BEHIND THE WAR

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2709, 2 March 1916, Page 3

BEHIND THE WAR

THE ENGLISH GIRIS' PARI

(From the London "Mail.")

The market-place of the village of , not very far from the front in Picardy, is crowded. Fine boards, placed on low saw-horses, serve as counters of tho canvas-roofed booths. They groan under the weight of the wares piled upon them. Picture postcards and woollen mittens, soclcs, and mulflors, leather purses, old books, torn sheet-music, spectacles, and pince-nesi, wliicli range in price from <I<l. to Is., fresh vegetables and butter, fish and meat, cut liowors and chocolate, fowl and game (live and dead) are being sold to eager buyers. Not the usual clientele of peasant women, but bronz-ed-faced, stecl-helmeted French troopers, turned housemaids, are busy buying a week's supply for the messes of the hundreds of battalions quartered in the neighbourhood. Prices are fixed by the local authorities, but the shrewd old market women, eager to turn- a penny, find it easy to convince their customers that higher prices must prevail. "(J'est le gouvernment qui pa.vo is tho telling' argument which usually .convinces the gullible poilu to give a sou or two more than the normal price, even though tho difference comes out of the officer's pocket. Brown-caped spahis and black-faced Senegalese are also buying products suited for their peculiar needs. Here and thero an ctiicor is himself superintending the purchases for some especially epicurean meal. There is no bargaining. mon capitaine," is tho reply to She rapid five of questions. Iho officers are evidently not, new to their jobs, and buy with a precision and skill which betray long practice. A Pair of Fat'DuoKs. One corner of the market-place has become the centre of interest. Out beyond the lino of booths an old, wrinkle-faced peasant woman stands, holding a pair of fat ducks by _tho feet, one in each hand. The birds wriggle and squawk, but she pays no attention to this; grasping them the more securely, she holds first ono and then the other on high, that her customer, as well as tho group of soldiers that has gathered, may inspect and admire the fine birds. And the customer ? She is a khakirclad, slim, young English girl. Her skirt. is short, 1 her boots heavy.and well-worn. She has shouldorstraps on her Bed Cross uniform, and her broad-brimmed felt hat shades a face tanned and burned by- months of out-of-door. life. She is utterly unconscious of the crowd, and merely keops on repeating to the duck woman, "Trop cher, trop cher." The woman bursts forth in an elegy of her ducks, in a French patois tihat sounds interesting, but is unintelligible. "Trop cher" is the only reward slie gets for her pains. The young girl pulls a memorandumbook out of her pocket, consults it, and then looks fixedly at the market-woman. She evidently wants the ducks. The woman remains obdurate. Then the girl snaps close -her note-book, and turns to go. But the victory has been won. The ducks are hers at her own price. There is a murmur of vdmiration as tlie wriggling birds are borne off to tlie Red Cross motor ambulance that stands waiting at the kerb. The girl steps to the front of tho car, cranks the heavy engine, jumps into her seat and .ill a moment is off piloting her big motor ambulance through tho confused traffic, across a narrow insecure temporary bridge. "C'ost 1 chic, les Anglaises," a bearded young veteran murmurs to a comrade, as tho khaki-coloured car passes out of sight. Doing Men's Tasks. The participation of women in war tasks has Tn all countries been admirable. The devotion of Frenchwomen in caring for the sick and wounded under tho most- difficult circumstances, even under heavy shell fire, has called forth justly merited praise. But of all the belligerents Englishwomen alone have had an active share in the fighting, in that in so many cases they are doing a mail's work. Hundreds of young Englishwomen have, for TDore than' a year, been living close up to the front, working at men's tasks, with a skill and untiring cheerfulness that are astounding. I was standing at' the. railway station of a village somewhere' back of tho French 'iines. A trainload of wounded arrived. A certain number of, tbo wounded were allotted to this town. They were removed from the train into a temporary waiting room, and then to tho ambulances. I noticed that more than half of the stretcher-bearers were women — Englishwomen—and the ambulances wore driven by the same women. The admiration of the French trooper for the amaxon-like achievements of the the Englishwomen knows no bounds. Their own women are devoted, tender, and sympathetic nurses, but Les Aug-' lsises are heroic. A man who has been wounded three times during the war told mo that the difference between' a man 'and a woman driver of an ambulance was all to the credit of the latter. "I would a thousand times rather be driven by a woman," he said to me. "They'll look out for every; pebble in the road, avoid every jolt, and it makes .a difference, I can tell you, when you have got a bad pain in your body." As far as I can ascertain, Englishwomen are the only women in this war who have driven motor ambulances. These services have been performed not only at British bases, but more particularly among the French. Clad in fighting clothes, wherever there are fighting men there the Englishwoman is to be found. Stretching across the rolling sand dunes of the north-east corner of Franco there are vast tent colonies, where for a year British women have been living under canvas, in all kinds of weather, nursing British wounded. It is ono thing to nurse the wounded in ivellheated, comfortable hospitals, and another to live in a cramped, ill-heated, draughty tent, where one is obliged often to wade nnkle-deep in mud to reach one's patients.

The Making of Shells. Howover, it is not only the war zone that the women of England have answered the call of patriotism. I have recently returned from an extensive tour through Great Britain. Throughout the land I found stirring examples of the devotion of the women to the great cause. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the credit for the shell superiority which the British now have over the Germans is due to the zeal and skill of British women. The 3in. shell most commonly used at the front is made from start to finish by women. There is scarcely a fuse fired by a British gun to-day' that has hot been made almost exclusively by female labour. The difficult task • of muldng these fuses, the hundreds of operations needed to turn out a complete fuse, the delicacy of touch and the doftness required to prepare this most intricate, sensitive, and important mechanism of modern -warfare —all this is the workmanship of the young girls of England. The fuse of a shell is perhaps its most essential component part. So that the women who. at home aro I! engaged on this work may rightly feel that theirs will bo 110 small .'share of victory when British shells make a breach in the Gorman line. The women of England to-day aro carrying the tradition <)E Florcnco Nightingale a stop farther. No longer content to comfort the sick and alleviate suffering, they have taken upon themselves many tasks hitherto borne by men. At borne thc.v or<». piliiui up mtuitions with an eagerness and zeal

which more than equal that of the men jg workers. In relief work anil in hos- ra pitals their executive skill antl ability M to manage large units with ease and M efficiency have been astonishing. In the (a war zones theiv sacrifice and devotion, M their willingness to do any odd job, || no matter how tedious, and keep smiU |j ing while at it, will ever remain one of M the shining pages'in the history of the' ii Great War. , ra a