Saturday, December 23 – 1916
Britain’s gift at the front.
With the British Armies in the Field, Thursday. – The wins is howling over the fields of France, with a high, plaintive cry in its gustiness, and away along the lines the landscape of battle is grim and desolate under the lowering clouds. The soldiers who go up to the trenches tighten the straps of their steel helmets, and tighten their lips too, because of the cold prospects in front of them. The have been hardened, but the wind and the wey will search for any soft spot in them.
How the wind shrieks across the swamps!
The guns have a more sullen sound through the booming of the storm’s deeper voices. There is nbo comfort in the weather of the war, but in each soldier’s heart to-day there is, perhaps, a warmer glow – not reaching down to his feet, but getting as high as his head – because there is coming to him across the sea Christmas gifts from hone – presents from “old Blighty,” which has not forgotten him, though it seems a thousand miles and a thousand years away from his strafed village through which he walks, or from this wet trench in which he is plastered with white mud.
There is not a soldier, however lonely in his old home life, for whom something is not coming, and though it may not be a great gift – a pair of socks, a bit of baccy, a woollen muffler – the thought of it comforts him, for this which will reach him sometime between now and Christmas is a reminder of the old way of life, when on that day he sat by his own hearth-side – not dreaming of war – and found life good.
Packages from the gift ships.
The Christmas presents to the army are already arriving piled high on the quays’ sides of French ports, as soon as they have been unloaded from the gift ships (with heavy cargoes in their holds), and packed tight in truck trains, which go up to the railheads, and again piled at the dumps, to which they are carried by long columns of motor lurries. There the horse transport is coming to meet them, and taking them up to the battalions.
And so the messenger of Father Christmas – soldiers all, who once heard the chimes of midnight by St. Martin-le-Grand – make their journeys from one stage to another, until the Christmas gift parcels get into the hands of muddy men in the foremost trenches or in little lonely billets for which the enemy’s shells come searching sometimes with a wailing higher than the wind.
Troops marching along the roads to-day – their steel hats and waterproof capes were all shining in the rain – turned eyes right to the supply columns flinging up mud and water from wheels which ploughed through deep puddles, and did not curse them. They grinned at the wooden packages crowded inside and at the heavy mail bags.
“Table delicacies! What ho! That’s a little bit of orl right for some lucky swine. Pork pies . . . Wow, wow! … Could do with one now without waiting for Monday morning.”
“Not for you, my child; not for you, old son!”
“Stow it! … I’ll bet a quid there’s something for all of us in those giddy boxes and bags.”
So the tongues of soldiers wagged to-day, and fellows who have foiled German barrages, and will do so again before another Christmas, talked like children (who like their forefathers “have learnt to discuss terribly in Flanders”), expecting the arrival of Santa Claus with a toy or two. Not even this war can kill the spirit of Christmas nor the child.
This is in the heart of all men who have not forgotten how to laugh. They laughed, grinned at least from ear to ear, in an old French market town to-day, when they bought their Christmas dinner for billets behind the line, all alive and cackling. There was one steel-hatted lad who drove his goose with a “Shoo, shoo, my beauty!” between the bottles and waggons, and others who carried fat geese under their arms, speaking words of warm affection to their bright-eyed birds.
Lancashire and Yorkshire lads.
In one French village behind the German lines I saw a busy scene this morning with the Christmas spirit bulging out of motor-lorries and horse-waggons, and bending men double with its jolly weight. The “dump” was under the walls of a French chateau, so old and old that out of it once came knights and squires on their way to the Crusades more than seven and a half centuries ago. The horse transport came through a Norman archway, giving a view of pointed gables, which looked down upon tumbrils when the lord and the lady of the old castle on the hill went to get a cold sharp kiss of mother guillotine.
And now by the queer dark freak of fate which has come to us here this morning, were British soldiers – Yorkshire and Lancashire lads – fetching their Christmas presents the lorries were unloading on to the backs of these fellows who had come down with the horse transport. As the name of each battalion was called out a bag was seized, hoisted on brawny shoulders, and taken to the waggon line under the shadows of the castle wall.
“Now, then, Koylies,” shouted the caller-out. The King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry had a heavy bag. But not heavier than the Yorkshire and Lancashire or the West Ridings or any of the rest.
Inside an Army post office – it was ab old storeroom up a flight of steps – mind your head when you get through the arch – the postman was having a busy time. Busy? I should say so, with 300 registered packets coming by every mail – the soldiers get money gifts now, because it’s easy to but good things in Army canteens – thousands of Christmas letters and parcels going homewards. For Tommy is not getting things from home without sending back a souvenir from France. His fancy is taken by the silk scarves in the shop windows of French villages. He knows a girl somewhere who would look very jolly in one of these.
Then he is posting off the divisional Christmas card. I described the Irish one a day or two ago, and to-night I had one from the Gay Gordons, who remember all their friends even when their dugouts are waterlogged, and hundreds of thousands of them are filling all the field post offices on their way to Blightly.
Work of distribution.
The office into which I went to-day to see the work of distribution would have gladdened the heart of the old man with the red cloak and the cotton-wool beard, who is sad this year because of the world’s wickedness. It was festooned with coloured streamers and paper flags. You would never guess, to look at it, that not far away was the greatest war in history, with all its terror and ghastliness.
In an officers’ mess yesterday, in a French village, I sat listening to some good music. And while I listened I read some notices stuck up between pictures from “La Vie Parisienne.” They were written by men whose hands spent more than one Christmas in France, and need a little encouragement, because another is coming round in war. They were pious tests for any soldier.
“Remember it’s worse for the boche!”
“There’s nothing so bad it can’t be worse.”
“Don’t grouse unless you’ve been six months in the trenches.”
“Hell to the Jeremiahs!”
“We are going to win this war.”
“If you are a pessimist don’t turn this round.” (And on the other side): “Have a drink.”
That is the spirit with which our Army works, not only in the fighting lines where Marl Tapley has the Dickens of a job to keep his laugh in tune, but behind the lines, where drudgery needs valour also. It is the spirit of all the Army postmen just now, who are working hard, in dealing with the vast pressure of the mails, so that each soldier shall get his packet of love within forty-eight hours from England to the trenches – 25,000 bags each day for the next fortnight, and more than two million letters, with 22,000 parcels sent home by soldiers.
Each day, also, from trenches to dumps, from dumps to railroads (by cross-country lorries), from railheads to boat, from boat to Blighty, and so to the little homes where woman and children wait with hope in their hearts for the Christmas post.
(Liverpool Daily Post, 23-12-1916, by “Philip Gibbs’)
XX
"Play Up, Liverpool" 