I—STORY OF AN AMERICAN AT THE BARONIAL CASTLE
It was five o'clock in the morning. A riotous sunrise deluged the Campine as I slipped into my clothes and ran down the narrow, twisting tower-stair to keep a secret tryst with the Baas, or overseer. Little slits in the tower wall, cut for mediæval archers, let in the arrows of the sun; and as I ran through the gloomy armory and the high-roofed Flemish dining hall—stripped of their treasure of old pikes, swords, crossbars, and blunderbusses by the diligent Germans—out to the causeway, and over the creaking drawbridge on my way to the stables and the dismantled brewery, I imagined myself an escaped prisoner from the donjons of Château Drie Toren. In truth, I was running away from Baron van Steen's week-end house-party for a breath of rustic air while the others slept.
The stables, tool sheds, hostlers' barracks, bake-oven, and brewery were thatch roofed and walled with brick, toned to a claret-red, pierced with small windows and heavy oaken doors. The doors were banded with the baronial colors—blue stripes, alternating with yellow, like the stripes on a barber pole—and in the centre of the hollow square of farm buildings fumed a mammoth brown manure pile. A smell of fresh cut hay and the warm smell of animals clung about the stables, and I heard the watch-dog rattle his chain and sniff at the door as I passed.
I found the Baas standing before his door, his face wrinkled with pleasure, his cap in his hand. Behind him his wife peered out at us, wiping her fat hands on her skirts, and two half-grown children stared from the nearest window. The Baas and his wife were the parents of sixteen children!
"Good day, mynheer!" every one shouted in chorus.
"Good day, madame; good day, Baas." (I used the Flemish title for overseer—the word from which has come our much-abused word "Boss.") "I'm a deserter this morning: the rest of the Baron's party sleeps."
"Ah, so," laughed the wife. "Mynheer is like the German soldiers who desert by dozens nowadays. And would your Honor hide in the forest like them—like the Germans?"
"To be sure. The Baas is to show me the deepest coverts, where mynheer the Baron will never find me more."
We laughed and passed on. A girl with a neckyoke and full milk pails came by from the dairy; nodding faces appeared at the windows of the farm buildings as we walked toward the woods; bees sped in the air from conical straw hives close to our path; and in a few minutes we were threading our way through a nursery of young pines, tilled like corn rows in Kansas, and all of equal age.
"Monsieur, there is a soul in trees," said the Baas, affectionately patting an ancient linden on the border of the old forest. The Baas was a man from the Province of Liège, and he preferred to speak French with me rather than Flemish. He had, too, a Walloon lightness of wit which went sometimes incongruously with his heavy frame, as when he said to me once when we were debating the joys of youth versus age, "To be old has its advantages, monsieur. One can then be virtuous, and it is not hard."
"There is a soul in trees," he repeated. "All together the trees have a soul. A forest is one spirit. These trees are old men and old women, very patient and kindly and sluggish of blood. They nod their heads in the wind like peasants over a stove. And they talk. Sometimes I think I can understand their talk—very wise and patient and slow. Men hurry apart, monsieur, but the trees remain together like old married people and watch their children grow up around them.
"Here,"—we had turned down a path and were in the fringes of another forest of small pines—"here the Germans have taken trees for their fortifications, slashed and cut, and those trees that are left are like wounded soldiers: they have arms too long or too short, heads smashed; feet uprooted, and yet they wish to live, because they are one spirit."
"What is this?" I demanded abruptly; for at my feet yawned a little pit, with lumpy clay still fresh about it and a fallen cross lying half hidden in the weeds.
"Ho, that? It is the grave of a German," said the Baas heartily. He spat into the raw pit. "The German has been taken away, but the children of Drie Toren are still afraid. They will not come by this path, on account of the dead Deutscher."
His foot crushed the rude cross as he talked, and we walked on. But I was vaguely troubled. That vile pit and the thought of what it had contained had spoiled my promenade. As I had found on a thousand other occasions, my freedom in Belgium was only a fiction. The war could not be forgotten, even for an hour.
A partridge thundered up at our feet and rocketed to earth again beyond the protecting pines. In a little glade we surprised four young rabbits together at breakfast. The Baas laid his hand lightly on my arm. "It is sad, monsieur, isn't it?" he said. "The poachers steal right and left nowadays. The gardes champêtres are no longer armed, so the thieves do as they will. There is more pheasant in the city markets than chicken, and more rabbit than veal. The game will soon be gone, like our horses and cattle.
"You remember, monsieur, the sand dunes by Blankenberghe and Knocke on the Belgian coast? Ah, the rabbits that used to be in those dunes! But now the firing of cannon has driven them all away."
A silence fell upon us both. The thickets grew denser, and we pushed our way slowly toward the deeper coverts. I found myself thinking of the little crosses along the seaside dunes which marked where greater game than rabbits had fallen—the graves of men—the biggest game on earth—the shallow pits and the frail wooden crosses, like that which the Baas's leather boot had crushed a half hour before.
