Leaves from a Field Note-Book Part 10

"_Deutschen Hunde! Stink-preussen!_[10] _Ja!_" It was the Alsatian who was speaking.

"_Sie sprechen Deutsch!_"[11] I exclaimed in astonishment.

"_Ja, ich kann nicht anders--um so mehr schade!_"[12] he replied mournfully. He was an Alsatian "volunteer," he explained, having deserted for the French side at an opportune moment. It was odd to hear him declaiming against the Germans in their own language. It is a way the Alsatians have. Treitschke once lamented the fact. "But," I interpolated, "it must be very painful for those of you who cannot get away like yourself."

"Very painful, monsieur; I have two brothers even now in the German army. They watch us--and they put Prussian _sous-officiers_ over us to spy. So when we see the _sous-officier_ sneaking about, we raise our voices and say, 'Ah! those beastly French, we'll give it them.' But when we are alone--well, then we say what we think."

And this led us on to talk of German spies and their nasty habits--how they had mapped out France, its bridges, its culverts, its smithies, like an ordnance-survey, and how predatory German commanders betray the knowledge of an Income-tax Commissioner as to the income and resources of every inhabitant who has the misfortune to find himself in occupied territory. Also how the German guns get the range at once. And other such things. All of which the paperhanger listened to in thoughtful silence and then told a tale.

"An officer in the uniform of your Army, monsieur, strolled up to my company one day. He was very pleasant, and his French was so good--not too good, just the kind of French that you English messieurs"--he bowed apologetically to me--"usually speak. Oh! he was very clever. And he talked with our captain about the battle for a long time. And then our captain noticed something--two things. First, monsieur, the English officer was very troubled with his eyes--he was always applying a large white handkerchief to the pupil. And it occur to the captain that the English officers do not carry white handkerchiefs but 'khaki.' What was the matter with the officer's eye? It could not be a fly--the weather was too cold; it had been raining. It could not be the dust; the ground was too wet. And the German sh.e.l.ls--they begin to fall right in the midst of us--they had been so wide before. So the captain was very concerned for monsieur l'officier's eyes, and he takes him aside very politely and says he had better see the doctor. A _sous-officier_ and two men shall take him to the doctor. Which they do. Only the 'doctor'

was the _liaison_ officer with our brigade--an English officer. And he finds that the officer is a spy--a Bosche. He have no more trouble with his eyes," added the paperhanger laconically. It was too good a story to spoil by cross-examination, so I left it at that.

"You like the bayonet?" I asked.

"Ah, yes! we love the bayonet. It is a _bon enfant_," said the _sous-officier_. "And they can't fence (_escrimer_), the Bosches--they are too _lourds_. I remember we caught them once in a quarry. Our men fought like tiger-cats--so quick, so agile. And you know, monsieur, no one said a word. Nor a sound except the clash of steel." His eyes flashed at the recollection. "They make a funny noise when you go through them--they grunt, _comme un cochon_." Perhaps I shuddered slightly. "Ah, yes! monsieur, but they play such dirty tricks (_ruses honteuses_). Of course they cry out in French, and put up their hands after they have shot down our comrades under their white flags." He gave a snort of contempt.

"What do they cry?"

"Oh, all kinds of things. 'I have a wife and eight children.' The German pig has a big litter." He looked, and no doubt felt himself to be, a minister of justice. And after all, I reflect, the Belgians once had wives and children too. Many of them have neither wife nor child any longer. And so perish all Germans!

The plumber, who had been studying his "hand," looked up from the cards.

"We have killed a great number of the Bosches," he said dispa.s.sionately.

"Yes, a great number. It was in a beetroot field, and there were as many dead Germans as beetroots. Near by was a corn-field; the flames were leaping up the shocks of yellow corn and the bodies caught fire--such a stench! And the faces of the dead! Especially after they have been killed with the bayonet--they are quite black. I suppose it's the grease."

"The grease?"

"Yes, we always grease our bayonets, you know. To prevent them getting rusty."

He was a man of few words, but in three sentences he had given me a battle-picture as clearly visualised as a canvas of Verestchagin. The reminiscences of the plumber provoked the paperhanger to further recollections, more particularly the stunning effects of the French sh.e.l.l-fire. He had found four dead Germans--they had been surprised by a sh.e.l.l while playing cards in a billet. "They still had the cards in their hands, monsieur, just as you see us--and they hadn't got a scratch. They were like the statues in the Louvre."

"Yes," said the _sous-officier_, "I have seen them like that. I remember I found a big Bosche--six feet four he must have been--sitting dead in a house which we had sh.e.l.led. His face was just like wax, and he sat there like a wooden doll with his long arms hanging down stiff--yes! _comme une poupee_. And I couldn't find a scratch on him--not one! And do you know what he had on--a woman's chemise! _ecoutez!_" he added suddenly, and he held up a monitory hand.

