“Well, candidly, darling, I did think it rather catty,” says The B.F. “After all, it’s not Skinny’s fault if she’s plain.”
The Bug and I avoid one another’s glance elaborately.
“Well, Commandant gave them a last chance to tell her what I had said,” continues Tosh. “They remained dumb. She asked me again what my exact words were. I said I had forgotten. ‘Very well,’ said Commandant,’ I order you to tell me.’ They again gave an impersonation of two dumb oysters, and that settled it. The old devil’s eyes fairly shot triumph. She sacked them on the spot for refusing to obey orders. She said she would not have insubordination in her ranks. Told them to catch the night train. I’m sorry about Frost,” adds Tosh regretfully. “Never knew a girl change gear like Frost. Absolute genius on a car.”
“But why didn’t she sack you too?” asks Etta Potato.
Tosh winks at me. “Cunning old devil. ‘You’ve got a faulty memory, Toshington,’ she says when they’ve gone. ‘I hope it continues faulty when this particular episode is discussed in the convoy. You may go.’ I don’t mind admitting it took the wind out of the good ship Toshington’s sails for a few brief moments.”
“I wonder what Commandant meant by that?” asks The B.F.
“I shall go on wondering all my life,” says Tosh.
The Bug and I look at one another for a long moment. Silently we are asking how much or how little Commandant guesses.
CHAPTER VI
WE are worried about The Bug—Tosh and I. The air raids have begun again with the moon. There has been one every night this week. We are all going under for lack of sleep, but The Bug is worse than anyone. The work has trebled; they are toiling at top speed in the camps to get the men away to the base to make way for the hundreds of wounded pouring in from the field hospitals, but Commandant has not yet grasped that even machines will wear out if they are not rested occasionally. She still rigidly insists on the petty punishments that make our lives hell—and The Bug gets more punishments than any of us. We are short-handed, too. Three girls are in hospital with dysentery, five with septicæmia, and two with measles, which leaves ten ambulances out of action until ten new drivers come—and it is becoming increasingly difficult to get drivers. Rumours of our treatment, not only in this convoy but in other depots, have quelled the ardour of the volunteers at home. Senseless fanatics like Commandant are to blame. She will not see the idiocy of her autocratic policy. Fifty per cent. of us are unfit for duty, but are carrying on because there is no other way out, and The Bug is worse than anybody. She is in a sad state. She is mere skin and bone and has taken to fits of screaming after the midnight convoys. If we try to rouse her from the semi-coma into which she falls she gets violent. It is lack of rest, topped by an encounter with a stretcher case who ripped his bandages away and had practically no face. Last week even Tosh got the wind up and brought Commandant. The Bug was sitting up screaming about men with no faces when Commandant stalked in in her God-Almighty way and ordered her to stop this nonsense immediately, with the result that The Bug wrenched herself free, flew outside, started up her bus, and was off like a rocket into the darkness before one could say knife. Luckily, Tosh caught her up about a mile down the road. She says it was ghastly racing neck and neck on a pitch-black night with The Bug yelling like a raving lunatic, but at last she got ahead, skidded completely round, switched her heads on, and took a chance of The Bug’s driving sense making her jam on the brakes—which happened, but it was a nasty chance to take. Dragging The Bug off her bus and getting her back was fairly easy, as The Bug is small and Tosh is hefty, and by the time they returned Commandant had the doctor, who jabbed a hypo into The Bug. She slept through three convoys and awakened, totally oblivious of what had occurred as fresh as a daisy. But did this teach Mrs. Bitch a lesson? Not at all. Seeing The Bug to outward appearances quite normal, she made her clean the w.c. while we others were resting.
This persecution of The Bug began three weeks ago. The dissatisfaction and unrest in the convoy had at last penetrated to the office and Commandant spoke to us after early roll-call. There were traitors in the camp; the work was hard, but we had not come to France to slack, but to help our brave soldiers to fight for world freedom—the usual clap-trap, before breakfast too. Were we women of England to be branded by future generations as lead-swingers?
She then waited for the applause. It did not come.
