loose in the world. So the champions of Things-As-They-Were are pretty worried. They are looking around for names to call the agitators of tomorrow. Bolshevik is all worn out.”
“Jim,” I cried, “we old veterans ought to reorganize and get a big strong association ready to help the boys on their return!”
“Alas,” said Jim, “90 per cent. of us old veterans are long since dug in on the side of Things-As-They-Were. We’re just as worried over the return of all those 500,000 healthy, ambitious young men as anybody else. Rather, than us rebuilding big, powerful, last-war veteran associations, I expect the new returning veterans will simply take over the old associations lock, stock and barrel.”
“Then,” I pointed out, “the boys will have a solid body…”
“Yeah,” sighed Jim, “90 per cent. of them will be snuggled back into civilian life and couldn’t be persuaded to attend a veterans meeting for love or money.”
“What time is it?” I inquired.
“It’s time we were back at the office,” said Jim, glancing at his watch.
So we hustled down the street and boarded the street car.
As has been noticeable lately, there is an ever-increasing number of real soldiers scattered among us. In the downtown streets and in the street cars and buses you can pick out the returned veterans from among the uninitiated soldiers we have been familiar with all these past years.
The veteran soldier has a look all his own. He doesn’t need that colored square patch on his shoulder to identify him. There is all the difference between him and the home-front soldier that there is between a new book and an old book. Or between a brand new squeaky pair of shoes and a lovely old pair of shoes with a sort of deep shine on them. Or between a new hat and an old hat. They are tender to look upon.
Jimmie and I got seats, though the car was crowded. A couple of wounded soldiers got on at Bloor St. coming from the hospital, but we had no chance to give up our seats to them. Ten people were ahead of us. Eight of them were soldiers.
Generous and Gallant
Now, you don’t go offering your seat to a strapping big soldier in apparent perfect health.
But the sight of those other soldiers so promptly jumping up to give their seats to two of the boys with stiff legs sort of warmed us up. We felt generous and gallant.
Down the car aisle came two ladies. They were neither young ladies nor elderly ladies. They were Mrs. In-betweens.
They were all dressed up very smartly, and had those dizzy little handbags that women carry when they are going to a movie rather than shopping. They were obviously out for a time.
And they looked very self-conscious, as only Mrs. In-between can, as they sidled past the several soldiers. For the newly returned soldier can’t seem ever to get enough of an eyeful of his own fair sex here back home.
As the ladies came level with Jimmie and me, they paused in their airy flight. And nobody can float through space quite so noticeably airy as these Mrs. In-betweens, neither young, nor elderly.
I was on the outside. I worked out and stood up. Lifting my hat gallantly, I said:
“Have a seat, lady.”
Jimmie was also squirming out.
The two ladies drew back and stared indignantly at us.
Jimmie and I stood back, to allow the ladies our seat.
They haughtily lifted their shoulders, turned their backs and moved slightly away.
They exchanged a withering glance and their lips curled.
So rather crestfallen, Jimmie and I resumed our seats.
A titter ran through the back end of the car from our fellow-passengers who had seen the incident. And among those in front who turned around to see what was cooking were a big sailor and a large soldier, both of them salty.
At, which moment, one of the two ladies said audibly above the noise of the car:
“I’ve never been so insulted. Two old drips like them…”
The sailor looked back along the car and saw Jimmie and me both blushing. And all our neighbors eyeing us with amusement.
The sailor heaved ho.
“Which done it?” he inquired jovially of the two ladies.
Both ladies flashed a hot and indignant glance down at us.
The sailor winked at the soldier. The two rose up very tall.
The sailor reached over and pushed the stop button on the window frame.
“So,” he said, genially, taking hold of the whole front of my coat, my necktie, collar, Adam’s apple and lapels. “So, this is what goes on while us boys are away to the wars, huh?”
He lifted me up.
There were scattered exclamations from the other passengers around. “What do you mean… how dare…” I said, as I felt myself airborne.
The sailor set me down in front of him and began propelling me towards the door.
“Look here,” I shouted, “what is the meaning…”
But the sailor just put his knee under me and lifted me loose from the hold I had on the upright bars.
I glanced back in dismay, to see if none of the passengers would speak up in my behalf. And I saw the soldier hoisting Jimmie by the necktie.
Ready For the Heave
“A fine state of affairs,” boomed the sailor genially, addressing the car at large, “when two old grandpappies like this can ride around in public insulting ladies.”
“And good-looking bims, too,” said the soldier, cheerily, holding Jimmie at arm’s length.
The car came to a stop. But the sailor was so strange to landlubber’s ways that he did not know you have to stand down on the step to open the door.
He just held me ready, and waited for the door to open.
The soldier right behind had Jim ready, too.
“Listen, sailor,” I said huskily through my neckband up around my ears. “Would you be sport enough to ask those ladies how we insulted them?”
“Get ready, grandpappy,” replied the sailor, waiting for the doors to open.
“Hey,” came a stranger shoving from the rear of the car, “wait a second, boys. These gentlemen didn’t insult anybody….”
At which moment, the motorman, seeing nobody wanted off, started the car.
“Just a minute,” shouted the sailor.
But the car proceeded.
“What’s this?” asked the soldier of the agitated citizen who had come to our aid.
“Listen, all these gentlemen did was offer those ladies their seat,” insisted our champion.
“Go and ask them,” I strangled. “Go on and ask them how we insulted them…”
The sailor let go of me and went back towards the ladies who were the thrilled object of the whole car’s attention.
“You said these birds insulted you, lady,” said the sailor.
“They certainly did,” said they together emphatically.
“What did they say?” asked the sailor grimly.
“They didn’t say anything,” said they. “They offered us their seats. Two old drips like them! Offering us their seats. Us! What do they think we are, taking seats from two old drips old enough to be our grandfathers.”
They perked up their chins and waggled their eyelashes around at the other customers.
“They…. er…. ah….” said the sailor.
The soldier let go of Jimmie.
“Maybe some of you soldiers,” called the sailor generally, “would like to give up your seats to these two ladies?”
Nobody moved. A lot of people laughed.
“Dad,” said the sailor, taking my arm and patting my tie straight and dusting me off, “allow me to return you to your pew.”
He was redder in the face than I. The soldier practically picked Jimmie up in his arms and carried him back to our seat.
Everybody was happy except the two ladies who, after a moment, moved up to the middle door and at the next stop got off, after favoring the whole carload, especially all the soldiers, with haughty and withering glances.
“Dad,” said the big sailor, lingering, “I’m sorry about this. You see, us guys come home full of high ideals. We’re ready to jump right in and do the Lord Galahad act at the first opportunity. When I heard that dame say she was being insulted….”
“It’s okay, son,” I said, “those ladies were at the easy insulted age…”
So for the rest of the run to the office, the sailor and the soldier hung on to the rail of our seat and we talked about this war and the last one, and everybody around leaned and listened with interest.
