FRONT LINES
TRENCH-MADE ART
By the very nature of their job the R.A.M.C. men in the Field Ambulances have at intervals a good deal of spare time on their hands. The personnel has to be kept at a strength which will allow of the smooth and rapid handling of the pouring stream of casualties which floods back from the firing line when a big action is on; and when a period of inactivity comes in front the stream drops to a trickle that doesn’t give the field ambulances “enough work to keep themselves warm.”
It was in one of these slack periods that Corporal Richard, of the Oughth London Field Ambulance, resumed the pleasurable occupation of his civilian days, to his own great satisfaction and the enormous interest of his comrades. Richard in pre-war days had been a sculptor, and the chance discovery near the ambulance camp of a stream where a very fair substitute for modelling clay could be had led him to experiments and a series of portrait modellings. He had no lack of models. Every other man in his squad was most willing to be “took,” and would sit with most praiseworthy patience for as long as required, and for a time Richard revelled in the luxury of unlimited (and free-of-cost) models and in turning out portraits and caricatures in clay. He worked with such speed, apparent ease, and complete success that before long he had half the men endeavouring to imitate his artistic activities.
Then Richard attempted more serious work, and in the course of time turned out a little figure study over which the more educated and artistic of his friends waxed most enthusiastic, and which he himself, considering it carefully and critically, admitted to be “not bad.” On the other hand, it is true that many members of the company regarded the masterpiece with apathy, and in some cases almost with disapproval. “Seems a pity,” said one critic, “that the corp’ril should ’ave wasted all this time over the one job. Spent every minute of ’is spare time, ’e ’as, fiddlin’ an’ touchin’ up at it; could ’ave done a dozen o’ them picturs o’ us chaps in the time. An’, now it is done, ’tain’t quarter sich a good joke as that one o’ the sergeant-major wi’ the bottle nose. Fair scream, that was.”
But in due time the corporal went home on leave, and took his study along with him. Later it gained a place in an exhibition of “Trench-made Art” in London, many newspaper paragraphs, and finally a photo in a picture paper and a note stating who the work was by and the conditions under which it was performed.
A good score of the picture papers arrived at the Oughth London from friends at home to men in the unit. That did it. There was an immediate boom in Art in the Oughth London, and sculpture became the popular spare-time hobby of the unit. This was all, as I have said, at a period when spare time was plentiful. The unit was billeted in a village well behind the firing-line in a peacefully sylvan locality. It was early summer, so that the light lasted long in the evenings, and gave plenty of opportunity to the sculptors to pursue their Art after the day’s duties were done.
As a consequence the output of sculpture would have done credit—in quantity if not, perhaps, in quality—to a popular atelier in full swing. The more enterprising attempted to follow the corporal’s path in portrait and caricature, and it must be confessed were a good deal more successful in the latter branch. The portraits usually required an explanatory inscription, and although the caricatures required the same in most cases, they only had to be ugly enough, to show a long enough nose, or a big enough mouth, and to be labelled with the name of some fair butt or sufficiently unpopular noncom. to secure a most satisfying and flattering meed of praise.
Less ambitious spirits contented themselves with simpler and more easily recognisable subjects. The cross or crucifix which, as a rule, marks the cross or forked roads in this part of France had from the first caught the attention and interest of the Londoners, and now, in the new flush of Art, provided immediate inspiration. Almost every man in the new school of sculpture graduated through a course of plain crosses to more fancy ones, and higher up the scale to crucifixes.
But in point of popularity even the cross sank to second place when Private Jimmy Copple, with an originality that amounted almost to genius, turned out a miniature model coffin. The coffin, as a work of art, had points that made it an unrivalled favourite. It was so obviously and unmistakably a coffin that it required no single word of explanation or description; it was simple enough in form to be within the scope of the veriest beginner; it lent itself to embellishment and the finer shades of reproduction in nails and tassels and name-plate; and permitted, without evidence of undue “swank” on the part of the artist, of his signature being appended in the natural and fitting place on the name-plate.
