Bullets & Billets

CHAPTER XV

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.