The Sword of Deborah Part 1

The Sword of Deborah.

by F. Tennyson Jesse.

CHAPTER I

A.B.C.

This world of initials ... in which the members of the British Expeditionary Force live and move--it is a bewildering place for the outsider. Particularly to one who, like the writer, has never been able to think in initials, any more than in dates or figures. The members of the B.E.F.--and that at least is a set of letters that conveys something to all of us--not only live amidst initials, but are themselves embodied initials. To them the string of letters they reel off is no meaningless form, no mere abracadabra to impress the supplicant, but each is a living thing, coloured, definitely patterned, standing for something in flesh and blood, or stone and mortar; something concrete and present to the mind's eye at the mere mention.

Just as, to anyone who does not know New York, it seems as though all the streets must sound exactly alike, being merely numbered, while, to anyone who knows them, the words East Sixty First, say, are as distinct from East Twenty First, distinct with a whole vivid personality of their own, as Half Moon Street from Threadneedle Street--so, to the initiate in the game, the letters so lightly rattled off to designate this or that official or inst.i.tution stand for vivid, real, colourable things.

But at first one is reminded forcibly of that scene in "Anna Karenina"

where Levin proposes to Kitty for the second time by means of writing in chalk on a table the letters "W, y, t, m, i, c, n, b, d, t, m, n, o, t,"

and Kitty, with great intelligence, guesses that they mean "When you told me it could never be, did that mean never, or then?" Kitty, if you remember, replies in initials at almost equal length, and Levin displays an intelligence equal to hers. I had always found that scene hard of credence, but I have come to the conclusion that Levin and Kitty would have been invaluable at H.Q.B.R.C.S., A.P.O. 3, B.E.F.

And the fog of initials is symbolic in a double manner; for not only do the initials stand for what they represent to those who know, but in their very lack of meaning for those who do not, they typify with a peculiar aptness the fact that after all we at home in England, particularly we ladies of England who live at home in ease, know very little indeed of even what the letters B.E.F. stand for. We have hazy ideas on the subject. Vaguely we know, for instance, that there are women, lots of women, working out in France, though quite at what, beyond nursing, we don't seem to know. Motor drivers ... of course, yes, we have heard of them. There is a vague impression that they are having the time of their lives, probably being quite useful too ... but of the technique of the thing, so to speak, what do we know? About as much as we know when we first hear the clouds of initials rattling like shrapnel about our heads if we go over to France.

And if we at home know so little, how can other countries know, who have no inner working knowledge of English temperaments and training to go upon as a rough guide to at least the probable trend of things? How can we expect them to know? And yet knowledge of what every section of the working community is doing was never so vital as at the present moment, because never before has so much of the world been working together on the same job--and the biggest job in history.

It is always a good thing to know what other folk are doing, even when they are not your sort, and what they are doing does not affect you, because it teaches proportion and widens vision--how much more important, then, when what they are doing is what you are doing too, or what you may yet come to do?

Gentle reader--and even more especially ungentle reader--if in these pages I occasionally ask you to listen to my own personal confession both of faith and of unfaith--please realise that it is not because I imagine there is any particular interest in my way of seeing things, but simply because it is only so that I can make you see them too. You are looking through my window, that is all, and it is not even a window that I opened for myself, but that had to be opened for me. If you will realise that I went and saw all I did see, not as myself, but as you, it will give you the idea I am wishful to convey to you. Anything I feel is only valuable because my feeling of it may mean your feeling of it too.

Therefore, when you read "I" in these pages, don't say "Here's this person talking of herself again ..." say "Here am I, myself. This person only saw these things so that I should see them."

If you don't it will be nine-tenths my fault and one-tenth your own.

Just as all the apparently endless combinations of initials in France are symbols of living realities to those who understand them, and of their ignorance to those who don't just as the very heading of "A.B.C."

which I have given this chapter typifies both those combinations of initials and the fact that you and I are beginning at the very beginning--for no one could have been more blankly ignorant than I when I went over to France--so the letter "I" whenever it occurs in this book is a symbol for You.

CHAPTER II

THE FEVER CHART OF WAR

"The women are splendid...." How tired we are of hearing that, so tired that we begin to doubt it, and the least hostile emotion that it evokes is the sense that after all the men are so much more splendid, so far beyond praise, that the less one says of anyone else the better. That sentence is dead, let us hope, fallen into the same limbo as "Business as Usual" and the rest of the early war-gags, but the prejudices it aroused, the feeling of boredom, have not all died with it. Words have at least this in common with men, that the evil that they do lives after them.