Editor’s Notes:
Post-War Veteran Re-Establishment was organized in World War 2, as the Department of Veteran’s Affairs was created in 1944, among other activities to avoid the issues after World War 1. ↩︎
More information on the Great War Veterans’ Association can be found here. ↩︎
He hoisted one keg on his shoulder and fled by a roundabout overland route back to the horse lines where the pipers were waiting. “It must be gas,” cried the major excitedly. “Don’t stand there, sergeant. Get four men at once and rush him back to the dressing station.”
By Gregory Clark, January 31, 1931.
In every regiment there are wheels within wheels. The colonel, the adjutant and the regimental sergeant-major are supposed to be the three paramount powers in whose hands separately and collectively the fate of thousand men lies.
But it is not so. Underneath the polished exterior of a regiment of infantry, shunting and wheeling and sloping arms so magnificently to the barked commands of one lone voice, there revolve wheels within wheels. Cliques, intrigues, parties grow and flourish. Some are founded on social distinctions, whereby men who were clerks and schoolmasters separate themselves from those of rougher hand. Others divided themselves on the substantial basis of county, so that men of Grey and Bruce held themselves in league against the men of Frontenac or the Maritimes.
But the greatest wheel of all, the mainspring of the works, was a sort of shabby Masonic brotherhood that scorned all pride of place or social position, and leaped the bounds of company or even the greater bounds of period of service, and consisted of those in the regiment who were ultra hard-boiled1. This secret society existed in every battalion of a thousand men. It was officered by a few old-timers, some of whom ranked as corporals or even as sergeants. Its membership was recruited from all companies, and even the signallers and scouts and the transport section contributed their little quota. If you were tough, you needed not to be a year or even six months with the battalion to be made welcome within the sanctuary of this old-soldiers’ lodge.
Most of the mysteries in any regiment’s history can be attributed to this ancient brotherhood. They held no meeting, they possessed no lodge room. Any estaminet2, any dugout, where two or three of them gathered together, was the holies of holies. These knights errant, who pitted their wits against highly technical fortifications of modern military organization were the heirs to the soldiers of fortune who, until a hundred years ago, roved the world in search of payment for their swords. It stands to reason that soldiers of fortune, like singers and dancers and horsemen born to a saddle, should still survive in this age.
I knew that my Corporal Jimmie Post was one of the high-ups within this secret sodality. Post was dusky, with mocking eyes and a scornful mouth, who sang courage back into his platoon with unspeakable songs, and who was to be found in time of disaster not with the little cliques of the brave, but lending his arrogant voice to comfort the weakest sister in the sector. He was aware of his gift of courage. He could throw it, a sort of blanket, around those of us who needed warmth in the cold gulf of fear. And he employed that mantle, and gloried in it.
Brotherhood’s Senior Warden
Court martials went astray, punishments were deflected, plans went amiss in that clean cold region where colonels, adjutants and regimental sergeant-majors live. And Corporal Jimmie Post knew all about it in advance. If any of my men got into serious trouble, Post would tell me, it would be all right. And it would be. Hard-looking strangers from other companies used to come into my trench and talk with Post. And he would be absent occasionally visiting abroad in the regiment in the line. Whenever I would be orderly officer, I would sometimes come on an estaminet being emptied at last post, where the gathering would adjourn with all the earmarks of a lodge meeting coming to an end; and Post was always in these companies. Post was senior warden, if not better, in some indefinable brotherhood of warriors.
Contrasted with Post, Sergeant Buster Parker had a saintly look. He was only a boy, but he had and still has, though one of his legs is gone, a mouthful of the most wholesome flashing teeth I ever saw in a human head. And, like many other men who had that flashing smile, he was gifted with power over his fellows. Despite the fact that he was a boy, Buster Parker was a sergeant and a crackerjack. And it was hard for me to believe now that if Corporal Jimmie Post was senior warden of that secret society in our regiment, Sergeant Buster Parker was worshipful master.
Captain Hal Franks, quartermaster, Lieutenant Seth Norton, transport officer and I as assistant or rear adjutant, were the officers of the horse lines who at that time were dwelling in comfort and security amidst the mud of Neuville St. Vaast while our regiment was up in the reaches beyond Vimy Ridge. Around us were uncamped the rear details, the drivers, the wagons, the orderly room and record clerks, the brass band and the pipe band, the provost sergeant and the artificers3 who are the tailors, horseshoers, carpenters and so forth; all of us the commissariat details of a regiment in the line, who take up their feed each night, and to whom the regiment comes back for rest when relieved.
We were a bomb-proof lot. Mostly old soldiers, retired to his ignominious region by reason of long service or weak backs. And we understood one another perfectly and got along like a lot of creatures in a barnyard.
There was an outbreak of impetigo4 in the regiment. Nasty skin disease that broke out all over, on the legs, body, hands and face. A few of the more valuable non-commissioned officers were sent out of the line to get themselves doctored up. But for most of the troops, it just meant salve and bandages.
Amongst those sent down to the horse-lines, I was delighted to find my old platoon corporal, Post, from whom I had been separated when I was promoted to the eminence and absurdity of assistant adjutant at the rear.
And a day or two later came down Sergeant Buster Parker, with sores like pennies all over his legs.
We spent some pleasant afternoons together in the thin March sunlight of Neuville St. Vaast and Aux Rietz Corners, talking of old-timers and how soft the war had been in my time as compared with now.
There would be, in all, counting these sick, lame and lazy and all the drivers and bandsmen, about a hundred and fifteen dwelling in the huts and tents of our rear camp.
A Memorable Saturday Night
It was a Saturday night that trouble came.
Out in the March night the wind howled and a chill rain lashed our hut. Captain Franks, Norton and I sat about our table, reading and writing and chatting in the desultory fashion known to rear headquarters. The batmen5 had retired. Our bedrooms were laid out. Captain Franks undressed and was preparing to insert himself into his blankets when, on the wild night air, there sounded a snatch of song.
Captain Franks, the senior, nodded to the door and I went and opened and listened. Through the storm and rain and across the mud I could see the lights burned in the scattered huts, and from them came the murmur of many voices.
And in a rift of the wind there came to us the loud skirl of bagpipes.
“Take a look around,” said Captain Franks. “It’s going on for eleven o’clock.”
I pulled on my rubber boots and raincoat and sloshed out into the night. The nearest hut was the guard-room where the provost sergeant lived in charge of whatever prisoners might be awaiting judgment. There were two men in confinement at that time.
A lone candle guttered in the guard hut, and it was empty. I called the sergeant. I called the guard. And no answer came, save the increasing murmur of song and bagpipes from the huts across the muddy field.
I circled round past the horse lines, where the horses drooped beneath their canvas shelters. I called for the piquet and got no answer. I walked around past the artificers’ shanties past the stores, rapping and calling, and got no reply.
And then I headed for the big huts, all glowing in the storm.
From a discreet distance I stood and looked in an open door. There was a sound of revelry. Some were playing cards. Some were lying and singing. Bagpipes skirled, and someone of the band was mournfully blowing a constantly interrupted solo on a trombone. Presently a drum came into action, and the laughter and tumult grew.
