Take a large French village, shell it a little and bomb it a little
from aeroplanes so that all the windows are broken and most of the
roofs damaged, remove the civilian inhabitants, pass several hundred
thousand troops through it, plant horse-lines all round it, so that
every road approaching it is churned into a morass by the horses’
hoofs, make the road running through it one of the main arteries
leading into battle, and choke it--day and night--with marching troops
and motor ambulances and long strings of lorries, smear it alternately
with layers of dust and mud, add several billion flies--horse-, house-,
and bluebottle--pop in a hundred thousand rats or so, bring back a few
score civilians to take possession of the only whole houses remaining,
and serve hot--extremely hot--and stinking. And there you have the
village of M----, the Brigade’s next halting-place, as it presented
itself to our Ensign and his billeting party about the hour of noon on
a blazing hot day.
Behind them they had a twenty-mile cycle ride, under a fierce sun,
against a violent and exhausting head-wind. And now, soaked to the skin
with perspiration, covered with dust, thirsty, tired, and (to speak
for our Ensign only) extremely cross, they pushed their heavy machines
up the long slope of the main street amid a dense mass of traffic and
clouds of petrol-scented dust.
They were early for their rendezvous with the Staff Captain: in
fact, they had more than half an hour to spare. They stacked their
bicycles together outside the Town Major’s office, which was to be
their trysting-place, and forthwith went their several ways in search
of shade and refreshment, to meet again at the appointed time. Our
Ensign was carried off by a billeting Coldstream officer to a Y.M.C.A.
establishment, where, among more flies than our Ensign had ever seen
together before, they quaffed some cold, green liquid, retailed at a
penny a glass as lemonade by a bespectacled Hebe (_masculini generis_)
behind the cake-laden counter. Our Ensign and his brother officer
absorbed several glasses of this refreshing beverage, and then went
forth to find the Town Major.
He was sitting in his office, a large, clean-shaven major of infantry,
urbane and charming. He mopped his brow, and sighed when he saw them
enter.
“Oh dear!” he groaned, “you keep on coming in, and I haven’t the least
idea where you are all to go. I do hope you’re not expecting anything
great in the way of billets: you’ll not get ’em here. Half the place
is in ruins, AND the dirt! AND the smells! You never saw anything like
it! Oh, damn these flies!”
He whisked his handkerchief round his head.
“Well,” he continued, “I think there’s some Perrier left: I believe I
got the last case in this part of the country: and I expect there will
be some whisky, too. Come along into the garden: the rest are there!”
His frankness boded ill: like Billeting Officers, Town Majors are
generally optimists, and chatter gaily about the “unexceptional
advantages” of the billets in their domain. The two officers followed
their host in silence into the garden, where they found the other
Billeting Officers of the Brigade, in various stages of exhaustion,
conversing in gloomy tones over the Town Major’s whisky and Perrier.
The garden was a dirty backyard contrived so as to collect all the
sun’s rays as in a burning-glass. It commanded a view of a flat green
field in which the principal object was an abandoned incinerator.
In due time the Staff Captain appeared and distributed the billeting
lists. He, too, was brutally frank about the accommodation: they had
best expect nothing, he told them. Our Ensign found allocated to his
battalion a short patch of houses in the main street, opposite and
on either side of the Town Major’s office. The list looked promising
enough: several billets were marked down as furnishing accommodation
for as many as a hundred men at a time: one even--as shown on the
list--would take two hundred. But as soon trust a company prospectus as
a billeting list; the element of truth is about the same in both.
It was a quarter to one when our Ensign started his round of the
billets. The billeting parties had come across country on their
bicycles; the Brigade was going to cover part of the journey by rail
and march the rest; they were not expected to arrive before three
o’clock at the earliest, so our Ensign felt that he could take things
fairly easily.
The peasants were not friendly--and why should they be, poor
creatures?--returning, with the French peasant’s fatalistic attachment
to his native soil, to find their houses wrecked, their gardens
ravaged, and their barns and sheds occupied by an ever-changing
succession of foreign soldiers. They came to their house doors and
pointed silently to the barns and outhouses about the yard, then shut
the door in our young man’s face.
