War's Dark Frame/With the British in Flanders
CHAPTER X
WITH THE BRITISH IN FLANDERS
I RECEIVED the coveted invitation to visit the British front the morning after my return to Paris from Champagne. The provost marshal started me adventurously enough. I was to report to the landing officer at one of the great seaport bases the next day at one o'clock—daylight saving time. That variation of an hour confused everything.
"You can only make it by the military train at 11:40 to-night," he said. “You'll have twelve nice sleepless hours for a journey that ought to take four or five. Then war is never convenient. Good-bye, good luck, and cling to your headquarters pass."
At half past eleven the facade of the Gare du Nord with its staring yellow clock was sufficiently forbidding. There were no hurrying crowds, no babel of voices, no porters. A gendarme, unreservedly surprised at the presence of a civilian, trundled my bag through. The great shed, inadequately lighted, had an unfamiliar air. A single train of low and antique carriages stretched 
"'One More Village Back to France'"
to the north until it was lost in a darkness relieved only by red and green signal lamps, close to the ground, vague in a slight mist, like will-o'-the-wisps.
No one reached the quay without a catechism from the soldiers and gendarmes at the barriers. A khaki clad figure stood with the others—the first Tommy—the extreme rear-guard of the British lines.
He grinned, struggling with what he conceived to be the American idiom.
"Give my regards to the boys—"
The train, crowded with poilus and officers, threatened to be insufferably stuffy. Therefore, until the last moment, I paced up and down the murky platform, hearing subdued voices which chanted popular army airs, oppressed by the wailing notes of an accordeon. Through an open window I had a glimpse of the player. His eyes were upraised. His face was dull with mental pain. His hands on the accordeon swayed apart and came together with slow, caressing gestures. His companions, in dirty blue overcoats, sat facing each other on parallel benches beneath a dim light. They swayed unconsciously in rhythm with the music, muttering inaudibly snatches of words. Eyes and cars were challenged by a sense of despair nearly voluptuous. I paced on, made very sad, very lonely by this haggard playing, by the instinctive response drawn from its hearers.
A squad of soldiers, solemn and weary, tramped down the platform. Bent beneath full knapsacks, they shuffled along, clinging to the butts of their rifles with an air of reaching out for help. Suddenly with tired motions they swung into a ragged platoon formation and waited dumbly for the command to break ranks.
A thick and unreal atmosphere invaded the melancholy shed. These fatigued and over-burdened figures; the crouched forms in the dusk of the third class carriages; the persistent, following lament of the accordeon; the vapours curling about the few lamps, like dying moons, high in the roof, all welded themselves into a conception of the exotic—of more than that—of the barbaric, of a helpless and primitive fatalism. This could not be Paris. These stooped and soiled figures, sent forth for killing, many of them for death, could not be educated, reasoning men. Then, close by, an officer breathed the word "Verdun," and the unreality dissipated. The picture assumed harder, surer lines. It had grown cold in the shed.
There were four officers in my compartment. Two others climbed from the platform and lounged in the meagre corridor. It was one of these who had spoken of Verdun. He had, it developed, been there. He sketched his incoherent recollections of its deadly turmoil. He broke off, glancing up with an abrupt reluctance.
Without doubt you recall so and so?"
The other nodded.
"You may have heard. A piece of one of those high explosive shells—a great fragment, all ragged—"
No dismay at the intelligence, scarcely surprise. From the darkness beyond the shed the locomotive whistle shrieked. That sound alone fitted because it was comparable with the sudden grief of a woman.
The train crawled into the obscurity, writhing through the yards like a gigantic reptile. The two officers moved away. In the close, dim carriage we curled ourselves in corners and tried to sleep. But it was difficult not to watch these uniformed figures, outstretched in awkward attitudes which mimicked the appearance of human refuse on a battlefield. Moreover, the train constantly halted. At each station a stocky little fellow would open his eyes, spring up, crash the window down, and demand at the top of his lungs if he had reached his destination. Finally an elderly officer stirred and asked with an accent of pity:
Don't you know, my friend, that you've still twenty miles to go? On this train that should permit you several days' complete rest. Sleep well."