II—"WE FOUND A STARVING GERMAN"
We had reached the deepest woods, when a gasping, choking cry stopped us short. The thicket directly before us stirred and then lay still as death. The cry had been horrible as a Banshee's wail, and as mysterious, but it was not the cry of an animal; it was human, and it came from a human being in agony. The Baas crossed himself swiftly and leaped forward, and instantly we had parted the protecting bushes and were looking down on a man lying flat on the ground—a spectre with a thin white face, chattering teeth, enormous frightened eyes, and a filthy, much worn German uniform.
"What are you doing here?" I demanded.
The soldier did not answer, he did not rise, he lay motionless and hideous like a beast. Then I caught sight of his left ankle, enormously swollen and wrapped in rags, and his hands—they were thin as sticks. The man was helpless, and he was starving.
And now came a strange thing. We two walked slowly around the man on the ground as if he were a wild creature caught in a snare. We felt no pity or astonishment; only curiosity. Utterly unemotionally we took note of him and his surroundings. He had no gun, no knife, and no blankets. He lay on some broken boughs, and he seemed to have covered himself with boughs at night. The wild, haggard eyes turned in their sockets and watched us as we moved, but otherwise no part of the man stirred. He seemed transfixed, frozen in an agony of fear and horror.
"Ashes! He has had a fire here, monsieur, but it was days ago." At the man's feet the Baas had discovered the remnants of a little fire. "Holy blue!" he added in astonishment, "he has eaten these!"
A pile of small green twigs lay near the fire. The bark had been chewed from them!
A buzzing swarm of flies, disturbed by our investigations, rotated in the air, and a faint, bad odor hung about the place, indescribably stale and filthy.
At the end of our search we turned again to the man on the ground. "Who are you? What are you doing here?" I demanded again. There was no answer. "Baas, have you a flask?"
The old man slowly drew a little leather-clad bottle from his breast pocket and passed it to me in silence. He offered it with obvious reluctance, and watched jealously as I knelt and dropped a little stream of liquid between the parted lips of the creature on the ground. The man's lips sucked inward, his throat choked at the raw liquor, he opened his mouth wide and gasped horribly for breath, his knees twitched, and his wrists trembled as if he were dying. Then the parched mouth tried to form words; it could only grimace.
For a moment I felt a mad impulse to leap on that moving mouth and crush it into stillness; such an impulse as makes a hunter wring the neck of a wounded bird. Instead, I continued dropping the stinging liquor and listening.
Then came the first word. "More!" the black lips begged, and I emptied the flask into them. The Baas sighed plaintively. "German?" the soldier whispered.
"No. American," I answered.
"The other one?"
"Belgian."
The frightened eyes closed in evident relief. The man seemed to sleep.
"But you?" I asked.
"I'm German—a soldier," he said.
"Lost?"
"Missing." He used the German word vermisst—the word employed in the official lists of losses to designate the wounded or dead who are not recovered, and those lost by capture or desertion.
"You understand, Baas?"
"No, monsieur."
"He says he is a German soldier—a deserter, I suppose, trying to make his way over the frontier to Holland. And he is starving."
The Baas's face became a battle-ground of emotions. His kindly eyes glared merrily, his lips twisted until his beard seemed to spread to twice its natural width. Instantly his face became grave again, then puzzled, even anxious. A stream of invective and imprecation in mingled French and Flemish poured from his troubled lips, and he stamped his feet vigorously.
"He can't stay here," I concluded.
"It is death to help him," said the Baas.
"For you, yes; for me, no. The Germans can only disgrace me as a member of the Relief Commission. They cannot kill me."
"He must not be left to die here, monsieur."
"The Germans will probably search your house if we take him there."
"He may betray us if we help him."
"That is possible. But you see he is very weak—almost dead."
"He may be a spy."
"That again is possible. But see! He has eaten twigs!"
"He is a damned pig of a German!"
"But you do not feed even pigs on sticks and leaves."
"I am afraid, monsieur."
"So am I, Baas. Yet you must decide, and not I. It is much more dangerous for you than for me."
III—THE DESERTER'S LAST HOUR
We stared into each other's eyes, trying to guess each other's thoughts. Every one in Belgium knows that the German army sows its informers everywhere. We could not even trust each other in that stricken country. Deserters and traitors were tracked down like dogs. Any one who gave aid or comfort to such persons did so at the risk of his life. It is said that pretended deserters deliberately trapped Belgians into aiding them, and then betrayed their hosts. Something of the sort was hinted in the famous case of Miss Edith Cavell. Knowledge, then, bade us be cautious: instinct alone bade us be kind.
The Baas's wide eyes turned again to the creature on the ground, and he sighed plaintively. "Monsieur," he began, in a very low, gentle voice, "I will help him. Give me my flask and I will go for food and drink. Then we must plan. Does it please you to remain here?"
