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A. J. Dawson
A "Temporary Gentleman" in France
Published by Good Press, 2021
EAN 4064066169633
Table of Contents
THE FIRST LETTER
Here we are at last, "Somewhere in France," and I suppose this will be the first letter you have ever had from your "Temporary Gentleman" which hasn't a stamp on it. It is rather nice to be able to post without stamps, and I hope the Censor will find nothing to object to in what I write. It's hard to know where to begin.
Here we are "at last," I say—we were nearly a year training at home, you know—and I shall not easily forget our coming. It really was a wonderful journey from Salisbury Plain, with never a hitch of any sort or kind, or so much as a buttonstick gone astray. Someone with a pretty good head-piece must arrange these things. At ten minutes to three this morning we were on the parade ground at —— over a thousand strong. At twenty minutes to eleven we marched down the wharf here at ——, well, somewhere in France; and soon after twelve the cook-house bugle went in this camp, high up on a hill outside the town, and we had our first meal in France—less than eight hours from our huts on the Plain; not quite the Front yet, but La Belle France, all the same. I wonder if I should ever have seen it had there been no war?
Our transport, horses, mules, and limbers had gone on ahead by another route. But, you know, the carrying of over a thousand men is no small matter, when you accomplish it silently, without delay, and with all the compact precision of a battalion parade, as this move of ours was managed. Three minutes after our train drew up at the harbour station, over there in England, the four companies, led by Headquarters Staff, and the band (with our regimental hound pacing in front) were marching down the wharf in column of route, with a good swing. There were four gangways, and we filed on board the steamer as if it had been the barrack square. Then off packs and into lifebelts every man; and in ten minutes the Battalion was eating its haversack breakfast ration, and the steamer was nosing out to the open sea, heading for France, the Front, and Glory.
The trip across was a stirring experience in its way too. The wide sea, after all, is just as open to the Boche as to us, and he is pretty well off for killing craft and mines. Yet, although through these long months we have been carrying troops to and fro every day, not once has he been able to check us in the Channel. The way the Navy's done its job is—it's just a miracle of British discipline and efficiency. All across the yellow foam-flecked sea our path was marked out for us like a racecourse, and outside the track we could see the busy little mine-sweepers hustling to and fro at their police work, guarding the highway for the British Army. Not far from us, grim and low, like a greyhound extended, a destroyer slid along: our escort.
The thing thrilled you, like a scene in a play; the quiet Masters of the Sea guarding us on our way to fight the blustering, boastful, would-be stealers of the earth. And from first to last I never heard a single order shouted. There was not a single hint of flurry.
It is about seven hours now since we landed, and I feel as though we had been weeks away already—I suppose because there is so much to see. And yet it doesn't seem very foreign, really; and if only I could remember some of the French we were supposed to learn at school, so as to be able to understand what the people in the street are talking about, it would be just like a fresh bit of England. Although, just a few hours away, with no sea between us, there's the Hun, with his poison gas and his Black Marias and all the rest of the German outfit. Well, we've brought a good chunk of England here since the war began; solid acres of bully beef and barbed wire, condensed milk and galvanised iron, Maconochie rations, small-arm ammunition, biscuits, hand grenades, jam, picks and shovels, cheese, rifles, butter, boots, and pretty well everything else you can think of; all neatly stacked in miles of sheds, and ready for the different units on our Front.
I think the French are glad to see us. They have a kind of a welcoming way with them, in the streets and everywhere, that makes you feel as though, if you're not actually at home, you are on a visit to your nearest relations. A jolly, cheery, kindly