ARRIVAL OF THE "JOHNSONS"--"WHERE
DID THAT ONE GO?"--THE FIRST FRAGMENT
DISPATCHED--THE EXODUS--WHERE?
Shortly after these events we experienced rather a nasty time in the
village. It had been decided, way back somewhere at headquarters, that
it was essential to hold the village in a stronger way than we had been
doing. More men were to be kept there, and a series of trenches dug in
and around it, thus forming means for an adequate defence should
disaster befall our front line trenches, which lay out on a radius of
about five hundred yards from the centre of the village. This meant
working parties at night, and a pretty considerable collection of
soldiers lurking in cavities in various ruined buildings by day.
Anyone will know that when a lot of soldiers congregate in a place it is
almost impossible to prevent someone or other being seen, or smoke from
some fire showing, or, even worse, a light visible at night from some
imperfectly shuttered house.
At all events, something or other gave the Boches the tip, and we soon
knew they had got their attention on our village.
Each morning as we clustered round our little green table and had our
breakfast, we invariably had about half a dozen rounds of 18-pounders
crash around us with varying results, but one day, as we'd finished our
meal and all sat staring into the future, we suddenly caught the sound
of something on more corpulent lines arriving. That ponderous, slow
rotating whistle of a "Johnson" caught our well-trained ears; a pause!
then a reverberating, hollow-sounding "crumph!" We looked at each other.
"Heavies!" we all exclaimed.
"Look out! here comes another!" and sure enough there it was, that
gargling crescendo of a whistle followed by a mighty crash, considerably
nearer.
We soon decided that our best plan was to get out of the house, and stay
in the ditch twenty yards away until it was over.
A house is an unwholesome spot to be in when there's shelling about. Our
funk hole was all right for whizz-bangs and other fireworks of that
sort, but no use against these portmanteaux they were now sending along.
Well, to resume; they put thirteen heavies into that village in pretty
quick time. One old ruin was set on fire, and I felt the consequent
results would be worse than just losing the building; as all the men in
it had to rush outside and keep darting in and out through the flames
and smoke, trying to save their rifles and equipment.
After a bit we returned into the house--a trifle prematurely, I'm
afraid--as presently a pretty large line in explosive drainpipes landed
close outside, and, as we afterwards discovered, blew out a fair-sized
duck pond in the road. We were all inside, and I think nearly every one
said a sentence which gave me my first idea for a _Fragment from
France_. A sentence which must have been said countless times in this
war, _i.e._, "Where did that one go?"
We were all inside the cottage now, with intent, staring faces, looking
outside through the battered doorway. There was something in the whole
situation which struck me as so pathetically amusing, that when the
ardour of the Boches had calmed down a bit, I proceeded to make a pencil
sketch of the situation. When I got back to billets the next time I
determined to make a finished wash drawing of the scene, and send it to
some paper or other in England. In due course we got back to billets,
and the next morning I fished out my scanty drawing materials from my
valise, and sitting at a circular table in one of the rooms at the farm,
I did a finished drawing of "Where did that one go," occasionally
looking through the window on to a mountain of manure outside for
inspiration.
The next thing was to send it off. What paper should I send it to? I had
had a collection of papers sent out to me at Christmas time from some
one or other. A few of these were still lying about. A _Bystander_ was
amongst them. I turned over the pages and considered for a bit whether
my illustrated joke might be in their line. I thought of several other
papers, but on the whole concluded that the _Bystander_ would suit for
the purpose, and so, having got the address off the cover, I packed up
my drawing round a roll of old paper, enclosed it in brown paper, and
put it out to be posted at the next opportunity. In due course it went
to the post, and I went to the trenches again, forgetting all about the
incident.
Next time in the trenches was full of excitement. We had done a couple
of days of the endless mud, rain, and bullet-dodging work when suddenly
one night we heard we were to be relieved and go elsewhere. Every one
then thought of only one thing--where were we going? We all had
different ideas. Some said we were bound for Ypres, which we heard at
that time was a pretty "warm" spot; some said La Bassee was our
destination--"warm," but not quite as much so as Ypres. Wild rumours
that we were going to Egypt were of course around; they always are.
There was another beauty: that we were going back to England for a rest!
The night after the news, another battalion arrived, and, after handing
over our trenches, we started off on the road to "Somewhere in France."
It was about 11.30 p.m. before we had handed over everything and finally
parted from those old trenches of ours. I said good-bye to our little
perforated hovel, and set off with all my machine gunners and guns for
the road behind the wood, to go--goodness knows where. We looked back
over our shoulders several times as we plodded along down the muddy road
and into the corduroy path which ran through the wood. There, behind us,
lay St. Yvon, under the moonlight and drifting clouds; a silhouetted
mass of ruins beyond the edge of the wood. Still the same old
intermittent cracking of the rifle shots and the occasional star shell.
It was quite sad parting with that old evil-smelling, rain-soaked scene
of desolation. We felt how comfortable we had all been there, now that
we were leaving. And leaving for what?--that was the question. When I
reached the road, and had superintended loading up our limbers, I got
instructions from the transport officer as to which way we were to go.
The battalion had already gone on ahead, and the machine-gun section was
the last to leave. We were to go down the road to Armentières, and at
about twelve midnight we started on our march, rattling off down the
road leading to Armentières, bound for some place we had never seen
before. At about 2 a.m. we got there; billets had been arranged for us,
but at two in the morning it was no easy task to find the quarters
allotted to us without the assistance of a guide. The battalion had got
there first, had found their billets and gone to bed. I and the
machine-gun section rattled over the cobbles into sleeping Armentières,
and hadn't the slightest idea where we had to go. Nobody being about to
tell us, we paraded the town like a circus procession for about an hour
before finally finding out where we were to billet, and ultimately we
reached our destination when, turning into the barns allotted to us, we
made the most of what remained of the night in well-earned repose.