The First Canadians in France

The "lady-chauffeur" was one of that eccentric, but interesting, band of mannish Englishwomen who invaded France in the early days of the war, and who have done wonders toward making Tommy's life in a foreign land agreeable. Intelligent, highly educated, remarkably indifferent to the opinion of the outside world, Miss Granville was a character worth more than a passing glance. Her toque was always pulled well over her ears, her thick, short grey woollen skirt had two immense pockets in the front, into which her hands, when not otherwise engaged, were always deeply thrust. A long cigarette invariably drooped from the corner of her pretty, but determined mouth, and she walked with a swinging, athletic stride. Romance might have passed her by unnoticed; but the world could not ignore her – she was too much a part of it. Some innate chivalry impelled Tim to step across and offer his assistance to the fair one in distress.

"Kin I be any help to ye, Miss?" he enquired, as he stooped down and peered underneath the car at the little lady who, stretched at full length upon, her back, was smoking a cigarette and at the same time screwing home an unruly nut.

"Oh! Is that you, Tim?" she remarked without removing the cigarette or taking her eyes off her work. "No, thanks, I think not – this is a woman's job."

"Ladies does queer stunts in France," Tim commented meditatively; "we ain't taken advantage uv dem in Canada de way we ought. See how de womens here, carries wood on dere backs, an', look at dem fish-women ketchin' skrimps in de sea. Gee, de gals to home ain't never seed real work!"

"You should train them, Tim. It's all a matter of up-bringing. Won't you have a cigarette?" she replied as she thrust a long open silver case out from under the car toward him. Tim extracted an Egyptian of a size such as he had never seen before.

"T'ankee, Miss – dat's a smoke fer a prince."

"That was the intention, Timothy," she remarked casually; and then came an unexpected question: "Do ladies in Canada smoke, Tim?"

Tim was visibly embarrassed. "Not sich as we calls ladies, Miss," he stammered; and then realising that he had made a faux pas he blundered on – "that is, Miss, I mean t' say – "

A rippling laugh from beneath the car cut short further explanation.

"Tim, Tim," she cried mockingly, "what a sad courtier you would make – you're too deliciously truthful."

Poor Tim was red with chagrin.

"I don' know wot a kertyer is," he replied defensively; "I'm a hod-carrier meself."

"Stick to it, lad," she laughed, "the hod lost one of its best exponents when you came to the war."

But the colonel now appeared at the door, and Tim, with a hasty adieu to his fair tormentor, sprang across the road. When we were all snugly tucked in the car, he stood for a moment looking ruefully toward the cause of his recent embarrassment.

"Dat's a queer gent, sir," he observed to the colonel, "dat lady-shoffer 'cross de way. It ain't on'y her boots wot's like a man's – de works in her belfry's queer too."

Reggy secretly sympathised with Tim's discomfiture, for it was only the day before, when he had made a graceful but unavailing whack at a golf ball, that he had turned to see her watching him intently – hands in pockets, cigarette in mouth.

"Rotten stroke, Miss Granville?" he remarked, to cover his annoyance; and she had coolly blown a cloud of smoke through her nostrils and replied:

"You're dead lucky to have hit it at all."

As the car moved off Reggy exclaimed: "That's the sort of girl who never gets a husband."

"Why not?" queried the colonel.

"Too much brain," Reggy returned. "It's too humiliating for a man to have a wife cleverer than himself."

"All depends upon the man," the colonel commented drily. Reggy ventured no reply to this ambiguous retort, but for the next few miles seemed lost in thought.

An hour's uneventful run brought us to the barricade on the outskirts of Boulogne. It consisted of two large waggons placed at an oblique angle across the road, at the foot of a steep hill. It was so ingeniously arranged that a motor car could not pass except at low speed. We were stopped by the French guard who stood with fixed bayonet – that long slender wicked-looking instrument, the sight of which makes cold shivers run up and down the back. The officer emerged from his little hut, and saluted with all the grace peculiar to the true Frenchman.

"Votre 'laisser-passer' monsieur, si'l vous plais?" he demanded politely.

The colonel unfolded the large blue pass, duly signed and stamped. It was scrutinised closely, the name and number of the car were recorded, and the officer, once more saluting, motioned us to proceed.

Running a barricade in France is not a healthful exercise. We did it once, by mistake, but an immediate rifle shot brought us to a halt. The sentry takes nothing for granted; if one goes through six times a day, the pass must be produced each time. Even the small towns of northern France cannot be entered or left without this ceremony.

We lunched at Mony's– every English and Canadian officer in France knows the spot – a small Italian restaurant close to the theatre, where substantial but delicious meals pop up from the cellar's depths. In this small room with the sawdust-covered floor and the little glass partitioned stalls, the full-stomached Signor Mony beams upon a clientele such as no other like café in the world can boast.

