khaki Red Cross train To the truck train full of wounded, and the weariness and laughter, And 'Good-bye, and thank-you, Sister,'4 and the empty yards again?
Can you recall the parcels that we made them for the railroad, Crammed and bulging parcels held together by their string, And the voices of the sergeants who called the Drafts5 together, And the agony and splendour when they stood to save the King?6
Can you forget their passing, the cheering and the waving, The little group of people at the doorway of the shed, The sudden awful silence when the last train swung to darkness, And the lonely desolation, and the mocking stars o'erhead?
Can you recall the midnights, and the footsteps of night watchers, Men who came from darkness and went back to dark again, And the shadows on the rail-lines and the all-inglorious labour, And the promise of the daylight firing blue the window-pane?
Can you recall the passing through the kitchen door to morning, Morning very still and solemn breaking slowly on the town, And the early coastways engines that had met the ships at daybreak, And the Drafts just out from England, and the day shift coming down?
Can you forget returning slowly, stumbling on the cobbles, And the white-decked Red Cross barges dropping seawards for the tide, And the search for English papers, and the blessed cool of water, And the peace of half- closed shutters that shut out the world outside?
Can I forget the evenings and the sunsets on the island, And the tall black ships at anchor far below our balcony, And the distant call of bugles, and the white wine in the glasses, And the long line of the street lamps, stretching Eastwards to the sea?
. . . When the world slips slow to darkness, when the office fire burns lower, My heart goes out to Rouen, Rouen all the world away; When other men remember I remember our Adventure And the trains that go from Rouen at the ending of the day.
2. Popular brand of cheap cigarette. 5. Groups of soldiers. 3. Crowded social gatherings. 6. I.e., to sing the British National Anthem, 'God 4. Nurse. Save the King.'
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CANNAN: GREY GHOSTS AND VOICES / 1983
From Grey Ghosts and Voices
I suppose it is difficult for anyone to realise now what 'France' meant to us. In the second war I met a young man of the Left who assured me that Rupert Brooke's verse was of no account, phoney, because it was 'impossible that anyone should have thought like that.' I turned and rent him, saying that he was entitled to his own opinion of Rupert Brooke's verse, but not entitled to say that no one could have thought like that. How could he know how we had thought??All our hopes and all our loves, and God knew, all our fears, were in France; to get to France, if only to stand on her soil, was something; to share, in however small a way, in what was done there was Heart's Desire.
I asked my Father1 could I take all my holidays in one and go for four weeks to France?I did not want holidays, I said, but I did want France. It was dark and we were walking home through the confines of Little Clarendon Street; my voice, I knew, shook; he took his pipe out of his mouth, halted his step for a moment and looked down at me. 'Ah! France,' he said, 'France, yes I think you should go. We'll manage.' I stammered thanks and we walked home in silence, understanding each other.
The Canteen was started at Rouen because Lord Brassey's yacht, The Sunbeam, had made two or three journeys there during the shortage of hospital ships bringing wounded home. Lady Mabelle Egerton, his daughter, looking round the desolate railway yards beyond the quays asked the R[ail]. Transport], Offficer]. if there was anything that could be done for the troops; drafts going up the line to Railhead, who had to spend a long day there, and sometimes a long night.
He said that the men brought their rations, including tea, but that there was no means of making hot water. (It was long before the days of another war when motorised infantry 'brewed up' with their petrol cans)?Could she find some philanthropic person to take on the job? She could find no one?? and decided to do it herself, and so the canteen, later known affectionately to thousands of the B[ritish]. E [xpeditionary]. F[orce]. and the New Armies, as 'the Coffee Shop' was born.
I had a passport. I packed. Left as little urgent work behind me as I could, and met Lucie, who I adored, in London. We travelled to Southampton and Hilary, who after sick leave had been posted to a home battalion of his regiment in Hampshire, came to dinner and we sat far into the night talking. He had been in France; I was going, and generously he treated me as if I was one of the fraternity. . . .
I had done nothing about a berth, and there was none to be had so I spent the night curled up, blissfully happy, on a coil of rope in the bow where no one noticed me, and woke in the early morning as we came into Le Havre. There were English soldiers in the streets, and in the cold spring sunshine a battery clattered by. We went up by train to Rouen. Someone had got us a couple of rooms in a small hotel with a restaurant below that overlooked the quays; those same broad quays where Bevil had disembarked. I fell into bed too happy to worry or to dream and went on duty after breakfast next morning.
Along the length of railway line ran a row of sheds with huge sliding doors.
1. Chief executive of the Oxford University Press, for which his daughter then worked.
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1984 / VOICES FROM WORLD WAR 1
In the first, and smaller one, was established a boiler room where enormous vats of hot water forever boiled. * * *
When the big trains were due in we opened the sliding doors of the sheds, the train doors banged and banged down the long line of the corridors and some 2,000 men would surge in. Barricaded behind our heavy table, and thankful for it when the pressure was heavy or a draft2 had somehow got hold of some drink, we handed out bowls of coffee and sandwiches, washed dirty bowls till the water in the tall vats was chocolate brown, and served again.
Someone would play the piano; Annie Laurie; Loch Lomond.3 Blurred lanterns lit the scene as best they might when it rained and our candles in the tills under the tables guttered in the wind. One was hot or horrid cold, harried, dirty, and one's feet ached with the stone floors. When the smaller drafts came one could distinguish faces, and regimental badges; have a word or two. * * *
