MY MAN FRIDAY--"CHUCK US THE
BISCUITS"--RELIEVED--BILLETS
It was during this first time up in the trenches that I got a soldier
servant.
As I had arrived only just in time to go with the battalion to the
trenches, the acquisition had to be made by a search in the mud. I found
a fellow who hadn't been an officer's servant before, but who wanted to
be. I liked the look of him; so feeling rather like Robinson Crusoe,
when he booked up Friday, "I got me a man."
He lived in a dug-out about five yards away, and from then onwards
continued with me right to the point where this book finishes. This
fellow of mine did all my cooking, such as it was, and worked in
conjunction with my friend, the platoon commander's servant. Cooking, at
the times I write about, consisted of making innumerable brews of tea,
and opening tins of bully and Maconochie. Occasionally bacon had to be
fried in a mess-tin lid. One day my man soared off into culinary fancies
and curried a Maconochie. I have never quite forgiven him for this; I am
nearly right again now.
These two soldier servants never had to leave the trench. It was their
job to try and find something to make a fire with, and to do all they
could to keep the water out of our dug-out, a task which not one of us
succeeded in doing. My plan for sustaining life under these conditions
was to change my boots as often as possible. If there wasn't time for
this I used to try and boil the water in my boots by keeping my feet to
the fire bucket. I always put my puttees on first and then a pair of
thick socks, and finally a pair of boots. I could, by this means,
hurriedly slip off the sodden pair of boots and socks and slip on
another set which had become fairly dry by the fire. We lived
perpetually damp, if not thoroughly wet. My puttees, which I rarely
removed, were more like long rolls of the consistency of nougat than
anything else, thanks to the mud. Dug-outs had no wooden linings in
those days; no corrugated iron roofs; no floorboards. They were just
holes in the clay side of the fire trench, with any old thing for a
roof, and old straw or tobacco leaves, which we pinched from some
abandoned farm, for a floor. So, you see, there was not much of a chance
of dodging the moisture.
The cold was what got me. Personally, I would far rather have gone
without food than a fire. A fire of some sort was the only thing to
cheer. Coke was scarce and always wet, and it was by no means uncommon
to over-hear a remark of this sort: "Chuck us the biscuits, Bill; the
fire wants mendin'."
At night I would frequently sally forth to a cracked up village behind,
and perhaps procure half a mantelpiece and an old clog to stoke our
"furnace" with.
Well, after the usual number of long days and still longer nights spent
under these conditions, we came to the day when it was our turn to go
out to rest billets, and a relieving battalion to come in. What a
splendid day that is! You start "packing" at about 4 p.m. As soon as it
is dusk the servants slink off across that turnip morass behind and drag
our few belongings back to where the limbers are. These limbers have
come up from about three to four miles away, from the Regimental
Transport headquarters, to take all the trench "props" back to the
billets.
We don't leave, ourselves, until the "incoming" battalion has taken
over.
[Illustration: soldier at rest]
After what seems an interminable wait, we hear a clinking of mess tins
and rattling of equipment, the sloshing of feet in the mud, and much
whispered profanity, which all goes to announce to you that "they're
here!" Then you know that the other battalion has arrived, and are now
about to take over these precious slots in the ground.
When the exchange is complete, we are free to go!--to go out for our few
days in billets!
The actual going out and getting clear of the trenches takes a long
time. Handing over, and finally extricating ourselves from the morass,
in the dark, with all our belongings, is a lengthy process; and then we
have about a mile of country which we have never been able to examine in
the day time, and get familiar with, to negotiate. This is before we get
to the high road, and really start for billets.
I had the different machine-gun sections to collect from their various
guns, and this not until the relieving sections had all turned up. It
was a good two hours' job getting all the sections with their guns,
ammunition and various extras finally collected together in the dark a
mile back, ready to put all the stuff in the limbers, and so back to
billets. When all was fixed up I gave the order and off we started,
plodding along back down the narrow, dreary road towards our
resting-place. But it was quite a cheerful tramp, knowing as we did that
we were going to four days' comparative rest, and, anyway, safety.
On we went down the long, flat, narrow roads, occasionally looking round
to see the faint flicker of a star shell showing over the tops of the
trees, and to think momentarily of the "poor devils" left behind to take
our place, and go on doing just what we had been at. Then, finally,
getting far enough away to forget, songs and jokes took us chirping
along, past objects which soon became our landmarks in the days to come.
On we went, past estaminets, shrines and occasional windmills, down
the long winding road for about four miles, until at last we reached our
billets, where the battalion willingly halted and dispersed to its
various quarters. I and my machine-gun section had still to carry on,
for we lived apart, a bit further on, at the Transport Farm. So we
continued on our own for another mile and a half, past the estaminet at
Romerin, out on towards Neuve Eglise to our Transport Farm. This was the
usual red-tiled Belgian farm, with a rectangular smell in the middle.