French, Belgian, English; yes, at times Italian, Russian, Serbian and even Japanese officers of high rank and ladies whose fame in charitable and Red Cross work is international, dine in this unique café. The little bar is in the dining room, and above its mahogany top you may see the head and shoulders of the proprietor's youthful daughter – a girl of such rare and artistic southern beauty that men and women too stare in admiring wonder.

But the military and the nobility are not the only guests. The crowded café distils a broad Bohemianism which startles one. At one table we see two dark-eyed "ladies-of-the-street" boldly ogling a couple of young subalterns in khaki who have just arrived from England. Brushing shoulders with the finest in the land the demimondaine quaffs her green liqueur, powders her nose and dabs again the painted cheek that riots in its bloom. At another table two French generals, oblivious to the hum about them, are planning schemes of war too deep for thoughts of giddy girls who seek to catch their eye.

Above the glass partition curls the smoke of cigarettes, and the laughing voices of Englishwomen tell us who are there. Upon the leather-cushioned bench which skirts the wall, a handsome Belgian, well past middle age, rests his chin upon the shoulder of a beautiful young Russian girl, and gently puts his arm about her waist. And as we look with passing interest at the pair, she takes the lit cigar from her companion's lips and places it between her own, blowing the clouds of smoke into his face. Every table but one is filled. The blended murmur of a dozen different tongues, the popping of champagne corks, the rippling laughter of the women, all combine in one strange sound in stranger France. One thing only reminds us of the outer world. The mani-coloured uniforms of soldiers of the several nations represented tell us all too truly that only a few miles away is the great grim battlefield and – death.

At 3 p.m. we started once more on the road and climbed the steep hill to that broad highway which leads to Calais. But now we reached another barricade, and an unexpected obstacle arose. The sentry regretted with a shrug of the shoulders and both uplifted hands, but the road was under repairs, and none might pass that way.

Jack came to the rescue and appealed to him in his inimitable French. Monsieur le Colonel with him was urgently needed at the front. The shortest and quickest route was the only one for such an important man – great speed was essential to the completion of pressing duties.

We could see the sentry wavering. Jack repeated: "Mon Colonel est bien pressé – bien pressé!" The sentry capitulated – of course if the Colonel was pressé, there was nothing else for it. He let us pass. As we whirled along the road, Jack laughed in that boyish manner of his and exclaimed:

"If you're ever held up by a French sentry, you must always be pressé– it's a great word! If you're only pressé enough you can get anywhere in France."

There wasn't another vehicle but ours upon that splendid highway, and we bowled along at tremendous speed through green fertile valleys and through leafless forests, rounding the curve which runs to the southeast from Calais and skimming along the crest of a low smooth mountain for mile upon mile.

We soon were on the road to St. Omer. From time to time the noisy whir of an aeroplane overhead helped us to realise that we were gradually drawing nearer to the real battle line, and once on looking up we could see the giant human bird at a great height, sailing above us. He came lower, so that we were able to see the pilot distinctly, and directed his course straight above the road. At the time we were travelling about fifty miles an hour, but he passed us as though we had been standing still – a moment later he became a mere speck in the distance, then faded into the mist beyond.

As we approached closer to the front we had expected to find the towns deserted except by troops. In this we were agreeably disappointed. As we entered St. Omer we found motors and waggons by the hundreds coming and going in a busy rush; every store was open too, and business was thriving with a thrift unknown before the war. Women and children, soldiers and civilians, crowded the busy streets, and the hum of industry was heard on every hand. Here not many miles from the trenches, we could see again the undaunted confidence of France, implicit reliance upon her troops, unswerving loyalty to her ideals – unutterable contempt for the possibility of further German invasion. It was a revelation in faith and a stimulus to merit such whole-souled unbreakable trust.

We had just drawn up at the curb in the city square when a big Rolls-Royce turned the corner and stopped close to us. It contained a man who wore the uniform of the British Red Cross Society, and who well matched the car in size; he descended and hastened over to our car.

"Jack!" he cried delightedly, "old Jack Wellcombe; by George, I'm glad to see you!" As he spoke he shook Jack warmly by the hand. "You and your friends must come over to the 'Bachelor's Own' with me."

Jack performed the round of introductions, and Mr. Harman, who proved to be an American from Texas, reiterated that we must come and dine with him.

"Thanks, Harman, old chap; we really must get along, we have to make Poperinghe to-night," Jack protested; but his American friend refused to take "no" for an answer.

"For," he concluded, parodying a line from a once popular opera, "'you really must eat somewhere, and it might as well be here.' Don't be in a hurry to get to Poperinghe," he continued. "I was over there this afternoon when a German aviator came to call. Just as a preliminary, and in order to show his good faith, he dropped a bomb on the church – Some crash, I tell you. It trimmed one corner off the tower and spattered the door rather badly."

"Was any one hurt?" Reggy enquired anxiously.