Without disturbing the scene, I returned and informed my senior officer that it was apparently somebody’s birthday. Beyond our hut lay the senior n.c.o.’s hut, where dwelt the quartermaster sergeant and transport sergeant and other nabobs in an isolation almost as grand as our own. I went to their door, and they dressed in hasty garments and went to investigate.
They returned in a few minutes, greatly disturbed.
“The whole outfit is tight6,” said they, standing across the table in the candle light. “Tight as owls. They must have got an awful lot of liquor.”
“Tight!” we cried.
“Everybody, the batmen, the clerks, the bandsmen, everybody,” said the quartermaster sergeant. “The provost sergeant is sitting in there singing with his two prisoners. The pipe band is putting on a concert. They are all jammed in there, and by the look of them it would be crazy to interfere. That Corporal Post and Sergeant Buster Parker and a bunch of others from up the line are raising hell.”
“Go and order the lights out,” said Captain Franks. “Get those men back in the guard room. Have everybody go to their quarters.”
The senior n.c.o.’s retired into the storm.
“There will hell to pay over this,” said the senior officer.
And we sat in silence waiting for the n.c.o.’s to return.
After a long wait they returned.
“The only thing you can do,” said they, “is send a riot call up to the battalion in the line and have them come back. Nothing else will stop them now. They’ve got rum. And I think they must have about ten gallons of it.”
“Are we to sit here and let it go on?” demanded the captain.
“I will crime the whole lot,” said the quarter-master sergeant, “but I think it would only aggravate matters it we tried to interfere now, with no men to back us up.”
We agreed with the n.c.o.’s, and we sat far into the night, listening to the rising and falling hubbub from the huts, in which no man came near us. And sometime in the stilly watches we retired, with maudlin snatches of music and yells faintly in our ears.
“Just a Little Party”
The first batman to rouse us was Bertrand, who supervised me. He wore a grin on his face and he looked much the worse of wear.
“I wouldn’t be in a hurry getting up if I was you,” he said to me, as he started laying out my razor kit.
“Why not?”
“The boys,” said Bertrand, “are in kind of bad shape this morning.”
“We thought we heard some noises last night,” said l. “What was up?”
“A little party,” said Bertrand. “Just a little party.”
“Were Post and Parker in it?”
Bertrand laughed, and withdrew apologetically.
We dressed and went forth to look at the wreckage. It was terrible. Many of the men were still sleeping, though buglers sounded the call to rouse and breakfast right into the hut doors. It was Sunday morning, and no parades until eleven o’clock to the church hut down on the Arras-Bethune road a few hundred yards away7.
Everyone ducked as we appeared. A few who still had a little in them brazenly appeared and it became a sort of duel whether we would approach them or they would approach us. Finally, the provost sergeant, looking extremely seedy, could stand the strain no longer, and he marched across the mud, quite unsteadily, and saluting with extreme care, said to us:
“Everything present and correct, shir.”
Saluted again and snapping about unsteadily, marched back to his guard hut.
We retired into our hut for breakfast.
“We can’t crime the whole camp,” said the captain. “We can only seek out the ringleaders. In any event, it is a scandal, and we are going to look very badly, however we handle it.”
The church parade was terrible. It was a travesty. But with a hundred sullen men still bleary from too much rum, it more than useless, it was unfair to attempt to goad them into resistance which would get them and us into deeper trouble.
After the church parade we held an investigation. My share was to sound out Sergeant Parker and Corporal Post, while the others dealt with the transport and quarters personnel.
“We got a little rum,” admitted Sergeant Parker. Post corroborated this statement.
“Where did get it?”
“Nobody knows where it came from,” they said, with deep interest in the subject. “It just appeared, and then everybody was singing.”
And then suddenly I realized I was up against that secret society within the regiment, as far these two were concerned, and I passed it up. At the hut, I found the captain and Norton. They had got nowhere. They had demanded, wheedled, threatened. But it appeared that the rum just came from nowhere, and nobody could remember who had had it first.
But Captain Franks that afternoon ordered Sergeant Parker and Corporal Post to return to the line for duty with their companies.
And he was right.
The Rum Story Spills Over
The story came in the door with Buster Parker the other day, as he tried to sell me a new car. He is a one-legged, two fisted salesman of Fords now, with his flashing smile undimmed.
Something recalled to mind that far-off March night, and in a minute the story was spilling over us with laughter.
“That episode,” said Buster Parker, sitting here fourteen years after in The Star Weekly office, “is remembered by you as one time you really felt the loss of authority. Some day I must write a book about all the times the officers thought they were in command and weren’t. But now I’ll tell you how we got the rum.”
Parker, with his infected legs, arrived out at the horse lines Saturday afternoon and immediately looked up Corporal Jimmie Post re the matter of the most comfortable flop. Post was living with the pipe band, a little group of ten Scotties, some of could not speak English at all; a distinct and isolated little band of superior beings, a sort of Scottish rite within that brotherhood I speak of, who were very particular who so much as sat down in their midst.
So Parker joined Post as a partner in the pipers’ hospitality.
“Now how about a little drink?” asked Parker, after his kit was settled away.
“None to be had,” said Post.
“How about Clarkie?” asked Buster.
“He’s gone mean since he joined the orderly room,” said Post. “I haven’t had a bottle from him for months.”
Then up spoke Brother Fluellen, who was a bugler by rights, but who had achieved by some devious route a position on the staff of the rear headquarters cook kitchen.
“You know this big ration dump down here below Aux Rietz Corners?” asked Fluellen.
“Yes,” said Sergeant Parker, sharply.
“It’s guarded,” said Cook Fluellen, “by a regular guard of crocks. They march sentry on it, one to each side of the dump. It’s about three hundred yards to a side. Well, the last time I was strolling along I had a look into the dump. It has sort of lanes running all through it. In one the lanes I seen some little six-gallon kegs.”
“Yes,” whispered Sergeant Parker, Corporal Post and all the ten pipers.
“So I says to the sentry, I says, what is in them little kegs back there, brother? And he says you would be surprised. I says, is it vinegar? And he says you would be surprised. And by the way he kept halting on his beat and looking back at me, boys, I know there is rum in them six gallon kegs.”
A great silence fell on the pipers’ hut.
Everybody knew the one-gallon rum jars in which the rum came up to the infantry. But a six-gallon keg!
Sergeant Parker rose to his feet. He looked out the door of the hut. Evening was falling and the March wind and rain made all the world a desolation.
“Corporal Post,” said the sergeant, “and Fluellen, you will parade in proper guard mounting order at eight o’clock to-night. You, corporal, will borrow from somebody a great coat with no stripes on it. Have your buttons shined to the nines, your pouches clean, and wear your tin hats.”
A New Guard for the Dump
Thus, at eight o’clock, after all the world of the horse lines had settled down for the night, there formed up discreetly out of the way of officers, a small parade consisting of a sergeant, corporal and a cook. Post and Fluellen, the pictures of soldiery smartness, stood side by side with rifles at the slope and bayonets fixed. Behind them stood Sergeant Buster Parker, dressed for guard mounting.
