Chapter 8 - A Klipdam Day
Several long days ago, when I was doing a tour visiting the Guides in South Africa, and my younger daughter, Betty, was travelling with me as my secretary, we spent a day which neither of us will ever forget.
It was one of the longest days I have ever gone through, and one of the most wearing—even though it was also very enjoyable. But I hate going long distances by car, and this time we went miles and miles, and called at several places for Guide Rallies on the way, including a township called Klipdam.'
And ever since then, if I have had a very full day with many items on the day's programme, I describe it to myself—or to Betty—as a Klipdam Day.'
And so now I am going to describe to you a good specimen of a Klipdam Day,' which happened in Normandy last April.
The trouble was that we started late. It just doesn't no to do that when you have hours of engagements ahead of you. For my part, I always try to start for a train or bus or for an engagement of any sort, just a tiny bit ahead of time if anything. Then you don 't get all hot and bothered, and have to rush and scramble and push and shove, and have that anxiety of feeling that you are going to be late.
I am told that half the accidents that happen, when people get run over and damaged or even killed on the roads nowadays, are caused because the person in question was hurrying and tearing across the road, owing to being late.
Be that as it may, if you have only yourself to think about, having to dash wildly along through starting late is your own affair and probably isn't of very great importance.
BUT if it affects other people, it matters quite a lot whether you arc late or not ; and it is far better to be ahead of time in keeping an appointment than to be behind-hand, just for the sake of those two or three minutes of extra time at your starting point.
If you start late, you never quite catch up, do you ? Anyhow in this case in Normandy, we never caught up, and I was in a state of mortification all through the day, not only from the misery of having to hurry desperately on the road, but because
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through losing minutes here, and half hours there, we had to cut short every engagement that had been planned, and I felt that we were being horribly rude to our friends at one place after another on our route.
8.30 a.m. and off we went ! At least, no, we didn't ! There was no petrol to be had in the little village where I had stayed the night with the Guide Commissioner, and so the car rushed off to Rouen to get some, and whilst this first delay was going on, we paced up and down the lane, with the early moming promise of sunshine gradually waning as April showers blew up and flurries of hail began to fall.
At last two cars appeared, and be-coated and be-rugged, we all squeezed in and tore off down the hill to Rouen.
And there, at once, our troubles began ! All the good old stone bridges had been destroyed, and there was one way traffic ' only across the temporary wooden bridges, controlled by firm American Military Police, who very rightly turned us back when we tried to cross the wrong way round, and so back we had to go, by a circuitous route through the old town.
So there we lost both time AND our second escorting car, which —as bad luck had it—was carrying the map of our route, and our itinerary and the list of our engagements !
However an unexpected hold up on a bye-pass luckily brought us up alongside them and, arriving an hour late at Port Audpner, we found a little party of Scouts, blue with cold, drawn up in a hollow square by the town's War Memorial.
As we started a little ceremony with the laying of a wreath on the statue, the hoisting of Colours and Speeches, a violent hailstorm hurled itself upon us, and though I am assured that these
Giboulée de Mars ' are of no account, I begged that the parade might be dismissed, and fled incontinently into the car and away on the next lap.
Making up time a little, we drew into Honfleur, to find a nice Scout and Guide Guard of Honour lining the Town Hall steps. Monsieur la Maire, his Council Members, and friends of Scouting were there to greet us, charming speeches were made in halting English, and the prosperity of Scouting and Guiding, coupled with friendship and goodwill between France and England, was pledged in cider and tea.
As we left the building we found that more and yet more Scouts and Guides seemed to have collected round the entrance, and, as we moved off up the hill they suddenly decided to escort us, and
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all tore along ahead and on either side of us in single file, holding hands forming a long chain, until at last breath gave out, and we
had to rush on, leaving that gay laughing crowd behind us, waving their hands and their hats and their flags with wild and friendly gesticulations !
Trouville was our next stopping place, so famous in the old days before the war for its summer seasons, its horse-racing, its casino, its gaieties and fashion parades, its gardens, luxurious villas, and bathing beaches and holiday atmosphere.
There is none of that now. As you drive along near the sea the beaches are covered with wire entanglements, mines and tank traps, the bright holiday bungalows are battered and dishevelled, and war has made the place but a grim shadow of its former self.
But the Scouts have kept going, and the Guides are there too, and I inspected a brave little group of them, lining the wide empty street ; and in spite of the shortage of food and drink in France, we were taken off to their tiny Den ' and given cups of hot tea and scones and cakes, cooked in the Scouts' approved camp oven.
Delayed, but full of zeal, we sped on our way to Caen, only to find when we got there that the important members of the Reception Committee ' of the Franco-Brittanique Association had given us up as hopeless and gone away from the Rendezvous ! As by that time we were two hours late, it wasn't to be wondered at!
But the Scouts and Guides hadn't lost their faith in our coming, and there they were, with a good lunch prepared, supplied, cooked and served by Guides in a house with half its roqf blown off, and they gave us a fine welcome, as well as a jolly good meal!
And then came one of the most stirring experiences of my life, for, as the first English woman visitor since D Day,' I went to see the famous Landing Beaches out on the Normandy Coast. Driving down a rough country lane we came to the tiny hamlet of Asnelles, and found a string of flags draped across, and a group of children dressed in their national costume, standing waiting, each holding a Union Jack, and the people in their rough clothes came from their wee cottages and grouped themselves round me and shook me by the hand.
I n this out of the way comer of Normandy nothing is known yet a bout. Scouts and Guides, and the fact of my being a Guide—and a Chief Guide at that !—meant less than nothing to them.
They only knew that I had come across from England to see them. These rural peasant folk came out to greet me because I.