Let me admit that when those in authority sent for me to go to France and see what certain sections of the women there were doing, I didn't want to go. I told them rather ungraciously that if they wanted the "sunny-haired-la.s.sies-in-khaki-touch" they had better send somebody else. I am not, and never have been, a feminist or any other sort of an 'ist, never having been able to divide humanity into two different cla.s.ses labelled "men" and "women." Also, to tell the truth, the idea of going so far behind the lines did not appeal. For this there is the excuse that in England one grows so sick of the people who talk of "going to the Front" when they mean going to some safe chateau as a base for a personally conducted tour, or--Conscientious objectors are the worst sinners in this latter cla.s.s--when they are going to sit at canteens or paint huts a hundred miles or so behind the last line of trenches. The reaction from this sort of thing is very apt to make one say: "Oh, France? There's no more in being in France behind the lines than in working in England." A point of view in which I was utterly and completely wrong. There is a great deal of difference, not in any increased danger, but in quite other ways, as I shall show in the place and order in which it was gradually made apparent to me.

Also, no one who has not been at the war knows the hideous boredom of it ... a boredom that the soul dreads like a fatal miasma. And if I had felt it in Belgium in those terrible grey first weeks of her pain, when at least one was in the midst of war, as it was then, still fluid and mobile, still full of alarums and excursions, with all the suffering and death immediately under one's eyes still a new thing; if I had felt it again, even more strongly, when I went right up to the very back of the front in the French war zone for the Croix Rouge, in those poor little hospitals where the stretchers are always ready in the wards to hustle the wounded away, and where, in devastated land only lately vacated by the Germans, I sat and ate with peasants who were painfully and sadly beginning to return to their ruined homes and cultivate again a soil that might have been expected to redden the ploughshare, how much the more then might I dread it, caught in the web of Lines of Communication.... I feared that boredom.

And there was another reason, both for my disinclination and my lack of interest. We in England grew so tired, in the early days of the war, of the fancy uniforms that burst out upon women. Every other girl one met had an attack of khaki-itis, was spotted as the pard with badges and striped as the zebra. Almost simultaneously with this eruption came, for the other section of the feminine community, reaction from it. We others became rather self-consciously proud of our femininity, of being "fluffy"--in much the same way that anti-suffragists used to be fluffy when they said they preferred to influence a man's vote, and that they thought more was done by charm....

With official recognition of bodies such as the V.A.D.'s and the even more epoch-making official founding of the W.A.A.C.'s, the point of view of the un-uniformed changed. The thing was no longer a game at which women were making silly a.s.ses of themselves and pretending to be men; it had become regular, ordered, disciplined and worthy of respect. In short, uniform was no longer fancy dress.

But the feeling of boredom that had been engendered stayed on, as these things do. It is yet to be found, partly because there still are women who have their photographs taken in a new uniform every week, but more because of our ignorance as to what the real workers are doing. And like most ignorant people, I was happy in my ignorance.

Well, I went, and am most thankful for my prejudice, my disinclination, my prevision of boredom. For without all those, what would my conversion be worth? Who, already convinced of religion, is amazed at attaining salvation? It is to the mocker that the miracle is a miracle, and no mere expected sequence of nature, divine or human.

I was often depressed, the wherefore of which you will see, but bored, never. Thrilled, ashamed for oneself that one does so little--admiring, critical, amused, depressed, elated, all this gamut and its gradations were touched, but the string of boredom, never. And the only thing that worries anyone sent on such a quest as mine, and with the inevitable message to deliver at the end of it, is that terrible feeling that no matter how really one feels enthusiasm, how genuine one's conversion, there will always be the murmur of--"Oh, yes.... Of course she has to say all that ... it's all part of the propaganda. She was sent to do it and she has to do it, whether she really believes in it or not...."

What can one say? I can only tell you, O Superior Person, that no matter what I had been sent to do and told to write I not only wouldn't but couldn't have, unless I meant it. I can only tell you so, I can't make you believe it. But let me also a.s.sure you that I too am--or shall I say was?--Superior, that I too have laughed the laugh of sophistication at enthusiasm, that I too know enough to consider vehemence amusing and strenuous effort ill-bred, that doubtless I shall do so again. But there is one thing that seems to me more ill-bred, and that is lack of appreciation of those who are doing better than oneself.