There was a boom in model coffins of all sizes, and a constantly flickering or raging discussion on details of tassels, cords, handles, and other funereal ornaments. Private Copple again displayed his originality of thought by blacking a specially fine specimen of his handiwork with boot polish, with nails and name-plate (duly inscribed with his own name and regimental number) picked out in the white clay. He was so pleased with this that he posted it home, and, on receiving warm words of praise from his mother in Mile End, and the information that the coffin was installed for ever as a household ornament and an object of interest and admiration to all neighbours, a steady export trade in clay coffins was established from the Oughth London to friends and relatives at home.
The Art School was still flourishing when the unit was moved up from its peaceful and prolonged rest to take a turn up behind the firing-line. The removal from their clay supply might have closed down the artistic activities, but, fortunately, the Oughth had hardly settled in to their new quarters when it was found that the whole ground was one vast bed of chalk, chalk which was easily obtainable in any shaped and sized lumps and which proved most delightfully easy to manipulate with a jack or pen-knife. The new modelling material, in fact, gave a fillip of novelty to the art, and the coffins and crosses proved, when completed, to have a most desirable quality of solidity and of lasting and retaining their shape and form far better than the similar objects in clay.
Better still, the chalk could be carried about on the person as no clay could, and worked at anywhere in odd moments. Bulging side-pockets became a marked feature of inspection parades, until one day when the C.O. went round, and noticing a craggy projection under the pocket of Private Copple, demanded to know what the private was loading himself with, and told him abruptly to show the contents of his pocket. On Copple producing with difficulty a lump of partially carved chalk, the C.O. stared at it and then at the sheepish face of the private in blank amazement. “What’s this?” he demanded. “What is it?”
“It—it’s a elephant, sir,” said Copple.
“An elephant,” said the C.O. dazedly. “An elephant?”
“Yessir—leastways, it will be a elephant when it’s finished,” said Copple bashfully.
“Elephant—will be——” spluttered the C.O., turning to the officer who accompanied him. “Is the man mad?”
“I think, sir,” said the junior, “he is trying to carve an elephant out of a lump of chalk.”
“That’s it, sir,” said Copple, and with a dignified touch of resentment at the “trying,” “I am carving out a elephant.”
The C.O. turned over the block of chalk with four rudimentary legs beginning to sprout from it, and then handed it back. “Take it away,” he said. “Fall out, and take the thing away. And when you come on parade next time leave—ah—your elephants in your billet.”
Copple fell out, and the inspection proceeded. But now the eye of the C.O. went straight to each man’s pocket, and further lumps of chalk of various sizes were produced one by one. “Another elephant?” said the C.O. to the first one. “No, sir,” said the sculptor. “It’s a coffin.” “A co—coffin,” said the C.O. faintly, and, turning to the officer, “A coffin is what he said, eh?” The officer, who knew a good deal of the existing craze, had difficulty in keeping a straight face. “Yes, sir,” he said chokily, “a coffin.” The C.O. looked hard at the coffin and at its creator, and handed it back. “And you,” he said to the next man, tapping with his cane a nobbly pocket. “Mine’s a coffin, too, sir,” and out came another coffin.
The C.O. stepped back a pace, and let his eye rove down the line. The next man shivered as the eye fell on him, as well he might, because he carried in his pocket a work designed to represent the head of the C.O.—a head of which, by the way, salient features lent themselves readily to caricature. None of these features had been overlooked by the artist, and the identity of the portrait had been further established by the eye-glass which it wore, and by the exaggerated badges of rank on the shoulder. Up to the inspection and the horrible prospect that the caricature would be confronted by its original, the artist had been delighted with the praise bestowed by the critics on the “likeness.” Now, with the eye of the C.O. roaming over his shrinking person and protruding pocket, he cursed despairingly his own skill.
“I think,” said the C.O. slowly, “the parade had better dismiss, and when they have unburdened themselves of their—ah—elephants and—ah—coffins—ah—fall in again for inspection.”