Oh, that was it, was it? An evil influence at work—some failure who was returning like the coward she was, trying to undermine the morals of the convoy first, resenting those others who would stay and see their duty through. . . .
“If you mean me,” said a “Seeing-Francer,” stepping forward, “I am going back before you kill me. And as I return to-night I can speak without being given a senseless punishment duty in addition to working about twenty hours a day. Feed your drivers and treat them like human beings. When they are trying to snatch a few minutes’ rest stop blowing your whistle. And have some strong working women brought to France and paid to do the housework and the cleaning of the ambulances while the drivers get some sleep. The food is not fit for pigs to eat. It stinks.”
“I eat it,” replied Commandant. “If it’s good enough for me it’s good enough for you.”
“But it still stinks,” replied the “Seeing-Francer,” “and it isn’t good enough for me. And I intend to complain to headquarters in London.”
“I eat the food,” said Commandant stubbornly. “Don’t forget to tell headquarters that.”
Which is quite true. She does. The trouble is we do not all possess iron stomachs like her.
“And do you clean the filth out of your own ambulance?” asked the “Seeing-Francer.” “No. If you did we’d hear a different story. As it is, you deliberately trap girls into petty disobediences to get it done for you.”
We nearly cheered her for this, but Commandant ignored it absolutely. “Any more complaints?” she inquired, and to our astonishment The Bug spoke up. In her quiet voice she suggested that in the face of these extra convoys and evacuations there should be no punishment duties, in order that the drivers could sleep, that the outside polishing of ambulances be discontinued and the 7.30 roll-call abolished. To wake drivers who had been out all night and expect them to be neatly dressed for a 7.30 roll-call was rather ridiculous. It was the “rather ridiculous” that got Commandant’s back up. Her cold eyes narrowed.
“Christ help The Bug from now on,” whispered Tosh.
“I am in charge of this convoy, and while I am in charge the ambulances will reflect credit on it. Punishments will continue when conduct merits them; and as for the 7.30 roll-call, may I remind the drivers we are on active service with the B.E.F.?”
So began the persecution of The Bug. She has averaged three hours’ sleep a day for the last three weeks and her body is not strong enough to stand the strain. She was in no condition for the shock of the man who had no face. She scrubs and cleans and does Commandant’s ambulance every day in addition to her own routine work, running unnecessary errands as well—many happy returns of the day to the matron at Number One, and so on.
When I read the rubbish praising the indomitable pluck and high spirits of “our wonderful war girls” I want to throw things at the writers. Our wonderful war girls—how bored we are with hearing it! We are not wonderful; there is nothing wonderful in doing what you’ve got to, because you’ve let yourself in for it. It’s like having a baby—you’re trapped once you’ve started. How the mob hangs on to a phrase and chews it to shreds! Like a dog with a bone. That eternal “doing our bit,” too. The catch-phrase of the newspapers. It has gone out of fashion here with The B.F.’s exit. There may be an odd few who enlisted in a patriotic spirit—I haven’t met any, personally. Girls who were curious, yes; girls who were bored stiff with home (like myself) and had no idea of what they were coming to, yes; man-hunters like The B.F.; man-mad women, semi-nymphomaniacs like Thrumms, who was caught love-making in an ambulance and booted back p
.d.q. to England, yes; megalomaniacs like Commandant who love “bossing the show” and have seized on this great chance like hungry vultures, yes; girls to whom danger is the breath of life, yes; but my observation leads me to the conclusion that all the flag-waggers are comfortably at home and intend to stay there.
Our “indomitable pluck”! We haven’t any left. If we had we’d admit we hate it and crawl home beaten. Our “wonderful high spirits”! We lost those the first night we arrived. The world seems determined to see nothing but a horrible, high-spirited, perpetual brightness in us. “Our girls love their jobs; they are always joking and playing schoolgirl pranks on one another.” Yes? Here is an example.
A driver developed a dangerous form of measles the other day and four of her friends crept into her hot flea-bag before it was disinfected, hoping to catch the germs and so get into hospital for a few weeks’ sleep. That is how full of fun and girlish high spirits we are. There is only one description of life out here, and that is Tosh’s and unrepeatable.