Lest you should misunderstand me when I say that I didn't want to go to France this time, and feared boredom, and felt no particular interest in the work of the women over there, let me add that I was careful to sponge my mind free of all preconceived notions, either for or against, when once it was settled that I should go. I went without enthusiasm, it is true, but at least I went with a mind rigorously swept and garnished, so that there might enter into it visitants of either kind, angelic or otherwise.

For this has always seemed to me in common honesty a necessary part of equipment to anyone going on a special mission, charged with finding out things as they are--to be free not only of prejudice against, but predisposition for; and just as a juryman, when he is empanelled, should try and sweep his mind bare of everything he has heard about the case before, so should the Special Missioner--to coin a most horrible phrase--make his mind at once blank and sensitised, like a photographic plate, for events to strike as truly as they may, with as little help or hindrance from former knowledge as possible.

Human nature being what it is, it is probably almost impossible for the original att.i.tude to be completely erased, however conscientious one is, and that is why I am glad that my former att.i.tude was, if not inimical, at least very unenthusiastic, so that I am clear of the charge of seeing things as I or the authorities might have wished me to see them.

And, for the first few days, as always when the mind is plunged headlong into a new world, though I saw facts, listened to them, was impressed, very impressed, by their outward show, it still remained outward show, the soul that informed the whole evaded me, and for many days I saw things that I only understood later in view of subsequent knowledge, when I could look back and see more clearly with the mind's eye what I before had seen with the physical. Yet even the first evening I saw something which, though only dimly, showed me a hint of the spirit of the whole.

I was at the Headquarters of the British Red Cross--which is what the letters H.Q.B.R.C.S. stand for--and I was being shown some very peculiar and wonderful charts. They are secret charts, the figures on which, if a man is shown them, he must never disclose, and those figures, when you read them, bring a contraction at once of pity and of pride to the heart. For, on these great charts, that are mapped out into squares and look exactly like temperature charts at a hospital, are drawn curves, like the curves that show the fever of a patient. Up in jagged mountains, down into merciful valleys, goes the line, and at every point there is a number, and that number is the number of the wounded who were brought down from the trenches on such a day. Here, on these charts, is a complete record, in curves, of the rate of the war. Every peak is an offensive, every valley a comparative lull.

Sheet after sheet, all with those carefully-drawn numbered curves zigzagging across them, all showing the very temperature of War....

With this difference--that on these sheets there is no "normal." War is abnormal, and there is not a point of these charts where, when the line touches it, you can say--"It is well."

As I looked at these records I began to get a different vision of that tract of country called "Lines of Communication" which I had come to see. This, where War's very pulse was noted day by day, was the stronghold of War himself. Here he is nursed, rested, fed with food for the mouths of flesh and blood, and food for the mouths of iron; here, the whole time, night and day, as ceaselessly as in the trenches, the work goes on, the work of strengthening his hands, and so every man and woman working for that end in "L. of C." is fighting on our side most surely. Something of the hugeness and the importance of it began to show itself.

And, as regards that particular portion which I had come out to see, I began to get a glimmering of that also, when it was told me, that of those thousands of wounded I saw marked on the charts, a great proportion was convoyed entirely by women. There are whole districts, such as the Calais district, which includes many towns and stations, where every ambulance running is driven by a woman. Not only the fever rate of War is shown on those charts, but just as to the seeing eye, behind any temperature-chart in a hospital, is the whole construction of the great scheme--doctors, surgeons, nurses, food, drugs, money, devotion, everything that finds its expression in that simple sheet of paper filled in daily as a matter of routine, so behind these charts of War's temperature kept at H.Q. is the whole of the complex organisation known as the British Red Cross. And outstanding even amongst so much that is splendid are certain bands of girls behind the lines, who, not for a month or two, but year in, year out, during nights and days when they have known no rest, have they, also, had their fingers on the pulse of war.

CHAPTER III

BACKGROUNDS

At H.Q.B.R.C.S. the D. of T. told me the first things for me to see were the F.A.N.Y.'s and the G.S.V.A.D.'s. That is the sort of sentence that was shot at me on my first day. I have told you what H.Q.B.R.C.S. means; the D. of T. means Director of Transport; the F.A.N.Y. is the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, and the G.S.V.A.D. is the General Service Voluntary Aid Detachment. Now the V.A.D. I had heard of, and of its members, always called V.A.D.'s, but G.S.V.A.D. was something new to me. Yet the importance of the distinction, I soon learned, was great.

