Chapter 9 MR. THOMAS ATKINS AND THE FRENCH

As I have already stated, Aire remained our railhead for some months, and during the first week of August 1915 we left it.

What sorrow our departure caused! As the long procession of lorries pulled out through the narrow pavé streets for the last time, the civilian population turned out en masse and was literally in tears! It is a noticeable fact that when British troops arrive to take up their quarters in any town or village for the first time they are occasionally, but by no means always, looked upon with a certain amount of suspicion and distrustfulness by the civilian inhabitants, who sometimes seem disinclined to offer facilities in the way of accommodation and so forth. I suppose this is not to be wondered at, and it would be curious to see what reception Allied foreign troops would receive in an English village. After a few days, however, they find Tommy is a good fellow and spends freely what little money he has. The shopkeepers in the little towns behind the line are as fortunate as the inhabitants of the invaded towns on the other side of the line are unfortunate. Among others, the debitants de boissons, or Estaminet keepers, do a roaring trade in such drinks as they are allowed to sell to the troops-very "small beer," and the usual red and white wines. Occasionally, in some places, one observes a small notice to the effect that "English Beer and Stout are sold here." The popular winter drink of 1914, café-rhum, came to an end when the veto was put on the sale of spirits to the troops, and it is impossible now to buy even a whisky and soda, though I have heard of one being produced by the gar?on at a certain café on being asked for a vin blanc Ecossé.

It is wonderful how Mr. Thomas Atkins, always adaptable, has mastered the French language, or rather, I should say, has compounded a language, half-French and half-English, but which nevertheless enables him to make himself understood and thoroughly at home in the most trying circumstances. As a rule, he is able to undertake the most complicated shopping with the greatest of ease, and carry on long conversations and arguments with the vendor meanwhile. There are, however, exceptions to every rule. A friend of mine, on one occasion, arrived late in the evening in a new village. It had been raining hard all day, as it only can in Flanders. Being wet through and very tired, he told his orderly to find the billet allotted to him and make various arrangements with Madame as to a latch-key and so forth. The orderly returned a little later with a crestfallen look and an air of dismay. "Can't make Madame understand, sir," he said. "They seem to talk a different kind of slang here to the last place we were in."

On another occasion my friend himself went into a chemist's shop at St. Omer with the object of purchasing some hair-wash. "Huile pour les chevaux" was the nearest he could think of, and he was greatly alarmed when the chemist produced a bottle of Elliman's horse embrocation and proclaimed its excellent qualities at some length. Huile pour les chevaux and huile pour les cheveux are two very different things! But Tommy is seldom at a loss. "Deux beers sivous play, Ma'mselle, compree?" he will demand as he enters an estaminet, and if Ma'mselle in question has any pretensions to beauty, he will not infrequently at a later stage of the proceedings, purely, no doubt, by way of paying a delicate compliment and to further cement the entente, add to his previous remarks some such jocular suggestion as "Promnarde avec moi?" To which the Ma'mselle will probably reply to the effect that he is "Très polisson." Tommy, nothing daunted, will round off the conversation by some cryptic remark to the effect that she is "no bong"!

Certain phrases, easily acquired orally, and seldom quite understood-for example, "nar poo," derived from "il n'y-en a plus," do duty on many occasions and under varying circumstances. Tommy even sometimes carries his French phrases so far as his letters home, possibly for "showing off" purposes. His spelling of French words is usually quaint.

Many of our lorry drivers, as I have explained, were previous to the war motor-bus and taxi-cab drivers in London. The powers of repartee of this type of man are proverbial, and with a slight admixture of French have lost none of their former crispness. On the contrary, his "vocabulary" has been augmented. It is a pity that we have had to resort to conscription for the Army, and one can only hope that sooner or later some distinction will be made between the conscript and the man who, regardless of age and the cost, volunteered for service in the early part of the war. In an Army Service Corps unit particularly, one notices men whose appearance leads one to think that there is, to say the least, a discrepancy between their real and regimental age as given on enlistment. I recollect asking one elderly-looking man his age; he replied, "Forty-two, sir." Noticing that on his breast was the blue and white ribbon of the Egypt medal of 1882, I remarked, "Then you must have been eight years old when that was awarded to you!"

It is interesting to note that Indian troops pick up French in many cases quite readily, and apparently more easily than English. If you chance on one on the road, trying to find his way to some village or other, and he cannot speak English and you cannot speak Hindustani, a little "pidgin" French will usually be found to be a common basis for conversation, or an old soldier, who has rejoined for the war and who many years ago perhaps served in India, will come to the rescue and explain matters with much gesticulation and a curious mixture of English, French, and Hindustani, the word compris, in the form of a question, usually playing an important part in the conversation. Many of the Native Cavalry soldiers now speak French quite fluently, their pronunciation being almost perfect.

