Notes of a Camp-Follower on the Western Front , livre ebook

The Floating Press - W. Hornung E.

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

102 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

Though the author was born and raised in England, it was E. W. Hornung's travels and military service that served as the chief source of inspiration for his literary works. The volume Notes of a Camp-Follower on the Western Front is a gripping account based heavily on the time Hornung spent on the margins of military camps in France at the height of World War I.

Sujets

Adventure (Guyana)

Adventure

Informations

Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 juillet 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776581436
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

NOTES OF A CAMP-FOLLOWER ON THE WESTERN FRONT
* * *
E. W. HORNUNG

*
Notes of a Camp-Follower on the Western Front First published in 1919 Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-143-6 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-144-3 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
*
AN ARK IN THE MUD Under Way A Handful of Men Sunday on Board CHRISTMAS UP THE LINE Under Fire Casualties An Interrupted Lunch Christmas Day The Babes in the Trenches DETAILS Orderly Men The Jocks Gunners The Guards A Boy's Grave THE REST HUT Fresh Ground Opening Day The Hut in Being Writers and Readers War and the Man 'WE FALL TO RISE' Before the Storm Another Opening Day The End of a Beginning The Road Back In the Day of Battle Other Old Fellows The Rest Camp—And After Endnotes
*
To THE KINDEST MAN IN THE BOOK
AN ARK IN THE MUD
*
( December, 1917. )
Under Way
*
'There's our hut!' said the young hut-leader, pointing through ironpalings at a couple of toy Noah's Arks built large. 'No—that's the nth Division's cinema. The Y.M.C.A. is the one beyond.'
The enclosure behind the palings had been a parade-ground in pipingtimes; and British squads, from the pink French barracks outside thegates, still drilled there between banks of sterilised rubbish andlagoons of unmedicated mud. The place was to become familiar to me undermany aspects. I have known it more than presentable in a clean suit ofsnow, and really picturesque with a sharp moon cocked upon some toweringtrees, as yet strangely intact. It was at its best, perhaps, as anocturne pricked out by a swarm of electric torches, going and comingalong the duck-boards in a grand chain of sparks and flashes. But itstrue colours were the wet browns and drabs of that first glimpse in theDecember dusk, with the Ark hull down in the mud, and the cinema asister ship across her bows.
The hut-leader ushered me on board with the courtesy of a youngcommander inducting an elderly new mate; the difference was that I hadall the ropes to learn, with the possible exception of one he hadalready shown me on our way from the local headquarters of the Y.M.C.A.The battered town was full of English soldiers, to whom indeed it owedits continued existence on the right side of the Line. In the gatheringtwilight, and the deeper shade of beetling ruins, most of them salutedeither my leader's British warm, or my own voluminous trench-coat (withfleece lining), on the supposition of officers within. Left to myself, Ishould have done the wrong thing every time. It is expressly out oforder for a camp-follower to give or take salutes. Yet what is he to do,when he gets a beauty from one whose boots he is unfit to black? Myleader had been showing me, with a pleasant nod and a genial civiliangesture, easier to emulate than to acquire.
In the hut he left me to my own investigations while he was seeing tohis lamps. The round stove in the centre showed a rosy chimney throughthe gloom, like a mast in a ship's saloon; and in the two half-lightsthe place looked scrupulously swept and garnished for our guests, anumber of whom were already waiting outside for us to open. The trestletables, with nothing on them but a dusky polish, might have beenmathematically spaced, each with a pair of forms in perfect parallels,and nothing else but a piano and an under-sized billiard-table on allthe tidy floor. The usual display of bunting, cheap but cheerful, hungas banners from the joists, a garish vista from platform to counter.Behind the counter were the shelves of shimmering goods, biscuits andcandles in open cases on the floor, and as many exits as a scene in afarce. One door led into our room: an oblong cabin with camp beds forself and leader, tables covered with American cloth, dust, toiletrequisites, more dust, candle-grease and tea-things, and a stove of itsown in roseate blast like the one down the hut.
The crew of two orderlies lived along a little passage in their kitchen,and were now at their tea on packing-cases by the boiler fire. They wereboth like Esau hairy men, with very little of the soldier left aboutthem. Their unlovely beds were the principal pieces of kitchenfurniture. In the kitchen, too, for obscure reasons not for me toinvestigate, were the washing arrangements for all hands, and any faceor neck that felt inclined. I had heard a whisper of Officers' Baths inthe vicinity; it came to mind like the tinkle of a brook at thesediscoveries.