After that we were quieter and dozed. One by one the officers gathered their baggage and left. The last clambered sleepily out in a grudging dawn at the first large English base. It was clear enough after that that we were behind the British lines. British faces, British khaki, British methods filled the frames of the windows.
At country stations hospital trains lay on sidings, ready to receive from temporary hospitals and ambulances their grim and scarlet freight. Their drab sides were relieved only by red crosses in white squares. But in each car clusters of field flowers splashed colour. The wide plate glass windows were open to the air. Orderlies in white jackets moved about the beds which were slung where the seats had been.
An aeroplane, a swallow-like speck, appeared to the right, flying in our direction. It came up rapidly until its lines were silhouetted against the sky in the east. The track curved. The war 'plane glided gracefully after us. I was on my feet, about to reach for two sandwiches I had stuffed in my raincoat before leaving Paris. They ceased to interest. Officers stood in the corridor, gazing tensely from the window. Those who boast they can identify war 'planes are in- variably uncertain at such a moment.
"Is it a Boche?"
“If it is, he's sure to drop his card on us."
“This train isn't such an easy hit. Hello!"
Conversation became general in the carriages. Some one laughed. Without warning the machine had swooped downwards and had disappeared behind the trees. Those dry sandwiches drew glances of envy.
Before they were eaten the line swung towards the sea, and with the first sparkling of water came the sheen of innumerable tents. This coast, remembered as a mecca of holiday makers, had become a vast encampment for Kitchener's volunteers—the men destined soon to be brought up for the great squeeze.
To the right in a field which rolled broadly towards green and treeless hills several companies of infantry seemed at some incomprehensible game. A hundred yards in front of them stood a series of posts between which cumbersome sacks depended at approximately the height of a man. The arrangement suggested the tackling dummies one sees on a football field during early fall practice. Then I commenced to understand, for other sacks, equally fat, sprawled on the ground. The soldiers themselves illustrated the rest. Released by the flashing of an officer's cane, they dashed precipitately forward, assaulting the contrivance with their bayonets. Some lowered their points and pinioned the prone sacks. Others chose those representing standing men. Steel gleamed, ripped through canvas, emerged on the other side, and was withdrawn with quick, twisting motions. The sea rolled in with an exceptional placidity beneath a smiling sun. A clean wind blew across the dunes and the fields. But it was clear that these new soldiers saw nothing, felt nothing, beyond the sacks, inert and pig-like, at which they rehearsed with a frantic obstinacy the killing of men.
Farther on practice trenches scarred the sands or were in process of construction. A minute efficiency appeared to have been brought to the training in attack and defence of these men who recently had stood behind counters, or bent over desks, or, perhaps, tilled peacefully such fields as these.
The train drew up before the station of a fairly large town in the legendary days, a summer resort. Two youthful and attractive Red Cross nurses entered the compartment. A sub officer, fresh-faced, slender, typical, had come to see them off. They smiled back at him with an attempt at brightness. He didn't quite hide a slight nervous. ness, an expression in his eyes sadly prophetic. One of the girls spoke impulsively.
"I am sorry you are going up to the front."
He glanced away, tapping at his shoe with his walking stick.
Stupid, isn't it? And just when I'm beginning to know and like the people here."
Certainly he meant that. It wasn't the familiar English emotional screen, for he followed it at once with:
"I wonder what will get me up there?”
It was symptomatic of a vital evolution in the Englishman who has experienced this war. I have seen many examples since. Such a shift of psychology seemed more important to the Allied cause than the rehearsal of a bayonet charge I had recently witnessed.
Nor was there any attempt on the part of the young nurses to shirk the hard facts.
"At any rate you can choose your own hospital," one of them suggested.
The officer's petulant striking at his boot continued.
“Wish I was sure of that," he said, “but I fancy they send you where it's most convenient."