Stripped of the pretty-pretty, “gay-lasses-in-khaki” touch, war is a beastly, boring business. Pure, unadulterated hell, and yesterday was the worst dose of all.
The first convoy arrived in at 5.30 a.m. We had been in bed a little over an hour. Fortunately, we were fully dressed—we have not had our clothes off at all for twelve days. It was a sickening affair. Each convoy seemed worse than the last. We got back at 6.30. At 7.30 the whistle went for roll-call, which was interrupted by another convoy, from which we returned at 9 to find that the beast of a cook, knowing we were out on duty, had served breakfast punctually at eight and it was stone-cold. Half-dead, we fell into our beds breakfastless and slept like logs until ambulance-cleaning. Eleven o’clock brought another convoy. Arriving back, we cleaned ambulances again, had a quick inspection, resulting in six of us being given punishments for dirty engines. Dinner stank so badly it was almost impossible to stay in the mess-room. Etta Potato and I made the usual Bovril upstairs, while The Bug lay on the bed. We are not allowed to drive with lights at night now, because of the enemy planes, and that, added to lack of sleep, has made our eyes red and sore. We call ourselves “The Beauty Chorus.” The inflammation resembles tropical sand-blight, and The Bug has it badly. Etta Potato forced some Bovril down her neck. She looked awful with her death-white face and red eyelids. Then the whistle went for another convoy and The Bug began to giggle. “Time to collect more men without faces. Hurry, we mustn’t be late.” She ran out, giggling in a cracked kind of voice. Etta Potato and I rinsed the Bovril cups without a word.
My ambulance was next in line to The Bug’s. All the time we were getting away she giggled and talked to herself, but she was quite normal on our return. There was another convoy from 8 till half-past nine, and we had just fallen on our beds utterly exhausted when the whistle blew. Lights out. An air raid. With the first bomb The Bug started to scream. The raiders were not beaten off for an hour, and all the time the bombs were dropping The Bug screamed. We have no shelters built yet, so we stay where we are, but since the raids there has been brown paper nailed over the windows, and there we lay in the darkness listening to The Bug, Tosh holding her down in case she ran outside and was hit. It seemed years before the “All Clear.” Then Commandant swooped down on The Bug. Never had she witnessed such a disgraceful exhibition of cowardice on the part of an Englishwoman. The Bug stared at her, dazed, then quietly fainted dead away. I have never seen Tosh so angry. “Get out,” she said, and Commandant got out. But it was half an hour before The Bug came round—in time for the signal for the midnight convoy. Tosh ordered The Bug to stay in bed, but Commandant came back and ordered her on duty. We got back and The Bug raved and screamed all night. None of us closed our eyes. She fell asleep just before roll-call and awakened with the whistle, quite normal, not remembering the air-raid or the last convoy. Tosh spoke to Commandant, but she will not believe The Bug is ill; she says it is a clear case of swinging the lead. The drivers in the adjoining cubicles are going to sign a “Round Robin” insisting on so many hours of sleep, or they will return home in a body.
·····
Tosh and I have had an adventure. At midday dinner, Commandant, a little subdued by the “Round Robin,” announced that as there were no convoys till the evening, those drivers who wished could have the afternoon off for sleep in view of the revolting disturbance of the previous evening—meaning The Bug. Except for emergency duty, she added. The threat of emergency duty settled Tosh and me. We knew who the first victims would be. So we decided to clear out and find a spot in the open air out of earshot of the infernal whistle. Although bitingly cold, the sun was shining, and if we took an extra coat we could sit down. The intrigue was conducted in whispers aside, in case the idea became too popular. The Bug was already in a dead slumber when at half-past one we set forth, ankle deep in mud, but feeling gloriously free. It took us a good half-hour to discover that there was nowhere to sit, unless we wanted a mud bath, so on and on we wandered, talking of this, that and the other, inevitably returning to the War.
