Before the loss of the Amphion caused dismay, the news of the sinking of the mine-layer Königin Luise, released late in the afternoon of 5 August, reinforced Great Britain’s almost religious faith in the Navy. In the high-charged elation of this first day of the Great War, the British public was only too happy to demonstrate its approbation of the Army too.
The progress of the RBs, marching through Felixstowe to entrain for Colchester, was seriously impeded by the attentions of an enthusiastic mob. After the boredom and frustration of the past few days, most of the soldiers were revelling in it. Bandsman Shawyer, still smarting at the ignominy of marching in the ranks, was acutely embarrassed.
Bandsman H. V. Shawyer, No. 4142, 1st Bttn., The Rifle Brigade, B.E.F.
The place was full of holidaymakers lining the pavements to see us go by and come war, hell or high water they seemed determined to get a laugh out of things. Of course none of us could foresee the four terrible years that lay ahead of us, but I didn’t feel too generously disposed to some of them. There were bunches of men in the doorways of the public houses holding up their foaming tankards at us as we slogged along – mocking us! And there were we under the weight of all our equipment and not a wink of sleep had we had the night before. Of course a lot of them were young – young enough to be feeling the weight of a full pack on their own backs before long. I often wondered if they were laughing then!
But most of the people couldn’t do enough for us, and they were pretty loud in the doing of it. Cheering, shouting, singing, waving their handkerchiefs, and showering us with sweets and packets of cigarettes. Some of the young girls were even pelting us with flowers as if we were blooming Spaniards or something. One man rushed out of a newsagent’s with his arms full of copies of the morning papers – he must have bought up the shop! He was running alongside us and the lads were grabbing the papers as fast as he could hand them out. And the cheering and yelling!
I was on the outside of a flank of four. I turned up my head and found myself inches away from a woman who was staring straight into my face. Being nineteen and bashful I was terrified that she was going to kiss me – some fellows were surrounded by women kissing them! – but she didn’t. She just put her hand up to her mouth and as I went by I could see that she had tears in her eyes. All the same, being a bit of a Kipling fan, I couldn’t help thinking of his lines. It’s Tommy this and Tommy that, and Tommy get outside, but it’s ‘Thank you Mr Atkins’, when the troopship’s on the tide.
The troopships were not precisely on the tide but the Army was up to its neck in preparations for the move. Exactly where they were to move to no one had, as yet, decided.
In Germany, troop trains carrying reinforcements to follow up the thrust into Belgium puffed incessantly towards the frontiers. The trains were decked with flowers and German civilians, no less enthusiastic than civilians in Britain, lined the railway tracks to cheer them on their way.
Now the focus of enmity in Germany had shifted to Britain, and British perfidy was roundly condemned by the morning newspapers beneath the headlines that blazoned the news that Britain ‘had declared war on Germany’. Technically, this information was correct, but there was no mention of the British ultimatum or its terms. Rather, in a natural desire to recruit patriotic feeling to the colours now nailed irrevocably to Germany’s masthead, the German press put forward the theory that Great Britain had jumped on the bandwagon in the hope of capturing German trade and German markets. It was equally natural that the German public should accept this version of events and that indignation was running high in the streets of Berlin.
Feelings were running equally high in government circles and, when the British Ambassador called on the German Chancellor to take leave, Herr von Bethmann-Hollweg reproached him bitterly. It was more than a courtesy visit, for the two men had got on well together and the Chancellor had been more concerned than any other German statesman about the morality of Germany’s actions. He had done his utmost to curb impetuosity, to delay the decision to mobilise. Only a few hours earlier – to the consternation of less scrupulous colleagues – he had publicly admitted that Germany’s invasion of Belgium was a violation of international law. As a patriot, he sincerely believed that the means justified the end, but von Bethmann was a sophisticated and cosmopolitan man, and he suspected that world opinion might take quite a different view. He believed in German decency and German honour. He simply could not believe that Germany and Great Britain were now at war.