Down the deserted La Targette road they marched, in the wind and rain, the sergeant’s voice picking them up, hup, hup, until, half way down the road along the dump they overtook the sentry on duty on that side, who and turned outwards.
“Party, halt,” commanded Sergeant Parker, level with the sentry.
“Right turn,” said the sergeant in the business-like tone of the guard.
“What’s this?” asked the surprised sentry on the dump.
“Relief,” said Parker, surily. “All right, Smith,” to Post, “take post. Fall in, sentry.”
And with alacrity, the honest sentry stepped smartly out and fell in beside Fluellen. What a swell night to get relieved!
And without the slightest hesitation, Parker commanded the party to turn, quick march, and down the road in the rain and the darkness they proceeded.
After marching about hundred yards, and nearing the end of the dump, where another sentry might be standing, Parker halted his party.
He reached over and firmly took the rifle from the sentry.
“Boy,” he said, though the man could have been his father, “you are in bad trouble. You can take your choice, but I think you ought to submit to a beating up, because you will never be to tell your officer that you were relieved.”
“What’s this?” stammered the C3 sentry, suddenly filled with an awful fear that all was not well.
Parker chucked the rifle away in the dark and swung on the sentry. There was a moment’s scuffle while the sergeant and Fluellen mussed and muddied up a figure that struggled frantically on the road.
“There,” said the sergeant, “you look as if you had been assaulted. Now run and call your guard.”
And like rabbits, Parker and Fluellen dashed into the hedges, doubled back and forward, and in a moment were lost in the stormy March night. Meanwhile a bedraggled sentry was on the dead tear to his guard room, desperately trying to make up his mind what to tell the sergeant of the guard as to being relieved or assaulted. And whichever way, it would need a lot of explaining.
Post was like a cat in the dark, anyway. When the sentry party left him standing smartly in the rain, he waited until they got out of earshot and then he quietly walked into the dump, found the kegs exactly where Fluellen had described them, hoisted one to his shoulder, retrieved his rifle and fled by a roundabout overland route back to the horse lines, where the pipers were waiting.
Some New, Terrible Epidemic
The question was: Did the keg really contain rum. It did. They first of all poured the rum into two of Fluellen’s big cooking dixies8, then burned the barrel and inside of a few minutes, the free invitation party to all ranks at the regimental horse lines was under way.
“I,” said Parker, “as chief steward of the party, decanted off two full waterbottles of rum before the party started, and these I buried in the earth in a secret place. So that when Captain Franks ordered me to return to my company up the line, as I thought might happen, I was quite content. I went up that night with the ration wagon. I dug up my two bottles, and then clinging to the back of D company limber I fortified myself from time to time during the journey up, so that by the time I met the D company ration party, I needed help, which was gladly given, for a consideration.
“Among those to whom I confided a share of my rum were my fellow sergeants of D company. And only one of them took too much. Because he is probably by now an elder in the kirk9, I will not mention his true name. We will call him Tram. Anyway, Tram by morning was in bad shape. Rum cannot be trifled with like whiskey or brandy. And he trifled with it. So we lay Tram out on the firestep in the sunlight to boil out.
“He was still there, breathing heavily and noisily, when word came that Major Victor Sifton was on his way round the trenches, making his morning inspection. He would be in D company lines any minute.
“And there was Tram lying, unconscious on the fire step. We tried to lift him to hide him in a dugout, but he fought us fiercely and started to shout.
“‘Get a stretcher,’ said I to Tram’s boys. We laid Tram softly on a stretcher. Then I opened my first aid bandage, broke the iodine ampoule and poured the iodine all over the bandage.
“With this swab, I delicately painted Tram all over his face, neck, hands and wrists, so that he was the most terrible pale yellow-brown color you ever saw. It was the most awful case of jaundice imaginable.
“And I just had the job neatly finished and the swab pitched over the parapet, when around the traverse walked Major Sifton.
“”What’s this!’ cried Major Sifton. ‘It’s poor Tram.’ He was rather fond of Tram.
“I told him Tram had just been suddenly took this way.
“‘It must be gas,’ cried the major, excitedly. ‘Don’t stand there, sergeant. Get four men at once and rush him back to the dressing station.’
“So very smartly,” says Buster Parker, “I rustled out four men, and away went Sergeant Tram, breathing noisily and turned a terrible color.
“At the dressing station they just took one look at him and rushed him for the ambulance. I suppose there they just took one look and rushed him back to the clearing station. And there, if he had not recovered consciousness, they probably put a red ticket on him and made a special flying trip to the base with him.
“Anyway, it was three months before Tram came back to D company. Nobody ever found out about the run and iodine. Tram woke up and wondered where the dickens he was. He felt awful bad, and he was able to wash off some of the iodine. His pulse was bad, his heart and lungs were bad. The doctors were sorry he had lost his bad color, but they put him under special observation for a few days, for fear of some new and terrible epidemic.
“Then he was returned, but Tram was so good a soldier, all the divisional schools and reinforcement depots held him for a few weeks as instructor. So that it was nearly three months before Tram got back to us and heard the full story of his holiday.
“So that,” says Buster Parker, “is the story of one keg of rum, and I tell it to you just to show there was a lot of going on all around us in the war that we knew nothing about.”
Editor’s Notes:
Some one who is hard-boiled is tough and does not show much emotion ↩︎
An estaminet is French for a small café, bar, or bistro, especially a shabby one. ↩︎
An artificer is an appointment held by a member of an armed forces service who is skilled at working on electronic, electrical, electro-mechanical and/or mechanical devices. ↩︎
Impetigo is a common and highly contagious skin infection. ↩︎
A batman in the military is a servant to an officer. This was phased out between the wars. ↩︎
A church parade in the military is a parade by service personnel for the purposes of attending religious services. This was mandatory at the time. ↩︎
A dixie comes from the Hindi word ‘degchi’ meaning a small pot. It consists of two parts, a large lower pan and a top lid that could be used as a frying pan or a serving platter. ↩︎
This would be an elder in the Scottish (Presbyterian) Church. ↩︎
“This is crazy,” cried the sergeant-major. “You’ll be plunked the minute you move.”
“No, I won’t. They won’t see me.”
“They won’t see a balloon!”
By Gregory Clark, December 21, 1929.
“Snow!”
The sergeant-major made it sound like a curse.
To the Canadian corps as a whole, burrowed in for the winter along the Lens front, the snow, fine and crisp, and comforting the ghastly ground swiftly, had a merry touch of home. The sentries, staring out over No Man’s Land, felt the strain relaxing as the white blanket grew. But the sergeant-major of C company of the Central Ontario regiment sensed a panic rising in his bosom.
“Now what the hell’re we going to do!” he groaned, as he thrust his way along the trench to the company officer’s dugout.
At the entrance, fat Captain Fannah was standing in the dark listening to the crisp pellets tinkling on his steel hat.
“Merry Christmas, sawm-major!” he squeaked.
“Sir, this jiggers the works,” said the sergeant-major, jabbing his heels into the bathmat1 by way of salute. “This snow is going to last. No Man’s Land is already white with it. The raid will be impossible.”
