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Chapter XV Of how the New Zealanders Came into The Land Of France

—Conan Doyle: The White Company.

Green hills rising from the sea! The Chateau d'If! On the hillsides above the sea churches and buildings of ancient grey stone! The city of Marseilles and the storied land of France!

Alas, there was no delay! A few who slipped up the wharves were stopped at the great iron gates and got but a glimpse of a street and shops and crowds of French civilians. The trains were waiting, and the men marched straight to them and crowded into the third-class compartment carriages with little realization of what luxurious state they were for once travelling in. The fair land of France was very beautiful in the spring sunshine. After the sand of Egypt and the dusty brown of Anzac, the green fields were very pleasant to the page 142eyes of men whose homeland was also green in the spring. The orchards were all in blossom. Sometimes the trains went past lovely villages of whitewalled, red-roofed houses, with stately chateaux rising in the background; at other times old world towns with spires and towers and battlements. Speed was apparently no object. Men who found themselves cramped with sitting for long hours in the crowded compartments got out and walked uphill alongside the crawling train.

At all the stations and crossings groups of French boys and girls greeted the troops with shrill exclamations, and with an idiom so chaste and classical as to make it clear that the Australians had been before us. Every here and there fatigue parties had dixies full of tea heavily dashed with rum to serve out to the men. When this was not available at a stop emergency rations were often broken into and the company's linguists would interview the engine-driver and by a weird mixture of alleged French and pantomimic gestures request that functionary to supply boiling water. Town after town was passed—Avignon, Orange, Lyons, Dijon, Aries with the Vercingetorix statue crowning the hill slope. At Versailles the trains side-tracked Paris, and ran up into the Department du Nord through Rouen, Abbeville, Etaples; past Calais, through St Omer, and so to the detraining point at Steenbecque outside Hazebrouck.

The men were immediately marched off to their billets, which were found to be the barns and outbuildings of the local farmhouses. French farms page 143are like St John's vision of the celestial city, insofar as they lie "foursquare." At this point the resemblance usually ends. The house itself occupies one side while the other three are taken up with the huge hay barn, the cow-shed (in which the cows are housed through the winter), the pigsties and implement sheds. The enclosed space is hollowed out and forms an immense midden into which is swept the stable manure and the general debris of the farm. The result is sometimes picturesque and always odoriferous. To the visionaries who had imagined that billets meant being quartered by twos and threes on French families, sleeping in the best bed-rooms and being entertained with considerable state, it was a somewhat rude shock to be thrust into a lean-to off the pigsties.

Nevertheless, from the point of view of those who were not too fussy these farm billets were often good places. If the barn was in fairly good condition it was snug enough; and if the farmer was generous enough with his hay and straw it was extremely comfortable to snuggle down in the soft cover after the baked clay of Anzac, the hard cold sand of the desert, and the iron or wooden decks of the transports. For an hour or so at night the darkness was broken by flickering candles; there was a cheerful hum of conversation from the thirty or forty good companions. Some one commenced to whistle or sing and soon the others joined in. After a while lights went out and soon all were fast asleep—and there was silence punctuated by the hearty snoring of one or two and the grunt of a pig page 144or the mooing of a cow from behind some flimsy partition. Unless there was a convenient stream, reveille meant a rush for the only pump and a queue of the less fortunate lining up to await their turn while the handle squeaked and rattled and the rackety old contrivance shook as energetic soldiers put their weight on the handle. A little later all were seated about eating breakfast while the farm rooster and his retinue of hens contentedly raked over the manure heap for theirs.

New Zealanders are in general adaptable people, and it was not long before they commenced to make friends with the French folk. The language difficulty was solved by the use of a few words often repeated, by strange and wonderful gestures and by the broadest of broad smiles. At first of course there were some misconceptions. The manners of French peasants towards their womenfolk are in general, apparently, non-existent and madame and mademoiselle were at first somewhat taken aback by men who pumped their water for them, or carried buckets, or opened doors or performed any of those small courtesies which in New Zealand are the general rule. For a while they were a little suspicious but courtesy passes current in all languages or in none and the result was the growth of a very real friendship.

For the first fortnight intercourse was somewhat limited by the fact that the men were all bankrupt. It was during this period of financial stringency that the French formed the opinion that the New Zealanders were a nation of abstainers. They bought page 145neither beer, although this was only a penny—deux sous—per glass, or coffee or omelets. However, when the long looked for pay day arrived the villagers were completely disillusioned. The drought broke.

One idiosyncrasy of their visitors that greatly intrigued their hosts was the extraordinary craze they had for bathing themselves—a craze which had no attraction for the French especially so early in the year as the spring. In one billet some officers demanded of their "madame" a tub and much hot water, "Mais oui, messieurs, certainement!" and the hospitable old lady bustled round to fulfil this extraordinary order. The tub was placed on the stone floor of one of the rooms. The hot water was poured in. The family was warned off, the officers stripped and the bath commenced. But as it was Good Friday, the family had concluded that the proceeding was a solemn religious rite in honour of the season; and so, entering from the communicating doors, they gathered reverently round and gazed with awe on this ceremony of purification. Surely these men took their religion seriously and sadly. "Mon Dieu! Fancy exposing the body to such cold!" The mere pursuit of cleanliness could not be sufficient reason for undergoing such unease. When their enraged and outraged guests had driven them forth, they probably speculated on the truth of the old saying that all Englishmen were mad.