The portrait sculptor nearly precipitated calamity by his eager move to dismiss without waiting for the word of command. And after this incident sculpings were left out of pockets at parade times, and the caricaturist forswore any attempts on subjects higher than an N.C.O.
The elephant which Private Copple had produced was another upward step in his art. He had tried animal after animal with faint success. The features of even such well-known animals as cats and cows had a baffling way of fading to such nebulous outlines in his memory as to be utterly unrecognisable when transferred to stone or chalk. A horse, although models in plenty were around, proved to be a more intricate subject than might be imagined, and there were trying difficulties about the proper dimensions and proportions of head, neck, and body. But an elephant had a beautiful simplicity of outline, a solidity of figure that was excellently adapted for modelling, and a recognisability that was proof against the carping doubts and scorn of critics and rival artists. After all, an animal with four legs, a trunk, and a tail is, and must be, an elephant. But there was one great difficulty about the elephant—his tail was a most extraordinarily difficult thing to produce whole and complete in brittle chalk, and there was a distressing casualty list of almost-finished elephants from this weakness.
At first Private Copple made the tail the last finishing touch to his work, but when elephant after elephant had to be scrapped because the tail broke off in the final carving, he reversed the process, began his work on the tail and trunk—another irritatingly breakable part of an elephant’s anatomy—and if these were completed successfully, went on to legs, head, etc. If the trunk or tail broke, he threw away the block and started on a fresh one. He finally improved on this and further reduced the wastage and percentage of loss by beginning his elephant with duplicate ends, with a trunk, that is, at head and stern. If one trunk broke off he turned the remaining portion satisfactorily enough into a tail; if neither broke and the body and legs were completed without accident, he simply whittled one of the trunks down into a tail and rounded off the head at that end into a haunch.
But now such humour as may be in this story must give way for the moment to the tragedy of red war—as humour so often has to do at the front.
Copple was just in the middle of a specially promising elephant when orders came to move. He packed the elephant carefully in a handkerchief and his pocket and took it with him back to the training area where for a time the Oughth London went through a careful instruction and rehearsing in the part they were to play in the next move of the “Show” then running. He continued to work on his elephant in such spare time as he had, and was so very pleased with it that he clung to it when they went on the march again, although pocket space was precious and ill to spare, and the elephant took up one complete side pocket to itself.
Arrived at their appointed place in the show, Copple continued to carry his elephant, but had little time to work on it because he was busy every moment of the day and many hours of the night on his hard and risky duties. The casualties came back to the Aid Post in a steady stream that swelled at times to an almost overwhelming rush, and every man of the Field Ambulance was kept going at his hardest. The Aid Post was established in a partly wrecked German gun emplacement built of concrete, and because all the ground about them was too ploughed up and cratered with shell-fire to allow a motor ambulance to approach it, the wounded had to be helped or carried back to the nearest point to which the hard-working engineers had carried the new road, and there were placed on the motors.
Private Copple was busy one morning helping to carry back some of the casualties. A hot “strafe” was on, the way back led through lines and clumped batches of batteries all in hot action, the roar of gun-fire rose long and unbroken and deafeningly, and every now and then through the roar of their reports and the diminishing wails of their departing shells there came the rising shriek and rush of a German shell, the crump and crash of its burst, the whistle and hum of flying splinters. Private Copple and the rest of the R.A.M.C. men didn’t like it any more than the casualties, who appeared to dread much more, now that they were wounded, the chance of being hit again, chiefly because it would be such “rotten luck” to get killed now that they had done their share, got their “Blighty,” and with decent luck were soon to be out of it all, and safely and comfortably back in hospital and home.
But, although many times the wounded asked to be laid down in a shell-hole, or allowed to take cover for a moment at the warning shriek of an approaching shell, the ambulance men only gave way to them when, from the noise, they judged the shell was going to fall very perilously close. If they had stopped for every shell the work would have taken too long, and the Aid Post was too cram-full, and too many fresh cases were pouring in, to allow of any delay on the mere account of danger. So there were during the day a good many casualties amongst the ambulance men, and so at the end Private Copple was caught. He had hesitated a moment too long in dropping himself into the cover of the shell crater where he had just lowered the “walking wounded” he was supporting back. The shell whirled down in a crescendo of howling, roaring noise, and, just as Copple flung himself down, burst with an earth-shaking crash a score or so of yards away. Copple felt a tremendous blow on his side.
