As ordered, we marched the Battery to B 35d 45.25. Reader, have you
ever lived in, or on, an unfurnished map-reference in Flanders? If
not, permit me to inform you that this group of letters and numerals
represented a mud-flat pocked with ancient shell-craters, through
which loafed an unwholesome stream under a bilious-looking sky. The
Junior Subaltern, fresh from home, asked where the billets were. We
could but bless his happy innocence and remind him that as Army Field
Artillery we were nobody's children, the orphan bravoes of the Western
Front, and that for us a bunch of map co-ordinates was considered
ample provision.
The horses, having with proper pride sneered at the stream, were
silenced with their nosebags, and then we asked our cook what
about it? That dauntless artist in bully-beef promptly brought our
far-travelled mess-table into action in the open, and thus publicly we
sat round it on our valises and drank Vichy water until the novelty
palled. Then the rain began and the men once more united in wishing
themselves in Tennessee.
The Captain was now driven from the bosom of the mess to find a Camp
Commandant, and to tell him, with the Major's compliments, that even
the personnel of Army Brigades were liable, in the words of the book,
to deteriorate rapidly if unprotected from damp. The officer, whom he
found lurking in a neighbouring Nissen hut, was tall and stately, but
admitted, under pressure, that to him was entrusted the stewardship
of our mud-flat and the adjacent camps, and that he could give us a
mess. Through the insistent drizzle this person, smiling now very
pleasantly, led us to a depressed wooden building that suggested
a derelict Noah's Ark with a sinister look about the windows. The
bad-tempered sky scowled between the planks of the roof; the querulous
wind whined up through the floor; rats backed snarling into the
corners on our entrance.
"This is the place," said the C.C. "You'll soon make yourselves very
comfortable."
That night I dreamed I was a "U" boat, and started up, snorting, to
find myself under a cascade, while the felt upon the roof banged and
rasped and flapped. It sounded as if the ark were trying to fly, but
found its wings rusty. At dawn we sent the Captain out, and refused
him breakfast till by some resource of ingenuity or crime he obtained
certain sausages of new felt. These our fearless batmen unrolled and
nailed upon the roof. After his porridge we pushed him out again with
a strong party under orders to carry the nearest R.E. dump by force
or fraud, and secure large quantities of timber, nails, canvas and,
if possible (the up-to-date R.E. dump secretes many unexpected
commodities), Turkey carpets, wall-paper, sofa-cushions and
bedroom-slippers.
The batmen were sent out with a limbered cart, some smoke shell and
the total establishment of billhooks, and forbidden to return without
sufficient material for bedsteads, window-shutters, bookshelves and
chairs. By evening the place began to feel habitable, and the C.C.,
when he looked in to borrow a horse, endeared himself to us all by
his obvious pleasure in our comparative comfort. We lent him the best
horse in the battery.
The Major's batman devoted the following day to the construction of
a species of retiring-room at one end of the hut, wherein the modest
members of the mess might bathe and splash at ease. The remainder of
the servants went out armed and returned with (1) a zinc bath, (2)
a stove, (3) a cuckoo clock, (4) a large mirror, (5) a warming-pan.
"Once let us make a home for ourselves," we said, "and our energies
will be free to finish the War." We devoted every cunning worker in
the battery to this great end. Drill was abandoned, stables forgotten.
We installed bookshelves, bootjacks, a sideboard, hat racks, a dumb
waiter, a stand for the gramophone and a roll-top desk for the Major.
The walls were tapestried with canvas, hung with pictures, scalps,
and the various decorations won by members of the mess. The original
building, disreputable and hateful, was hidden and forgotten.
And then the C.C. called again, and, after a minute and admiring
inspection of our abode, informed us that to his bitter sorrow he had
to turn us out; umteen battalions of infantry were coming in and had
to be accommodated--this being an infantry camp....
That night, as I walked about in the rain, I looked in at the open
door of our lost home. Two N.C.O.'s were sitting over our stove, lost,
lonely in the elongated emptiness; longing, I knew, to be with their
comrades bellowing in an adjacent hut. And so I understood and knew at
length how Camp Commandants manage the maintenance and improvement of
their domain. I devote myself now to warning the simple-hearted gunner
against unfurnished huts and the hospitality of Camp Commandants.
And some day I hope to be in a position to lend that particular C.C.
another horse.
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