Just contemplate the Billeting Officer’s parlous position. The briefest
period of grace is conceded to him, in which he and his accomplices
cycle furiously ahead of the Battalion to distribute the billets
in the area allotted to them. Even as the Billeting Officer, dusty
and damp-browed, receives, on arriving at his destination, from the
Staff Captain of the Brigade, the list of billets set apart for his
Battalion, he can hear, with the ears of his mind, the Battalion
marching towards him with the leaden feet of inexorable destiny. Every
minute brings them nearer; every minute shortens that brief breathing
space in which he must complete all his arrangements and present
himself, calm and unruffled, with a complete map of the locality in his
mind, at the entrance of the village, to lead the incoming troops to
their quarters.
The Billeting Officer must combine the organising genius of a William
Whiteley with the quickness of decision of a Napoleon. He must be
gentle as the dove, cunning as the serpent. He must be all things
to all men--firm with recalcitrant peasants, persuasive with fussy
beldames, glib with weary and fractious officers who look for beds when
there are no beds.
The Billeting Officer must be an optimist, unfailing and
uncompromising. He must survey the world through the rosy spectacles of
the house agent. As in the house advertisements in the newspapers, so
to him all residences must be “stately” or “well-appointed,” all villas
“pretty” or “charming,” all rooms “lofty,” all barns “spacious.”
He and every man of his Billeting Party are cold and calculating
egoists. The four Quartermaster-Sergeants of the Battalion who
accompany him are, each and individually, solely concerned with
securing the best billet for their own companies. The Pioneer Sergeant
has come forth to seek the largest and roomiest barn in sight for the
housing of the Quartermaster’s stores; the Drill-Sergeant is heart and
soul devoted to the interests of the Orderly Room, the Guard Room, the
Medical Inspection Room, and quarters for the signallers and the Drums;
as for the poor Billeting Officer, tossed to and fro like a shuttlecock
between all these conflicting currents, his dominant idea is to find
some kind of decent billet for the Commanding Officer and Headquarters.
Nor must he ever lose sight of the fact that, if he gives the officers
of his own company anything like good quarters, he will unload upon his
own devoted head all the lightnings of the other company messes.
The Billeting Party, headed by our Ensign, set off on bicycles on a
delicious summer morning for the village of F----, the next half of
the Brigade, on what some one called its “one night stands” about the
country. The faithful Johnson had procured for his “master” from the
Signalling Sergeant a bicycle, which, in consideration of a little
cleaning and oiling, ran somewhat better than army machines generally
do. On the road they fell in with billeting parties from the other
battalions of the Brigade, and on the face of each Billeting Officer
dull care had graven a deep furrow.
Outside the church of F----, an ugly bogus Gothic structure, red
and staring, like the picture on a child’s box of bricks, the Staff
Captain met them by appointment, and handed each Billeting Officer
a list setting forth the numbers of the different billets at the
disposal of the Battalion. Every house in the war zone in France bears
a number stencilled on the door, and underneath, an entirely fabulous
computation of the numbers of “Hommes” or “Chevaux” that can be lodged
there.
Billeting at F---- was unusually easy. The barns were large and in
good repair, and the local inhabitants, while somewhat resigned, were
friendly. The four companies were allotted billets without difficulty,
and even the Drill-Sergeant found quarters for all his different
charges. But accommodation for the officers was a different matter. Our
Ensign found lodgings for the four company commanders, _tant bien que
mal_; the Interpreter, who was of the party, arranged with the local
curé to put up the Chaplain; and our Ensign kept in his mind’s eye a
certain _coquet_ little red-brick villa, marked down on his list as
affording accommodation for five officers, for the Headquarters billet.
But at the very door of the villa disaster was lurking. Two dragoon
officers met them in the garden.
“Is this billet free?” asked our Ensign with fear in his heart.
“No,” said one of the dragoons promptly; “there are five of us in
here--Corps cavalry--been here for weeks.”
“But it’s down on my list as our billet,” objected our Ensign.
“I know,” was the calm reply; “we’ve had about six fellows before you
after it--I’ve told the Mayor to scratch it off!”
Our Ensign looked at the list again. Then he saw a tiny smudge, which
on closer investigation proved to be an asterisk. “Probably occupied”
was the note he read at the foot of the page.
The list was exhausted--none of the rooms they had seen would do for
Headquarters; so our Ensign, with the optimism of the Billeting Officer
nascent in his breast, started to look for a clean bivouac where
Headquarters might be accommodated in tents. They presently found a
large grassy orchard which seemed suitable for the purpose. It lay
behind a farm, where our Ensign duly demanded the requisite permission.
An extremely dirty, red-eyed old woman was the _propriétaire_. She
had a large, bare, and very dilapidated room, swarming with flies,
which she offered; but she resolutely set her face against letting the
orchard be used.
She wagged her old head stubbornly.