“What’s time?” demanded, the pudgy captain. Offhand, Captain Fannah was a type of man you would not like. It took a week to like him. And then you gave him your shirt.
“Nine-fifteen, sir.”
“Raid’s at one ack emma2,” said Captain Fannah. “Plenty of time to dope it out. Reduce the party from the full platoon to ten men. And inform Lieutenant Beaurien that I will take the raid instead of him.”
“Very good, sir. Will I report back to you or stay in the trench?”
“Tell Lieutenant Beaurien to take over trench duty. You come back. I want you tonight, sawm-major.”
The little fat captain spoke querulously3, like a head-waiter busy with a banquet. He struggled, grunting, into the dugout entrance.
The sergeant-major hurried to the left where Eleven Platoon stood, and picking up its sergeant, went on to where the platoon officer, Beaurien, was sitting on the firestep4 discussing the impending raid with a few of his toughest men.
“Sir,” said the sergeant-major, stamping his salute on the frosty bathmats, “here’s good news for most of your platoon. Captain Fannah has ordered plans changed in view of the snow. He will lead the raid himself, and will take only ten men instead of the whole platoon. With his compliments, will you please take command of the trench and act for him until further orders.”
Beaurien was visibly relieved. The good word spread along the trench and down into dugouts where Eleven Platoon lay worrying about the raid and the snow. But the handful of choice spirits who had been gathered round Beaurien gave no sign of joy. A raid is a jumpy business. A battle is one thing, with its tumult and vasty compass. In a battle you feel as if all the world is with you in disaster. But a little raid has a lonesomeness that eats into the core of a man. From the length of a brigade front away, a raid, with its two battery barrage, sounds like a drunken celebration with giant fire crackers. And you wonder about the little handful of lads that are scurrying about in the night beneath that angry vortex of shellfire in the heart of the great tropic stillness of the long No Man’s Land.
In every platoon were a half-dozen hard-boiled characters who invariably found themselves selected for raids, battle patrols, wire-cutting and the more desperate adventures of trench warfare. Five of these, standing about their relieved lieutenant, knew that no matter how the raiding party might be reduced, from thirty-five men to ten, they would be amongst the ten. And they were right.
“Well, troops,” said Beaurien, rising. “I don’t mind telling you I have been glad to sit down ever since this snow started falling. My legs is bad.”
“I’ve Got a Secret”, Said Fannah
Beaurien, with a white and purple ribbon on his tunic and enough bloody exploits to his credit to permit him the luxury of confessing fear, produced his little platoon roster from his pocket.
“You five will go,” he said. “Each of you pick one other man. How’s that? Then there can be no belly-aching about the wrong man being sent.”
The five departed along the trench to select their voluntary partners in desperation.
Raids were the peculiar pride of the Canadians. They had, in a sense, originated them. At any rate, back in Fifteen, they had become aware of a higher rate of individual initiative which existed amongst Canadians and had developed various forms of raids, some with the famous “box” barrage, three walls of shell-fire, the fourth or near wall being left open for the entry of the raiders. Then they went on to the stealth raid in its many forms, where no gunfire disturbed the silence of night, but only the sudden whang of bombs bursting and the muffled crack of pistols held close to the stomachs of surprised sentries in the violated trench. It was a stealth raid that Eleven Platoon was about to pull.
“And how,” Captain Fannah was saying into the little field telephone deep in his candle-lit, coke-gassey dugout, “can we make a stealth raid across a blanket of virgin snow?”
“Fannah,” came back the colonel’s Royal Military College voice, “brigade says we have got to – got to – get a prisoner for identification. I have put it up to you. This snow may last a week. I realize the mess this makes, but, my dear Fannah, you’ve got to figure it out. You can shift the time if you like.”
“One ack emma,” said Captain Fannah, in his pained voice. “They will go at one ack emma, colonel, but I am reducing the party to ten.”
“And Beaurien taking them?”
“Mmmm,” said Fannah, knowing that the crackling telephone, with its lines laid across the waste of mud between his and the colonel’s dugout, six hundred yards back, would convert this sound into an affirmative.
The sergeant-major, sitting on a cartridge-box beside the captain, filched a cigarette out of the captain’s leather case. These two, off parade and when no other ranks were looking, were more than comrades.
“What’s the dope?” asked the sergeant-major, as the phone was laid down.
“The Stokes guns5,” said Fannah, “are going to start right away and make a lot of dark holes out in that white No Man’s Land. They will fire at random around the open and over towards the German trench. Tell Beaurien to get as many of our men as he can risk out of the front line, so that some of the Stokes can fall short, close to our trench. It will look like a warming-up from a new bunch of Stokes just come in.”
“Won’t Fritz be on the lookout?”
“The Stokes will stop at twelve midnight. Starting at one o’clock, I want you to get the boys, one by one, out into the best Stokes holes that occur. Scatter them out from Tivvy Sap.”
“Then what?”
“Then,” said Fannah, sighing deeply and looking guiltily away from his sergeant-major, “when they are in position I go over and go in.”
“What!”
“You know there is a gap in their wire?”
“I found it. But they may have closed it since last night. But what the devil can you do alone?”
“I’ve got a secret,” said Fannah.
“This is crazy,” cried the sergeant-major. “You will be plunked the minute you move.”
“No I won’t. They won’t see me.”
“They won’t see a balloon!”
“It will have to be done as slyly as possible. All I want them for is to cover me coming back. Just plain rifle fire. Some of us are going to get hurt, but I can’t see that can be helped.”
The first faint thump of the Stokes shells vibrated in the dugout and made the candles flicker.
“Get out and watch that Stokes stuff and pick a nice bunch of dark spots for the boys to lie on.”
“I don’t like your scheme,” said the sergeant-major, standing up and looking at his officer grimly. “I think you have gone nuts.”
“They won’t be able to see me,” said Captain Fannah. “I will be all white.”
Disappearing in the Snow
A random fire from Stokes mortars disturbed the night. These softly belching little cannon hurled their whiskey-bottle shells high in the air, to fall and lie a horrid moment on the ground before they went off with a terrific crash. They blew shallow, five-foot-broad patches of darkness on the snow-covered ground. A steady, thickening whirl of snow continued to fall. Machine guns woke up on the German side and chattered about nervously. Flares went up more frequently, to dazzle the new fallen snow. Fritz was on the alert. But the Stokes fire neither increased nor seemed to concentrate. It gave a lazy, casual and poorly-aimed battering to a strip of No Man’s Land for a three-hundred-yard stretch. About eleven o’clock, puzzled by this desultory crashing, the Germans ordered their field guns to fire some retaliation, which cheerfully increased the number of dark spots out in the snow.
As if quelled by this come-back, the Stokes died away at midnight. And peace, oddly spiritualized by the snow, settled over the line. The one point of discord in miles of silence was stilled.
