In Utterly Immoral I cover Robert Keable’s time in France during the First World War with the South African Native Labour Contingent. He only spent only one Christmas in France during the War. He was based in Le Havre with the SALNC who were kept in a closed compound, which they were usually banned from leaving except for work. Robert wrote about the experience in his book Standing By. He begins by describing, with undisguised bitterness, how Christmas was celebrated in France:

For three years I read about Christmas on the Western Front after having vainly tried to spend it there, but this year that joy was mine. And I understand that I was very lucky, for there never had been before such a Christmas as this. In the first place, there were more turkeys than ever; in the second, there were more plum-puddings; and, in the third, there were even mince-pies. We read all about it at once in that ubiquitous daily of whose circulation the proprietors used to talk so much, but of which less is said now, probably because even they are bewildered by the numbers of those who read what they serve up. After that we read about it in the illustrated weeklies. The turkeys had articles to themselves in each, until one wondered vaguely if there had not been perhaps some mistake in one's upbringing, and that possibly Christmas was the commemoration of the creation of turkeys. I searched more closely for evidence, and all but concluded it was the commemoration of the discovery of mistletoe.

Then I lighted on a paragraph which informed us that there had been no disgraceful recollection of our common Christianity on that day. Men christened had not ceased to try to kill each other for a moment because it was the birthday of Jesus Christ. Turkeys there were, yes, and plum puddings, but no ''truce of God." One could at least congratulate oneself on that. We are convinced, this fourth Christmas of the War, that every Saxon and Bavarian peasant, as every Prussian, is a rejoicing baby-killer.

Robert then went on to talk about the Christmas he celebrated with the devote Christians who had travelled with him from Basutoland (now Lesotho) to France.

Providence was upon our side. The powers that be had decided to inoculate the half company on the evening of the 23^rd December, a circumstance not perhaps seen immediately to be related to the subject in hand, but capable of explanation. For that entailed the 24^th being deprived of their labour until, on the lapse of twenty-four hours, to be precise at 6.30 p.m. of that date, they could be called out once more for the nightshift. Such providential dispensation gave me my chance; we might have our Christ's Mass almost on the day, indeed upon the Eve, if we could find any place for an altar. Inquiries almost led to despair. There is no YMCA in the camp, no canteen, no recreation-room, no spare cubicle even, and the boys sleep and eat in great huts taking sixty or so, in each of whom the greater part will be heathen. But the sergeant-major came to my rescue and offered the Sergeants' Mess. They themselves would not be up at the hour I wanted it, as the company was to have the holiday, and it was a big and convenient room. I was very grateful.

At 5.30, then, I was up and out of my own camp. It was terribly cold, especially to us Africans, and still dark. By six the congregation was gathering, and I prepared for the confessions. One by one the burly fellows came in, to make that individual prostration of themselves upon the mercy of God which is so much more real than any general confession. One by one as each finished, they went out into the snow to make room for the next, and I could hear them stamping and swinging their arms to keep warm. Eighteen in all there were, and at last we could all come in together. I set up the altar. A few drapings, two pictures, one of the Mother with her Son, and the other of the Crucifixion, this last between the candles, soon transformed the common table, and I slipped the altar-stone in under the white cloths. Flowers we had none, but I had brought two sprays of richly berried holly, and these added to our festive appearance. A server from my own parish attended me, and just as in our far-away Basuto home we sang the Christmas Missa. The men's voices in the Sesuto words behind carried me easily those six thousand miles, and, as we would have done there, we all knelt together, when our Lord had come, to sing the ''Adeste Fideles."

I was round at 2.30, to find somewhat of a commotion on foot, for a party of drunken soldiers had called to the boys over the barbed wire and asked them why they did not come out and enjoy themselves like the rest. When these had been moved on, the sergeants had to deal with an excited camp, ready for anything, and arguing against the compound system heart and soul. The black and white question cropped up, and my service came as a happy intervention. So we gathered for Evensong in one of the big huts, boys still sleepy in their blankets round the walls, tables still littered with the fragments of dinner, but a growing crowd at one end. All sorts and conditions were there, heathen, Nonconformists, Roman Catholics, and my boys, the latter in a knot round me. We had a great time. We sang several hymns to draw off more men from the excited crowd outside, and then got on with the shortened Evening Service ...

The tradition in Robert’s parish in Basutoland was for everyone to gather round the crib on the evening of Christmas day and celebrate the birth of Jesus. Robert received permission to take his parishioners out of the camp to a local Catholic Church to visit their crib.  

It chanced that not far away there was a Catholic chapel, dedicated, appropriately to the season, to Our Lady of the Snows. It stands at cross-roads, in a fearful wilderness of mud and stagnant water and railway lines and filth, half-built, with only a house or two near it. We fell in, then, and marched there, thirty-six of us in all, a few being Roman Catholics themselves. I would not take other than men who understood, for otherwise we might have had more than I could manage. Also I was not sure what reception we should get. I myself was a heretic; and I was doubtful if we should be allowed to do more than look.

The French congregation, with a sprinkling of Tommies, had just finished Benediction as we arrived, and the old cure was even then divesting himself of his stole. There was a little stir as we marched in. The boys looked anxiously about, and recognised the signs of the Presence of our Lord in His Sacrament without being told. They genuflected and slipped into pews. I went up and asked in my best French for leave to say the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary with them in Sesuto.

Robert struggled to explain to the priest that he was an Anglo Catholic priest, not actually a Roman Catholic one, but was granted permission to go ahead.

We all knelt before the Sacrament. First we sang "Adeste Fideles" to the old tune, and then we said the Joyful Mysteries and thought of our Lord's Incarnation. Then I led them in the Divine Praises and the Salve Regina, and then, row by row, we went up to the Crib. It was poor — not nearly so good as ours. But these French do teach us something. The Babe was very big, probably the first part of a church set to be slowly acquired; Joseph, Mary, and the oxen might have come from a child's Noah's Ark. I would never have dreamed of so dreadful a mixture. But they were right: the boys made no adverse comment. The star drew us, and the boughs of green stuff smelt very fragrant. Each genuflected as he drew near, and peered in; and one, after much fumbling with dirty papers, pushed a ten-franc piece into the manger. The cure stood by and watched it all, and so did the French behind.

By this time it had grown quite dusk, and we had to go. We knelt once more together — sang Nunc Dimittis to a plain song setting, and the white people recognised the tune. Two or three girls joined in in Latin. The cure, a white-haired old man with a very kindly smile, knelt on the pavement.

One last look around at the pictured faces and the twinkling lamps of that poor little chapel, and we were out into the wet and cold and snow. ''What a lovely church!" said one to me, as he passed.

''Yes," said I. . . .

We dismissed in camp. As they broke away, a lance-corporal stopped them. "We thank you, we thank you very much. Father," he said. "This is a strange land, and we are far from home, but we have seen familiar things to-day.”

"Eh," they chorused, native-wise; "truly it is so."

Maybe none of us will forget our 1917 Christmas on the Western Front, even although it was behind the line. There is not very much that we chaplains can do for our black boys under the inevitable conditions of labour here, but it is surely something, which may be remembered next year and many after years in the valleys of the Drackensberg, that in a land so far and among conditions so strange, Christmas brought the first familiar things — the Mother and the Crib.