World War: Bearskins at Home

By last week some 200,000 men of the British Expeditionary Force were across the Channel and safely in place. They continued arriving by night, three or four transports at a time, without interruptions. German submarines and the great German Air Force did not even throw a leaflet at them—just as the Allies did little to prevent the Germans from bringing up hundreds of thousands of men and tons of supplies to man the West-wall.

No one officially said where the B. E. F. was stationed, but everyone knew: on France’s low-lying Belgian border from Lille to Hirson, right where the “Old Contemptibles” took their stand 25 years ago. They were assigned this position because, if the Western Front develops a war of movement, the movement will most likely come through the Dutch-Belgian door. The B. E. F. consists of a dozen divisions of troops mostly mechanized and motorized. There is one vehicle for each six men. A break-through by the Germans anywhere would be most effectively rushed to and met by the British mobile divisions —still called cavalry—and by motorized infantry.

Lord Gort, commander-in-chief of the B. E. F., lunched international news correspondents at B. E. F. headquarters—in the hotel of a small town still wearing scars of World War I. In dispatches delayed until last week he was reported as warning his guests against losing sight of the men amongst so many machines. Said he: “The man remains master of those machines and . . . from men . . . results will come. If the spirit of the men is not right the aircraft and tanks will never reach their destinations. The man remains foremost, last and all the time.”

Lord Gort carefully toasted President Roosevelt and paid special deference to the correspondents by saying: “We really welcome your presence here to tell your people what we are doing in France. We regard you as our cooperators and collaborators.”

To get a sense of what a “cavalryman”‘ mounted on his mechanical steed experiences during a charge, Correspondents Webb Miller (U. P.) and Harold Denny (New York Times) rode together in one of the B. E. F.’s fast, small tanks. Mr. Miller got a banged leg, Mr. Denny a sense of awe and seaksickness as they joggled cross-country on rubber-padded perches within their little juggernaut.

John O’Donnell of the New York Daily News wrote: “The war is a washout—figuratively and actually.” Rain had reduced the Cambrai plain to a snipe bog, and “no gun has yet been fired in anger.” Wire enclosures were built to hold German prisoners, but stood empty so far.

Regiments of the Guards* are in the B. E. F., garbed far differently from the bear-skinned beauties whom tourists have seen on their chargers at Whitehall or clumping over the cobbles of Windsor Castle. Bearskins are at home, and the B. E. F. is clad in drab battle costumes cut like mechanics’ overalls. They wear rubber boots. Their food comes up in thermos boxes. Their quarters are provided with elaborate drainage systems. Where bullets and bully-beef were their essentials last time, now they depend essentially on petrol and motors. Where being decorative was Guardsmen’s principal peacetime duty, being efficient and ready if not actually deadly was their present concern.

Correspondent Edward Angly of the blue-blooded New York Herald Tribune reported the happiest experience. Everyone knew that Edward Windsor, once King but now only a Duke turned major general, was somewhere in France. Not everyone knew that his younger brother, Prince Henry, 39, Duke of Gloucester, is chief liaison officer of the B. E. F., with a major general’s rank. Correspondent Angly was standing on a corner with his officer guide when up whirled an official car driven by an officer, with the chauffeur on the back seat. To Mr. Angly’s glad amazement, the driver was the Duke, an old friend of his guide. “They chatted a while and even swapped limericks* now as in World War I the favorite British form of arousing the risibles.”

Mr. Angly was further charmed when he discovered that the “Captain Cambridge” who, in a driving rain across muddy fields, showed him through a British blockhouse and then was left on duty there while his Colonel took the newsmen to cosy tea, was Queen Mary’s nephew, Lord Frederick Cambridge.

Also on French soil last week was Britain’s Air Secretary Sir Kingsley Wood. He bustled through the base fields, interviewed pilots who had seen action, said bonjour to one of their landladies by way of improving international relations. Correspondent William Stoneman of the Chicago Daily News wrote: “A howling, 50-mile-an-hour gale and a soggy airdrome did not prevent one young gallant from going up and putting on a hair-raising show for us this noon ‘just to show that we don’t mind the weather.’ For half an hour he dived his ship from the cloudy sky, skimming over our heads at 400 miles an hour, went into hair-raising rolls a few feet off the ground, and drove almost vertically into the sky.

“Flying on his side at the end of one mad dive, he almost intercepted an Army lorry which was moving innocently along the road. If, later on in the war, you read about a British ace whose name begins with L, it will probably be this young man. His own comrades, who themselves have qualified for this crack squadron, say he is the fanciest aviator in the R. A. F. and we believe it.”

Mr. Stoneman also wrote about “a British officer with one of the most famous names in England” who went rabbit-snaring by night with two poacher privates, got caught by French gendarmes and charged 1,000 francs (which he would not pay).

Correspondent William Watts Chaplin of I. N. S. reported seeing a distinguished British officer lay a wreath on a grave marked with his own name in one of the great World War I cemeteries near the front. The grave contained the officer’s amputated leg, believed to be all that was left of him.

Trafalgar Day (Oct. 21), 134th anniversary of Lord Nelson’s smashing of Napoleon’s Navy, brought out 215,231 boys between 20 and 22 to register for military service in England, Scotland and Wales.* Only 4,556 declared themselves “conchies” (conscientious objectors). War Secretary Leslie Hore-Belisha radiorated: “This is not a war about a map. It is a fight to reestablish the conditions under which nations and individuals including, may I say, the German nation and individuals—can live and live again.

“Nothing but a guarantee for establishment of a new order, from which the menace of Nazi oppression has been removed, can justify us in laying down our arms.”

With the war bogging down for the winter in mud, Britain’s mechanized B.E.F. seemed unlikely (except for the Air Force) to take up its arms soon. Casualty lists at home were far longer than those from France. The Minister of Transport announced that, due to the blackout, deaths in road accidents rose from 617 in August to 1,130 in September.

* There are seven Guards regiments, two Household Cavalry (Life Guards and Royal Horse Guards or “Blues”), five Foot Guards (Grenadier, Coldstream, Scots, Irish, Welsh). All the foot Guards wear bearskins on dress parade. The Household Cavalry wear helmets of German silver, ornamented in gilt. The King is colonel-in-chief of all seven Guards regiments, and of only two others (Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers) in all the British regular army. *Due to atrocious reporting or censorship, no limerick was quoted in Mr. Angly’s dispatch. * Some 219,000 conscripts of this class are already in training.