COMRADES IN ARMS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 6, Issue 245, 26 January 1917, Page 3 (Supplement)

COMRADES IN ARMS.

BlilTlsil AND FRENCH SOLDIERS,

Captain i'hilippe .Millet, who has sorv- ! Ed tor a year a> French Othcer of Liaison with a Bmi.-n division ou the Western trout, has been particularly struck by the ease with which the French and tiie Bntisii soldier can and do fraternise together, llis twelve mouths' experience, of which he writes in the November Nineteenth Century, has taught him the great fact—astonishing, no doubt, to many people—that the differences between the liritish and the French temper are, ou the whole, superficial. It took him a little while to realise this truth, but, as he .-ays, war is a great master, and reveals many hidden things. Half-jestingly, he remarks that draughts are the only subject on which the French and British armies thoroughly disagree. "Be he a private or an officer, the Frenchman alwavs avoids draughts if he can help it. it is just the reverse with the British army. They have a real genius for inventing draughts, even when there is only one window in the room. Curiously eiiiiigh, this does not prevent them from catching cold. The most striking demonstration of this fact was given me in .March, 1915. W'e were billeted in Ville-Chapelle, a primitive place, where the general's mess had to be in the kitchen: so that my friends arranged that both the window and the entrance door, which faced each other, should remain open and provide us with a cold wind, while the kitchen stove was heating us from behind; in consequence of which they all fell ill, one after the other, beginning with the general and ending with the A.D.C. My revenge for all I had suffered was that I was the last to be laid un with the 'flue.' " '

THE BRITISH OFFICER AS A TALKER, I rom wnat he had read, more especially in English novels, Captain Mill->t expected the average U-itish offic :* to be a silent, glow-minded sportsm-ia, full of manly qualities, such as self-re-spect and self-control, but admirable rather than amiable, and on the whole not very human. He was surprised, therefore, when several senior officers proved to be very talkative—one, a colonel, "the best of men, who talked himself to death at every supper, with a variety of gestures that a Southerner might well have envied/' General topics including literature, and politics, were discussed every night, and in the matter of politics the British officers "could beat any officer in the French armv, for they cursed their own Government with unabated vigour." One of the writer's British comrades, "a mast cultured and delightful fellow," was a good pianist, and each time lie returned from the trenches would fling ehimself on the piano and gratify us with a selection of Italian music." "Where," asks Captain Millet, "was my typical English hero.- ' As for self-control, the British officers hud, of course, a good deal of it, but "they did not overdo it in any way, as (aptain Z_illet discovered when on a slippery road, his car rar into the cur of a- British army corps commander. Little damage was done, but "the General jumped out like a tiger, followed by two staff officers, who carefully imitated his voice and gestures."' He had completely lost his temper.. Although the unfortunate captain (or, rather, lieutenant, as he then was) had never met the irate General before, the latter declared that it was not the first time such a thing had occurred, and that lie would have to report the delinquent to his French superiors. No apologies seemed to soothe him, but a few days later when he again met Captain Millet the General laughed over the incident, and thereafter always hailed him with a smile, and the words, Hello. here is the fellow who ran into my car. ' "I liked him better with his occasional fits of ill-humour," says the Frenchman, "than if he had been the Iron Duke."

BRAVE UNDER FIRE. I. nder fire the British officers were, of course, all very brave men. "Indeed, they behaved ia a very peculiar wav, in the most unpleasant circumstances—as if they were playing golf on a peaceful green. \\ e had a brigadier in the division, who was uncommonly remarkable in that respect; for he would, in the midst o c a hot battle, carefully pick out the most dangerous spot and make it his report centre, as if he were enjoying a shower bath." Yet the British officers did not attempt to conceal that they found the game as beastly as the French did, and their "human feeling expressed itself sometimes in a picturesque way," as was the case with an R.E. officer, who, when surprised by a burst of shell fire while inspecting wire entanglements, sat him down in the first-line trench, and muttered indignantly to himself, "I suppose I had better wait nnti the blighters have done." Like the I-rench, the British were equally modest about their own courage. Not- a few of them spoke of being frightened as they would have mentioned a headache. "One day," says Captain Millet, "during a battle one of the staff officers who had just gone ahead to reconnoitre the ground in a most unwholesome place, and was starting again on the same errand, said to me, with a smile, 'lt's beastly out there. . . Not being personally brave, I hate it.' I shall never forget that word spoken by one who had never shown the slightest hesitation in exposing his life." Indeed, the genuine humanity of the British soldier seems to have come almost as a revelation to the French officer. He was amazed to find officers and men iu the British army so like officers and men in his own, the only great di:Tereneo that the British spoke English and the French spoke Ferneh. '"The truth i>. it is impossible to have watched the two armies in the field without coming to the conclusion that a common civilisation, as well as a common calico, lias created links between us," say.- Captain Millet, "that are stronger than any barrier a difference in tongue can raise between two peoples. For we are both at bottom 'made of the same wood,' as people say in 1 ranee: we are equally human, we have the same defects, and the same trick of kicking when a bully comes nero-s our path."