Things went all right at first. Everything was filthy and swarming with
flies, everywhere the ground was befouled, and in many of the once trim
gardens, amid the full-blown roses and the straggling and broken lines
of peas and scarlet runners, water-logged and evil-smelling dug-outs
were crumbling into oblivion--mementoes of the days when the German
artillery was close enough up to shell the French troops in their
billets. But our Ensign managed to get billets for three out of the
four companies, though most of the places had holes both in the roof
and in the wattle walls. He intended to put the remaining company in
the billet noted as accommodating 200 men.
This was where the billeting list let him down badly--an act of base
betrayal. For the farmer came out of his house at the officer’s summons
and announced, politely enough but with great firmness, that the
_granges_ were no longer available, for the harvest, which was to be
brought in that afternoon, would fill them to the rafters.
Here was a staggering blow indeed. The whole Battalion was provided for
except the officers; and now, unless the Town Major could allot them
another billet, the whole billeting scheme would have to be rearranged
and a quart crammed into a pint pot--that is to say, a thousand men
packed into billets for 750.
Back to the Town Major’s office our young man went. It was already
half-past two; neither Headquarters nor the messes nor the officers had
yet been provided for. The Town Major was out. He had been carried off
by the Brigade Medical Officer, who was clamouring for a site for the
field ambulance. Sending one of his party to watch the entrance of the
village in case the Brigade should appear before its time, our Ensign
set off feverishly on the track of the Town Major.
It was three o’clock by the time that our young man had found him.
There was no sign of the Brigade as yet. Heedless of the clamouring
throng of petitioners at the Town Major’s heels, our Ensign resolutely
button-holed him and poured his pathetic story into his sympathetic
ear. Our young man’s desperate situation stirred the generous heart of
that Town Major.
“The harvest again!” he groaned, clasping his brow. “I’ll go and see
what I can do with the fellow, but I fear we are undone!” As they
hurried up the street, he explained to our Ensign that, by virtue of
some dark arrangement between the British and French authorities, the
peasants had the right to claim exemption from billeting to make room
for the crops.
The Town Major’s fears were justified: the farmer was in the right; his
position was incontestably sound; they would have to forego the billet.
Together, the Major and our Ensign inspected two other
billets--“emergency billets” the Town Major called them, the last
two in the place. One was occupied by an artillery store, but they
contrived to filch from the gunners accommodation for one platoon; the
other was a gaunt barn, open all along one side, with shell-holes in
the further wall, and the corrugated iron roof abundantly perforated by
shrapnel.
Our Ensign shook his head, thanked the Town Major, and fled. The
whole billeting scheme had to be rearranged. He picked up his
billeting party once more and started the round again, reshuffling the
billets, redistributing the men, cramming in half a platoon here and
tucking little packets of men away in there, deaf to expostulation
and entreaty, coldly ignoring the dismay in the faces of his
quartermaster-sergeants.
Half-past three! No Brigade yet: now for the officers ... two or
three in this empty room, with sacking stretched in front of the
paneless windows, and the mess across the entrance-hall in a dirty
apartment, where fat bluebottles hovered greedily about decaying
fragments of bully beef; this silent and forbidding house, to which
they obtained access through a window, with three filthy little rooms,
would accommodate six or seven officers--say, the members of the
double-company mess: some tents could be put up in the garden at the
back; another mess here, the company commanders there ... but where, oh
where, to put Headquarters?
There was nothing suitable under a roof, but our Ensign remembered
the field with the incinerator behind the Town Major’s garden. Four
o’clock: not a drum to be heard: the Brigade was late: back to the
office to obtain from the ever-patient Major a lien on the field. Done!
and three tents promised into the bargain in case it rained that night
and the billets leaked.
It had already started to rain when our Ensign, his appointed task
over, hastened down the village street to the cross-roads by the river
by which the Brigade would come in.
There he found his fellow-billeters in the Brigade, each with his tale
of dirty billets and leaky roofs and swarming flies, each with his
story of the treachery of billeting lists, for the harvest surprise,
our Ensign found, had been sprung on them all.
They waited patiently in the rain for hours. The traffic never ceased
to pour into the village in a double stream, going in both directions
to and from the battlefield, troops and guns and transport and
ambulances and motor-cars. A red-capped sergeant of military police
stood on point duty at the cross-roads, immutably calm and affable amid
the confusion and the din; eternally side-tracking strings of horses,
which were not allowed through the village, and which persevering
grooms, well knowing the prohibition, hoped yet to be able to get
through, patiently answering inquiries from dust-powdered lorry-drivers
who had lost their way.
