THE TREK SOUTH
Until we left Bailleul the Canadian Division had been a part of the 2nd
Army under Sir Herbert Plumer. We were now to go to the other end of the
British line and become part of the 1st Army, then commanded by the
present Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig.
The news of this change was greeted with little enthusiasm by the old
soldiers in our midst, but old soldiers are invariably pessimists, and
imagine that every inspection is the prelude to more "dirty work at the
cross-roads" and that every change made in their dispositions is for the
worst.
Still, we were all sorry to leave Bailleul, with its bright little
shops, and to say good-bye to the _cure_ and our other friends there.
We fell in at night in the Grande Place--the little square that has
probably seen more British troops come and go than any other town in
northern France--and waited there for the battalion to form up. It was
a beautiful summer night, the square tower of the cathedral and the
Moorish spire of the Hotel de Ville forming perfect silhouettes against
the starlit sky.
We were not kept waiting long; the shrill of a whistle from somewhere in
the darkness put an end to all talking, and we hastily slung our packs
on our shoulders again and started on our long tramp south to La Bassee.
For a while our route lay through country that some of us had traversed
before, and Merville, Vieux Berquin, and other places were hailed with
delight. There is a certain charm in returning to places that one has
never expected to see again. Much speculation began as to whether we
were going back to our old trenches at Bois Grenier and Fleurbaix or
not, but all hopes of this happening were dashed to pieces when, after
passing through Neuf Berquin, we turned sharply to the right.
After this disappointment our packs began to weigh more heavily; the
mouth organs and vocalists were less persistent in their efforts and
gradually stopped in disgust, and only an accordion, wielded by a husky
Scotchman at the rear of the company, strove to cheer us up. It was
probably "Lochaber no more" or some other dirge he was playing, as he
always showed unnatural fondness for the weird and the sad--probably due
to the difficulty of fingering lively airs while on the march.
Passing through Merville, A----, who was marching beside me, regained
his spirits sufficiently to point out a shop where a pretty girl sold
champagne, and then relapsed into silence again.
A little further along the road we saw the adjutant riding alongside the
major, and we knew we were nearing our billets. We turned up a side-road
through Calonne, and the companies again broke off in different
directions to the various farms to which they had been allotted.
We were again fortunate in getting very good accommodation--good airy
barns, a mill-pond for washing, and a well of no-worse-than-the-ordinary
water. But imagine our surprise to find chalked on the gate of the
largest and best farm a sign:--
"SMALL POX.
BY ORDER."
Here we were in a fix, as the men would not enter the place till we
hunted up that long-suffering individual the interpreter. Then we found
the placard to be only a ruse on the part of the unsophisticated
peasantry to avoid having troops billeted there.
Having been found out and beaten at this game, Madame produced a sheet
of paper she called a "reclamation," for some straw she claimed had been
stolen by the preceding troops, and while she and the interpreter
harangued over this we stowed our men away and sought our own billets a
little distance up the lane.
At Calonne we received newspapers telling of the starting of the French
offensive in the Artois district and prophesying an attack on our part
to co-operate with them. We got out our maps and saw we were quite close
to Neuve Chapelle, and as the Aubers Ridge--the great natural barrier to
Lille--formed the obvious point to attack, we were not greatly surprised
when a day or two after arriving at this peaceful little village we
again took the route--this time toward Neuve Chapelle. We had heard the
guns drumming along the Aubers Ridge all the day before during church
parade service (May 9th), and were, on the whole, rather disappointed
when after a few miles' march we turned off the road into a farm near
"le Cornet Malo" and lay there in the mud all day. Some of the Lahore
Division passed us on their way into the affair, the Indian gunners
sitting on their limbers like statues.
It was rather a wretched day we spent in this farm. A heavy rain had
turned the orchard in which we lay into a "bit of a bog," and all the
straw we could buy or steal from the inhabitants could not keep us out
of the mud. Here, too, we found the first instance of friction between
the troops and the civilian populace, and the old lady made no bones
about telling us how unwelcome we were. She opened hostilities by taking
the rod from the pump so that we could not fill our watercart, and the
troops retaliated by stealing bundles of unthreshed wheat. This was
speedily put a stop to (and paid for) by the officers, and, for a while,
peace reigned supreme while a thriving trade was done in coffee at two
sous a cup and beer at three sous a glass.
Then some of the officers, seeing a lot of freshly-baked bread in a room
just off the kitchen, offered to buy some. To our surprise the old woman
started to wave a knife around dangerously and screamed: "You take my
wheat, you take my water, and now you won't even leave me my bread! I
would rather the Germans had come; they at least pay for what they
take!"
As we had just paid her for the straw we thought this was going a little
too far, and F----, who had a fine taste for sarcasm, waved his
coffee-cup eloquently in the direction of the two slatternly girls that
were peddling the coffee to the soldiers through the window, and said
"What? With all these beautiful daughters," and then continued with a
graphic description of the horrors in Belgium.
This quieted the old lady down, but we were not sorry to leave there and
shift to billets further up the road that night. It was the only
instance we encountered of our being unwelcome in France, and the billet
we occupied that night, although one of the filthiest houses we came
across, was marked by a much more cordial spirit.
We were fortunate to get into this farm, as two of the companies had to
bivouac, there being only accommodation for the staff and two companies
in the area. The matter was decided by lottery, the major being lucky
enough to draw a long straw.
[Illustration: AMATEUR THEATRICALS BACK OF THE LINE]
It was rather a squeeze getting the company stowed away that night, but
we managed somehow, and then turned into the kitchen. Here we were
entertained with a graphic description by an old hag of how she had been
wounded. It seemed that in some of the preliminary fighting she had run
across a field between our troops and the Germans and received three
bullets. She was quite cheerful about it and showed us two wounds, and
when A---- casually asked about the third she collapsed in a chair and
went into spasms of laughter. All the rest of the evening she would
point her finger at him and start again to tee-hee. A---- was much
annoyed.
We stayed in that vicinity another day, as it was not certain whether we
would be thrown into support in the attacks on the Aubers Ridge at
Fromelles or the Bois de Biez, but it was eventually decided that the
artillery preparation had been inadequate, and the following night we
continued our march southward.
Near Locon we passed some of the Indian Cavalry, gigantic-looking men
with their turbanned heads. They surveyed us gravely as we passed, one
or two flashing brilliant smiles in response to some friendly greeting.
Then shortly afterwards we crossed the canal, and without further
incident reached the outskirts of Bethune, where we went into bivouac in
an open field, being favoured, most fortunately, with fine weather.
Our long trek had ended.