"I shall stay here with him."
"Good! I will go."
I knelt beside the soldier and chafed his filthy hands until blood flowed again in his dry veins. The swollen pupils of his heavy eyes brightened. He talked continuously in a thin trickling whisper—a patter of information about dinners he had eaten, wines he had drunk, his military service, his hardships, and his physical and mental sensations. I had read of victims of scurvy in the Arctic snows dreaming and talking day and night of food, only of food. So it was with the starving soldier. The liquor had made him slightly delirious, and he babbled on and on.
His broken ankle pained him. When I moved him about to rest it, his lightness astonished me. The man had been large and heavy; he was shrunken to a bag of bones. His uniform hung about him like a sack, and it seemed as if the slightest jar would snap his arms and legs. Tears welled under his heavy, dirty eyelids. "Mother! Mother!" he whispered once. "Art thou there? Mother!" Then as his eyes again cleared and he saw the trees interarched above him—the trees which the Baas had told me were one spirit; the grim, silent, sepulchral trees; the haunted, malignant trees which had wooed him with their shelter and then broken him and starved him; the trees beneath which his forest-dwelling ancestors had cowered for thousands of years and to which they had offered human sacrifices—he broke down and sobbed horribly. "She is not here! She is not here! No, she is not here!" he repeated over and over again.
IV—"WE BURIED HIM IN THE PIT"
When the Baas returned, we covered the deserter with our coats and fed him. Perhaps we did wrong to give him food, although I think now that he was doomed before we found him. We did our best, but it was not enough. In less than an hour, after a horrible spell of vomiting, the poor man was beyond all help of ours. His eyes rolled desperately, his breath came in horrid gasps, and he grew rigid like a man in an epileptic fit.
We tore open the breast of his uniform to ease his labored breathing. A metal identification disk hung on a cord from about his neck over a chest which was like a wicker-work of ribs. His belly was sunken until one almost saw the spinal column through it. His tortured lungs subsided little by little, the terrifying sound of his breathing sank to nothing, his head thrust far back and over to the right side, his arms stiffened slowly, his mouth fell open.
We watched, as if fascinated, the pulsing vein in his emaciated neck, still pumping blood through a body which had ceased to breathe. The top of the blood column at last appeared, like mercury in a thermometer. It fell half an inch with each stroke of the famished heart. It reached the base of the neck and sank from sight, and still we stared and stared. The man was dead, yet I seemed to have an awful vision of billions of sentient cells, billions of little selfish lives which had made up his life, fighting, choking, starving to death within that cooling clay.
The Baas bent his head, uncovered, and crossed himself. With a quick stooping motion, he closed the wide open eyes and straightened the bent limbs. Then he rose to his full height and looked at me sadly. "This man had a mother, monsieur," he said. "We must forget the rest."
In the pit where the other German had lain we buried the body of the deserter, and we found and repaired the little lath cross and set it up at the grave's head. But first I took from about the neck of the corpse the oval medallion which told the man's name and regimental number. It was a silver medal, finer than those usually worn by privates in the German army. I have it by me as I write, and on it is etched the brave sentence, "God shield you from all dangers of warfare, and render you back to us safe and victorious!"
I was late for breakfast at the Château, but Van Steen kindly made room for me at his right hand. "Aha, monsieur!" he called gaily, "we thought you were helping to find the deserter."
"Wha-what, monsieur le Baron?" I stuttered in amazement.
"The German deserter. A file of soldiers woke us up at seven o'clock, inquiring for one of their men who ran away from Mons a month ago. They are searching the stables and the forest. They have traced him here to our commune. I hope they catch him!"
My fingers clutched the silver disk in my pocket. "I think they will not catch him, messieurs. He ran away a month ago, you say?"
"A month ago.... But it is nothing to us, eh? Let us eat our breakfasts." The Baron bowed grandly to me. "Monsieur le Délégue," he began in his smooth, formal voice, "once again we remind ourselves that it is thanks to you and the generous American people that we have bread. It is thanks to you that our noble Belgium is not starving.... Eh bien! Let us eat our breakfasts."
And so we did.
(Told in the Red Cross Magazine.)
Patrick Corcoran, of the Royal Engineers, on leave in New York, gives a picture in which the monotony of slaughter is relieved by wagers among the men and pranks with a football as the charge begins. Told in the New York World.
I—AN IRISHMAN TELLS HIS TALE
"To the German soldier war is a serious business. To the Frenchman it is sublime devotion. To the Englishman it is bully sport."
This from Capt. Patrick Corcoran of the Royal Engineers, hero of a dozen "Somewheres" in France, twice wounded and on permanent leave in New York City.
"And to the Irishman?" I asked.
"Fighting always was the Irishman's great amusement," he said. "The English are good sports, but they never did get the fun out of their fun that the Irish do."