The shades of evening deepened gently amid a depressing drizzle, but
still the Brigade did not come, still the traffic flowed past without a
moment’s break.
“It looks as if the Brigade were not going to arrive until after
dark!” said one of the Billeting Officers; “and in this squash there’ll
be the most holy confusion--the Lord help us!”
A Grenadier subaltern, who had discovered a wayside café just past the
cross-roads, led some of them to it. None of them had had anything
more substantial than a sandwich since breakfast, and they demanded
food. All that Madame could produce was a box of wafers, very sweet and
sickly, which they ate with some excellent coffee which Madame prepared
over the stove.
Outside night fell, muggy and wet. Then the Brigade transport, which
had come by road, arrived, a long train of rumbling limbers, with the
Transport Officers on horseback. They had no news of the Brigade, but
a little later a staff car, which the Billeting Officers stopped,
reported that it had passed “some Guards or other” on the road about
two miles back.
And then at last they came ... at eight o’clock. The dark and the
traffic notwithstanding, the Guards made their entry to the tap of
drum, and, despite all forebodings, each battalion got safely tucked
away in its billets. When he reached the mess our Ensign found that his
brother officers had so many remarks to offer on the slowness of the
train that had conveyed them, and the general inefficiency of railway
transport in particular, that they altogether omitted to comment on the
nature of the billets which he offered them.
Though the sleeping quarters were indescribably bad, the actual
mess-room proved to be better than might have been expected. It was a
room in a small farmhouse occupied by a Frenchwoman, whose husband was
in the trenches, and who, after the gifted Apollo had talked to her a
little in his most Parisian French, proffered her services as cook. And
so, while the traffic rumbled, and the rain splashed down outside, they
made a good dinner, and eventually repaired to their squalid lodging
in excellent spirits. There they found their sleeping-valises spread on
the dusty floor, and there they laid them down to sleep, promising to
turn every available servant on to swabbing in the morning.
M---- proved itself to be every bit as bad as it had promised. The
billets were positively filthy, and for days the battalions of the
Brigade swept and garnished and burnt, filling in the rubbish pits
which gaped, stinking, in every garden, and leaving a trail of chloride
of lime behind them wherever they went. Fly-papers and fly-swatters
proved illusive against the indomitable breeding energy of the flies,
and only days of unremitting hard work contrived at length to abate
this very disagreeable and very unhygienic pest.
It rained for days on end. In a few hours the deep dust of the road
turned first to a thick morass of mud, and then into a liquid lake
of slime which flowed across the gutters to the very gateways of
the billets. To avoid wading in mud up to the ankles, the men built
little causeways to bridge the gutters, using the bricks from the more
dilapidated houses, and laying branches on top. Nearly all the billets
leaked, and the yards, filthy as they always are abroad with a vast and
sodden midden-heap in the centre, were ankle-deep in slush. What was
possible to do with tarpaulin to stop the gaps in roofs and walls was
done, but while the rain lasted the men had a very thin time, which
they bore, as all men do in France, without grousing, reserving their
grumbling for superficial and insignificant details, as is the way of
the British soldier.
The billets were so bad and the weather continued to be so wet that a
rum issue was ordered, though the season of the daily rum issues had
not yet arrived. An officer superintended the issue of rum to each
company, for the regulation is that each man must drink his tot on the
spot where it is issued, in the presence of an officer--this to prevent
hoarding and its attendant evils.
Accordingly, our Ensign found himself one wet evening attending the
issue of rum to the company. On the floor of the barn stood a lighted
candle, the centre of a number of mess-tins representing the portions
of the different groups in the company. At our Ensign’s side was the
Company Sergeant-Major with the rum-jars. Silent and expectant, the men
stood all around and in the yard without.
The Company Sergeant-Major poured the rum out into the different tins,
announcing as he did so the name of the recipients--“No. 5 Platoon,”
“The Cooks,” “The Pioneers,” and so on. Then, after much shuffling
about in the outer darkness, the men got formed up, mess-tin in hand;
but before the first received his noggin, the Company Sergeant-Major
put to our Ensign that time-honoured question, “Would he try a little
drop?”