At 4.30 the unkempt couple staggered in with the first urn, and I tookmy post at the tap. One of them shuffled down the hut to open up; ouryoung skipper stuck a carriage candle in its grease on the edge of thecounter, over his till, saying he was as short of paraffin as of change;and into the half-lit gloom marched a horde of determined soldiers, andso upon the counter and my urn in double file. 'Tea, please, sir!' 'Twoteas!' 'Coop o' tay, plase!' The accents were from every district I hadever known, and were those of every class, including the one that has noaccent at all. They warmed the blood like a medley of patriotic airs,and I commenced potman as it were to martial music.
It was, perhaps, the least skilled labour to be had in France, but thatevening it was none too light. Every single customer began with tea: themugs flew through my hands as fast as I could fill them, until my end ofthe counter swam in livid pools, and the tilted urn was down to a gentledribble. Now was the chance to look twice at the consumers of ourinnocuous blend. One had a sheaf of wound-stripes on his sleeve; anotherwas fresh trench-mud from leathern jerkin (where my view of him began)to the crown of his shrapnel helmet; many wore the bonnets of a famousScotch Division, all were in their habit as they fought; and there theywere waiting for their tea, a long perspective of patient faces, likeschool-children at a treat. And here was I, fairly launched upon thecareer which a facetious density has summed up as 'pouring out tea andprayer in equal parts,' and prepared to continue with the first half ofthe programme till further orders: the other was less in my line—but Icould have poured out a fairly fluent thanksgiving for the atmosphere ofyouth and bravery, and most infectious vitality, which already filledthe hut.
In the meantime there was much to be learnt from my seasoned neighbourat the till, and to admire in his happy control of gentlemen on theirway up the Line. Should they want more matches than it suited him tosell, then want must be their master; did some sly knave appear at thetop of the queue, without having worked his way up past my urn, then itwas: 'I saw you, Jock! Go round and come up in your turn!' Or was it aman with no change, and was there hardly any in the till?—'Take twosteps to the rear, my friend, and when I have the change I'll serveyou!' When he had the change, the sparks might have flown with itthrough his fingers; he was lightning calculator and conjuror in one,knew the foul franc note of a dubious bank with less than half an eye,and how to refuse it with equal firmness and good-humour. I hardly knewwhether to feel hurt or flattered at being perpetually 'Mr.' to thisnatural martinet, my junior it is true by decades, but a leader I wasalready proud to follow and obey.
In the first lull he deserted me in order to make tea in our room, buttook his with the door open, shouting out the price of aught I had tosell with an endearing verve, name and prefix included every time. Itmade me feel more than ever like the mate of a ship, and anxious to earnmy certificate.
Then I had my tea—with the door shut—and already an aching back forpart of the fun. For already the whole thing was my idea of fun—thepicnic idea—an old weakness. Huts especially were always near my heart,and our room in this one reminded me of bush huts adored for theirdiscomfort in my teens. Of the two I preferred the bush fireside, ahearth like a powder-closet and blazing logs; but candles in their owngrease-spots were an improvement on the old slush-lamp of moleskin andmutton-fat. The likeness reached its height in the two sheetless bunks,but there it ended. Not a sound was a sound ever heard before. Thecontinual chink of money in the till outside; the movement of manyfeet, trained not to shuffle; the constant coughing of men otherwise insuperhuman health; the crude tinkle of the piano at the far end of thehut—the efficient pounding of the cinema piano—the screw-like throb oftheir petrol engine—the periodical bringing-down of their packed house,no doubt by the ubiquitous Mr. Chaplin! Those were the sounds to whichwe took our tea in the state-room of the Ark. She might have been on apleasure-trip all the time.
That first night I remember going back and diving into open cases ofcandles, and counting out packets of cigarettes and biscuits, sticks ofchocolate, boxes of matches, and reaching down tinned salmon, sardines,boot-laces, boot-polish, shaving-soap and tooth-paste, button-sticks,'sticks of lead' (otherwise pencils), writing-pads, Nosegay Shag, RoyalSeal, or twist if we had it, and shouting for the prices as I went,coping with the change by light of luck and nature, but doling out thefree stationery with a base lingering relief, until my back was ahundred and all the silver of the allied realms one composite coin thatdanced without jingling in the till. Gold stripes meant nothing to menow; shrapnel helmets were as high above me as the stars; the only herowas the man who didn't want