Fun in the trenches! With shells dropping all around and blowing the bodies of your comrades into red fragments! What do the soldiers do, I wondered, when this is happening?
The Frenchmen sing, this captain told me. Not to keep up their courage, but joyously, exultantly.
"And the British?"
"Sure, they lay bets on what the next shell will do."
"The 'sausages' are the fine toys," the captain went on. "The Boche call 'em minnewieffers, but they look like sausages. They always come with a series of whoops, and you can tell almost exactly where they're going to hit. Then they sit down and rest five seconds before they explode; they muss things up a little sometimes, but they're decent about it.
"But the whizz-bangs—nobody loves a whizz-bang. You can't even hear them coming. You never have time to place a bet. They just whizz and bang in the same breath; and if you happen to be conscious after that, you help to bandage."
Capt. Corcoran enlisted as a private. I wondered how he came to get his commission.
"So did I," he said. "I was carrying despatches to different places within our sector; couldn't go to another sector without special orders. But one day I was asked to take a despatch to another sector and I took it. When I came back, they made me a lieutenant. Nothing at all had happened, and I couldn't understand it. I didn't have any pull that I knew of; and besides, pulls don't count nowadays.
"They told me a while later," he added, "that I was the seventh man sent out with that despatch. The first six were killed."
II—"I WAS IN A CAVE ON CHRISTMAS EVE"
It was nearing Christmas when I met Capt. Corcoran. He is a genial and, I felt sure, a rather sentimental soul; but his matter-of-fact conversation about matter-of-fact human slaughter was altogether chilling. So I asked him about Christmas in the trenches.
"I spent last Christmas at Loos," he said. Loos, one of the worst of slaughter pens! I grew expectant.
"I was sapping," he said. "Part of an engineer's duties are the extension of deep underground passages toward the enemy's lines, laying mines under 'No Man's Land' and listening, if possible, for signs of activity on the other side.
"I was sapping—Christmas Eve. We were down thirty-five feet, in a little cave about nine by four. There were three of us. Along toward midnight a big shell landed right, and we were buried. We were buried thirteen hours. One of the boys lost his mind, but they dug us out Christmas afternoon."
"It wouldn't have been so bad," he added, "if we had only had to wait. But we could hear the Boche sapping just a few feet away and we hated like everything to be mined and blown up down there. You don't mind it when you're out in the open air, but you get nervous in a fix like that."
"It must have been a merry Christmas after all—just to get out," I remarked.
"No," he said. "Something happened that got on my nerves. I went as soon as I could to get my Christmas mail—wanted to see what Santa Claus had brought—and he didn't bring me a blessed thing but a bill for thirty pounds."
I have hoped for a reaction against war on the part of the troops—a psychological revulsion, in time, against the long-drawn-out killing. I tried to present my theory to the captain, but he didn't seem to grasp it.
"Everybody's nervous," he said, "for the first day or two—like a horse just in from the quiet country being driven through your city streets. But, sure, if he was going to shy at the 'Elevated,' he'd do it the first week. After that, he gets used to the noise and he'd be nervous without it. 'Tis so with a soldier. He's glad to get wounded for a change, and be sent back home; but then he gets to missing the noise of the whizz-bangs and the coal boxes and the darling little sausages, and he isn't easy until he gets into the game again."
"But the horrors of hand-to-hand fighting," I protested. "How can anybody go through that and come out sane?"
"'Tis simple," he said. "You know you've got to get your man, or he'll get you."
"Get him? How?"
"With whatever you've got. Maybe your bayonet. Maybe your knife. Maybe nothing but your fists and teeth."
I tried to picture youths advancing under the smoke of artillery, through fields mowed by machine guns, dropping a moment into craters ploughed out by giant shells, creeping out under other curtains of smoke and reaching at last that other line of youths—then the thrust, the stab or the fight to the death with teeth and claws. I tried to picture young husbands and fathers and lovers, and even jolly good fellows, getting used to this—but I failed. I am an incorrigible mollycoddle.
"What is the war doing to the soldiers?" I asked. "How is it changing them most?"
"Making men of them," said the captain. "They came out little pasty-faced clerks with no lungs, no muscle, no nerve and no vision. Now they've seen life—and death—and aren't afraid of either. They have muscles and nerves of iron, and a man's outlook on life. They'll never be mere clerks or mere Londoners again."
Capt. Corcoran doesn't reminisce. He doesn't romance. Getting a war story from him is hard newspaper work; not that he isn't willing to give information, but war conditions are no longer a novelty in Europe, and heroes are so common that their stories are no longer interesting. Little by little, I learned the following facts about his record, which did not seem at all extraordinary to him:
He fought in the battles of the Aisne, Pepereign, Festubert, Hooge, St. Eloi, Neuve Chapelle, Loos and Pommier. He was wounded at Neuve Chapelle, sent to England, recovered and insisted on going back. He was wounded again at Pommier last February, two miles back of the line, when a stray shell fragment struck him in the back. The force of it hurled him to the ground in the midst of some barbed wire entanglements that caught in his forehead and tore back his scalp to the crown. A comrade clapped a cap upon his head to hold the scalp in place while he was carried to the hospital. His recovery amazed the surgeons.