The interview with the British Ambassador was a painful one. Von Bethmann all but wrung his hands. What the British Government had done was terrible. The consequences would be appalling and Britain would be entirely to blame. And all for one word – ‘neutrality’! All for ‘a scrap of paper’ Great Britain was going to war with a kindred nation who desired nothing more than her friendship. It was like striking a man from behind when he was already being attacked by two assailants. The two men parted sadly. All Sir Edward Goschen’s protestations could not mollify the Chancellor nor reduce the temperature of his fevered indignation.*
A hostile mob who apparently shared the Chancellor’s opinion besieged the British Embassy with volleys of stones and missiles. Deeply embarrassed, profoundly apologetic, the German Foreign Office ordered mounted police to be sent to restore order and to protect the Ambassador and his staff from further disturbance. In the morning the Ambassador received an apology of sorts from the Kaiser, and he received it with mixed feelings. It was delivered verbally by an aide-de-camp whose chilly arrogance and exaggerated courtesy conveyed beyond any shadow of doubt that it was intended to be a slap in the face.
The Emperor has charged me to express to your Excellency his regret for the occurrences of last night, but to tell you at the same time that you will gather from those occurrences an idea of the feelings of his people respecting the action of Great Britain in joining with other nations against her old allies of Waterloo. His Majesty also begs that you will tell the King that he has been proud of the titles of British Field Marshal and British Admiral, but that in consequence of what has occurred he must now at once divest himself of those titles.
Next morning the Ambassador and his staff left the Lehrter Station by special train for the Hook of Holland. The German Foreign Office had gone to considerable trouble to ensure that their journey would be comfortable and that the Ambassador would not be harassed. Other British subjects caught by the war in Germany were not so fortunate.
The Bayreuth Festival had ended on Saturday and a number of affluent British, and a few rich American music-lovers had travelled adventurously by motor car, intending to follow a feast of Wagner by a leisurely tour of Wagner’s Germany. There were some ugly incidents in country villages whose inhabitants merely recognised them as foreigners. No amount of argument would convince them that the travellers were not also spies. In the spa resorts of Carlsbad and Baden-Baden where wealthy Europe ‘took the cure’, hundreds of people who had been caught unawares by the war were the victims of hysteria whipped up by the ‘foreign air raid’ scare. Everyone was trying to get out. Perhaps the only person who was positively enjoying the adventure was Margaret Foote from Hayling Island. She was fourteen years old and had come to Germany on holiday with her mother. They cruised down the Rhine on the Hollandia and, like their fellow passengers, were stranded when the riverboat docked at Mannheim.
Margaret Foote
We travelled to Heidelberg in the evening and stayed there the weekend. All the shops were left open by order on the Sunday and everywhere one heard men’s voices singing, ‘Der Wacht am Rhein’. We were stopped on a bridge by an officer, who enquired (in German, of course) what nationality we were. Some Americans with us told him theirs, whereupon he asked, ‘Do you speak English?’ We all five burst out laughing and said, ‘Don’t you know what language they speak in America? Did you think it was Red Indian?’ He had thought we were Russian spies!
On 3 August we went to Stuttgart. The journey took seven and a half hours instead of two! We saw several troop trains, crowded with men cheering and singing. After them came open trucks, on each of which was a cannon with a soldier upon it. It was a wonderful sight. On arriving at Stuttgart we heard that a Serbian spy had just been caught. Crowds were waiting to see him – but it was really a German workman who had been sent by the police to do something to the telegraph wires. The people, thinking that he was cutting them, shot him dead!
There was a great fall of shooting stars that night and everyone began to fire at them, mistaking them for the lights on a French aeroplane. On August 7th, three days after England declared war, the English were ordered to leave the country and were given a safe conduct into Switzerland. We were treated well in Germany, but the spy mania made it unsafe to go out alone.
War fever was sweeping Europe like an epidemic and people could hardly wait to get to grips with the enemy. So far, of the Allies, the only people to have had a taste of the fighting were the Serbs and the Belgians. They were at the wrong end of it and they were fighting for their lives.
Now that Britain was officially at war with Germany, Lieutenant Spears in Paris was able to cast off his discreet civilian garb and appear in the uniform of British officer. Paris was already like a ghost town. The French system of a compulsory military service meant that almost every able-bodied man was a member of the Army Reserve, obliged to join the colours in the event of war. Overnight, men had disappeared from the streets. Shops were shuttered and hastily affixed notices informed would-be customers that the patron had gone to fight for France. Taxis disappeared, motor buses were few and far between and the only form of transport for those not fortunate enough to possess bicycles were some ancient horse-drawn carriages driven by equally ancient coachmen. It was impossible for a civilian to travel by train, for the trains were running to military timetables and to military destinations. Rumour was in the air and by nightfall on the 5th, most citizens were convinced that a string of barges carrying British soldiers had been seen travelling down the Seine towards Rouen. They were pleased with this news. It seemed to indicate (as Lieutenant Spears reflected with amusement) that the British Army, if not numerous, was at least prompt.
