CHAPTER XXII

CHRISTMAS WITH METHUEN'S ARMY

"THE Boers are going to their homes to spend Christmas," was the news we read one day from all the points where our armies were centred. Some men might have been cross, or even jealous, under the circumstances; but we saw the humour of the situation, realising that even if we could slip out of our trenches to foregather with our loved ones at home, we should have to travel four weeks, and seven thousand miles to clasp hands with them.

Of course, we of Lord Methuen's army celebrated the day after our own fashion, and worked ourselves up to enjoy it almost as if it were the genuine article.

I shall describe the day in camp, and though most of its features were precisely the same as they would have been on any other day, the record may be none the less interesting on that account.

After you have lived in a tent a few weeks, if you can call it living, the untying of the flap is as certain to wake you as would be the smashing in of your front door in London. You hear the strings being pulled

out of their bow knots, and presently there is the squeezing, surging noise of a man pushing his way in, as if you were living in a drum, and he was breaking through it. He is your soldier servant, and he remarks, "Gun fire, sir; I've brought your cocoa, sir."

Your soldier servant! What a good fellow he is! You were told before you took him into your employ at eighteenpence a day that he was not precisely without a mark against his name, that at home in barracks he was one of the dare-devils of the battalion-apt to slip out of a second or third story window, and come back tipsy, and say to some officer he met, “Good morning, sir; you're a good soldier, sir." But if you didn't mind these eccentricities, and would employ him, you would find him willing, clever, respectful, worth his weight in gold as a servant, precisely as he is worth the same amount as a fighting man.

"And I have brought your cocoa, sir," he says. "I was out on picket all night, sir; but I got sent in this morning ahead of the rest with a message, sir. Had a bit of fun last night, sir. My captain happened to mention that he might be hungry an hour or two after dark, as he hadn't had nothing all day. So me and another chap we came across a house, and we came across a duck and a pigeon and a hen, and then we looked for some vegetables, and came across some potatoes and onions and carrots.

And then we came

across a pot to cook 'em in, and a couple of plates, sir

-which came in very handy. And when the captain came along he said we gave him the finest 'raggoo' he believed he had ever eat, sir. He said he wouldn't ask no questions how we had come across such things as was in the 'raggoo,' and as he didn't ask any questions he didn't get no lies.

"Breakfast at half-past six, sir; shall I call you at

six?"

"Do," and with the word I sink back into slumber between my goatskin carosse and my blanket, both still necessary, for the night was bitter cold, and the sun has not yet warmed the air.

At six the servant comes again with a bucket of water, so coated with dust that the fluid is the colour of khaki. But what of that? So is the soap, and so is the towel-indeed, the very balloon sent to us from England is khaki-coloured. It was painted so, but it would have soon turned so if it had been let alone. We wash and dress, and go out to breakfast. Between us and the mess-table is the kitchen. The ladies at home should see that kitchen of the officers' mess of the Yorkshire Light Infantry, which has turned out soup that Lord Methuen has praised, and viands we have not been a bit ashamed to offer to him and his brigadiers.

This serviceable kitchen consists of a sort of bonfire, around and on top of which are set half a dozen Flanders kettles-oval black pots about a foot high, and

eight or nine inches wide in the middle. In one of these porridge is cooking, in another tea, in others coffee, milk, bloaters, and the like. Soldiers in their shirt-sleeves are chopping wood, stirring the pots, frying the bacon, and serving out the food to the servants. The mess-sergeant's tent is near by—a little provision shop, in and before which are boxes and chests of biscuits, cake, tinned goods of almost every sort, sauces, beer, spirits, bread, and other edibles-milk and butter being wholly missing.

Already the intense heat of the day is on everything, and yet, because we are among soldiers, every man wears his coat, and wears it buttoned to the chin. The officers are all used to buttoned-up suffocation, and deserve no credit; but every morning I pat myself on the back, and declare that it is almost as courageous for me to put my coat on my fevered, sweltering body, and then button it up, as it is for a professional warrior to go into battle.

A dozen or so of the officers are round their rude mess-table, each with his soldier,servant behind him, or passing between the kitchen and the table.

Merry Christmas!" Merry Christmas!" comes from every throat, and heartily is the greeting shouted back. I look at them all and wonder how they appeared in London, or in Yorkshire, when last they were at home. Certainly not as they appeared now in their old and stained khaki, with here and there a beard or

a blistered nose, and everywhere hands and faces tanned and tinted like mahogany.

How modest and unassuming, how frank and brotherly they are, these sterling fellows who have been in the heat of four battles, have been thinned in mess and ranks by shocking losses, and yet are as eager for the next fray as the newest regiment out here. I know no other regiment so well, for I have lived with this since Methuen's start; but I suppose these men are simply types of British officers. I know that never a man in our mess has grumbled or complained. I have seen the unvarying eagerness with which each man has heard that a battle was on for next day. After any engagement each has told of his part in it as calmly as an architect would tell of a day's work in an office.

But wonderful as these men seem to me, they are but British officers. And in an army made up of the best regiments there must be many a mess like this.

The talk is of the big plum-pudding that has been sent up from Capetown for the officers. The Queen's chocolate for the men has not yet come, and makeshift puddings are to be made in camp.

There will be champagne at the officers' dinner, and a tot of spirits is to be served to every Tommy. Frankly, we find it a little difficult to talk of Christmas, with nothing to remind us of it except a promise of pudding, and a distant view of a white-robed clergyman talking to a double line of soldiers on the veldt.