Fanny Goes to War

by Pat Beauchamp

  This swinging left one feeling like nothing on earth, and sometimes was a day's work in itself.

  In spite of all the precautions we took, whatever water was left in the water pipes and drainings at the bottom of the radiators froze solidly, and sure enough, when we had got them going, clouds of steam rose into the air. The frost had come to stay and moreover it was a black one.

  Something had to be done to solve the problem for it was imperative for every car to be ready for the road first thing in the morning.

  Camp fires were suggested, but were impracticable, and then it was that "Night Guards" were instituted.

  Four girls sat up all night, and once every hour turned out to crank up the cars, run them with bonnet covers on till they were thoroughly warm, and then tuck them up again till the next time. We had from four to five cars each, and it will give some idea of the extreme cold to say that when we came to crank them again, in roughly three-quarters of an hour's time, they were almost cold. The noise must have been heard for some distance when the whole Convoy was roaring and racing at once like a small inferno. But in spite of this, I know that when it was not our turn to sit up we others never woke.

  As soon as the cars were tucked up and silent again we raced back to the cook-house, where we threw ourselves into deck chairs, played the gramophone, made coffee to keep us awake, or read frightening books—I remember I read "Bella Donna" on one of these occasions and wouldn't have gone across the camp alone if you'd paid me. A grand midnight supper also took up a certain amount of time.

  That three-quarters of an hour positively flew, and seemed more like ten minutes, but punctually at the second we had to turn out again, willy-nilly—into that biting cold with the moon shining frostily over everything apparently turning it into steel.

  The trouble was that as the frost continued water became scarce—baths had stopped long ago—and it began to be a question of getting even a basinful to wash in. Face creams were extensively applied as the only means of saving what little complexions we had left! The streets of the town were in a terrible condition owing principally to the hygienic customs of the inhabitants who would throw everything out of their front doors or windows. The consequence was that, without exaggeration, the ice in some places was two feet thick, and every day fresh layers were formed as the French housewives threw out more water. No one remained standing in a perpendicular position for long, and the difficulty was, once down, how to get up again.

  Finally water became so scarce we had to bring huge cans in a lorry from the M.T., one of the few places not frozen out, and there was usually ice on them when they arrived in camp. Then the water even began to freeze as we filled up our radiators; and, finally, we were reduced to chopping up the ice in our tank and melting it for breakfast! One morning, however, Bridget came to me in great distress. "What on earth shall I do," said she, "I've finished all the ice, and there's not a bit left to make the tea for breakfast? I know you'll think of something," she added hopefully.

  I had been on night guard and the idea of no hot tea was a positive calamity.

  I thought for some minutes. "Here, give me the jug," I said, and out I went. After looking carefully round to see that I was not observed, I quietly tapped one of the radiators.

  "I'll tell you after breakfast where it came from," I said, as I returned with the full jug. Bridget seized it joyfully and must have been a bit suspicious as it was still warm, but she was much too wise to ask any questions.

  We had a cheery breakfast, and when it was over I called out, "I hope you all feel very much better and otherwise radiating? You ought to at all events!"

  "Why?" they asked curiously. "Well, you've just drunk tea made out of 'radium,'" I replied. "Absolutely priceless stuff, known to a few of the first families by its original name of 'radiator water,'" and I escaped with speed to the fastnesses of my hut.

  THE STORY OF A PERFECT DAY

  (From "Barrack Room Ballads of the F.A.N.Y. Corps,"

  By kind permission of Winifred Mordaunt, F.A.N.Y.)

  We were smoking and absently humming

  To anyone there who could play—

  (We'd finished our tea in the Mess hut

  Awaiting an ambulance train—)

  Roasting chestnuts some were, while the rest,

  Cut up toffee or sang a refrain.

  Outside was a bitter wind shrieking—

  (Thank God for a fug in the Mess!)

