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Updated: June 13, 2025
The rain rained faster than it had ever rained before, and the gale was so violent that we could scarcely keep our feet. Finally, we diagnosed a complaint that could not be cured by the roadside. So we stopped working, to curse and admire the German rockets. There was an estaminet close by. It had appeared shut, but when we began to curse a light shone in one of the windows.
A group of soldiers were lounging on the stone seat in front of the village estaminet. Being off duty, they were reveling in that popular martial pastime known to the Tommy as "grousing" and to the Yankee doughboy as "airing a grouch." Top-Sergeant Mahan, formerly of the regular army, was haranguing the others. Some listened approvingly, others dissentingly and others not at all.
And to come down from history and romance to astounding prose, we find, a few years ago, Roubaix, a town of 114,000 souls, that is to say, a fourth of the population of Lyons a town whose financial transactions with the Bank of France exceed those of Rheims, Nimes, Toulouse, or Montpellier, represented by a man of the people, the important functions of mayor being filled by the proprietor of a humble estaminet and vendor of newspapers, character and convictions only having raised the Socialist leader to such a post!
"If we could reach the estaminet itself," said Angus thoughtfully, "we could get a more extended view. Sergeant Mucklewame, select ten men, including three bombers, and follow me. I am going to find a jumping-off place. The Lewis gun too."
But when they left the estaminet the woman came shrieking into the street after them. Hence the agent de police and the grasp on the Australian's wrist. "I should be glad if you would explain the case to this little Frenchman," said the soldier. "If he does not take his hand off my wrist I shall have to kill him." "Perhaps a little explanation might serve," I said.
"Now listen carefully," said Angus, who had just finished scribbling a despatch. "First of all, you, Bogle, take this message to the telephone, and get it sent to Company Headquarters. Now you others. We will wait till that machine-gun has fired another belt. Then, the moment it has finished, while they are getting out the next belt, I will dash across to the estaminet over there.
"Yes, tell me about yourself, Dick," he said again. "I have done a picture, if that is what you mean, besides some portraits; I have worked down here like a galley slave for the last three months." "And is the queer little estaminet in Soho still in evidence? Do the men of to-morrow still meet there nightly and weigh the claims of the men of to-day?"
The snow-clad mountain reminds them that once they were daring tobogannists; the undulating common makes them sad because they can no longer handle a golf-club; by the riverside they sit down and tell you of the salmon they caught before they caught rheumatic fever; birds only make them long for guns; music raises visions of the local cricket-match of long ago, enlivened by the local band; a picturesque estaminet, with little tables spread out under the vines, recalls bitter memories of ping- pong.
The old woman muttered: "'Tis niet goet, 'tis niet goet," and the elder daughter echoed: "Oh, 'tiss no bon, 'tiss no bon." Two British officers entered. They looked round and saw that private soldiers were sitting at the tables. But the St. Martin was the biggest estaminet in the village and provided the best wines and coffees, so they stood in the doorway, undecided what to do.
Sometimes the bag is large, and sometimes the bag is small; but the performance occurs twice nightly, with frequently a matinee thrown in. Then they were something new, and enterprises to be talked about. The project first took concrete form in the back room of a certain estaminet which served as the Headquarters mess when the battalion was resting after a spell in the trenches.
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