We know surprisingly little about the War here, only what we gather from odd out-of-date scraps in the papers, and things the sitters tell. If the sitters have advanced on their small frontage we are winning and there will soon be peace; if they have retreated we are losing and God knows when it will end. When the great peace comes Tosh is going to retire to bed for a month, but I am hoping Aunt Helen will die and leave me her money, in which case I will take a trip round the world. I was telling Tosh this when we barged clean into two officers round a blind bend.
“Well, I’m blowed!” exclaimed one of them. “Old Tosh!”
“Chump!” Tosh delightedly seized the speaker by the hand and pumped energetically. “What the hell are you doing in this home from home?”
“I’ve been here eight weeks.”
“I can beat that—I’ve had eight months.”
Tosh then introduced me, and he introduced the other man, a Captain Baynton, who asked where we were going. Tosh airily informed him that we were absent without leave and had no plans. Then, suggested Captain Baynton, why not come with them; they were bound for a concert in the German Prisoners’ Compound. Tosh’s friend thought this a tophole brainwave, and Tosh said she was game if I was, though we’d probably be set to rebuild the convoy as punishment if Commandant found out.
“She’s pretty bloody, isn’t she?” asked Chump, and Tosh replied that if she said what she thought of Commandant in public she’d be put in clink for a year. So off we ploughed through the mud, laughing.
It was good to laugh again. By the time we reached the Prisoners’ Compound I felt quite young. It was quite an imposing affair. The prisoners had built it entirely. There were corrugated tin huts and a big recreation-room—islands in a sea of mud. The outside barricade was quite unnecessary. Any unfortunate prisoner who tried to escape would be wallowing up to the neck in thick greasy mud before he had gone a yard. The planks laid down for us to walk on had sunk a foot deep. One false step and overboard we would have gone. Chump thanked God he was not tight as usual, and proved his assertion by walking the chalk-line for us, holding up the hem of his British warm coyly like a woman with a train and swaying over the mud at a perilous angle. Tosh laughed so much at his antics that she nearly fell in herself.
The officer-in-charge met us at the entrance to the recreation-room. He was a pal of Chump’s, so we had no difficulty in being admitted. The concert would begin in five minutes. We were the only visitors; in fact, Tosh and I were the first women to visit the Compound. Had he had any idea of the honour he would have had some special programmes done; as it was, he only had these poor things—meant for Chump and Baynton, handing us two postcards most exquisitely inscribed in red and black scroll work, the edges with a fine circle design and at the top a winged head, rather reminiscent of the R.F.C. badge. He was privately very bucked, we could tell, by our admiration, and told us the man responsible was a famous German black-and-white artist.
&
nbsp; While they talked on one side, Tosh translated the programme for me. There were German ballads on the piano, a wedding song and a humorous recitation entitled Heinrich Fliegenbutton, but mostly the items were choral selections—Verlassen, Verlassen, and similar things. We then went inside, where I had the shock of my young life. We were seated in a big cage with bars—iron bars—exactly like a cage at the Zoo.
I shall never stare at an animal in a cage again; I shall feel too sorry for it. If it experiences half the embarrassing sensations I experienced, its life must be one long torture. Five minutes passed before I dared glance up from my programme, to meet hundreds of staring eyes. Brown eyes, blue eyes, small eyes, large eyes—curious eyes all of them, and all hungry and unspeakably filled with longing. I went scarlet. Once I dreamed I was travelling in an Underground carriage minus a stitch of clothing; I felt exactly now as I did then. Naked and exceedingly ashamed. The prisoners circled round and round the cage whispering and pushing the front ones away when they had stared long enough. It was the first time most of them had ever seen an Englishwoman, and Tosh whispered that their remarks were distinctly uncomplimentary. She made me see the funny side of it. While they admired my red cheeks, my bust was too small and my legs inches too thin; and while Tosh’s bust and calf measurements met with universal approbation, they did not like her wind-tanned face. Unanimously they decided that Englishwomen were not physically attractive. They were very nice about it, Tosh translated; the remarks were more in sorrow than in anger, all without a smile and quite impersonal, with none of the cheeky, witty, Cockney atmosphere our own Tommies would have managed to infuse into a similar situation. Most of them would have condescended to sleep with us, however, in lieu of anything more exciting, Tosh translated.
Not So Quiet... Page 9