1: This might be Edith Berners, mother of Captain Hamilton Berners ('Hammie' in letters to Fr Paul Nevill when he was Editor of the Ampleforth Journal, in which this aritcle originally appeared. It was first published in vol 21.
The Ampleforth Hut is sometimes asked by what right it bears its name, and what its real connexion with the College is, so here it gives some account of itself. The Catholic Club, which is now proud to form with the Catholic Women’s League the recognised Catholic institution in France, was started by three simple adventurers, Mr and Mrs Worsley-Worswick[2] and Mr Harding[3]. Worswick should of course be writing this article, but as I, a fellow-worker in the Catholic Club at both Havre and Etaples[4], though not in the Ampleforth Hut, happen to be in England, I am doing it for him. It is a pity, as he would be able to include far more anecdote, local and individual to the Ampleforth Hut itself.
2: Worslsey-Worswick:
3: Harding:
4: Havre, Etaples: Le Havre, at the mouth of the river Seine, was the principal supply port fro the BEF. Étaples was the chief base camp. All troops going to an dfrom the front like passed through it. It was very large.
A single hut only was originally contemplated and this was opened at Havre on March 10th, 1915. A beautiful spot had been secured, all the camp lying behind the hut, and in front a brook, a valley, and trees and hills beyond. Along this side of the building was a verandah, — the first hut-verandah in France; there we had all our meals from May till October. Worswick was storeman, and when he and Harding nervously compared the stores with the account-books at the end of a week’s trade, they were astonished to find that we had made a large profit. On looking into the quantities of wares sold they saw that our pillar of support was the Wild Woodbine. The courtesy of the French government in letting all troop-supplies enter France free of duty made the cigarettes and tobacco veritable mints; and until buying prices rose so enormously and selling prices on the whole sank, these wares gained money like clockwork.
It was obvious that the work must expand, and they at once made enquiries which suggested that Etaples would be the most suitable camp for a new hut. The delays, so common since, in gaining the necessary permits and necessary building material, were almost unending, and it was late in the year before the hut was finished.
In the following spring (1916) plans were made to found a third hut at Rouen, but this fell through, and so, as the Reinforcement camp at Etaples had grown to about twice the size of any other in France, it was decided, against some criticism, to build a second hut there. The decision has proved wise, and no hut in France has justified its existence more thoroughly than this one.
The Havre hut had originally been named the Catholic Club, and the first Etaples one of course had the same name ; but as a distinction now became necessary, that one, managed by Harding, was christened the Oratory Hut, and the new one, built and managed ever since by Worswick, the Ampleforth Hut, in compliment to their respective schools[5].
5: The Oratory School:
The price of everything had risen so rapidly that the cost of the Oratory Hut, which was built on the strength of the trading profits, was not yet paid off, and the money for the Ampleforth Hut was obtained by appealing in England (this hut cost nearly twice as much as the original Havre or Ladycross Hut). Ampleforth village sent a subscription[6] which we thought most sporting of them, and the College has sent substantial sums several times. Only the other day Fr Abbot gave a most beautiful set of white vestments which I am taking out to the hut in a few days. The situation of the Ampleforth Hut is again turning out fortunate as Etaples camp, and particularly that side of it, is expected to continue in use as long as any in France.
6: Ampleforth Village: Fr Paul Nevil was parish priest of Ampleforth village, as well as Editor of the Amplefotrth Journal, and knew many of those involved as family or friends. St Benedict's parish did indeed conribute to the spport of the Hut.
Many old boys will know the hut, which lies on the Tipperary Road in the middle of the camp. It is not the largest, but it is quite one of the prettiest there. If it is not very large it has often wished that it were! In busy times there is nothing unusual in two queues reaching from the counter to the far end of the hall, and then doubling back the whole length of the verandah. I think it is a fair guess that it has always been the busiest hut in the camp.
Designing a hut is not so simple as it looks. Everything wants to be near everything else, and cannot. The Catholic Club huts were always planned to have a room for the chaplain at all times, and to use the main hall for Mass and Benediction when needed. At Havre there was only a movable altar on the stage, but then permission being given to reserve the Blessed Sacrament, a little chapel was added. At the Oratory Hut the stage was left at one end of the hall and the chapel put at the other, with a small door into the chaplain’s room and very wide doors opening into the hall, so that at service times the chapel became the sanctuary. This meant, however, that the counter, kitchens and other rooms had to go along the side of the hut, which had distinct inconveniences. So at the Ampleforth Hut the counter and kitchen were put in their natural place at one end, and at the other the floor of the chapel was raised (a very good point), and a low stage was made in the hall outside it. The kitchen is magnificent and has divers ingenious hatches and cupboardings created by Worswick’s invention.