There is one excuse for everything which, like charity, covers a multitude of sins, in France to-day. If one has occasion to suggest to a shopkeeper that so and so is très cher, or to the chef de gare that the train is late for which you are waiting, no matter what the complaint, the answer is invariably the same, "C'est la guerre, monsieur." It is the stock phrase of consolation and explanation. They accept the war, do these peasants and bourgeois of Northern France, in a spirit of optimistic fortitude, as something which has unfortunately got to be, and which shows no sign of ending, at any rate at present. Their hatred of the Boches, which they readily express, both verbally and by such cryptic signs and phrases as "Coupez la gorge," etc., is intense, and of a nature that could hardly be realized by the people of England, who have not been subjected to the systematic brutality which the Boches have invariably exercised, or experienced the invasion of Belgium-as carefully planned as it was diabolically executed.

In no town or village in which I have been have I seen a solitary man of military age, married or single alike, except, of course, the obviously physically unfit, who is not in the Army, the Navy, or the workshops, and this has been the same since the first 1914 mobilization in France. The older men are employed as sentries at level crossings and on railway bridges. Even in the munition works, the impression one gains is that the bulk of the people thus employed are old men, women, or young girls and boys.

Yet the work of the land, right up almost to the trenches, in this richly agricultural and intensely cultivated country, is carried on as usual by those left behind. The old men, women, and children work in a way that is truly remarkable. Never have I seen women and children do such an amount of manual work. The pay of the French poilu, formerly five centimes (a halfpenny) and latterly raised to twenty-five centimes (two-pence halfpenny), together with the small "separation allowance" paid to his dependents, compel the latter to carry on the work of the land as of yore and keep things going till the war is ended.

As a contrast to the many posters which placard every available hoarding and wall in England, there are very few in France. One is to be seen everywhere-in cafés, railway carriages, in the streets, etc.; and it contains three lines of straightforward and pungently sound advice, strictly to the point and commendably brief. It emanates from the Minister of War, and is as follows:

Taisez-vous!

Méfiez-vous!

Les oreilles des ennemies vous écoutent!

The only other posters to be seen advertise the advantages of investment in the French War Loan; they are obviously drawn by artists, and are in keeping with the best theatrical posters in London, such as one would see outside His Majesty's Theatre.

The three lines of warning which I have referred to above lead me to the question of spies. Of course, spies there are, without a doubt, especially in places which have previously been in enemy occupation, and through such agents information of military importance is conveyed to the enemy, by one method or another. There are, however, alleged spies, who are occasionally reported by different people, soldiers or civilians, who may have reason to suspect them. The various Assistant Provost Marshals are, naturally, only too anxious to catch real spies, and are not only willing but keen to investigate reports and incidentally inconvenience ninety-nine suspects in the hope of catching the hundredth. Curious mistakes happen, and did so particularly in the early stages of the war. On one occasion an apparently eminently respectable-looking and bearded Frenchman was apprehended. He was noticed standing in the street making what appeared to be entries in a pocket-book with the aid of a pencil whilst some batteries of artillery were passing along through the town.

It was only necessary to put two and two together and use a small amount of imagination; what could he be taking note of in his pocket-book except the sizes, number, and such-like particulars of the passing guns? He protested vehemently and excitedly that so far from being a spy he hated the Germans. He was, he said, a merchant from Roubaix, and was not his house and business place in their cursed hands? Which facts were proved by investigation in due course to be perfectly true. On being examined, he was asked among other questions if he could produce what he was alleged to have written in his pocketbook. This, he said, was a matter of impossibility, but he offered instead an explanation. He had, he stated, on the previous evening seen a girl who greatly attracted him; chancing to run across her again the following day, he hastily pulled out his notebook with the object of scribbling a brief note to suggest a rendezvous for later in the day. Unfortunately, she disappeared into a house near by, and he, losing sight of her, was unable to deliver his note. Naturally, therefore, he could not produce it; he had torn it up and thrown it in the gutter. I need hardly add that when the authorities were satisfied as to his identity he was released, the victim of a mistake and his own indiscretion.

A few days after this incident I happened to notice a report of it in a French newspaper. With true journalistic ardour for sensational details, the writer of it added that the supposed spy "swallowed" the note he had written, rather than produce it for inspection. This is not true, but my story is an accurate account of the incident, which caused great amusement at the time.