"Not at the moment," Harman replied, "but a few hundred fools, including your humble servant, rushed into the square 'to see what made the wheels go round.' He hovered over us gracefully for a few moments, waiting to collect a good crowd of spectators, then he dropped a big one right into the centre of the mass."

"Good Lord!" Reggy exclaimed in a horrified whisper, "what happened?"

"Nothing as bad as we deserved, but there were eleven killed and as many more wounded – it was a horrible sight! You'll see the effects of it still when you get there, in the broken windows and pieces of stone knocked out of the buildings for fifty yards around."

We decided to stay for dinner. We motored down a side street and pulled up at his "Bachelor's Own." It was a comfortable French house of the better class, with floor of coloured tile and long glass doors connecting all the down-stairs rooms. A piano and a grate-fire, around which a few leather easy chairs were placed, gave the "lounge" an appearance of homelike comfort – moreover, one might sit there and, by merely turning the head, see everything of interest on that floor. We noticed in the next room the table being spread for numerous guests, and a Belgian servant bustling about at his work.

Harman motioned us to be seated, and after offering us some cigarettes, told us to "make ourselves at home" as he must warn his butler (save us!) of our arrival. When he returned a few moments later, beaming with smiles, like the true host he proved to be, he remarked deprecatingly:

"You mustn't expect too much of an old bach's table in these rough war-worn days; but as far as it goes this is open house to every man in uniform."

Later in the evening, when guest after guest "dropped in," until there were eighteen of us in all, we grasped the significance of his remark, and realised what his genial hospitality meant to the lonely officers who passed that way.

We didn't expect too much – in fact we didn't expect half of what we got. We hadn't looked forward to grilled merlin, roast chicken, tender lamb, Jerusalem artichokes or delicious cantaloupe, nor to Gruyère cheese served with crisp cream-wafers. In our modesty we had forgotten to expect the mellow flavoured wines which clung to the sloping sides of glass as delicate as a spider's web, or rich Havana cigars and real Egyptian cigarettes. No, strange as it may seem to the casual reader, we hadn't expected any of these things; we were prepared for Bologna sausage and a can of sardines, but in these we were disappointed. A whirlwind of plenty rose at Harman's magic call, and cast us adrift upon a sea of luxury.

Towards the close of this splendid repast, I took occasion to ask our benevolent host to what particular branch of the Red Cross work he was devoting his energies.

"Just what you see," he answered with a laugh. "Cheering up dull dogs like Wellcombe here, as they pass upon their weary way – that's about all."

"He's talking bally rot!" cried Jack from his end of the table, "I'll tell you what he does, as he won't tell you himself. He feeds the hungry and the poor; he gives all kinds of delicacies, from pickles to pheasants, to the wounded and sick soldiers in the Field Ambulances and hospitals for miles around; he carries food and drink to the wounded Tommies in the trenches and the Dressing Stations. I've seen him steal out upon the battlefield in a perfect hell of machine gun bullets and shrapnel – places where the devil himself wouldn't venture or expect to get out alive – and carry back those poor shattered lads in his arms. He – "

"Jack, Jack," Harman cried in protest, "for heaven's sake have a little pity – I can't live up to a rep' like this!"

"Don't interrupt, please!" Jack commanded. "One word more and then I'm through. He's been a perpetual Santa Claus to every boy at the front, and a godsend to every man in the rear – a damn good fellow and a man." He had risen to his feet and struck the table with his hand in his earnestness. "Here's a toast for you, my comrades in arms," he cried in conclusion: "Here's to Harman – Harman the Red Cross hero of St. Omer!"

As one man we rose to our feet and drained our glasses dry.

After dinner we crowded into the lounge, and Jack sat down at the piano. With nimble fingers he drew soft music from the keys. We soon discovered we were in a nest of artists, drawn together by a common tie.

Little Watkins, another Red Cross driver, who, as we afterwards learned, had risked his life a score of times to help some wounded fellow on the treacherous road, sang for us. It seems but yesterday that we sat there in the smoke-filled room, listening with rapt attention to his silvery tenor voice. The flames from the fire lit up his face as the throbbing notes poured forth. Je sais que vous etes jolie;we know now why he sang so well – he was in love. Poor Watkins has many months since passed to the "great beyond," but the sweet pathos of his voice still lingers in the ears of those he charmed that night.

Kennerly Rumford was then called upon – yes, the world-renowned Kennerly Rumford, in khaki in a little room in St. Omer – and in that magnificent baritone of his filled the house until it rocked with glorious sound. Rich, deep, rolling melody welled up from his great chest, until the wonder of it struck us dumb. I looked about me; pipes rested unused upon the table; cigarettes had been cast away, and the cigars, forgotten for the nonce, were dead.

We were loathe to leave this house of entertainment, but time was pressing, and we still had many miles to go.

The streets were black as pitch; no lights were permitted in the war zone, but at last we found our way out of the town, and started.