They were not quite as prompt as all that. But before the war was twenty-four hours old, most of the Reservists were back in the fold of their regiments. The crisis had even alarmed some of them into turning up, off their own bat and uninvited, as early as Bank Holiday Saturday. Most of the soldiers on the strength were young soldiers of less than six years’ service. The Reservists were the experienced men, the veterans, the men the army badly needed in case of trouble, but not all the young soldiers stood agape with admiration as they marched in. By the time the 1st RB arrived back at Colchester after a tedious roundabout journey, their Reservists had moved in and had virtually taken over their quarters. They were none too pleased.
Bandsman H. V. Shawyer, No. 4142, 1st Bttn., The Rifle Brigade, B.E.F.
We found the barracks full of Reservists – many still in civilian dress – and more were flocking in by almost every train. Fitting them out with uniform, boots and equipment was proceeding rapidly, but in some cases it was no easy job. Quite a few men had lost the soldierly figure they had taken with them into civil life. I remember one man in particular who must have weighed all of eighteen stone. In fact, the Quartermaster’s staff simply couldn’t fit him out, and he had to stay behind in England for several weeks until the training and the exercise – not to mention less sumptuous feeding! – tore about four stone off him.
It was hard on the Reservists, leaving good jobs and comfortable homes to come back to coarse uniforms and heavy boots. Even so, I found it hard to forgive them. Our Band Rooms were the showpiece of the Battalion, but after they took them over they looked like an old clothes shop down Petticoat Lane. All our review order tunics had been tossed into heaps in corners and our carefully creased black trousers were just lying around wholesale. All our spare kit, our grey shirts and our socks and pants, had been pinched – we’d left in such a hurry that there was no time to put things away securely.
Even so, we’d left our barrack rooms spick and span – hand-scrubbed floors, kit precisely folded and everything neat and tidy. I could hardly believe it was less than a week ago. I just stood inside the door with all my full kit still on and stared at it. I don’t know what expression was on my face – disgust I suppose! – but one man who was stretched out smoking on my bed-cot had the cheek to say to me ‘Never mind, kid. The war won’t last long enough for you to get hurt. You’re too young to worry.’
I had a fair idea that he could have told where my kit had gone if he’d had a mind to! We were all furious, and there was more than hot words exchanged, I can tell you. We had to break up quite a few fights!
My kit – or what was left of it – was strewn all over the floor for me to choose from. I salvaged what I could, packed it into a small suitcase I had and sent it home by rail. As it turned out, I needn’t have bothered. But I wasn’t to know then that I’d worn that lovely dark green review order tunic for the last time in my life. And it was the last I ever saw of those barrack rooms where the Band had lived for nearly three years.
After I’d rescued what was left of my belongings, I went straight off to the barrack quarters of C Company as a dutyman. And that was that!
Shawyer’s sarcastic comrade had been partly right. The Army had spared a thought for its young soldiers and, for the moment at any rate, they would not be needed. As their battalions prepared to move off, the boys were given railway warrants and orders to proceed to the home depots of their regiments to join the tamer ranks of Reserve battalions. They went with varying degrees of reluctance.
With a thousand and one details to attend to, the Commanding Officer of the Royal Artillery Depot at Woolwich could have done without the deputation of boy trumpeters who had, respectfully but purposefully, exercised their right to a personal interview. Twelve of them marched in, escorted by the trumpet major, and came to attention in front of the Colonel’s desk. Once a week, one or two of the trumpeters ostentatiously went through the motions of shaving a suspicion of fluff from their cheeks. Most did not, for the oldest was not yet eighteen and the youngest a mere sixteen and a half. Nevertheless, Jimmy Naylor had been in the Army for more than two years and, like the others, he was absolutely determined not to be left behind when the guns went to France. He had been elected to plead the trumpeters’ case.
The Colonel listened carefully, but he shook his head.
‘It’s against all the rules.’
‘But, Sir …’Jimmy launched into another argument. He was a persuasive speaker. He knew, too, that the Royal Artillery, if not precisely a private army as some of its members liked to think, was an élite body which, by and large, made its own rules and got away with it.
While the trumpeters stood stiffly at attention and endeavoured to read his thoughts, their Commanding Officer reflected. The youngsters were keen. They could make themselves useful. It would be good for the lads to test their stamina and too bad to do them out of what would, in all probability, be a bit of a lark.