Once he broke military rules by staying away from his billet all night. That night a shell struck the billet and killed his partner with whom he had been sleeping for months.
At another time, a shell split a house in which he was installing signal apparatus and killed half a dozen telegraph clerks with whom he had just been talking. He was uninjured.
III—"EVERYBODY IS A HERO"
"Heroes," he mused. "I suppose everybody is a hero after he has got on to the knack of heroism. You don't call a man a hero because he rushes fearlessly across Fifth Avenue; but to a person who has never seen anything busier than a country road, the act looks heroic. It's something the same with No Man's Land. I have a friend, a doctor, who got a D.S.O. for going out on No Man's Land to bandage up some wounded comrades. He didn't know he was doing anything heroic. They needed care; they couldn't come in, so he went out—that's all.
"It was different with O'Leary. He went out for the fun of the thing and got eighteen Germans."
The captain spoke of Private Michael O'Leary, V. C., who won the coveted decorations for this particular joke. It happened in the sector where Capt. Corcoran was stationed and he was well acquainted with the details.
"O'Leary had been betting on the 'sausages' for several days," he said, "and he was bored. He wanted some real fun and let everybody know he was in the mood.
"Betcha can't go across and bring back a Boche," somebody suggested. O'Leary sprung from the trench and went. In a second he was lost in the darkness and in half a minute the boys heard him yelling like a demon for help. Nobody could ever figure out how he did it—he must have brained the sentinel and disarmed the others while they were asleep. But there he was, with the arms of eighteen of them piled up before him, yelling back to the British trenches to come over and get the men. Of course, the boys answered his call and brought the whole eighteen back to the British lines.
"You see, the Germans, with all their efficiency, aren't used to that kind of fighting. They're always so darn serious about it. They're good soldiers but they don't have any fun. When they see us come over kicking a football ahead of the charge, they don't seem to know what to make of it. We do it sometimes, don't you know, just to add a little novelty to the sport.
"The war is just beginning. The Germans have a great machine and it'll take a long while to break it.
"As much as you people in the States have heard about German efficiency, there has been little overestimating of it. Only one who has seen the Germans in action can appreciate what a well-regulated business organization they have made of war.
"I don't know what our boys will do when it's all over; they're so used to war that peace will probably come hard for a while.
"Seriously, now, I don't know a soldier who is even dreaming of peace. They didn't want war, but now that it is here, they're going to carry it through. And they're going to have all the fun they can out of it while it lasts."
Experiences of a Highland soldier, back from the front, while visiting London for the first time in his life. The hero's correct name, of course, has been suppressed in this story in the Wide World.
I—STORY OF THE HIGHLANDER ON FURLOUGH
He was standing on the main-line departure platform of St. Pancras Station. Motionless, as though on guard over the bookstall, he might have been made of the granite of his native country, and I felt sure that his name was Sandy or Jock.
His war-stained khaki bore traces of many ordeals undergone; even the big, red knees were flecked with mud. Around him hung the extraordinary medley of equipment that so thoroughly justifies the old Army axiom that a soldier is "something to hang things on."
A red face beamed out like a beacon from the mass of paraphernalia, a wisp of sandy hair peeped from under the soft khaki headgear, but the steady blue eyes glanced at me with hard suspicion as I felt for my cigarette-case; and thinking my action might be misunderstood, I went into the refreshment-room and dined.
Nearly three-quarters of an hour later I emerged. It was eight o'clock, and I had half an hour longer to wait for my train to the Midlands. I gasped when I saw the Highlander still standing on sentry-go beside the bookstall. Presently he shouldered his rifle and paced along the platform. There was a clatter, and his steel helmet slipped from his back and rolled towards me. I just saved it from going under the wheels of a heavy luggage truck a porter was pushing along.
The Highlander took his property with gruff word of thanks.
"Losh, mon; it's a terrible city!" he murmured, as he placed his rifle between his knees and groped among the multitudinous buckles and straps on his broad back. "D'ye ken it's been my life's dream to see yon London? Ma old mither don't believe in dreams—and I'm thinkin' she's reet. I'll be glad when eleven o'clock comes and I'm off for bonnie Scotland!"
"Eleven o'clock!" I gasped. "Why, you've nearly three hours to wait, and you were here when I arrived just after seven."
"Aye; I've been here since four o'clock. Mon, I know this platform as well as I know ma own wee house! I feel safer here than in yon streets."
Having fixed his steel helmet to his satisfaction on top of the other gear, he swung his rifle round on the sling—nearly braining an elderly gentleman who was passing behind him in the process. Ignoring the civilian's angry protest, he turned to me.
