WAIFS ON BATTLEFIELD.

Taihape Daily Times, 19 October 1917, Page 2

WAIFS ON BATTLEFIELD.

I believe they are forbidden, these little camp-followers, but then boys are forbidden to steal apples out of orchards and they steal them all the same. And so at all hours of the day these little girls and boys wander round the camps, with their chocolates and oranges and their weird broken English. There was Marie Louise, whose name among the men degenerated to Mary Liza. The first time I met her. was about ten o'crock one morning, when I was lying in my sleeping bag, on che straw that carpeted a long wooden hut, seeking the moral courage to get up and wash in the canvas bucket that stood outside. Suddenly I heard footsteps, and turned round "to tell my servant where to put the shaving water —and instead *>f my servant there stood in the doorway a small fat girl with red cheeks and fair hair and a torn apron. She gazed at me for some seconds; then, "Orantehes, wun pence,' * .she announced. As though I wanted oranges at a penny a piece when I had marched into camp at 5 o'clock in the morning, and had the growth of four days on my chin!

But she came every morning and would leave me with a collection of three or four oranges for which I had no earthly use, and with little details cf her history that I found more ininteresting. Her father, she told me, had been taken prisoner in Liege, and her mother she had never known. "But how do you livef'l asked. "But I live with Mme. Lebrun, the baker's wife," she told me. '' They sent me there when we came from Liege. And then," she added with an absurd air of independence, "T earn my living," And she rattled in her pocket, the money her oranges had brought her. I paid my contribution, and I heard her, far off'down the camp, calling in her shrill child's voice. "Orantches, wun pence." And one day I asked her if she did not go to school, and she was so offended that she deserted me for some days "I have no use for schools. I learn the English," she said. For you have to be very careful with ridiculous little vivandieres these descendants of the camp-followers of the armies of Napoleon. They are so dignified and so childish. There was one little boy of four who made a.speciality of chocolate, and'he too, was alone in the world. He arrived from heaven knows where every day after lunch, and he tramped sturdily off along the rough pave to heaven knows where again in the evening, liis pockets jingling with ten-centime pieces, and his cap, in lieu of a basket, packed tight with bits of cake or :.:my biscuits.

There are dozens of them -near every camp—pathetic little creatures with no homes and with ridiculous'names like Hegesippe or Eugenie, Casimir, or Clementine—and the Army would do wrong to exclude them. Let them by all moans be forbidden, but let them disobey the order. For they have a far better use than to fill the soldier's stomach with bitter oranges and cheap chocolates. "They make one think of 'ome, whom I found crawling on hands and knees for the benefit of some younglike/' explainde a shamefaced soldier ster. "Does one good to see a kid some times.—" Mud and Khaki."