I looked at him again, straight and unafraid in spite of the prophetic dulness of his eyes. So much youth, so many possibilities tossed among the chances of a war in which death is simple and kind! It was impossible not to forecast, not to question if he was to be the destination some days hence of a bullet or a shell fragment, or a gas attack, or a flash of this improved liquid flame.
To walk into that sort of thing for an indefinite period with your eyes open! No wonder they've largely given over shirking the hard facts in France.
Something lingering, wistful, nearly sentimental, coloured the farewell of one of the women. There was, it appeared, romance here. Some concession from her was to be expected, yet, when the train had started, when he had dropped to the platform after clinging perilously to the step until the last possible moment, she turned to the window with a sigh.
“Poor fellow!"
It was scarcely more than an echo of the sigh!
"I wonder. Oh, dear! I wonder."
No tears, no comfort, from the other woman, no further allusion to him — only an anxious dis cussion as to whether they would be in time for the English boat. It seemed rather cruel. Then I remembered the hard facts. These women during many months had worked in hospitals sheltering wounds unbearable merely to see. They had watched young men go forth not to return. They had helped others back to a mutilated, useless existence. The romance in Flanders isn't the old romance. It is there, nevertheless. It is greater than the old romance because it is definable only in terms of undisciplined truth.
Such fugitive experiences are always impressive in the war zone. I, too, carried from that sunlit station a sharp regret. The momentary glimpse of this young soldier had left a sense of acquaintanceship. It seemed incredible there should be no renewal, no knowledge by and by of the resolution of his future which then had appeared so brief and futile.
Those poor girls didn't catch their boat for England. We puffed into the noisy, dusty seaport base an hour late. An excitable porter scooped up my bag and piled it on a truck with their luggage. Before I could stop him he was careering drunkenly along the docks at their flying heels. The military landing officer rescued us. He was sympathetic with the nurses. He promised me an hour for a bath and a noon breakfast before the arrival of the transport with the rest of the party for the front.
Later, while we waited for the boat, he chatted amiably.
"I'm one Englishman," he smiled, "who knows you don't hunt Indians or shoot buffalos on Fifth Avenue. Several years ago somebody tried to show me all of New York in three days. I'm still convalescent."
He indicated two grey cars rolling down the quay driven by young men in khaki. An officer sprang from the tonneau of one and hurried forward. He was introduced as a staff captain from headquarters who would be my cicerone for the next few days. The anonymity of this war extends even to such a companionship. Captain Williams, to use some name then, was sympathetic about my presence there at such an hour. It sketched for him that interminable journey by night. He would have waited for me. So at once I was made to feel welcome and at home. The English don't ask many to see what they are accomplishing in Flanders, but when you are there they reserve little. They never give you a feeling of intrusion.
Two transports came in to-day. As they made fast to the quay one saw that the decks were cluttered with life-preservers. Some men still strug gled from that suggestive embrace. For on these transports every one is compelled to wear a life-belt from port to port.
They commenced to troop off—Tommies, subalterns, and generals. It seemed fantastic so many human beings could be crowded into these little boats. There were no smiles on the sunburned faces. Men coming to Flanders for the first time or returning after leave don't smile easily, but when a boat goes forth for the chalk cliffs of England even the menace of submarines can't kill a breathless gaiety.
Williams collected our party—a man from the foreign office and two Japanese, one straight and slender with a face of a Samurai type, the other short and round with a gentle, nervous manner of speech.
During luncheon in the maritime station Williams outlined his plans. That afternoon we were to see interesting but not dangerous places. Later we might learn the vital mechanism of army service and ordnance. If we wanted to go, he would take us to the front line trenches. We could visit Arras—possibly Notre Dame de Lorette, and other notorious points of the fighting line which for the present must share the general anonymity.
That programme was carried through, and we
saw, I fancy, a little more of war than any one intended. Therefore, the interest of our first afternoon was heightened in retrospect by the peace we were not to know again during this trip.