"That's the sixth," he said, shortly, and a faint glimmer of amusement came into his clear blue eyes, "the sixth thieving rascal that felt ma rifle this day. They hang round trying to steal something from ma kit. It's a terrible city. I've been discoverin' it all day."
"Look here," I said, "I've half an hour to spare, and you must be feeling hungry. I can't offer you a drink, but if you'll come and have some hot tea or cocoa and something to eat, I'll be proud, and you can tell me of your adventures."
The Scot eyed me suspiciously.
"A wee lassie made the same offer three hours since," he replied, doubtfully. "A lassie all in furs, but I didna trust her, and I told her so. She was after ma money or ma kit, or she wouldn't have been so angry at having been found oot! But I'll trust ye, mon. I want a bite of something, and if it's my adventures you want to hear, it's a wonderful story I'll have to tell ye."
And here is the tale he told me, though I can only indicate the broad Scots in which he spoke.
II—THE SCOTCHMAN TELLS HIS OWN TALE
For years in ma wee Inverness-shire home I'd dreamt of seeing London. I'd never seen a city in ma life. I might have gone to Edinburgh once, but I lost the excursion ticket I'd bought and couldna find it till the train had gone. Ma mither had put it away for safety and forgotten where she'd put it! I was working for Farmer Macpherson when news of the war came, and about the end of August I was in the market-toon, when up came a chap dressed like I am now, except that he'd only got three stripes on his arm ... and was twisting a cane. "My lad," says he, "don't you wish to serve your King and Country?"
"Aye," says I, "but I'm serving Farmer Macpherson juist noo, and he and ma mither wouldna like me changing jobs."
Well, the sergeant had a lot to say. Mon, he was an awfu' liar, that sergeant! Maybe he came from here; I'm thinking he did! He talked of seeing life and of being in Berlin before Christmas.
"Mon," I says, "I'm not fashing maself about Berlin, but if I go in the Army shall I go to London?"
"Of course," says he. "As soon as you're a soldier you'll go to London."
"All reet," says I; and I sent a boy home with the pony-cart to tell them that Jock McTosher had 'listed and was going to London. Well, I didna go to London. I trained in various parts of Scotland, just far enough away to miss ma home, but too close to get a real change. Then we went to an awfu' place in Wiltshire, all mud and huts and hard work; and then slipped across to France. I was a sad mon when I left the dock that night. I'd thought as a soldier I'd be sure to see London, but I'd never even seen a big town save the one we sailed from, and they marched us through that at night, when everything was quiet, and stowed us away in the big ship like smuggled goods.
Well, I'd given up all hope of seeing London unless I got wounded and was sent there, when a bit ago they told me ma name was down for a ten days' leave! "Losh!" I says to maself, "I'll have a whole day in London before going north!" Well, I've had it, mon, and it's been a wash-out!
At six o'clock this morning I arrived at Victoria, and with some pals had breakfast at a hut in the station. One of them was a Londoner, and when the laddies left me to go to their homes, he told me to keep straight along the street and I'd come to Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament.
Losh! mon, I was verra disappointed with London when I stepped out into yon street. It was quieter than the ruined wee village I'd left in France. Well, I looked at the Abbey from the outside, but no' feeling dressed for the kirk, I went across to the Houses of Parliament, thinking maybe the politicians would have had their breakfast interval and be starting again soon, as it was by then getting on for eight o'clock.
But the big gates were shut and there seemed no one about but a policeman. A nice mon he was—and he knew me, too.
"Halloa, Jock!" says he, quite friendly. "What are ye wanting?"
"Mon," says I, "I'm having a day in London, and I want to see the Members of Parliament and the great lords at work. Maybe the day-shift's having breakfast and not started yet?"
The policeman laughed as though I'd made a joke. He said the members weren't working that day, and anyway they didn't start till the afternoon.
"Mon," I said, "they must make good money, or they'd never be able to live with so much standing-off time."
"They don't do so bad," says the policeman, with another laugh; and I walked up a road called Whitehall, though I couldn't see anything white about it, unless it was the faces of the wee lassies hurrying to work. Then I went into a park and sat down and had a rest and a smoke. Maybe I dozed for awhile, for when I got out into that same Whitehall again something wonderful seemed to have happened. It was all noise and rush, and I was saluting officers until my arm ached. Then I crossed the road a bit, and after having been nearly run over twice, turned down a side-street and lost myself.
III—ON THE WAY TO PICCADILLY
Presently I saw what looked like a kindly old gentleman, and I asked him the way to Piccadilly.
"You'd better take the Tube," says he. "There's a station just over there."
"Tube!" says I, doubtful like. "What's that?"
"An underground railway," says he, hurrying off. "You'll get to Piccadilly Circus in a few minutes."