‘Very well. If your parents will give permission. I know you won’t let me down.’
He was rewarded with an ecstatic chorus of ‘No, Sir!’ The boys were cock-a-hoop and rushed back to their quarters to write the required letters home. A few looked slightly worried. Jimmy Naylor, knowing that it would take his parents in India some six weeks to answer, decided that it was pointless to trouble them and unblushingly forged his father’s signature. He couldn’t afford to wait. Everyone knew that it would take far less than six weeks to sort out the Kaiser. By the time a letter of permission could possibly arrive from India the war would certainly be over.
Trumpeter was a ‘boy’s’ rank and it went back to the earliest days of the Army. The duties of a trumpeter were not onerous but they carried a high degree of responsibility. It was the trumpeter’s task to sound the bugle-calls that governed his unit’s every move, from reveillé to lights out. On field days and in manoeuvres, his place was at the elbow of the officer in command of his battery, ready to transmit his orders, to send the guns forward into action, to halt, to cease fire, to trot, or to limber up and gallop to the rear. Only the high, clear notes of a trumpet could pierce the noise of battle and reach the scattered sections of a battery of guns. Trumpeters, at least in action, were almost obsolete in the Regular Army but in the Royal Horse Artillery they still played a vital role. They were the obvious people to carry urgent messages to and from the gun-line and they acted, in effect, as private orderlies and personal messengers to the battery commanders. The pay of a trumpeter and of all boy soldiers was one shilling a week.
As a boy piper with the 2nd Battalion, The Highland Light Infantry, Dan Bonar’s duties were similar, if less exclusive than those of a trumpeter in the Royal Horse Artillery. Bonar was no mean musician. Although he was only fourteen he had been playing the bagpipes for years, and even Pipe Major William Young had been sufficiently impressed to put him under the personal charge of Corporal John Smith. Smith hailed from Lochboisdale and was easily the best piper in the Battalion. He had listened keenly to Dan’s playing. Then he said, ‘Boy, I’ll make you a great piper.’ That had been two months ago when Dan had first joined the Battalion at Aldershot, and in his short time under Smith’s tuition his prowess had already earned him promotion to Orderly Piper of the Battalion. Like all Scottish regiments, the HLI ordered its day to the call of the pipes. Dan had to be up at half-past five to rouse the Battalion at six with the duty tune that traditionally woke the Jocks from slumber – ‘Hey Johnny Cope are ye waukin’ yet?’ His last duty of the day was to send them to sleep at a quarter past ten to the strains of ‘Johnny lie doon on yer wee pickle straw’. Notwithstanding his tender years, Dan was the first man up and the last man in the battalion to go to bed. The question of extra pay did not arise.
On the eve of the Battalion’s departure for France, Boy Bonar was about to be packed off to the Regimental Depot at Hamilton. Late in the afternoon Corporal MacKinnon called to him across the barrack room.
Boy D. Bonar, No. 12302, 2nd Bttn., Highland Light Infantry, 2nd Division, B.E.F.
He said, ‘Right, Boy, we’re off to the war and I’ve got some money belonging to you. Come and we’ll count it out.’ In those days soldiers got no benefits at all – and my princely shilling a week didn’t go very far. MacKinnon was a fatherly chap and he’d got hold of me a day or so after I joined the Battalion. We got a month’s furlough once a year in the wintertime, and he pointed out to me that when furlough time came round I would have my fare to pay to Scotland. What was I doing about it, he wanted to know. I said, ‘Nothing.’ I hadn’t given it a thought! He said, ‘Well you’d better do something about it. Any money you have to save, you give it to me.’
In those days there were no dining rooms where the soldiers could eat. They ate where they slept, and every evening the mess duty orderly went to the ration store and drew the following day’s ration of bread – a pound per man. The soldier put it in his locker and when breakfast came he cut off what he needed and the same at dinner time at twelve o’clock. At tea-time nothing was issued except the urn of tea and there was nothing to put on the bread that was left. But you could buy pennyworths of jam and butter and cheese in the canteen, and this is where we boys used to earn the odd copper, going to the canteen to fetch these tit-bits for the soldiers. As often as not we got a halfpenny or a penny for ourselves. Sure enough, I gave all these coppers to Corporal MacKinnon – and it had mounted up to a good few shillings!
We counted it out on the top of his kit box. Then I put it in my sporran and he went with me to the post office and I opened a savings account. He showed me the benefit of saving, old Corporal MacKinnon, and from then on I put a bit away every time I got paid. The number of my post office book was 24317A and, as time went on and I got promoted, my bank book became well worth admiring!