They had ripped most of the clothes off him and were busy with first field dressings on his wounds when he recovered enough to take any interest in what was going on. The dressers were in a hurry because more shells were falling near; there was one vacant place in a motor ambulance, and its driver was in haste to be off and out of it.
“You’re all right,” said one of the men, in answer to Copple’s faint inquiry. “All light wounds. Lord knows what you were carrying a lump of stone about in your pocket for, but it saved you this trip. Splinter hit it, and smashed it, and most of the wounds are from bits of the stone—luckily for you, because if it hadn’t been there a chunk of Boche iron would just about have gone through you.”
“Stone?” said Copple faintly. “Strewth! That was my blessed elephant in my bloomin’ pocket.”
“Elephant?” said the orderly. “In your pocket? An’ did it have pink stripes an’ a purple tail? Well, never mind about elephants now. You can explain ’em to the Blighty M.O.[1] Here, up you get.” And he helped Copple to the ambulance.
Later on, the humour of the situation struck Private Copple. He worked up a prime witticism which he afterwards played off on the Sister who was dressing his wounds in a London hospital.
“D’you know,” he said, chuckling, “I’m the only man in this war that’s been wounded by a elephant?”
The Sister stayed her bandaging, and looked at him curiously. “Wounded by a elephant,” repeated Copple cheerfully. “Funny to think it’s mebbe a bit of ’is trunk made the ’ole in my thigh, an’ I got ’is ’ead and ’is ’ind leg in my ribs.”
“You mustn’t talk nonsense, you know,” said the Sister hesitatingly. Certainly, Copple had shown no signs of shell-shock or unbalanced mind before, but——
“We used to carve things out o’ chalk stone in my lot,” went on Copple, and explained how the shell splinter had been stopped by the elephant in his pocket. The
Sister was immensely interested and a good deal amused, and laughed—rather immoderately and in the wrong place, as Copple thought when he described his coffin masterpiece with the name-plate bearing his own name, and the dodge of starting on the elephant with a trunk at each end.
“Well, I’ve heard a lot of queer things about the front, Copple,” she said, busying herself on the last bandage. “But I didn’t know they went in for sculpture. ‘Ars longa, vitæ brevis.’ That’s a saying in Latin, and it means exactly, ‘Art is long, life is short.’ You’d understand it better if I put it another way. It means that it takes a long, long time to make a perfect elephant——”
“It does,” said Copple. “But if you begins ’im like I told you, with a trunk each end——”
“There, that’ll do,” said the Sister, pinning the last bandage. “Now lie down and I’ll make you comfortable. A long time to make a perfect elephant; and life is very short——”
“That’s true,” said Copple. “Especially up Wipers way.”
“So, if making elephants gives some people the greatest possible pleasure in life, why not let them make elephants? I’m an artist of sorts myself, or was trying to be before the war, so I speak feelingly for a brother elephant-maker, Copple.”
“Artist, was you?” said Copple, with great interest. “That must be a jolly sorter job.”
“It is, Copple—or was,” said the Sister, finishing the tucking-up. “Much jollier than a starched-smooth uniform and life—and lots in it.” And she sighed and made a little grimace at the stained bandages she picked up. “But if you and thousands of other men give up your particular arts and go out to have your short lives cut shorter, the least I can do is to give up mine to try to make them longer.”
Copple didn’t quite follow all this. “I wish I’d a bit o’ chalk stone, Sister,” he said; “I’d teach you how to do a elephant with the two trunks.”
“And how if a trunk breaks off one’s elephant—or life, one can always try to trim it down to quite a useful tail,” said the Sister, smiling at him as she turned to go. “You’ve already taught me something of that, Copple—you and the rest there in the trenches—better than you know.”