Bullets & Billets

CHAPTER XXV

GET­TING STALE--LONG­ING FOR CHANGE-- WE LEAVE THE DOU­VE--ON THE MARCH-- SPOT­TED FEVER--TEN DAYS' REST

The Dou­ve trench­es claimed our bat­tal­ion for a long time. We went in and out with monotonous reg­ular­ity, and I went on with my usu­al work with ma­chine guns. The whole place be­came more and more de­press­ing to me, and yet, some­how, I have got more ideas for my pic­tures from this part of the line than any oth­er since or be­fore. One's men­tal out­look, I find, varies very much from day to day. Some days there were on which I felt quite mer­ry and bright, and strode along on my night­ly ram­bles, calm­ly ig­nor­ing bul­lets as they whisked about. At oth­er times I felt thor­ough­ly de­pressed and weary. As time wore on at the Dou­ve, I felt my­self get­ting in­to a state when it took more and more out of me to keep up my vigour, and sup­press my imag­ina­tion. There were times when I ex­pe­ri­enced an al­most ir­re­sistible de­sire to lie down and sleep dur­ing some of my night walks. I would feel an over­whelm­ing de­sire to ig­nore the rain and mud, and just coil up in a farm amongst the emp­ty tins and rub­bish and sleep, sleep, sleep. I looked for­ward to sleep to drown out the wor­ries of the dai­ly and night­ly life. In fact, I was slow­ly get­ting ill, I sup­pose. The ac­tu­al rough and ready life didn't trou­ble me at all. I was both­ered with the _idea_ of the whole thing. The un­nat­ural at­mo­sphere of things that one likes and looks up­on as pleas­ing, peace­ful ob­jects in or­di­nary times, seemed now to ob­sess me. It's hard to de­scribe; but the fol­low­ing gives a faint idea of my feel­ings at this time. In­stead of de­riv­ing a sense of peace and seren­ity from pic­turesque coun­try farms, old trees, set­ting suns, and singing birds, here was this wretched war busi­ness hash­ing up the whole thing. A farm was a place where you ex­pect­ed a shell through the wall any minute; a tree was the sort of thing the gun­ners took to range on; a sun­set in­di­cat­ed a quan­ti­ty of light in which it was un­safe to walk abroad. Birds singing were a mock­ery. All this sort of thing both­ered me, and was slow­ly re­duc­ing my phys­ical ca­pac­ity to “stick it out.” But I de­ter­mined I would stick to the ship, and so I did. The pe­ri­od­ical go­ing out to bil­lets and mak­ing mer­ry there was a thing to look for­ward to. Ev­ery one comes up in a re­bound of spir­its on these oc­ca­sions. In the evenings there, sit­ting round the ta­ble, writ­ing let­ters, talk­ing, and oc­ca­sion­al­ly hav­ing oth­er mem­bers of the reg­iment in to a meal or a call of some sort, made things quite pleas­ant. There was al­ways the post to look for­ward to. Quite a thrill went round the room when the door opened and a sergeant came in with an arm­ful of let­ters and parcels.

Yet dur­ing all this lat­ter time at the Dou­ve I longed for a change in trench life. Some ac­tiv­ity, some march to some­where or oth­er; any­thing to smash up the ev­er­last­ing stag­nant ap­pear­ance of life there. Sud­den­ly the change came. We were told we had to go out a day be­fore one of our usu­al ses­sions in the trench­es was end­ed. We were all im­mense­ly pleased. We didn't know where we were bound for, but, any­way, we were go­ing. This news re­vived me enor­mous­ly, and ev­ery­thing looked brighter. The de­par­ture-​night came, and com­pa­ny by com­pa­ny we hand­ed over to a bat­tal­ion that had come to re­lieve us, and col­lect­ed on the road lead­ing back to Neuve Eglise. I hand­ed over all my gun em­place­ments to the in­com­ing ma­chine-​gun of­fi­cer, and fi­nal­ly col­lect­ed my var­ious sec­tions with all their tack­le on the road as well. We mere­ly marched back to our usu­al bil­lets that night, but next morn­ing had or­ders to get all our bag­gage ready for the trans­port wag­ons. We didn't know where we were go­ing, but at about eleven o'clock in the morn­ing we start­ed off on the march, and soon re­al­ized that our di­rec­tion was Bailleul.