But Bonar’s unexpected affluence was small consolation for the indignity of being left behind. Naylor was more fortunate. He was already on his way to join a battery attached to the 2nd Division and it was on the point of leaving to embark for France.
From the point of view of regimental officers on the staff of the Army’s depots, the departure of the Expeditionary Force could not come too soon and they would be only too happy to see the back of them. The Victorian architects who had planned the spacious barracks as model quarters for the soldiers of the Queen had never envisaged such an influx of men. On top of housing their resident battalions whose numbers had been suddenly doubled by the embodiment of Reservists, they were obliged to squeeze in entire Reserve battalions. Somehow it had been managed, but only by doubling up accommodation (in extreme cases, even trebling up) and by staggering mealtimes so that there was hardly a decent interval between ‘Last Breakfasts’ and ‘First Dinners’. The latecomers were lucky if they got more than scraps of bully beef and slops from the bottom of the tea urn.
By the weekend most barracks were a shambles. Even the holiest of holies, the barrack squares that in normal times were models of good order and discipline, began to look more like market squares on an auction day. Long lines of men queued up to get into the mess halls. They queued outside the sick bay to be medically examined. They queued for extra kit at the Quartermaster’s stores. They queued outside the armoury, where relays of NCOs worked overtime inspecting rifles and humping heavy boxes of ammunition, and where the whetstone whined interminably as it sharpened the officers’ swords. In the stables and in the fields where the Army had set up temporary horse lines the transport men were busy with whitewash brushes and buckets of permanganate darkening the coats of light-coloured horses to camouflage them for active service in France. The War Book had thought of that too.
The War Book had also provided for 120,000 horses to be ‘called up’ in the first two weeks of the war. All week and all over the country, the authorities had been going about the business of collecting the animals and vehicles needed to bring the Army’s transport up to strength. Some of the Army’s representatives had gone about this task with more enthusiasm than commonsense. The powerful horses that pulled heavy tram-cars were now required by the Army to pull its guns and supply wagons, and zealous officials in Morecambe had commandeered so many that the trams stopped running altogether. Some protesting farmers, more anxious about getting in the harvest than sending the Expeditionary Force on its way, almost came to blows with requisitioning officers who came to enlist their workhorses. And country gentlemen, chagrined to see their fine-bred steeds departing on War Service as ‘officers’ chargers’, were not much consoled by the comparatively generous payment of £75 in exchange for a favourite mount.
The arm of the military was long. By the end of the week it had reached as far as the island of Arran on the west coast of Scotland. Eighty horses had been requisitioned and on Sunday morning the Caledonian steamer Duchess of Argyle arrived to take the first batch to the mainland.
Although it was just half an hour’s sail by Clyde steamer from Gourock, Arran was a quiet island that had more in common with highland Argyll across the Firth to the north than with lowland Ayrshire a stone’s throw away on the southern coast.
Even in August when the population was swelled by holidaymakers, there was little amusement to be found in Arran except when the weekday boats came in from Glasgow and Gourock. Young men in the Territorials, caught on the hop by the war during their annual holidays, had left the island earlier in the week. Their elders, hungry for news which only reached Arran when the midday steamer brought the early editions of the Glasgow papers, had clubbed together to subscribe to a telegraph service offered by the Glasgow Herald and besieged the post office in Brodick as soon as it opened in the mornings. On Sunday there were no steamers and no news and although Wartime Regulations kept the postmaster on the alert for emergencies, the post office itself remained firmly shut.
The Duchess of Argyle steamed in early in the morning and the work began right away. Even on market days when occasionally a horse, or a cow, or a coop of clucking chickens was loaded on to the steamer to be sold on the mainland, Arran had never seen anything like it. All Brodick gravitated to the pier-head to watch as the reluctant horses were urged up the gangway and persuaded into the railed enclosures that had been knocked up on the deck. The whinnying, the shouting, the bustle would have been unusual even for a weekday, and groups of curious locals stopped briefly on their way to church. Not all of them were diverted by the entertainment. One elder of the Kirk, dour in his Sunday black, exclaimed in a voice that was meant to be heard, ‘This is not the Sabbath we are accustomed to in Arran!’ He had spoken in Gaelic but in case any stranger should be left in doubt of Arran’s disapproval, he said it again in English.