  Never mind if the old stove is reeking

  If only the cold's a bit less—

  But one of them starts and then shivers

  (A goose walking over her tomb)

  Gazes out at the rain running rivers

  And says to the group in the room:

  "Just supposing the 'God of Surprises'

  Appeared in the glow of a coal,

  With a promise before he demises

  To take us away from this hole

  And do just whatever we long to do.

  Tell me your perfect day."

  Said one, "Why, to fly to an island

  Far away in a deep blue lagoon;

  One would never be tired in my land

  Nor ever get up too soon."

  "Every time," cried the girl darning stockings,

  "We'd surf-ride and bathe in the sea,

  We'd wear nothing but little blue smockings

  And eat mangoes and crabs for our tea."

  "Oh no!" said a third, "that's a rotten

  Idea of a perfect day;

  I long to see mountains forgotten,

  Once more hear the bells of a sleigh.

  I'd give all I have in hard money

  For one day of ski-ing again,

  And to see those white mountains all sunny

  Would pretty well drive me insane."

  Then a girl, as she flicked cigarette ash

  Most carelessly on to the floor,

  Had a feeling just then that her pet "pash"

  Would be a nice car at the door,

  To motor all day without fagging—

  Not to drive nor to start up the thing.

  Oh! the joy to see someone else dragging

  A tow-rope or greasing a spring!

  Then a fifth murmured, "What about fishing?

  Fern and heather right up to your knees

  And a big salmon rushing and swishing

  'Mid the smell of the red rowan trees."

  So the train of opinions drifted

  And thicker the atmosphere grew,

  Till piercing the voices uplifted

  Rang a sound I was sure I once knew.

  A sound that set all my nerves singing

  And ran down the length of my spine,

  A great pack of hounds as they're flinging

  Themselves on a new red-hot line!

  A bit of God's country is stretching

  As far as the hawk's eye can see,

  The bushes are leafless, like etching,

  As all good dream fences should be.

  There isn't a bitter wind blowing

  But a soft little southerly breeze,

  And instead of the grey channel flowing

  A covert of scrub and young trees.

  The field of course is just dozens

  Of people I want to meet so—

  Old friends, to say nothing of cousins

  Who've been killed in the war months ago.

  Three F.A.N.Y.s are riding like fairies

  Having drifted right into my dreams,

  And they're riding their favourite "hairies"

  That have been dead for years, so it seems.

  A ditch that I've funked with precision

  For seasons, and passed by in fear,

  I now leap with a perfect decision

  That never has marked my career.

  For a dream-horse has never yet stumbled;

  Far away hounds don't know how to flag.

  A dream-fence would melt ere it crumbled,

  And the dream-scent's as
strong as a drag.

  Of course the whole field I have pounded

  Lepping high five-barred gates by the score,

  And I don't seem the least bit astounded,

  Though I never have done it before!

  At last a glad chorus of yelling,

  Proclaims my dream-fox has been viewed—

  But somewhere some stove smoke is smelling

  Which accounts for my feeling half stewed—

  And somewhere the F.A.N.Y.s are talking

  And somebody shouts through the din:

  "What a horrible habit of snoring—

  Hit her hard—wake her up—the train's in."

  CHAPTER XV

  CONVOY PETS, COMMANDEERING, AND THE "FANTASTIKS"

  We took turns to go out on "all-night duty"; a different thing from night guards, and meant taking any calls that came through after 9 p.m. and before 8 a.m. next morning.

  They were usually from outlying camps for men who had been taken ill or else for stranded Army Sisters arriving at the Gare about 3 a.m. waiting to be taken to their billets.

  It was comparatively cheery to be on this job when night guards were in progress, as there were four hefty F.A.N.Y.s sitting up in the cook-house, your car warm and easy to crank, and, joy of joys, a hot drink for you when you came back!

  In the ordinary way as one scrambled into warm sweaters and top coats the dominant thought was, would the car start all right out there, with not a hand to give a final fillip once the "getting loose" process was accomplished?