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was British, and they knew better than anyone about the landing at their very doors on D Day, and that France owed her liberation to Britain at that vital moment in the world's history.
Moving on to Saint Pierre de Fresnais, across the windswept fields, old women left their weeding in the furrows, and the men left their ploughs, and came and clustered round me, their gnarled hands seizing mine, and they formed a horse-shoe round me, and a ring-leader made me a speech of welcome.
And from the cliff close by we looked down on the famous port called ' Mulberry,' the wide artificial harbour of pontoon piers, that made it possible for our ships to come close in from the open sea, to land our men on the beaches.
A bitter wind was blowing in from the sea, and I could hardly see for the tears that came welling into my eyes from the stinging cold.
But at that moment and at that place there was an echo of tears in my mind and in my heart too—tears of pride at the heroic .courage of thousands upon thousands of men, and tears of sympathy for all those who belonged to those men, and for whom in so many cases, D DAY and those Normandy Beaches have been the entrance gate to sorrow and loss.
Down the hill we scrambled, into the village of Aromanches, to be welcomed by a little knot of fisher-folk, and their families and their hens and ducks and dogs, before speeding off as quickly as possible to yet another delayed engagement elsewhere.
How I am envied ! I am sure that there is not a Guide or a Guider amongst you who doesn't say, when it is heard that the Chief Guide is off travelling again : ' how lucky she is to have the chance of making all these joumeys ! '
Yes ; I am lucky to have the chance of doing them. I am lucky indeed to have the reason for doing them, the ability to do them, the health for doing them, and the wherewithal for doing them.
It is a wonderful privilege 'to go on these many trips, and I love to carry out these visits if, by doing so, I can help to bring help and encouragement to Guides and Guiders in their work.
But most willingly would I exchange places with any one of you, if someone would undertake them instead, for it is neither an easy nor a light task to fulfill all the duties that are expected of one.
And it is a terrific responsibility to be your British Chief Guide, and to be your spokesman, and then to combine with that also the position of other people's Chief Guide too.
You see, owing to having been chosen in 1930 to be World
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Chief Guide, my position is a dual one, and when I am in other countries, even though in most cases they have got their own national Chief Guides,' I belong in a special sort of way to all those Guides too.
To you they may seem as foreign ' ; but to me they are not
foreign ' at all, but all are equally part of the whole Guide family, connected to me with the ties of affection and trust just as much as you are.
This was brought home to me once when a small Guide ',over there ' asked me the question quite simply : Then are there also Guides like us in England too, and do they also belong to you ? '
So when I am off on the wander, I need to count on your mental support in my task ; and I feel sure that I can count on your goodwill which goes with me, as the carrier of your message of friendship to them all.
Well, I am still telling you about one frienziedly busy day that I spent in Normandy. Having carried out our visits, to Port Audener, Honfleur, Caen, and the three little villages at The Beaches,' our escort—Monsieur le Sous-Prefet—headed at breakneck speed for Bayeux, though we were due back at Caen at that very hour and time was getting late.
In vain did we protest that a call at Bayeux was not on the programme : Monsieur le Sous-Prefet is adamant, insisting that we should pass through his home-town, Bayeux, before we return to Caen, quite ignoring the many extra miles thus to be added to the journey.
The reason for this firmness on his part was discovered on our arrival, for there, as a little surprise for us, in the garden of his old Chateau, was a complete small Rally of Scouts and. Guides, as well as a party of friends to meet us for tea.
As I came out on to the steps of a wide garden porch, the Scouts and Guides were all, spread out before me, standing stiffly to attention, forming the pattem of a Guide Badge on the lawn. They were frozen with the cold, and stiff with shyness, too ; but that broke down when—in my very bad French—I gave them your greetings, and later, during a further maddening delay whilst our car went away to fetch petrol, we all linked hands and sang and then danced some easy local country dance together to keep ourselves warm.
And then, as the light was failing, we got back to beautiful, battered, shattered. Caen, and the big ceremonial parade took place before the bigger authorities and military commanders
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the French and British Colours were hoisted, and speeches were made—all formal and dignified—and in the same horrid biting east wind, testing our endurance to the utmost.
I was told that there was to be a Scouts' Sing-Song later, and though I begged that, for the sake of both performers and audience, this should take place indoors, it was pointed out to me that in that town there Is no indoors '—no big enough building intact with a roof on, in which to congregate especially as the townspeople had been notified that they could attend.
When, eventually we arrived there in the wide open space before the Cathedral, we found a huge concourse of people, standing watching the great blazing Camp Fires, joining in with the singing of the Scouts and Guides, and immensely enjoying the good-humoured stunts and vigorous Folk Dancing.
Then the Rovers performed a most impressive scene.
You all know the Swiss Chalet Song, don't you, and the story of how Jean, the Mountain Guide builds his Chalet high up upon the mountain,' and how it was later destroyed by an avalanche ?
Well this group of Rovers acted and sang that story, half a dozen of them standing out in front, silhouetted in the fire-light, with their hands held up like a roof over their heads, representing the roof and walls.
As the tragic avalanche verse came into the song, they all collapsed upon the ground—just as the houses of this, their own town—fell in ruins from the avalanche of shells and bombs in 1944.
And then a spot light shone down from the Cathedral tower, and Jean, his heart full of courageous hope with a spirit of vigour and determination, planned to re-build his ' Chalet ' ; and coming forward, he strode back and forth and then lifted up the prostrate walls ' from' the ground, and made the Chalet ' upright and alive again, symbolising how, in spite of what has come to Caen and to them in the war, they will keep up their courage and not be, defeated. They will not leave things as they are, but will strive with all their might to be strong and to build their town and their homes anew,
Facing this page were these photographs:-
4. The Chief arriving at Zurich
5. The camp fire at Lugano
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