On a fine, clear, warm spring day we marched along, all in the best of spir­its, songs of all sorts be­ing sung one af­ter the oth­er. As I marched along in the rear of the bat­tal­ion, at the head of my ma­chine-​gun sec­tion, I se­lect­ed items from their reper­toire and had them sung “by re­quest.” I had some as­ton­ish­ing­ly fine mouth-​or­gan­ists in my sec­tion. When we had “In the trail of the Lone­some Pine” sung by half the sec­tion, with mouth-​or­gan ac­com­pa­ni­ment by the oth­er half, the ef­fect was enor­mous. We passed sev­er­al bat­tal­ions of my reg­iment on the road, ev­ident­ly bound for the Ar­men­tières di­rec­tion. Shouts, jokes and much mirth showed the kin­dred spir­its of the pass­ing columns. All bat­tal­ions of the same reg­iment, all more or less re­cruit­ed in the same coun­ties. When we reached Bailleul we halt­ed in the Square, and then I learnt we were to be bil­let­ed there. There was ap­par­ent­ly some dif­fi­cul­ty in get­ting bil­lets, and so I was faced with the ne­ces­si­ty of find­ing some for my sec­tion my­self. The trans­port of­fi­cer was in the same fix; he want­ed a large and com­modi­ous farm when­ev­er he hitched up count­less as he had a crowd of hors­es, wag­ons and men to put up some­how. He and I de­cid­ed to start out and look for bil­lets on our own.

I found a tem­po­rary rest for my sec­tion in an old brick­yard on the out­skirts of the town, and the trans­port of­fi­cer and I start­ed out to look for a good farm which we could ap­pro­pri­ate.

Bailleul stands on a bit of a hill, so you can get a wide and ex­ten­sive view of the coun­try from there. We could see sev­er­al farms perched about in the coun­try. We fixed on the near­est, and walked out to it. No luck; they were will­ing to have us, but it wasn't big enough. We tried an­oth­er; same re­sult. I then sug­gest­ed we should sep­arate, and each try dif­fer­ent roads, and thus we should get one quick­er. This we did, I go­ing off up a long straight road, and fi­nal­ly com­ing to a most promis­ing look­ing ed­ifice on one side--a re­al large size in farms.

I went in­to the yard and walked across the dirty cob­bles to the front door. The peo­ple were most pleas­ant. I didn't un­der­stand a word they said; but when a per­son push­es a flagon of beer in­to one of your hands and an ap­ple in­to the oth­er, one con­cludes he means to be pleas­ant, any­way.

I mum­bled a lot of jar­gon to them for some time, and I re­al­ly be­lieve they saw that I want­ed to use their place for a bil­let. The own­er, a man of about forty-​five, then start­ed a long and hardy dis­cus­sion right at me. He put on a se­ri­ous face at in­ter­vals, so I guessed there was some­thing rather im­por­tant he was try­ing to con­vey to me. I was saved from giv­ing my an­swer by catch­ing sight of my pal, the trans­port of­fi­cer, cross­ing the yard. He came in. “I've brought Jean along to talk,” he an­nounced. (Jean was our own bat­tal­ion in­ter­preter.) “I can't find a place; but this looks all right.” Jean and the own­er at once dived off in­to a labyrinth of un­in­tel­li­gi­ble words, from which they emerged five min­utes lat­er. We sat around and lis­tened. Jean turned to us and re­marked: “They have got fever here, he says, what you call the spot­ted fever--how you say, spot­ted fever?--and this farm is out of bounds.”

“Oh! spot­ted fever! I see!” we both said, and slid away out of that farm pret­ty quick. So that was what that farmer was try­ing to say to me: spot­ted fever!

I went down the road won­der­ing whether cere­bral menin­gi­tis germs pre­ferred ap­ples or beer, or per­haps they liked both; aw­ful thought!

We went back to our orig­inal se­lec­tion and de­cid­ed to some­how or oth­er squeeze in­to the farm which we thought too small. Many hours lat­er we got the trans­port and the ma­chine-​gun sec­tion fixed up. We spent two nights there. On the sec­ond day I went up in­to Bailleul. Walk­ing along in the Square, look­ing at the shops and mar­ket stalls, I ran in­to the brigade ma­chine-​gun of­fi­cer.

“Top­ping about our brigade, isn't it?” he said.

“What's top­ping?” I asked.

“Why, we're go­ing to have about ten day's rest; we clear off out of here to-​mor­row to a vil­lage about three miles away, and our bat­tal­ion will bil­let there. Where we go af­ter that I don't know; but, any­way, ten days' rest. Ten days' rest!!”

“Come and split one at the Fau­con d'Or?”

“No thanks, I've just had one.”

“Well, come and have an­oth­er.”