“_Non, non, non!_” she croaked, “_j’n’veux pas! La dernière fois les
soldats ont joué au ballon dans le verger ... ils ont tout abimé ...
j’n’veux pas!_”
Our Ensign explained with much persuasiveness, but with a horrid fear
in his mind that the Battalion would arrive any instant, that only
officers would be lodged there who never played football, and who, by
their very presence, would prevent the irruption of _ballon_-kicking
soldiery.
Then the Interpreter took a hand and drew a superb word-picture of the
innate courtliness and good behaviour of every British officer--of
these officers in particular--and of the Commanding Officer most of all.
The old harridan began to yield.
“_Mais, bien sûr_,” she muttered irresolutely, “_ils vont casser mes
arbres...._”
The Interpreter spoke again. These officers were rich and generous.
They would do no damage, but any damage they might do would be paid
for: of that she might rest assured. The officers would buy her
chickens, her butter, her eggs: the noble young man at his side was
even at that moment ready to invest five francs in the produce of the
farm (this on a whispered suggestion from our Ensign). She would be
reasonable; she would not regret it.
Then, at last, the old lady gave way.
“_Je veux bien, alors_,” she said, “_pourvu qu’on ne va pas jouer au
ballon!_”
Thus it was settled, the double-company mess was installed in the old
lady’s room in consideration of a _douceur_ of 2 francs 50 a day, and
our Ensign rushed away to the entrance of the village to await the
coming of the Brigade.
The Brigade arrived with its usual punctuality in a cloud of dust
behind the Drums, each Battalion being taken charge of by its Billeting
Officer as it marched in, the quartermaster-sergeants leading the
different companies into their billets. The men swarmed into the
farmyards and dumped their packs and rifles in the barns, then lined
up in the yards of their billets for the customary foot inspection--in
bare feet, their boots and socks in their hands. The cookers, all
smoking, with their begrimed attendants trudging behind, lumbered into
the billets, the little billet-boards appeared outside gateways and
doors, the guards were mounted, and then the officers, dusty and hot,
came streaming into the messes where the mess servants, surrounded
by dogs and cats and poultry and small children, were unpacking the
mess-boxes and getting lunch.
Our Ensign walked up to the Mess to receive congratulations on the
success of his arrangements. He was given a chilly reception.
“I suppose we have the worst mess in the place,” said Roderick
gloomily; “the cobbler’s children are always the worst shod, and the
Billeting Officer’s mess always gets the rottenest accommodation!”
“I can’t imagine,” said El Capitan, one of the company commanders, “why
you put me to sleep next door to X. I have to go through his room to
get to mine, and you know how he hates being disturbed!”
“I suppose you’ve arranged for tents,” said somebody else darkly; “of
course the simple life is very healthy and all that, but there’s the
devil of a storm blowing up, and what sleeping out in the open in your
beautiful orchard to-night will be like, the Lord only knows!”
Then the mess waiter, entering, informed our Ensign that there were no
potatoes: could he get some anywhere? That Madame would not allow the
cook to make a fire in the courtyard: would he speak to her? That they
had sent up word from the medical inspection room to know whether the
Heavies were entitled to be in the same billet: would the Billeting
Officer mind stepping across there and seeing about it?
Our Ensign put down his drink untasted, and holding his head in his
hands, staggered out into the hot sunshine. In the street he met an
ensign of one of the other companies, dusty, doleful, and dejected.
“Got a good mess?” he asked our Ensign.
Our young man assumed an air of Christian resignation.
“Nobody could have a worse mess than we’ve got,” continued the other,
and added pointedly, “but, _of course_, you’re all right!”
Our Ensign laughed bitterly and went his way. Black is the lot of the
Billeting Officer.
But when he returned to his mess the soothing influence of luncheon
had worked wonders. The gramophone was playing, and the mess beamed at
its late victim over its coffee and cigarettes. The sun was shining
brightly out of the blue sky; the tents were being pitched in the
orchard; altogether life had assumed a fairer hue. The gust had passed.
And our Ensign, eating his lunch, reflected that campaigning is,
after all, but a series of gusts: a gust of pleasant days, a gust of
bad ones; a gust of easy times, a gust of unfortunate incidents and
“strafeing,” when everything seems to go wrong; a gust of peaceful
wanderings like the present, and then a gust of war, of stern reality,
the gust to come.
That afternoon some of them took horses and rode across to visit the
adjacent “Grottoes,” which, according to the Interpreter, were the
principal attraction in the way of sight-seeing in that part of the
country. In the village outside which the Grottoes were situated, our
Ensign came across The Lad, whose Battalion was billeted in the place.
The Lad, with a party of his brother officers, was, to our Ensign’s
intense delight, engaged in heated controversy with his Billeting
Officer. As few things are harder to bear than the annoyance of a good
example, so is nothing more consoling to the victim of injustice than
to see his fellow in the same pass.
