Bullets & Billets

CHAPTER XXVII

GET­TING FIT--CAR­ICA­TUR­ING THE CURÉ-- “DIRTY WORK AHEAD”--A PRO­JECT­ED AT­TACK--UN­LOOKED-​FOR OR­DERS

Mil­itary life dur­ing our ten days was to con­sist of get­ting in­to good train­ing again in all de­part­ments. Af­ter long spells of trench life, troops get very much out of strong, ef­fi­cient march­ing ca­pa­bil­ities, and are al­so apt to get slack all round. These rests, there­fore, come pe­ri­od­ical­ly to all at the front, and are, as it were, ton­ics. If men stayed long enough in trench­es, I should say, from my stud­ies in evo­lu­tion, that their legs would slow­ly merge in­to one sort of fin-​like tail, and their arms in­to seal-​like flap­pers. In fact, time would con­vert them in­to in­tel­li­gent sea-​li­ons, and ren­der them com­plete­ly in har­mo­ny with their nat­ural life.

Our ton­ic be­gan by be­ing tak­en, one dose af­ter meals, twice dai­ly. In the morn­ing the bat­tal­ion gen­er­al­ly went for a long route march, and in the af­ter­noon prac­tised mil­itary train­ing of var­ious kinds in the fields about the vil­lage. My whole time was oc­cu­pied with ma­chine-​gun train­ing. Morn­ing and af­ter­noon I and my sec­tions went off out in­to the coun­try, and se­lect­ing a good var­ie­gat­ed bit of land pro­ceed­ed to go through ev­ery phase of ma­chine-​gun war­fare. We prac­tised the use of these weapons in woods, open fields, along hedges, etc. It was an in­ter­est­ing job. We used to de­cide on some sec­tion of ground with an ob­ject to be at­tacked in the dis­tance, and ap­proach it in all kinds of ways. Com­pe­ti­tions would fol­low be­tween the dif­fer­ent sec­tions. The days were all bright, warm and sun­ny, so life and work out in the fields and roads there was quite pleas­ant. Each evening we as­sem­bled in our cheer­ful bil­let, and thus our rest went on. My sketch­ing now broke out like a rash. I drew a great many sketch­es. I joked in pen­cil for ev­ery one, in­clud­ing Suzette, Berthe and Marthe. I am sor­ry to say I plead guilty to hav­ing cast a cer­tain amount of ridicule at the Curé. He was so splen­did­ly aus­tere, and wore such fun­ny clothes, that I couldn't help per­pe­trat­ing sev­er­al sketch­es of him. The dis­loy­al­ty of his parish­ioners was very marked in the way they laughed at these draw­ings, which were pinned up in the row of cot­tages. Some­times I would let him off for a day, and then he would come drift­ing past the win­dow again, with his “Dante” face, sur­mount­ed by a large curly, fad­ed black hat, and I gave way to temp­ta­tion again.

He didn't like sol­diers be­ing bil­let­ed in his vil­lage, so Suzette told me. I think he got this out­look from his rather painful ex­pe­ri­ences when the Ger­mans were in the same vil­lage, pri­or to be­ing driv­en north. They had locked him up in his own cel­lar for four or five days, af­ter re­mov­ing his best wine, which they drank up­stairs. This sort of thing _does_ tend to­wards giv­ing one a bit­ter out­look. He preached a ser­mon whilst we were there. I didn't hear it, but was told about it si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly by Suzette, Berthe and Marthe, who in­formed me that it was di­rect­ed against sol­diery in gen­er­al. His text had ap­par­ent­ly been “Do not trust them, gen­tle ladies.” A gross li­bel. I re­tal­iat­ed im­me­di­ate­ly by draw­ing a pic­ture of him, with a girl sit­ting on each knee, singing “The sol­diers are go­ing, hur­rah! hur­rah!” (tune--“The Camp­bells are com­ing”).

I'm afraid I was rather a canker in his vil­lage.

One day, my dear old friend turned up, the same who ac­com­pa­nied me on leave to Eng­land. He didn't know we were hav­ing our rest, and searched for me first be­hind Wul­verghem. He there heard where we were, and came on. He was rather a star in a mil­itary way, and could, there­fore, get hold of a car now and again. I was de­light­ed to see him, as it was pos­si­ble for me to go in­to Bailleul with him for the af­ter­noon. We went off and had a re­al good time at the “Fau­con d'Or.” We went out for a short drive round in the evening, and then part­ed. He was obliged to get back to some­where near Bethune that night. The next day I was just start­ing off on my ma­chine-​gun work when an or­der­ly ar­rived with a mes­sage for me. The Colonel want­ed to see me at head­quar­ters. I went along, and ar­riv­ing at his house found all the com­pa­ny com­man­ders, the sec­ond in com­mand, and the Ad­ju­tant, al­ready as­sem­bled there.