  Luckily my turns came round twice during night guards, and the last time I had to go for a pneumonia case to Beau Marais. It was a bright moonlight night, almost as light as day, with everything glittering in the frozen snow. Susan fairly hopped it! After having found the case, which took some doing, and deposited him in No. 30 hospital, I sped back to camp.

  As I crossed the Place d'Armes and drove up the narrow Rue de la Mer, Susan seemed to take a sudden header and almost threw a somersault! I had gone into an invisible hole in the ice, two feet deep, extending half across the street. For some reason it had melted (due probably to an underground bakery in the vicinity). I reversed anxiously and then hopped out to feel Susan's springs as one might a horse's knees. Thank goodness they had not snapped, so backing all the way down the street again, relying on the moon for light, I proceeded cautiously by another route and got back without further mishap.

  Our menagerie was gradually increasing. There were now three dogs and two cats in camp, not to mention a magpie and two canaries, more of which anon. There was Wuzzy, of course, and Archie (a naughty looking little Sealyham belonging to Heasy) and a mongrel known as G.K.W. (God knows what) that ran in front of a visiting Red Cross touring car one day and found itself in the position of the young lady of Norway, who sat herself down in the doorway! I did not witness the untimely end, but I believe it was all over in a minute.

  One cat belonged to Eva, a plain-looking animal, black with a half-white face, christened "Miss Dip" (an inspiration on my part suggested by the donor's name, on the "Happy Family" principle). She was the apple of her eye, nevertheless, and nightly Eva could be heard calling "Dip, Dip, Dip," all over the camp to fetch her to bed. Incidentally it became quite an Angelus for us.

  Considering the way she hunted all the meat shops for tit bits, that cat ought to have been a show animal—but it wasn't. One day as our fairy Lowson was lightly jumping from a window-sill she inadvertently "came in contact" with Dip's tail, the extreme tip of which was severed in consequence! In wrathful indignation Eva rushed Dip down to the Casino in an ambulance, where one of the foremost surgeons of the day operated with skill and speed and made a neat job of it, to the entire satisfaction of all concerned. If her tail still remains square at the end she can tell her children she was blessée dans la guerre. The other cat was a tortoiseshell and appropriately called "Melisande in the Wood," justified by the extraordinary circumstances in which she was discovered. One day at No. 35 hut hospital I saw three of the men hunting in a bank opposite, covered with undergrowth and small shrubs. They told me that for the past three days a kitten had been heard mewing, but in spite of all their efforts to find it, they had failed to do so. I listened, and sure enough heard a plaintive mew. The place was a network of clinging roots, but presently I crawled in and found it was just possible to get along on hands and knees. It was most mysterious—the kitten could be heard quite loud one minute, and when we got to the exact spot it would be some distance away again. (It reminded me of the Dutch ventriloquist's trick in Lamarck). It was such a plaintive mew I was determined to find that kitten if I stayed there all night. At last it dawned on me, it must be in a rabbit hole; and sure enough after pushing and pulling my way along to the top of the bank, I found one over which a fall of earth had successfully pushed some wire netting from the fence above. I waited patiently, and in due time caught sight of a little black, yellow, and white kitten; but the minute I made a grab for it, it bolted. I pulled the netting away, but the hole was much too deep for so small a creature to get out by itself, and it was much too frightened to let me catch it. With great difficulty I extricated myself and ran to the cookhouse, where I soon enlisted Bridget's aid. We got some small pieces of soft raw meat and crawled to the top of the bank again. After long and tedious coaxing I at last grabbed the little thing spitting furiously while Bridget gave it some food, and in return for my trouble it bit and scratched like a young devil! It was terribly hungry and bolted all we had brought. When we got her to the cook-house she ran round the place like a mad thing, and turned out to be rather a fast cat altogether when she grew up. We tossed for her, Bridget won, and she was duly christened with a drop of tinned milk on her forehead, "Melisande in the Wood."