About twelve-thirty the first of the covering party, crouched and swift, skipped out an opening in the Canadian wire and flung himself into one of the shell holes. There was a breathless moment of waiting, but no hint that the figure had been noticed came from the German trench. The bank of barbed wire, which was a filigree of rust and silver, acted as a dark screen for the raiders’ movements. Another figure made the dash, then another. Obviously the German sentries were lulled by the same feeling of security the new fallen snow gave the Canadians. One by one the ten men of Eleven Platoon got into the dark splashes on No Man’s Land where the Stokes and the German field guns had left their scars.
Then appeared queer and ghostly little figure in Eleven Platoon’s trench. His head was swathed in white field bandages. His legs and feet were likewise wrapped tightly in white. Over his arm he carried a large white garment. And from amongst the bandages emerged Captain Fannah’s plaintive voice:
“If any man fires from this trench until I return I will personally lame him!”
Beaurien and the other two lieutenants of C Company were with the captain to see him off. The sergeant-major was the last to go out before Fannah, and he was to go furthest and be closest to the lone white raider when the entry into the German trench was attempted. Shaking hands with the captain, the sergeant-major himself wrapped in bandages in different spots so that he appeared raggedly camouflaged, climbed over the parados6 and disappeared into the silence.
Not a Shot was Fired
Then Captain Fannah shook out the garment he was carrying and drew it over his head. He stood forth absolutely white, save for pencil-wide strip across his eyes.
“No shooting from the trench,” he said again. “The boys in front will do any shooting required.”
And helped by his lieutenants from behind the pudgy captain grunted his way over the parapet. The thick snow fell like feathers.
“I can’t see him already,” said one of the sentries.
Beaurien stood up on the fire-step. Through the haze of falling snow could faintly be seen the scattered dark splotches where the shells had cleared a space. But no movement disclosed the fact that in eleven of them, staggered across towards the German lines, lay eleven men with their rifles cocked and pointed to answer any flash from the enemy trench. And not a trace could be seen of Fannah, though Beaurien knew his stout little officer could not have got far on his dangerous mission.
A long time passed. Suspense during a stealth raid is a sensation never otherwise experienced. The burst of a bomb, the crack of a shot comes like a note of joy to break the tension. But no sound came from white-shrouded No Man’s Land. The usual night silence lay like a desert stillness, and you would never have guessed that within a square mile ten thousand men were standing with their wits wide awake. Only occasionally the German flares mounted and lobbed vividly through the glistening night. But there was no flare-thrower on duty closer than three hundred yards from Eleven Platoon’s front. Beaurien watched for a telltale moving shadow when the flares were falling, but on the shining shadows of No Man’s Land nothing stirred.
After twenty minutes that had seemed hours there was a quiet movement at the German trench, a hundred yards away. Shadows in the misty snowfall, dark figures moving fitfully against the white.
“Psst!” hissed the sentry beside Beaurien. A sergeant came running.
“Figures moving over against the German wire!” he cried in a low voice to Beaurien.
“I see them. Get back to your duty.”
Yet not a shot was fired, no flick of orange pecked in the darkness.
Then quite distinctly, moving slowly towards the Canadian lines, came two figures looming black against the snow. On they came, stumbling, hesitating. After a moment’s intent staring it appeared that they walked with their arms in the air over their heads.
“My God!” said the sentry, removing his safety-catch.
“Keep still, you…”
“They Thought I was a Fairy”
A greenish flare popped into the air opposite, burst and lighted the whole scene in dazzling splendor. The two figures stopped dead still in their tracks, their arms on high, lividly silhouetted against the snow. Beaurien, watching the shadows, not the objects themselves, as an old-timer should, saw what he was looking for, a small, round shadow in rear of the long shadows of the two standing Germans.
A shout came from the German trench. The flare lobbed to the ground and went out with a loud hiss. A shot was fired from the enemy. Instantly two shots from the dark shell holes spat back. The two dark figures against the snow began to run, hands held appealingly high. A machine gun opened from the German side. The shell holes began to spit, spit, redly. The way a typhoon could spring in an instant out of the solitude of No Man’s Land was a miracle not comparable to anything in the temperate zone. A very gale of machine gun fire rose out of the German front and support lines. White flares and red signal flares zipped and lobbed into the sky. The German artillery opened up with its usual smartness. But not a sign or sound came from the Canadian trench. The two tall Germans, guided by some unseen force in rear of them, wriggled and scrambled unhurt into the Canadian trench. A white-robed figure slid pantingly in on their heels. One by one the men in the shell holes leaped and crouched back through their wire gap. Two were wounded in the rush. The sergeant-major was last, a wounded man clinging to him.
In Captain Fannah’s dugout, ten minutes later, while his batman unwound the bandage from his head and legs, the purple-faced company commander stared up sulkily into the face of his colonel.
“I understood,” said the colonel, breathless after his dash up from his headquarters, “that Beaurien was doing this show?”
“No, sir,” said Captain Fannah. “I distinctly told you that I was going.”
“I didn’t hear you. Damn it, Fannah, you have no right to be fooling about on operations of this sort. We need you. You keep out of these things. Let the young fellows do it.”.
“Now tell me,” said the colonel, “how did this thing come off?”
“Very simply. I dressed all in white. I had a covering party in the Stokes holes. When I got close to their wire I heard voices singing softly. I had found the gap they had in their wire for working parties and patrols, and the voices were coming from the trench directly in front of the gap.
“So I crawled in the gap, got my pinnie7 caught in the wire a couple of times and finally going barely an inch at a time, got to where could see these two men here.
“They were singing what seemed to be Christmas carols. I guess the snow affects Germans the way it does us. Anyway, instead of watching the gap as was their duty they were facing each other, revelling in close harmony. They would brake off, argue quietly and then try the passage again, to get it just right. So while they were working out their harmonies I got within a few feet of them. Then I held up my pistol and said distinctly – ‘Bleib still8!'”
“They blibed. All they could see was the pistol about two feet from their heads, suspended in space. I told them, in my good high school German, to put their hands high and with me to come. They thought I was a fairy or a ghost of something. German folklore has other winter characters besides Santa Claus.
“So I digged them in the ribs to show them the visible gun was real. And here they are.”
“But where,” said the colonel, picking up the garment which Fannah had over his head, “did you get this? Why Fannah, it is a flannel nightshirt!”
“That,” said Fannah, “is my dear old mother’s Christmas present to her boy in the trenches, received in the mail.”
Editor’s Notes:
In World War 1, a bathmat is another name for a duckboard. Wooden planking were placed at the bottom of trenches and across other areas of muddy or waterlogged ground to avoid sinking into them. ↩︎
Ack Emma is a British signalmen’s telephone pronunciation of A.M., before noon. So one ack emma is 1 a.m. ↩︎
Querulously means in a complaining way, especially using a weak high voice. ↩︎
A firestep is narrow ledge, located inside a trench, that allows soldiers to see over the parapet. ↩︎
Parados were an elevation of earth behind a fortified place as a protection against attack from the rear, especially a mound along the back of a trench. ↩︎
A pinnie is short for the British word “pinafore,” a term that originally meant “an apron or sleeveless garment”. ↩︎
All the time the doctor kept shaking his head more and more
By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, November 18, 1933.