He was an awfu' liar, that mon! Why, it was ten minutes before I got ma ticket! There were penny-in-the-slot machines besides the little windows; but I don't trust them. There seemed to be about half-a-dozen railways running into the place, and there were maps with all the colours o' the rainbow to show you how to get to places; but as I didn't know where I was, or whether I was on a green or a brown line, they didn't help me much. I looked at the pictures and I looked at the pert lassies in uniform clippin' tickets an' all. I didn't like bothering them with questions, but at last I got to a window and asked for Piccadilly.
"Penny," says the girl.
"Aye," says I, and I put down ma rifle, not meaning to hurt the foot of the fussy mon behind me. "Is there any reduction for a return?" says I, having been brought up never to waste the bawbees.
"No," she snapped. "Penny's the fare. Hurry up, please!"
"Yes, do," growled out the mon behind, hopping about on one foot and I saw it was true about a crowd quickly gathering in London—for just in the little time I'd been talking there were dozens of people waiting in a line.
"I'll have to get at ma purse," says I, starting to search ma pockets. "Losh! I believe I have it in ma pack! Will ye give us a hand with these straps, laddie?"
"Oh, I'll pay your fare," says the man behind me; and no doubt he meant it kindly, though his way was rough. Well, I puts ma ticket in ma pocket and walks a little way. Then one of the wee lassies with clippers stops me and wants ma ticket.
"Hold ma rifle, lassie," says I, "so as I can get it."
Seeing how unsociable everyone else seemed, I spoke kindly to the lassie and told her I hoped she liked the job and her mither approved and all. But maybe, knowing Londoners, she didna trust any mon; anyway, the C.O. with a bad attack of liver couldn't have told me off much sharper; and there was a crowd behind charging at me just like a game of football!
Mon, I'm not surprised that these Londoners make good soldiers! A man that could take that Tube every day of his life would think the first line of trenches restful! Down a sort of underground tunnel I walked; then suddenly I came to the funniest staircase I'd ever seen. I should have stopped to stare at the rumbling, snarling thing, but people from behind pushed me, and all of a sudden there was somethin' wrong with ma feet, and I found myself carried forwards. While I was looking about me steps formed before my eyes, and I gave a yell and clutched out to save myself.
Now mind ye, mon, I'm a respectable young chap; ma feyther was elder at the kirk and ma mither's always warned me to treat lassies with proper respect.
I didna know it was a lassie's waist I clutched hold of when I went down with a crash, ma rifle clattering and those awfu' stairs sliding downwards all the time. When I pulled myself together I saw that I'd dragged down with me a very pretty lassie, and she was sitting on ma knee! She was wearing one of those terrible short skirts, and there before my eyes was about a yard of silk stockings; but the lassie jumped to her feet just as I was going to shut ma eyes.
She was quite nice aboot it, mind ye—the only nice Londoner I'd met. She was flushed-up like, and confused, as anybody would be on that awfu' livin' staircase, but she helped me to get to ma feet and collect ma kit. It wasn't her fault, moreover, that I fell down again in getting off that movin' contraption. I thought I was going to be carried doon the crack where it disappeared, and what with marking time and trying to step off with both feet at once I came down again with another crash. I blocked the passage-way for a minute or two, and the poor Londoners, with never a second to spare, were clambering all over me. Do they get paid by the minute?
When I'd picked maself up and seen that nothing was missing, the dainty little lassie had disappeared. I was sorry, for, although I've been taught to be cautious of women, she was certainly verra nice, and no weight at all on ma knee.
IV—"I'VE WALKED THE SEWERS OF LONDON"
Finding myself alone, I set off up a tunnel. Presently I came to a notice—"Exit by Stairs." I didna know what "exit" meant, but I knew all about those terrible conjuring-trick stairs, and so I turned back and tried another tunnel. Seeing a lot of people going into a little room, I followed them. I gave ma ticket to another lassie, but she was so busy love-making to a bit of a boy that she took it without so much as a glance at it or me. There were advertisements in the room, and sort of sliding doors at each end of it. "It's a waiting-room," says I to maself; and thinking there might be some time before a train came and they opened the other door, I lit a "fag." Very wisely, I saw, they'd put up "Beware of Pickpockets," so I kept my eyes about me.
"No smoking!" barks the lassie; and she came into the room, closing the other gates behind her.
I was just going to argue with her, when all of a sudden the room started to move upwards. Losh! mon, it gave me an awfu' turn! I yelled out, and a man standing next to me laughed—anyway, he laughed till I turned round and ma rifle knocked against his head. Then, before I knew what had happened, the other gates swung open in a ghostly way. Mon, I'll swear there was no one to open them! I drew in a breath of fresh air, thinking I'd got to Piccadilly but, if you'll believe me, I'd walked the sewers of London and come out at place where I'd entered! And that old man said the "Tube" was an underground railway! Underground maze, I call it! I walked to Piccadilly after that; I was afraid of spending the rest of ma leave down there.