  The magpie belonged to Russell, and came from Peuplinghe. Magpies are supposed to be unlucky birds. This one certainly brought no luck to its different owners. Shortly after its arrival Russell was obliged to return to England for good. Before going, however, she presented Jacques to Captain White at Val de Lièvre. Sure enough after some time he was posted to the Boche prisoner camp at Marquise—a job he did not relish at all. I don't know if he took Jacques with him, but the place was bombed shortly after and the Huns killed many of their own men, and presumably Jacques as well. So he did his bit for France.

  The canaries belonged to Renny—at least at first she had only one. It happened in this wise. The man at the disinfector (where we took our cars and blankets to be syringed after an infectious case), had had a canary given him by his "best girl" (French). He did not want a canary and had nowhere to keep it, but, as he explained, he did not know enough of the language to say so, and thought the easiest way out of the difficulty was to accept it. "Give me the bird, proper, she 'as," he added.

  The trouble was he did not reckon on her asking after it, which she most surely did. He could hardly confess to her that he had passed the present on so instead he conveyed the news to her, somehow, that the "pore little bird had gone and died on 'im." She expressed her horror and forthwith produced a second!

  "Soon 'ave a bloomin' aviary at this rate," he remarked as he handed the second one over! No more appeared, however, and the two little birds, both presumably dead, twittered and sang merrily the length of the "cues."

  As the better weather arrived so our work increased again, and in March the Germans began a retreat in the west along a front of 100 miles. We worked early and late and reached the point of being able to drive almost asleep. An extraordinary sensation—you avoid holes, you slip the clutch over bumps, you stop when necessary, and go on ditto, and at the same time you can be having dreams! More a state of coma than actual sleep, perhaps. I think what happened was one probably slept for a minute and then woke up again to go off once more.

  I became "Wuzzy's" adopted mother about now and, whenever I had time, combed and brushed his silver curls till they stood out like fluff. He could spot Susan miles away, and though it was against rules I sometimes took him on bo
ard. As we neared camp I told him he must get down, but he would put on an obstinate expression and deliberately push himself behind my back, in between me and the canvas, so that I was almost on the steering wheel. At other times he would listen to me for awhile, take it all in, and then put his head on my shoulder with such an appealing gesture that I used to risk being spotted, and let him remain. He simply adored coming out if I was going riding, but I disliked having him intensely, for he ran about under the horses, nibbling at them and making himself a general nuisance. He would watch me through half shut eyes the minute I began polishing my riding boots; and try as I would to evade him he nearly always came in the end.

  He got so crafty in time he would wait for me at the bottom of the drive and dash out from among the shrubs just as I was vanishing. One day we had trotted some distance along the Sangatte road, and I was just congratulating myself I had given him the slip, when looking up, there he was sitting on a grassy knoll just ahead, positively laughing and licking his chops with self-satisfied glee. I gave it up after that, I felt I couldn't cope with him, and yet there were those who called him stupid! I grant you he had his bad days when he was referred to as my "idiot son," but even then he was only just "peculiar"—a world of difference.

  One job we had was termed "lodgers" and consisted of meeting the "sitting" cases from an ambulance train, taking them to the different hospitals for the night, and then back to the quay early next morning in time to catch the hospital ship to England. The stretcher cases had been put on board the night before, but there was no sleeping accommodation for so many "sitters." An ordinary evacuation often took place as well, so that before breakfast we had sometimes carried as many as thirty-five sitting cases, and done journeys with twelve stretchers. One day at No. 30 hospital I saw several of the girls beside a stretcher, and there was the "Bovril king" lying swathed in blankets, chatting affably! He was the cook at No. 30, a genial soul, who always rushed out in the early hours of the morning when one was feeling emptiest, with a cup of hot soup. He called it doing his bit, and always referred to himself proudly as the "Bovril king." Alas, he was now being invalided home with bronchitis!