“I suppose,” said Jimmie Frise, “you have had your old tin hat and uniform out of the moth balls?”
“As a matter of fact, I have,” I confessed. “The world is very uneasy.”
“If they are going to have a war,” said Jim, “I wish they would pull it off soon, while us old birds are still eligible, instead of waiting until our kids are grown up.”
“That’s just what I felt,” I said, “when I went up to the attic and got out the old tunic and Sam Browne belt.”
“How did they fit?” asked Jim.
“Terrible,” I said. “The tunic won’t come within five inches of meeting across my stomach. My breeches don’t fit at all. Anywhere. I’ve used up all my old khaki shirts long ago, of course, fishing and hunting. But I’d have to get a whole new outfit.”
“The tin hat still fits, though,” suggested Jimmie.
“Even the tin hat felt funny,” I admitted.
“Well,” said Jim, “I tried on my old uniform the other night, and I must say I used to be a far better man than I am now.”
“Jimmie,” I reminded him, “you must remember it’s nearly twenty years ago!”
“Oh, no!” cried Jimmie. “Not twenty!”
“In less than one year,” I said, “it will be twenty years since the night you and I stood out in front of the old Star office looking at the bulletin boards, with the crowd jammed right across the road to the old red brick Bank of Commerce building, and out to Yonge St.”
“Twenty years,” breathed Jimmie. “It seems like the year before last.”
“There are young men,” I went on, “who are to-day just the age you and I were that night when we were watching the bulletins announce the declaration of war, who weren’t even born that night!”
“My goodness,” whispered Jim.
“And they’d be the ones to go tearing up University Ave. to enlist,” I said. “And they don’t know a bayonet stud1 from a breech bolt2.”
“Or a bridoon3 from a snaffle,” cut in Jimmie, always butting in with some artillery stuff.
“Imagine them having to learn all over again what we learned,” I said. “And this modern young crowd so cool and sarcastic and nice. They’d hate it.”
“We were kind of innocent at that age,” mused Jimmie.
“And sort of yessir, nossir,” I said. “It was easy to make soldiers out of us. They wouldn’t find it so easy with the twenty-year-olds of to-day.
Getting Ready For the Next War
“If they’re going to have a war,” said Jim, angrily, “let them have it now while we’re still good. It takes two years to learn how to pull on a drag rope4. Why put it up to our kids to have to go through all of that again?”
“Or how to work a patrol in No Man’s Land,” I cut in. “Or how to sleep in a barn, without even straw. Or how to carry a man with his leg off.”
“Or how to build a funk hole5,” came Jimmie, “or make a gun platform on soggy mud, with nothing solid for miles around.”
“Or how close to walk behind a rolling barrage,” I said. “There’s a thing! It takes years to teach the boys how close to walk behind their own barrage, and it costs thousands of lives just to learn that one thing.”
“They ought to have their war now, if they are going to have it,” cried Jimmie, “so that those of us who know the tricks can use them.”
“Jimmie,” I said, “let’s get going. Let’s rejoin the militia and get in shape.”
“What will we join?” demanded Jim. “You were an officer in the infantry and I was only a gunner in the artillery. Let’s go together to this next one.”
“Right!” I cried. “We’ll both join the infantry.”
“We will like the dickens!” exclaimed Jim. “Why should a man want to spend his life sitting in the mud? The artillery’s the thing, with horses to ride, and great big shiny guns slamming in the dark, and interesting things to do every minute of the day and night. I’d die of inaction in the infantry, just sitting around.”
“Where do you get that stuff about sitting around!” I demanded heatedly. “Boy, if it’s action you want….”
“Now listen,” pleaded Jimmie. “If we go back to the infantry, you will be a major or colonel, and I’d have to start at the bottom as a buck private.”
“If you are honest about wanting to take part in a war to end war,” said Jim, levelly, “if you wish to make the world safe for democracy, a world fit for heroes to live in, just to use a few phrases of a former and almost forgotten nobility, then you will be willing to start at bottom again. And you’ll join the artillery with me as a gunner.”
“I suppose it would be only fair,” I confessed. “But I’ll be surrendering a lot of ground I gained in the last war.”
“The last war,” snorted Jimmie. “What a fizzle you made of that! I should think you would be glad to start at the bottom again.”
“All right,” I said, “I’ll join the artillery with you, and you can teach me how to polish a horse.”
“There’ll be a lot of things I can teach you,” said Jimmie, darkly.
For the Good of the Corps
So Jim found out what night the local artillery units would be parading, and taking on men if any.
And about 8 p.m. we went down to the armories on University Ave. One or two infantry regiments were also holding parades that night, and I held Jimmie back while we stood inside the huge wooden paved drill hall and watched the boys forming up.
“Aren’t they splendid, Jimmie?” I cried. “Oh, it’s a shame we are not going into the infantry.”
We watched a company form up. We saw the sergeants and then the lieutenants inspecting.
“There is a slight sort of I-don’t-know-what missing,” I said to Jim. “They haven’t quite got a sort of something that my boys used to have. I can’t say what it is.”
“Wait till you see us gunners,” said Jim.
The officer commanding the company took over and gave a few drill commands.
“Ah,” I said, “now if I were out there in his place, you would hear commands. You would hear a voice. Like a bomb. It would make this place ring.”
“Come on,” said Jimmie, “let’s get on down to the artillery barracks if it’s style you want.”
We walked around the corridors and came to a room with some mystical numbers on the door which Jimmie said meant Field Artillery. Two young men in uniform were sitting at a desk reading some documents. They did not look like infantry. They had a clean, tidy look, and they had white cords over their shoulders that gave them an appearance of chastity, nobility, which is not part of the disposition of infantry. You could not imagine either of these gentlemanly young men charging a stuffed sack with a bayonet and the proper facial expression.
“Good evening,” said Jim.
The two lads looked up at us pleasantly.
“My friend here and I,” said Jim, “are a couple of old soldiers and we thought we would like to join up again. Are you taking any men on?”
“Were you artillery?” asked one of them.
“I was,” said Jim, proudly. “My friend here was infantry, but he is anxious to switch.”
The two high school boys smiled at us and at each other.
“Well,” said the better looking youth, “as a matter of fact, we are fairly well up to strength just now.”
“What we were thinking,” said Jim, sitting down on the corner of their desk, “was that the militia would be rather keen on getting some of us old timers back into harness. For the good of the corps. We know the ropes. It wouldn’t be like taking on new recruits.”
Everything To Unlearn
The two lads looked at us solemnly.
“For instance,” went on Jimmie, earnestly, “you chaps are no doubt thoroughly trained on theory and gunnery. But what do you know about active service conditions? Did either of you ever haul on a drag rope?”
“Which war were you in?” asked one of the slim young men. “The South African or the 1914-1918 affair?”
Jim and I were both astonished.
“The great war,” we said.
“Ah, things have changed a lot since those days,” said the first youth. “You would have to unlearn everything you learned in that old war. Nothing is the same. For example, I suppose you used to fool around with horses?”
Jim nodded speechlessly.