There will be no gain in recounting the work of a canteen-hut as by now everyone knows what it is like. The success of the Ampleforth Hut has been proved by the number of its customers and the reputation which the men always give it in their speech. For many months, when orderlies were unobtainable, the whole evening work of stoking boilers and collecting and washing thousands of basins was done by voluntary helpers. Sometimes a man just leaving to go up the line will give a five- or ten-franc note to be spent on something for the hut, 'Because he has had such a good time there.' Often he will give a few francs for flowers for the chapel. Or he writes, and says he wishes he was back there, 'It was like home to him.' Mrs Worswick told me of one dear little Jock who waited for her after Mass to tell her that he had been away up the line, and now how happy he was to be back at that hut again and all that it meant to him.
For this of course the ladies are to be thanked. More even than to give good value and fair treatment, the Catholic Club tries to be always courteous and friendly to the soldiers, and it is enormously to the credit of the ladies who have worked at the Ampleforth Hut that so many really touching things have been told or repeated to them about their hut. When you have been working all day it is not very easy late in the evening to be polite to a very worthy, very slow-thinking, slow-moving man, who blocks all the others, and refuses things and then asks for them again; and there are hundreds of little things that annoy intensely until you remember that they are less than unmeant.
There are hard moments for the men also. Think what it means to move slowly up a queue of a hundred and fifty, half the time outside the hut on a bitter night, and then see the counter shut when you are among the next half- dozen. Many extra minutes are given again and again, but the end must come some time. And yet most of the men don’t give a cross word or a cross look.
In summer time huts are a comfort for the soldiers, but are not indispensable; in winter they all but are. In a camp there is not only no play room, but not even a school room or barrack room. After six or eight hours marching and drill what would a man do on a winter evening after 5 o’clock, unable to get anything to eat or drink, unable to get near a fire, unable even to sit at a table and write a letter ? A few camp commandants are against huts, but the rest, and the Provost Marshals, in spite of all the work that the civilian permits give them, would not be without them for any money.
And the chaplains? Ask those who have had charge of the west side of Etaples camp and have made their headquarters at the Ampleforth Hut. Any man in the camp can see the Catholic Club, or find it in a few minutes, and there he finds the Blessed Sacrament, and a priest to hear his confession and give him Holy Communion at any time of day. There are always either two or three parade Masses on Sunday, one every other day, and Benediction twice a week, and the congregation is very often overflowing into the road. In the evening confessions sometimes keep two priests busy for four hours on end, and it is worth while on a Thursday, for instance, to see fifty or sixty men go to Holy Communion after Benediction.
It is hard to say how many of the doubtful and half-keen come to the chaplain in a hut when they would not go to him in a church or church-tent, but there are many. They go to the hut to buy, or often because they like the idea and name of a Catholic place, and once they are there the priest’s room is so near, and they can slip into it quietly, and into the chapel too, which opens on to a private verandah round one corner of the building.
The more perfect arrangement of the Ampleforth Hut gives no opportunity for such an incident as happened at Havre. I was stripping the altar there after Benediction one Sunday, when the men who were carrying vases, &c., down to the chaplain’s room, came back, saying in grave tones, 'Can’t get in now, sir Someone at confession already.' 1. Later I met X—, a keen and excitable fellow-worker. He was all over himself with the 'catch' that he had made for the padre. A man had kept near his door at Benediction, and afterwards had asked X so many questions about him, 'Who was he ? What was his name? What sort of fellow was he? Was he charming? &c.' X related how he hung on to the man, who was so obviously nervous and undecided, and as soon as the padre came along he pushed him in. By the end of the day I was rather full of this grave case for confession, and at supper made some remark about it. The padre gave a shout of laughter.
'X, you know that man you shoved into my room after Benediction?”
'Yes', said X, in a complacent tone. 'Do you know what he wanted ? He wanted to borrow a franc!'
The founders of the Catholic Club have told me how very lucky we are in having so much opportunity for spiritual work in our huts. Their first objective was Boulogne Convalescent Camp, but a hut, a splendid one, was put up there by the Catholic Women’s League, so they were advised to go to Havre. There they found themselves in a Reinforcement camp, and Reinforcement camps have been their aim ever since. Holy or indifferent, keen or lazy, the soldier who ever goes to the Sacraments at all, goes when he is leaving the Base for the firing line, i.e. when he is leaving his Reinforcement camp. And thus in the Ampleforth Hut thousands and thousands of men have been to Confession and Holy Communion, in some cases for the last time in their lives.