The Grottoes consisted of a series of high-roofed caves and narrow
galleries cut out of the soft chalk, and running far into the bowels
of the earth. To the archæologist or geologist they would doubtless
have proved of enthralling interest, for the old gentleman who had made
their exploration his life work had filled case upon case with those
chipped and dusty fragments of flint in which the scientific mind
rejoices. To our Ensign and his companions the main interest of the
Grottoes consisted in the fact that they were beautifully cool, and
also that the Germans were known to have made good use of similar caves
in such fortified villages as Beaumont Hamel and Les Bœufs.
The young French girl who showed them round by the light of a candle
informed them, with all the glib fluency of the professional guide,
that in feudal times the Grottoes had been quarries in which the serfs
quarried the chalk for local lordlings, and that at different periods
of history the caves had afforded refuge to various bands of brigands,
including some jolly fellows rejoicing in the name of the Flayers of
the North. Refugees had found sanctuary there in the French Revolution,
and at the time of the Prussian invasion of 1870 the civil population
had likewise made the caves their hiding-place.
“The Grottoes extend for two kilometres,” wound up the young French
lady; “one franc is the charge for the whole trip: fifty centimes for
the shorter journey.”
“How far did she say?” asked one of the visitors.
“Two kilometres,” replied our Ensign.
“Tell her we’ll give her a franc and take the short trip,” came back
the reply ... and Science hid her head.... “I want my tea!”
As they paid the girl at the entrance, before going away, our Ensign
asked her if she were the regular guide.
“_Avant la guerre_,” she answered, “_c’était mon père qui faisait le
guide. Mais lui et mes deux frères sont partis pour l’armée et depuis,
il n’y a que moi et ma sœur qui restent!_”
“Are they all right, your father and brothers?” somebody asked.
“_Papa est tombé à Verdun_,” she replied; “_un de mes frères est
prisonnier en Allemagne: l’autre est encore là-bas, au front!_” And she
wiped her eyes.
You can’t move far in France to-day without stepping into the shadow of
the people’s mourning.
Then they went back into the blinding sunshine, and, mounting their
horses, clattered back to F----. At the horse-lines, where they left
their horses, they learnt that “Retreat” was to be played in the main
street of the village by the massed Drums of the Brigade. So they all
strolled off to the main street and found retreat in full swing.
It was a good show. The broad street running between the long, low,
white farmhouses, with big gateways opening into the square courtyards,
was thronged with men from the different battalions of the Brigade.
Tall and sunburnt and well brushed, with their cap-stars and buttons
well burnished, they lined the sides of the street, leaving the centre
of the road free for the passage of the Drums.
In F---- was quartered a labour company of Senegalese, extraordinary
nightmare objects, loose-limbed, lanky negroes, with coal-black faces
seamed with tribal cuts, grinning from beneath high yellow tarbooshes,
round the edge of which their thick woolly hair was fuzzed out, huge
pouting lips, and a highly comic attire consisting of voluminous
jebbahs of coarse canvas, snowy white, reaching below the knee,
baggy white trousers, and heavy marching boots. Parties of these
weird-looking creatures were now scattered about among the thick lines
of Guardsmen, jolly as only negroes can be at the sound of music,
grinning with a white flash of teeth, and chattering volubly in their
African lingo. They were an extraordinary company, and their morning
parade with picks and shovels, before going out to work on the roads,
was the most excruciatingly funny thing a man ever saw.
Down the centre alley, between the lines of men, came the Drums,
four drum-majors with their staffs in front. Behind them came the
side-drums, the drummers’ hands raised high and falling together, the
tenor drums, the fifes and the brass drums. On reaching the top or the
bottom of the street, as the case might be, the leading files turned
and marched through the succeeding files, each rank following suit.
It was a great moment for the Drums. The whole Brigade was in the
street, from the Brigadier downwards: every eye was on the Drums, and
the Drums bore themselves right gallantly. They crashed through all the
well-known marches, to which the Brigade had trudged many a weary mile
in France, and then came the crowning moment, the march based on the
regimental airs of the Brigade of Guards.
One after the other the old familiar tunes rang out, amid a roll of
drums that made the very windows rattle,--“The British Grenadiers,”
of the Grenadiers; “Milanello,” that quaint, jingling march which the
Coldstream picked up in Spain, and of which tradition says the original
Spanish words are unprintable; the Scots Guards’ “Hieland Laddie,” the
frankly joyous “St Patrick’s Day” of the Irish Guards, and the sonorous
“Men of Harlech” of the Welsh Guards.
After the fantasia had ended in an abrupt crash, the Senior Drum-Major
marched stiffly across the street to the Brigadier, and, saluting,
asked for permission to dismiss. Then every officer’s right hand went
to his cap and every man stiffened to attention as the Drums played
“God Save the King,” the tones of which, both on land and sea,
announce to the fighting forces the coming of night.
* * * * *
The next day the Brigade moved on again.