Letters from France | Page 4

street of a little French town,
where, standing on the wet cobbles at the corner of the old city square,
under dripping stage scenery gables, you find another British
policeman who passes you to another policeman at another corner who
directs you under the very archway and into the very office which you
are intended by General Headquarters to reach.
And if you go on right up to the very trenches themselves you will find
that British policeman all the way; directing the traffic at every country
cross-road where there is likely to be a congestion of the great
lumbering motor-lorries; standing outside the ruined village church
which the long-range guns have knocked to pieces in trying to get at a
supply dump or a headquarters; waiting at the fork-roads where you
finally have to leave your motor-car and walk only in small parties if

you wish to avoid sudden death; on point duty at the ruined farmhouses
which it is unhealthy at certain hours of the day to pass. At the corner
where you finally turn off the road into the long, deepening
communication trench; even at the point where the second line trenches
cross the communication trench to the front trenches--in some cases
you find that policeman there also, faithfully telling you the way,
incidentally with a very close and critical eye upon you at the same
time.
He is simply the British policeman doing his famous old job in his
famous old way. He is mostly the London policeman, but there are
policemen from Burnley, from Manchester, from Glasgow amongst
them. And up near the lines you find the policeman from Sydney and
Melbourne waving the traffic along with a flag just as he used to do at
the corner of Pitt and King Streets. Just as he used to see that the
by-laws of the local council were carried out, so he now has to see to
the rules and orders made by the local general. It is a thankless job
generally; but when they get as far as this most people begin to be a
little grateful to the policeman.
Our railway train and the policeman had carried us over endless
farmlands, through forests, beside rivers, before we noticed, drawn up
along the side of a quarter of a mile of road, an endless procession of
big grey motor-lorries. Every one was exactly like the next--a tall grey
hood in front and a long grey tarpaulin behind. It was the first sign of
the front. Presently a French regiment went by along a country
road--not at all unlike our Australian troops in some ways--biggish
fellows in grey-blue overcoats, all singing a jolly song. They waved to
us in the same light-hearted way Australians have. There were more
fair-haired men, among some of the French troops we have seen, than
there would be in one of our own battalions.
After this there came great stores at intervals, and timber yards--hour
after hour of farmhouses and villages where there was a Tommy in
every doorway, Tommies in every barn, a Tommy's khaki jacket
showing through every kitchen window; until at last towards evening
we reached a country populated by the familiar old pea-soup overcoats

and high-necked jackets and slouch hats of Australians.
There they were, the men whom we had last seen on the Suez
Canal--here they were, already, in the orchard alongside of the old
lichened, steep-roofed barn--four or five of them squatting round a fire
of sticks, one stuffing his pipe and talking, talking, talking all the while.
I knew that they were happy there before ever they said it. A track led
across a big field--there were two Australians walking along it. A road
crossed the railway--two Australians were standing at the open door of
the house, and another talking to the kiddies in the street. There was a
platoon of them drilling behind a long barn.
A long way ahead of that, still going through an Australian country, we
stopped; and a policeman showed us to the station entrance where there
was a motor-car which took us and our baggage to the little house
where we were billeted. On the green door of the house next to it,
behind the pretty garden, was scrawled in chalk, "Mess--five officers."
That was where we were to feed.
[Illustration: "TALKING WITH THE KIDDIES IN THE STREET"]
It was as we came back from tea that I first noticed a distant
sound--ever so familiar--the far-off heavy roar of the big guns at Cape
Helles. It was guns firing along the lines away to the east of us.
And as we walked back after dinner that night from the little
mess-room, across the garden hedge and over the country beyond, there
flashed ever and anon hither and thither a distant