“Of course nowadays,” went on the young man, “everything is mechanized. Guns are drawn by tractors. The personnel travel in fast trucks. Are you a good mechanic?”
Jimmie slid off the corner of the desk.
“Well, well!” he breathed.
I felt extremely sorry for Jim.
“I can’t imagine artillery,” said he, “without horses. Without the stables, the trumpets sounding. Now I suppose you toot the horn on the truck for the boys to fall in. No more ‘stables,’ no more trumpets sounding hoarsely, no more horse lines, pickets, all the romance gone, all the thrill of driving the guns into action, the night roads, the pack trains of ammunition going up the line.”
The two lads smiled pityingly.
“Oh, there’s romance in the guns,” they said. “I suppose you old boys who did your courting in a buggy can’t imagine a modern youth doing any courting worth while in a fast roadster, huh?”
“Jim,” I said quietly, “I told you before you should come into the infantry. Nothing changes there. It is the same to-day as it was in Caesar’s time, or the Duke of Marlborough’s.”
“How fast,” asked one of the bright youths, “did your machine gun shoot in that 1914-1918 show?”
“Sir,” I said, with dignity, taking Jim by the arm, “our Vickers guns fired upwards of four hundred a minute!”
“Well,” laughed the first youth, “even the Vickers is stepped up to 800 a minute now, but modern infantry will be using the new Farquhar-Robertson gun that fires 2,400 shots a minute, air cooled, and you can change a barrel in three seconds!”
“I don’t believe you!” I said.
“Fact,” said both the young soldiers.
“I don’t believe it,” I shouted.
Jim and I stalked from the room.
“Which infantry units will we join?” I asked, as we strode along the corridors filled with striplings.
“Any one at all,” said Jim. “My gosh, going into action in a motor truck in low gear! You can tell an artilleryman in the dark by the smell of gasoline instead of horse!”
“Jimmie,” I said, “it is a soulless machine age, and it was foolish of us not to foresee that in twenty years there would be dynamic chances in such a thing as artillery. But infantry, now! No matter what new inventions they may make in the art of war, they still have to have the foundation, the infantry! The good old gravel crushers. Come on!” From the corridor we emerged into the huge echoing drill shed.
There was the good old infantry!
In mass!
“Shun!” shouted an officer.
“Standat-ICE!” he yelped. “Shun!”
“Slow-ope-UPPS!” he barked.
“Come on, Jimmie,” I cried breathlessly, “the same old stuff! Duke of Wellington! King Canute! Nothing changes. Let’s get into it, the changeless and unchanging…”
We hastened around the walls of the echoing vasty drill hall. We went into an open door.
There were two or three young lieutenants standing, in the room.
“Is this an infantry unit?” I cried.
“Yes,” said they, poising their cigarettes.
“All right,” I exclaimed. “Show us where to sign up. Where’s the orderly room7?”
“I’m in charge of the orderly room,” said the tallest of the lieutenants coolly. “What is it you want?”
“We want to sign on,” I said. “We’re going to get into the game again. We’re two old soldiers and we think it high time we were back in uniform. Give us a couple of attestation blanks8.”
“Hold on,” said the tall lad. “How old are you boys?”
“Pardon me,” said Jim, standing stiffly. “You are talking to an ex-major!”
He indicated me. I stood at attention, but my stomach seemed to be in a different place from where it was the last time I stood at attention. I shifted it around here and there, but I realized the effect was not good.
The three lieutenants put their heads together. They were mere cadets.
“So you want to join up,” said the tall one. “Aren’t you on the reserve?”
“I wish to go in with my friend here,” I said. “And I am going to start at the bottom, again. With him.”
“We will rise together,” said Jim.
Just Two Decrepit Old Men
They put their heads together again. “I think,” said the tall one, “a medical examination might be arranged to-night. If you will just wait, I will go and see if I can locate the medical officer.”
He left us with the two young lieutenants and they chatted with us pleasantly, asking us about the Great War, and we told them various stories that would show how important it is that an army should be filled with old veterans. They seemed very impressed with us, and they both said it would certainly be a comfort to have men of our experience in their regiment.
The tall young officer returned with a fat officer who told us to follow him. The other three lieutenants followed, too.
We went into a small bare room and the medical officer ordered us to strip. It was a chilly little room and we both had the goose flesh by the time we got our shirts off, and I am afraid we made a poor impression on these younger men who had youth on their side. The doctor measured us longways and across, he listened to our hearts, lungs; asked us to cough, made us read printing at ten feet; and all the time he kept shaking his head more and more.
“Both of you have flat feet,” he said, at last. “Your hearts are full of murmurs, your chest expansion is practically gone, your eyesight is defective, you have got fallen diaphragms, one of you is overweight, and the other is underweight, I can see every sign of high blood pressure and hardening of the arteries. Your King and country may want you, boys, but they don’t want you bad.”
They all helped us dress. They assisted us out the door. They saluted us ceremoniously as we staggered out into the drill hall heading for the main exit.
They saluted us ceremoniously as we stalked out into the drill hall heading for the main exit
Down University Ave. we moved, with leaden feet, Jimmie helping to hold me up by my elbow. By the time we got to Queen St. we were just two decrepit old men, with our backs bowed, our cheeks fallen in and our legs bent at the knee so that our poor old feet slid along the pavement, instead of lifting.
“Jimmie,” I said, and my voice was thin and quavering, “even if we could go to war, I don’t think we would enjoy it any more.”
“Not with caterpillars pulling the guns,” said Jim, in a cracked old voice.
“And machine guns,” I whined, “shooting at the rate of 2,400 a minute, not for me!”
“It sounds like a game for younger men,” said Jim.
“They’ve taken all the pleasure out of it,” I yammered.
“Let these young squirts find out about war for themselves,” squeaked Jimmie.
And two old veterans, holding themselves very stiff and marching in step, held a parade all by themselves along Queen St. to the City Hall, where our car was parked.
Editor’s Notes: There were a few of these types of stories, just before the Second World War, where they spoke of signing up again. This is very early, from 1933 rather than others that appeared in 1939 or 1940.
A Bayonet stud is the metal mount that either locks the bayonet onto the weapon or provides a base for the bayonet to rest against, so that when a bayonet cut or thrust is made, the bayonet does not move or slip backwards. ↩︎
A Breech bolt or breech block is the part of the firearm action that closes the breech of a breech loading weapon before or at the moment of firing. ↩︎
A bridoon is a bit (for horses) designed specifically for use in the double bridle, while a snaffle is a simple bit used with a single set of reins. ↩︎
A drag rope is a rope with a short chain and a hook that is attached to an artillery carriage and used in emergencies in dragging it or locking its wheels. ↩︎
A funk hole is another name for a dugout, a concealed place where one can hide in safety. ↩︎
A batman was a soldier assigned to a commissioned officer as a personal servant. These disappeared before World War 2, except for only the most senior officers (so Greg is out of touch here as well). ↩︎
The orderly room is a room used for regimental or company business. ↩︎
Attestation blanks are the forms used to give personal details when signing up. ↩︎