Rum on an empty stomach before dinner is not to be recommended, but our
young man knew what was expected of him, and with suitable gratitude
accepted the offer. About a mugful of raw spirit was thereupon poured
out for him, greatly to his dismay, but he picked it up, and crying
“Here’s luck!” drained it. The rum burnt his throat and brought the
tears to his eyes, but he finished off the portion and held the mug
upside down, as the men do, to show that it was empty--all this amid
profound silence, with every man’s eye upon him. Then, one by one,
the men emerged out of the gloom into the yellow circle of light,
with outstretched tin or mug, received their portion, tossed it off,
inverted their drinking vessel, and moved away, wiping their mouths on
the backs of their hands. When every man had been served, the Company
Sergeant-Major picked up the last tin, and, tipping it down for the
officer to see the contents, said--
“For the sergeants and myself.”
This last portion was divided between them and consumed. Then the
C.S.M., shaking the rum jar, said--
“There’s some left yet, sir.”
“Everybody had his tot?” asked our Ensign.
“Yes, sir,” was the reply.
“Right,” answered the officer; “tip the rest out!”
(For such is the inexorable rule of the Army: what is left over from a
rum issue must be spilled. Rum does not keep.)
“Sir!” replied the C.S.M., and in obedience to the order he emptied a
brown gush of the spirit upon the earthen floor under the sorrowful
gaze of the men. Our Ensign would have gladly given them an extra tot
all round, for the night was raw and chill, but an order is an order....
And now the Guards found themselves within measurable distance of the
ultimate goal of all their wanderings, the Battle of the Somme. Day
and night the little village street resounded to the tramp of marching
columns, to the thunder of the jarring, quivering trains of ammunition
lorries. In that cramped and crowded village the only parade-ground
was the dirty courtyards of the different billets, where the most
stentorian word of command would often be lost in the roar of traffic
from the street.
But while the stream of men and munitions flowed unceasingly eastward
towards the Somme, from the battlefield came daily reports of further
successes. Every sign pointed to the imminent participation of the
Guards in the great offensive. There were frequent conferences, and,
day after day, the Guards marched out by platoons, by companies, by
battalions, past the little military cemetery, past the vast camps
stretching away to the horizon, past the gangs of grubby German
prisoners working on the roads, to the training-ground, where the
coming attack was rehearsed in every detail. There were field-days and
night operations and lectures and several false alarms, ... warnings
to be in readiness for immediate departure, which were afterwards
cancelled.
A few days after the arrival of the Brigade at M----, the Guards’
Divisional Canteen turned up and installed itself in the main street,
and was followed shortly afterwards by the Guards’ Divisional Cinema,
which was set up in that very barn with shrapnel-riddled roof which
our Ensign had rejected as a billet. Tarpaulin supplied the missing
wall, a little gas-engine furnished the power, and on the many wet
evenings that the Clerk of the Weather bestowed on the Guards at
M----, “the pictures” proved a great attraction. There, on one of the
rare fine afternoons, our Ensign and a large party of his friends sat
in a stifling atmosphere and saw the Somme battle film. Save for a
few gunners and sappers, the whole audience consisted of Guardsmen,
and their comments on this celebrated series of pictures were
instructive--for they made none. They only cheered and laughed every
time “Fritz” was seen on the screen.
The Guards’ Divisional Baths--a travelling concern this, that plants
itself in any empty building that seems adapted to the purpose, or, in
default of such a building, erects its own premises--happened along
with its array of tubs and heating apparatus and vast supplies of
towels and clean shirts, socks, and underwear. Every day parties of men
were marched down by an officer under a scheme that ensured to every
man one bath a week.
There was much entertaining between the different Messes. Everybody
was always dining out with one or other of the company Messes in the
different battalions, with the Brigade machine-gunners, or with the
Stokes Mortars, who are charming fellows, but whose propinquity in
the trenches is unpopular owing to the disagreeable tendency of their
murderous weapons to draw fire.
In the double-company Mess all went as merry as a wedding bell. Madame,
in whose house the Mess was lodged, proved herself a jewel and cooked
them wonderful omelettes and ragouts, and a _Potage Bonne Femme_ before
which Escoffier himself would have doffed his hat. The Mess raged and
wrangled and argued, as young men do the world over, but the underlying
good fellowship was never disturbed. The past tense is ever a kindlier
critic than the present, but our Ensign, looking back on those pleasant
summer days, cannot recollect that there was a single discordant
element in that little band of men.
But the sand in the hour-glass had all but run out. At last the word
for their departure came. And Battalion Orders that evening closed
with a significant paragraph. Under the heading Dress, it ran--
“The polishing of buttons and cap-stars is discontinued until further
orders.”
_A bon entendeur, salut!_