Echoing down the corridor outside there came nearer and nearer the beat of a drum and with it the liquid notes of a fife. I recognised the measure--who can ever forget it! It stirs the blood like a trumpet. The door was kicked open and two convalescent soldiers entered, one wearing a festive cap of coloured paper such as is secreted in Christmas "crackers." He was playing a fife, and the drummer was close upon his heels.

Every one rose in his bed and lifted up his voice:

Allons! enfants de la Patrie!

A strange electricity ran through us all. The card-players had thrown down their cards just as the plumber was about to trump an ace. The others had tossed aside their papers and laid down their cigarettes. The Turco--"Muley Hafid" he was called, because those were the only words of his any one could understand--who had been deploying imaginary troops, with the aid of matches, upon the counterpane, as though he were a sick child playing with leaden soldiers, recognised the tune, and in default of words began to beat time with a soup spoon. Up and down the pa.s.sage way between the beds marched the fife and drum; louder beat the drum, more piercing grew the fife. What delirious joy-of-battle, what poignant cries of anguish, has not that immortal music both stirred and soothed!

To what supremacy of effort has it not incited? It has succoured dying men with its _viatic.u.m_. It has brought fire to glazing eyes. It has exalted men a little higher than the angels, it has won the angels to the side of men:

Tout est soldat pour vous combattre: S'ils tombent, nos jeunes heros, La terre en produit de nouveaux Contre vous tout prets a se battre.

Aux armes, citoyens! Formez vos bataillons: Marchons, qu'un sang impur abreuve nos sillons.

As I gently closed the door of the ward and stole out into the corridor on tip-toe, I heard again the martial chorus swelling into a tumult of joy:

Le jour de gloire est arrive!

It was the note of the conqueror.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] German swine! Stinking Prussians!

[11] You speak German!

[12] Yes, I can no other, more's the pity!

XVI

PETER

My friend T---- and myself were smoking a pipe after dinner in his sitting-room at the Base. He was a staff-captain who had done his term as a "Political" in India, and had now taken on an Army job of a highly confidential nature. He was one of those men who, when they make up their minds to give you their friendship, give it handsomely and without reserve, and in a few weeks we had got on to the plane of friends of many years. As we talked we suddenly heard the sound of many feet on the cobbles of the street below, a street which ran up the side of the hill like a gully--between tall houses standing so close together that one might almost have shaken hands with the inmates of the houses opposite.

The rhythm of that tramp, tramp, tramp, in spite of the occasional slipping of one or another man's boots upon the greasy and precipitous stones, was unmistakable.

"New drafts!" said T----. Instinctively we both moved to the window. We knew that the Army authorities were rushing troops across the Channel every night as fast as the transports could take them, and often in the silence of the sleep-time we had heard them marching up the hill from the harbour to the camps on the downs. As we opened our own window, we heard another window thrown open on the floor above us. We looked down and saw in the darkness, faintly illuminated by the light from our room, the upturned faces of the men.

"Bonjour, monseer," they shouted cheerfully, delighted to air on French soil the colloquialisms they had picked up from that _vade mec.u.m_ (price one penny) of the British soldier: _French, and how to speak it_. It was night, not day, but that didn't matter.

"Good-night," came a piping treble voice from the floor above us.

"Good-night"--"Good-night, old chap"--"Good-night, my son"--the men shouted back as they glanced at the floor above us. Some of them gravely saluted.

"It's Peter," said T----; "he'll be frightfully bucked up."

"Let's go up and see him," I said. We ascended the dark staircase--the rest of the household were plunged in slumber--turned the handle of the bedroom door, and could just make out in the darkness a little figure in pyjamas, leaning precipitously out of the window.

"Peter, you'll catch cold," said his father as he struck a match. The light illuminated a round, chubby face which glanced over its owner's shoulder from the window.

"All right, Dad. I say," he exclaimed joyfully, "did you see? They saluted me! Did _you_ see?" he said, turning to me.

"I did, Major Peter."

"You're kidding!"

"Not a bit of it," I said, saluting gravely. "They've given you commissioned rank, and, the Army having spoken, I intend in the future to address you as a field-officer. Of course your father will have to salute you too, now."

This was quite another aspect of the matter, and commended itself to Peter. "Right oh!" he said. And from that time forward I always addressed him as Major Peter. So did his father, except when he was ordering him to bed. At such times--there was a nightly contest on the matter--the paternal authority could not afford to concede any prerogatives, and Peter was gravely cashiered from the Army, only to be reinstated without a stain on his character the next morning.