We were moved to the village very suddenly. There was no reason that we
could see for the move. However, this transpired later. It was getting
dusk when we reached the village. A and C Companies were sent at once
up to the firing-line, and B and D Companies were lined along a ditch
in support. The ditch had been prepared for habitation by the regiment
who had held it before. At one point they had thrown some boards across
the ditch and made a house underneath. This proved a very welcome
shelter when later it came on to rain. We lay in the ditch for an hour
or two listening to the last shells before nightfall, from one of our
heavy batteries, singing overhead. The shells were sent in groups of
three, and we could plainly hear each, whizz-whizz-whizz, chasing each
other through the air, perhaps not more than twenty yards apart. We
were comfortable enough where we were, and idly speculated on what
errand of destruction the shells were bent. They sounded nasty great
things to have coming in the wrong direction, and we wished the Germans
joy of them.
About eight I felt hungry, and got out of the trench to have a look
round. I had two tins of Mc'Conochie in my haversack, which I put in
a pan of boiling water. Across a field to the front I saw a farm, and
decided to go over and explore. In the field there were two or three
curious heaps of straw, which proved to be the burial piles of dead
cows, killed by shell fire, and covered over by the farmer in this
rather ineffective fashion. The cows were getting smelly, and I did not
stay long looking at them. I found the farm occupied by two old men and
an old woman. One of the old men, over eighty, they told me, had taken
to his bed and lain there with the shutters up for three days. He was
half-dead from fright, and could not be induced to move. The old woman
said they had had Germans billeted in the farm a week before. They had
treated her and her old husband none too gently, driving them out of
the house while they made soup in her cauldron. She had managed to hide
one or two little bits of bread, and was making supper off a crust and
some coffee. She put the fire at my disposal for getting supper ready
for Goyle and the other officers in the company. They all came across
a quarter of an hour later, Evans with a great possession--a tin of
cocoa. There was plenty of milk to be had from the farm--indeed, it
was a godsend to the old people to get a man to milk their cows--and
we soon had a beautiful jug of thick, steaming cocoa. We then prepared
the Mc'Conochie, and what proved to be our last meal all together was
a good one.