Even the Scotland Yard detectives were bewildered by some of these people whose passports were thoroughly sound, but whose costumes aroused deep suspicion.  What could they do, for instance, with a young Hindu, dressed as a boy-scout, wearing tortoise-shell spectacles, and a field kit of dangling bags, water-bottles, maps, cooking utensils, and other material suitable for life on a desert isle?  Or what could they say to a lady in breeches and top-boots, with a revolver stuck through her belt, and a sou’wester on her head, who was going to nurse the wounded in a voluntary hospital at Nice?  Contingents of remarkable women invaded the chief tea-shops in Boulogne and caused a panic among the waitresses.  They wore Buffalo Bill hats and blue uniforms with heavy blue coats, which were literally spangled with brass buttons.  Upon their stalwart bosoms were four rows of buttons, and there was a row of brass on each side of their top-coats, on their shoulders, and at the back of their waist-belts.  In the light of the tea-shop, where they consumed innumerable buns, one’s eyes became dizzy with all these bits of shining metal.  To a wounded man the sight of one of these ladies must have been frightening, as though a shell had burst near his bedside, with the glint of broken steel.  Young officers just drafted out with commissions on which the ink was hardly dry, plucked at their budding moustaches and said “War is hell.”

Some of the older officers, who had been called out after many years of civilian ease, found the spirit of youth again as soon as they set foot on the soil of France, and indulged in I the follies of youth as when they had been sub-lieutenants in the Indian hills.  I remember one of these old gentlemen who refused to go to bed in the Hotel Tortoni at Havre, though the call was for six o’clock next morning with quite a chance of death before the week was out.  Some younger officers with him coaxed him to his room just before midnight, but he came down again, condemning their impudence, and went out into the great silent square, shouting for a taxi.  It seemed to me pitiful that a man with so many ribbons on his breast, showing distinguished service, should be wandering about a place where many queer characters roam in the darkness of night.  I asked him if I could show him the way back to the Hotel Tortoni.  “Sir,” he said, “I desire to go to Piccadilly Circus, and if I have any of your impertinence I will break your head.”  Two apaches lurched up to him, a few minutes later, and he went off with them into a dark ally, speaking French with great deliberation and a Mayfair accent.  He was a twentieth century Falstaff, and the playwright might find his low comedy in a character like this thrust into the grim horror of the war.

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