I have no doot that Piccadilly is gay enough. But I was feeling tired and hungry the noo there were officers thick as flies after jam; and there didn't seem room for me and ma kit on the pavement. And the lassies! Never have I seen such clothes, and some of 'em had enough fur on them to make twenty goatskin waistcoats. It's a queer thing, though, but all of them seemed to have their clothes too short for them; ma mither would have been horrified. They looked at me as if I was something out of a show, and I began to feel nervous. "Losh!" I says to maself, "I'll have a bit of dinner. I'll do maself well." So I walked into a restaurant, after dodging a naval officer who was standing at the entrance and seemed to have something to do with the place. As soon as I got in I saw I'd made a mistake, and I'd have retired at the double, but a foreigner in evening dress, with about four square feet of starched shirt on him, came rushing up quite excited.
"You can'd sdop here," says he. "Dis blace is for ladies and gendlemen."
"Mon," says I, "there's many a rule made to be broken, or you wouldna be here."
"I'll haf no insolence!" he cries, going very red. "You go to a common restaurant. We do not serve your sort here."
That roused what ma mither calls the devil in me.
"Mon," says I, catching him by the collar, "I've been killing the likes of you for the past sixteen months. The only difference is that they wore a grey uniform, instead of that fancy dress of yours. Say 'kamerad' and bring me some sausages and mashed and a pint of beer, or you'll be the thirteenth I've finished off at close quarters, and that might be unlucky for both of us!"
"The Scotsman's quite right," piped a pretty voice; and I felt fair frightened. The whole place was in an uproar. Ma rifle—an awkward thing is a rifle—had knocked over a chair, and a young Brass Hat (Staff officer) who was sitting at a table with the girl with the pretty voice, came over. I had to let the other chap go, so as to salute.
"This won't do, you know," says Brass Hat, very severe; but the pretty lassie frowned at him, and he looked a bit awkward. "Confound you, you fool!" says he, very fierce, to the man in evening dress. "The young lady wants this man to lunch with us!"
V—"AND I WENT TO THE CINEMA"
I can't quite remember what happened after that. I should have liked to have fed with that lassie, for her eyes sparkled like stars, and as the Brass Hat was afraid of her it showed she was worth knowing. Still, she wasn't my lassie, but his, and he mightn't have liked it, so I started to retire. The Brass Hat gave me half a crown and said something about being quite as keen on killing the waiter as I was; and then I found myself out in Piccadilly again. It was some time before I found a little pub where I got a good dinner, with beer, for eighteenpence. I will say that for Londoners, mon, they do throw money aboot. Within an hour or so I'd had a railway fare paid and been stood a good dinner. But they take so much more out of you than what they give you, that's my grievance.
Well, having had a good dinner, I strolled along for a bit, and then I thought I'd have a motor-bus ride. As I was standing on the pavements a 'bus stopped alongside me. Mon, I blushed and turned away ma head.
There, on the wee platform at the end, stood a lassie in a blue kilt shorter than mine and high-top boots. Ma little sister wears longer skirts! She was a brown, curly-haired lassie, quite twenty years old, with a funny-shaped hat on her head and a cheeky smile on her lips.
"Want the Bank, Sandy?" says she.
"Lassie," says I, "war's a terrible thing! Go hame to your mither and ask her to lengthen your kilt!"
"Kilt, indeed!" says the hussy, unabashed. "You're out of date, old boy!" And she jerked the bell and the 'bus went off. She waved to me from the stairs, but, of course, I took no notice. By now I was tired of London, mon; I wanted a little peace. Coming to a cinema, I paid saxpence at a little ticket-office and went through a hall that was all mahogany and plush, with a sort of field-marshal in full dress sweeping the marble floor. A lassie with a torch pulled a curtain on one side, and I saw a man falling into a river with a motor-car chasing him. Then the lights went up, and I saw I'd paid saxpence just to stand. I said I'd been swindled, but the people round only cried "Hush!" and then the lights went out again and some letters came up on the screen—"The Big Advance on the Somme."
Mon, when you've been dodging shells and bullets for sixteen months, and ruins and broken trees are the only sort of scenery you've seen, you don't want to have "Big Advances" thrown at you on the pictures. I think I began a speech, and I'm sure it would have been a fine one, but things happen so sudden in London. I saw a shell coming over—on the film, ye ken—and I ducked from force of habit and jostled one or two people. In the excitement I upset a pretty lassie who picked up ma helmet—it was in the dark, ye see—and then I was put out. I wanted to go, or else they'd never have done it. After that—— Oh, is that your train, mon?
"I should have liked to hear the remainder of your adventures in London, Jock," I said, leaning out of the carriage window.
"There weren't any more," replied Jock, gazing suspiciously round him. "I came straight here after that. I've had enough of London. I've only three hours to wait the noo! I'll be feeling a wee-bit lonely, but——"
The train moved away suddenly. I saw the brawny man in khaki take up his position by the bookstall, now closed. I waved to him, but he had turned to granite again. Private McTosher had discovered London!