It was Sunday 9 August, and the fifth day of mobilisation. Yesterday the advance parties of the Expeditionary Force had landed secretly in France. Tomorrow the first contingents of the main force would set out on their way to join them.
On Tuesday, within hours of the Declaration of War, Lieutenant Spears had been ordered to attach himself immediately to the French army. He was supposed to be engaged on intelligence work but in the absence of anyone else he found himself acting, willy nilly, as liaison officer.
Since Spears knew as little as the French did of Great Britain’s intentions and of the progress of her newly mobilised Army towards the Front, he was in a far from enviable position. At General Lanrezac’s headquarters he was welcomed with all the cordiality due to a comrade-in-arms and invited at once to join the Junior Officers’ Mess where he was favoured with lavish meals but also with much ribbing at the expense of the so-far-invisible British Army. ‘How,’ demanded the French in tones of honeyed sympathy, ‘could the poor creatures be expected to arrive on time, when war had so inconveniently broken out on their Bank Holiday weekend?’ The Tommies were probably indulging in a last paddle in the sea or in a last blow-out of roast beef. Perhaps, since the banks were on holiday (this with heavy irony) they had no money for the fare! But doubtless, with their well-known respect for the principle of ‘le fair play’ the British expected the Kaiser to suspend hostilities until they were ready to meet him.
Despite the sneering of the French, it was no mean achievement in little more than a week to mobilise, to equip and to ship an expeditionary force of some 80,000 men across the English Channel.
Civilian trains were commandeered to carry reserves to their units and battalions to the ports, and civilian ships were pressed into service to take them across the Channel. A mountain of stores and forage, field-guns, shells and munitions went with them. There were 80,000 rifles to inspect, 80,000 bandoliers and pouches to fill with small-arms ammunition, 80,000 iron rations to issue, and none of it could have been achieved at short notice had it not been for the meticulous plans prepared long ago for just such a contingency. One afterthought had caused a minor headache, at least to the Army’s printers already overwhelmed by a torrent of military orders and notices. The Secretary of State for War, Lord Kitchener, had taken the trouble to compose a personal message to the troops. Somehow 80,000 copies had been produced. They were distributed on the very eve of departure, and every soldier of the Expeditionary Force was given a copy of Lord Kitchener’s farewell words to carry with him in his paybook.
You are ordered abroad as a soldier of the King to help our French comrades against the invasion of a common enemy. You have to perform a task which will need your courage, your energy, your patience. Remember that the Honour of the British Army depends on your individual conduct. It will be your duty not only to set an example of discipline and perfect steadiness under fire but also to maintain the most friendly relations with those whom you are helping in this struggle. The operation in which you are engaged will, for the most part, take place in a friendly country, and you can do your own country no better service than in showing yourself in France and Belgium in the true character of a British soldier.
Be invariably courteous, considerate and kind. Never do anything likely to injure or destroy property and always look upon looting as a disgraceful act. You are sure to meet with a welcome and be trusted; your conduct must justify that welcome and that trust. Your duty cannot be done unless your health is sound. So keep constantly on your guard against any excesses. In this new experience you may find temptations both in wine and women. You must entirely resist both temptations, and, while treating all women with perfect courtesy, you should avoid any intimacy.
DO YOUR DUTY BRAVELY,
FEAR GOD,
HONOUR THE KING.Kitchener,
Field Marshal.
The soldiers of the British Expeditionary Force did not, in general, suffer from an excess of prudishness. Many had spent years in the Army, roughing it in barrack rooms from Aldershot to Dehra Dun, and they were far from being the bunch of effete innocents which the contents of this document seemed to imply.
It reduced the officers of the French General Staff to tears of laughter. That evening Lieutenant Spears was the butt of heavy witticism. ‘Is it an army your Lord Kitchener is sending us, or is it a girls’ school?’ Attired in the khaki service dress, in which his Parisian landlady had unfavourably compared him to a dusty canary, feeling distinctly ill at ease in the company of the gorgeously uniformed French, Lieutenant Spears did not enjoy a comfortable dinner. But he contented himself by retaliating with the suggestion that, in order to avoid mishaps, the French would be well advised to teach their troops the difference between the uniforms of friend and foe. He himself had twice narrowly escaped being shot out of hand by zealous Frenchmen who were unfamiliar with khaki service dress and had inconveniently mistaken him for a German.
By the time the first contingents of the British Expeditionary Force arrived, attired in khaki as drab as his own, Lieutenant Spears was almost inclined to regard them as his personal reinforcements.