should be glad to see many women of that type in the Y.M.C.A. work. It is one of the great needs of our army
that the boys should be amused and kept clean mentally and morally. I don't believe there is any organization
better qualified to do this than the Y.M.C.A.
Most of our chaps spent their time "on their own" either in the Y.M.C.A. hut or in the estaminets while we
were in Petite-Saens. Our stop there was hardly typical of the rest in billets. Usually "rest" means that you are
set to mending roads or some such fatigue duty. At Petite-Saens, however, we had it "cushy."
The routine was about like this: Up at 6:30, we fell in for three-quarters of an hour physical drill or bayonet
practice. Breakfast. Inspection of ammo and gas masks. One hour drill. After that, "on our own", with nothing
to do but smoke, read, and gamble.
Tommy is a great smoker. He gets a fag issue from the government, if he is lucky, of two packets or twenty a
week. This lasts him with care about two days. After that he goes smokeless unless he has friends at home to
send him a supply. I had friends in London who sent me about five hundred fags a week, and I was
consequently popular while they lasted. This took off some of the curse of being a lance corporal.
Tommy has his favorite in "fags" like anybody else. He likes above all Wild Woodbines. This cigarette is
composed of glue, cheap paper, and a poor quality of hay. Next in his affection comes Goldflakes--pretty near
as bad.
People over here who have boys at the front mustn't forget the cigarette supply. Send them along early and
often. There'll never be too many. Smoking is one of the soldier's few comforts. Two bits' worth of makin's a
week will help one lad make life endurable. It's cheap at the price. Come through for the smoke fund
whenever you get the chance.
Café life among us at Petite-Saens was mostly drinking and gambling. That is not half as bad as it sounds. The
drinking was mostly confined to the slushy French beer and vin blanc and citron. Whiskey and absinthe were
barred.
The gambling was on a small scale, necessarily, the British soldier not being at any time a bloated plutocrat.
At the same time the games were continuous. "House" was the most popular. This is a game similar to the
"lotto" we used to play as children. The backers distribute cards having fifteen numbers, forming what they
call a school. Then numbered cardboard squares are drawn from a bag, the numbers being called out. When a
number comes out which appears on your card, you cover it with a bit of match. If you get all your numbers
covered, you call out "house", winning the pot. If there are ten people in at a franc a head, the banker holds
out two francs, and the winner gets eight.
It is really quite exciting, as you may get all but one number covered and be rooting for a certain number to
come. Usually when you get as close as that and sweat over a number for ten minutes, somebody else gets his
first. Corporal Wells described the game as one where the winner "'ollers 'ouse and the rest 'ollers 'ell!"
Some of the nicknames for the different numbers remind one of the slang of the crap shooter. For instance,
"Kelly's eye" means one. "Clickety click" is sixty-six. "Top of the house" is ninety. Other games are "crown
and anchor", which is a dice game, and "pontoon", which is a card game similar to "twenty-one" or "seven
and a half." Most of these are mildly discouraged by the authorities, "house" being the exception. But in any
estaminet in a billet town you'll find one or all of them in progress all the time. The winner usually spends his
winnings for beer, so the money all goes the same way, game or no game.
When there are no games on, there is usually a sing-song going. We had a merry young nuisance in our
platoon named Rolfe, who had a voice like a frog and who used to insist upon singing on all occasions. Rolfie
would climb on the table in the estaminet and sing numerous unprintable verses of his own, entitled "Oh,
CHAPTER V 23
What a Merry Plyce is Hengland." The only redeeming feature of this song was the chorus, which everybody
would roar out and which went like this:
Cheer, ye beggars, cheer! Britannia rules the wave! 'Ard times, short times Never'll come agyne. Shoutin' out
at th' top o' yer lungs: Damn the German army! Oh, wot a lovely plyce is Hengland!
Our ten days en repos at Petite-Saens came to an end all too soon.
On the last day we lined up for our official "bawth."
Petite-Saens was a coal-mining town. The mines were still operated, but only at night--this to avoid shelling
from the Boche long-distance artillery, which are fully capable of sending shells and hitting the mark at
eighteen miles. The water system of the town depended upon the pumping apparatus of the mines. Every
morning early, before the pressure was off, all hands would turn out for a general "sluicing" under the
hydrants. We were as clean as could be and fairly free of "cooties" at the end of a week, but official red tape
demanded that we go through an authorized scouring.
On the last day we lined up for this at dawn before an old warehouse which had been fitted with crude
showers. We were turned in twenty in a batch and were given four minutes to soap ourselves all over and
rinse off. I was in the last lot and had just lathered up good and plenty when the water went dead. If you want
to reach the acme of stickiness, try this stunt. I felt like the inside of a mucilage bottle for a week.
After the official purification we were given clean underwear. And then there was a howl. The fresh
underthings had been boiled and sterilized, but the immortal cootie had come through unscathed and in all its
vigor. Corporal Wells raised a pathetic wail:
"Blimme eyes, mytie! I got more'n two 'undred now an' this supposed to be a bloomin' clean shirt! Why, the
blinkin' thing's as lousy as a cookoo now, an me just a-gittin' rid o' the bloomin' chats on me old un. Strike me
pink if it hain't a bleedin' crime! Some one ought to write to John Bull abaht it!"
John Bull is the English paper of that name published by Horatio Bottomley, which makes a specialty of
publishing complaints from soldiers and generally criticising the conduct of army affairs.
Well, we got through the bath and the next day were on our way. This time it was up the line to another sector.
My one taste of trench action had made me keen for more excitement, and in spite of the comfortable time at
Petite-Saens, I was glad to go. I was yet to know the real horrors and hardships of modern warfare. There
were many days in those to come when I looked back upon Petite-Saens as a sort of heaven
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