Four sets of initials represented my chief objectives in France, the F.A.N.Y.'s, the V.A.D.'s, the G.S.V.A.D.'s, and the W.A.A.C.'s. Of these the former are known as the Fannies, and the last named as the Waacs, owing to the tendency of the eye to make out of any possible combination of letters a word that appeals to the ear. Of these four bodies, the Fannies and the V.A.D.'s were in existence before the war, being amongst those who listened to the voice of Lord Roberts crying in the wilderness. They are all unpaid, voluntary workers, and they rank officially as officers. Among themselves, of course, they have their own officers, but socially, so to speak, every f.a.n.n.y and V.A.D. is ranked with the officers of the Army. But with the G.S.V.A.D.'s and the Waacs it is not so. They are paid, and are to replace men; G.S.V.A.D.'s work in motor convoys and at the hospitals, as cooks, dispensers, clerks, etc., and the Waacs work for the combatant service. Except for their officers, who rank with officers of the Army, the members of these two bodies are considered as privates.

And as both the Fannies and the Waacs go in khaki, and both the V.A.D.'s and the G.S.V.A.D.'s in dark blue, it will be seen that confusion is very easy to the uninitiate. That is my only excuse for perpetrating the worst blunder that has probably ever been committed in France. Taken to tea at a f.a.n.n.y convoy I committed the unspeakable sin of asking whether they were Waacs....

They were very kind to me about it, but when I eventually grasped the system, I saw it was as though I had asked a Bra.s.s Hat whether he belonged to the Salvation Army. Yet when I told the sad tale of my _gaffe_ to the members of a V.A.D. convoy, they only seemed to think it must have been quite good for the Fannies ... but somehow it wasn't equally good for them when I timidly asked whether they were G.S.V.A.D.'s ... though they were also very kind to me about it.

The D. of T. motored me over to the Fannies' convoy, on a pale day of difficult sunlight. Is there anywhere in the world, I wondered, more depressing--more morbid--landscape, than that round Calais? It weighs on the soul as a fog upon the senses, and it seemed to me that only people of such a tenacious gaiety as the French or such an independence from environment as the British could survive there for long. I have seen country far flatter that was yet more wholesome, and I loathe flat country. There is something in the perpetual repet.i.tion of form in the country round Calais, the endless sameness of its differences, that is peculiarly oppressive. Pearly skies blotted with paler clouds, endless rows of bare poplars, like the skeletons of dead flames, yellowish roads unwinding for ever, acres of unbroken and sickly green, of new-turned earth of an equally sad brown ... and over all the trail of war, whose footprint is desolation. The occupation even of an army of defence means camp after camp; tin huts, wooden huts, zinc roofs; hospitals; barbed wire; mud. And, amidst all this, and the sudden reminders of more active warfare in houses crumpled to a scatter of rubble by a bomb, there are people working, year in, year out, undismayed by the sordid litter of it....

The saving of it all to the newcomer, though even that must pall on anyone too accustomed, is that, like Pater's Monna Lisa, upon this part of France "the ends of the world are come" ... (and who shall wonder if in consequence "her eyelids are a little weary"?). Inscrutable Chinamen, silent as shadows, flashing their sudden smiles, even more mysterious than their immobility, turned from their labour to watch the pa.s.sing of the car; Kaffirs from South Africa, each with a white man's vote, voluntarily enlisted for the Empire, swung along; vividly dark Portuguese, clad in grey, came down to their rest camps; Belgians trotted past with their little ta.s.sels bobbing from their jaunty caps.

And, in great droves along the roads, or, sometimes, more solitary in the fields, the German prisoners stood at gaze, their English escort shepherding.

The first time my companion told me we were coming on German prisoners, I shut my eyes, determined to open them unprejudiced, with a vision clear of all preconceptions; really, at the bottom of my heart, expecting that I should find them extraordinarily like anyone else....

But they were not. They were all so like each other, that by the time you had seen several hundreds you were still wondering confusedly whether they were all relations ... even my Western eye detected more difference between the types of Chinamen I met upon the road than in these Teutons. Of course, the round brimless cap has something to do with it, as has the close hair-crop, but when all is said, how much of a type they are, how amazingly so, as though they had all been bred to one purpose through generations! The outstanding ear, placed very low on the wide neck, the great development of cheekbones and of the jaw on a level with the ears, and then the sudden narrowing at the short chin ... and the florid bulkiness of them. A detachment of _poilus_ swung past in their horizon blue, and what a different type was flashed up against that background of square jowls, what a thin, nervous, wiry type, all animation....