On another occasion I was Orderly Officer of the Day at Aire, and "visiting rounds" late at night, a sentry on duty in the town, belonging to a Scottish regiment, told me that he had a man dressed in officer's uniform under observation, who aroused his suspicion owing to the questions addressed to him as to the whereabouts of certain brigades and regiments. He had already, he said, reported the matter to his corporal, who had posted two sentries outside the house into which the suspect had gone. My duty was quite plain: this case was one for immediate investigation; so, accompanied by the sentry, I went up to the house, which was only a few yards away, and which happened to be a brasserie. The next thing to be done was to gain admittance to the brasserie. It was now after midnight. Having given the sentries orders to load their rifles, but only to loose off in the event of their suspect endeavouring to make his escape or resist escort, and to shoot low at that, with my revolver in one hand I rang the brasserie bell with the other. It was one of those large bells suspended at some height, actuated by a long chain, and which have a way of continuing to ring for some time after the chain has been pulled. Very soon, up went a window on the first floor, and out of it appeared the head and shoulders of a woman, obviously aroused from her slumbers. I inquired in the best French I could command if there was an "Officier anglais" billeted in the house. She replied that there was one, and she would go to his room and wake him. In a few minutes, after much clanking of chains and bolts, the front door was opened. This, then, was the critical moment! A Captain of the -- Regiment emerged and asked what the -- I wanted and why the -- I had woke him up at such an unearthly hour of the night. The sentry had made a mistake in his overzealousness. The alleged spy was an officer, who had that night returned from leave, and finding no one about except a sentry, had sought from him such information as to the whereabouts of his unit as would enable him to rejoin it on the following morning. So, apologizing profusely and explaining my position in the matter, I withdrew, greatly disappointed at being denied the excitement of catching a real spy.

A friend of mine was travelling along a country road in a motor-car and noticed a man walking who aroused his suspicions. He was dressed in an odd assortment of military uniform and civilian clothes, and on his coat were several regimental buttons, both French and English. Moreover, he was unable to produce any pass or papers of identification. My friend, first ascertaining that his prisoner was unarmed, invited him to get into the back of the car, which he did, not neglecting at the same time to pull over his knees a fur rug which happened to be there-one of those magnificent bear-skin rugs which were sent out as presents to certain members of the Expeditionary Force by the Grand Duke Michael of Russia in the winter of 1914. In a few minutes the next village was reached, and passing through it my friend noticed with some surprise that his fellow-traveller was being greeted with cheers, thrills of laughter and hand-waves by the children and a few people who happened to be about. Stopping at the mairie, the man was at once identified. He was the local "rag and bone" man, quite harmless, though somewhat mad. Nevertheless, he thanked my friend profusely for the lift, which he explained had not only saved him a two or three miles walk on a dusty road, but provided for him a new sensation and experience, for this had been his first ride in a motor-car. I need scarcely add that spies have since been a sore point with my friend.

And here I must tell a story against myself. Returning to railhead about ten or eleven o'clock one evening, I had occasion to halt the convoy en route, as I noticed that it was beginning to spread out too much and several vehicles in the rear were becoming "stragglers." As I pulled up, a man approached from the direction in which I had been proceeding and walked past along the line of lorries drawn up on the roadside. He aroused my suspicions, for although he wore the usual service jacket of a British officer, he appeared in the dim light to be also wearing red-coloured "slacks" of apparently the same hue as a French soldier. My first impression was that he was dressed in a mixture of British and French uniform, possibly an ill-informed German spy, who, having heard of the belle alliance, imagined it to be carried to such lengths in practice that the uniforms of the two Armies were combined. I watched him for a minute, then followed, and getting even with him, wished him "Good-evening." There was no time to lose, so I got straight to the point and asked him his name and regiment. He inquired the reason of my apparent curiosity, and I admitted that the shade of his trousers had aroused my suspicions. He replied that he was in the 11th Hussars-the only regiment in the British Army, he added, who were privileged to wear "cherry-coloured" slacks. I apologized and withdrew, feeling quite crestfallen. The following day I told this to a cavalry officer who had been a good many years in the Service. He was much amused, and said, "Oh yes, that's quite right; no doubt he belongs to the 11th, always known in the Service as the 'cherubims'!" I have never run up against my cherubim friend again, but if he should ever chance to read these lines and recalls the incident, I trust he will forgive me, and realize that I only carried out what I deemed, in my innocence, to be my duty.