“Dirty work ahead,” I thought to my­self, and went in­to the Colonel's room with the oth­ers. Enor­mous maps were pro­duced, and we all stood and lis­tened.

“We are go­ing to make an at­tack,” start­ed the Colonel, so I saw that my con­jec­ture wasn't far wrong. He ex­plained the de­tails to us all there, and point­ed out on the maps as many of the ge­ograph­ical fea­tures of the forth­com­ing “show” as he could, af­ter which he told us that, that very af­ter­noon, we were all to go on a mo­tor-​bus, that would come for us, down to the al­lot­ted site for the “scrap,” to have a look at the ground. This was news, if you like: a thun­der­bolt in the midst of our ru­ral seren­ity. At two o'clock the bus ar­rived, and we, the cho­sen ini­ti­at­ed few, rat­tled off down the main street of the vil­lage and away to the scene of op­er­ations. Where it was I won't say (cheers from Cen­sor), but it took us about an hour to get there. We left the mo­tor-​bus well back, and walked about a cou­ple of miles up roads and com­mu­ni­ca­tion trench­es un­til we reached a line of trench­es we had nev­er seen be­fore. A won­der­ful set of trench­es they were, it seemed to us; beau­ti­ful­ly built, not much wa­ter about, and nice dug-​outs. The Colonel con­ferred with sev­er­al au­thor­ities who had the mat­ter in hand, and then, point­ing out the sec­tor in front which af­fect­ed us, told us all to study it to the best of our abil­ity. I spent the time with a periscope and a pair of binoc­ulars drink­ing in the scene. It's dif­fi­cult to get a good view of the in­ter­ven­ing ground be­tween op­pos­ing lines of trench­es in the day time, when one's on­ly means of do­ing so is through a periscope. Night is the time for this job, when you can go in front and walk about. This ground which we had come to see was com­plete­ly flat, and one had to put a periscope pret­ty high over the para­pet to see the sort of thing it was. It was no place to put your head up to have a look. A bul­let went smack in­to the Colonel's periscope and knocked it out of his hand. How­ev­er, with time and pa­tience, we formed a pret­ty ac­cu­rate idea of the ap­pear­ance of the coun­try op­po­site. Be­hind the Ger­man trench was the re­mains of a vil­lage, a few of the hous­es of which were up lev­el with the Boche front line. A great scene of wreck­age. Ev­ery sin­gle house was bro­ken, and in a crum­bling state. This was the place we had to take. Oth­er reg­iments were to take oth­er spots on the land­scape on ei­ther side, but this par­tic­ular spot was our ob­jec­tive. I stared long and earnest­ly at the wrecks in front and the in­ter­ven­ing ground. “About a two-​hun­dred yard sprint,” I thought to my­self. We stayed in the trench­es an hour or two, and then all went back to a spot a cou­ple of miles away and had tea, af­ter which we mount­ed the mo­tor-​bus and drove back home to our vil­lage. We had got some­thing to think about now all right;--the com­ing “show” was the fea­ture up­per­most in our lives now. Ev­ery one keen to get at it, as we all felt sure we could push the Boches out of that place when the time came. We, the ini­ti­at­ed few, had to keep our “in­side” in­for­ma­tion to our­selves, and it was sup­posed to be a dark mys­tery to the rest of the bat­tal­ion. But I imag­ine that any­one who didn't guess what the idea was must have been pret­ty dense. When a mo­tor-​bus comes and takes off a group of of­fi­cers for the day, and brings them back at night, one would scarce­ly imag­ine that they had been to a crick­et match, or on the an­nu­al out­ing.

Well, the “tum­bril,” as we called it, ar­rived each day for near­ly a week, and we drove off gai­ly to the ap­point­ed spot and sat­urat­ed our­selves in the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the land we were short­ly to at­tack. In the morn­ings, be­fore we start­ed, I took the ma­chine-​gun sec­tions out in­to the fields, and by map­ping out a sim­ilar land­scape to the one we were go­ing to at­tack, I re­hearsed the com­ing tribu­la­tion as far as pos­si­ble. My gun­ners were a pret­ty ef­fi­cient lot, and I was sure they would give a good ac­count of them­selves on “der Tag.” We prac­tised bolt­ing across a ploughed field, and com­ing in­to ac­tion, un­til we could do it in record time. My sergeant and se­nior cor­po­ral were both ex­cel­lent men.

The whole bat­tal­ion were now in ex­cel­lent trim, and ready for any­thing that came along. A date had been fixed for the “show,” and now, day by day, we were rapid­ly ap­proach­ing it. It was Fri­day, I re­mem­ber, when, as we were all sit­ting in our bil­lets think­ing that we were to leave on Sun­day, a fresh thun­der­bolt ar­rived. A mes­sage was sent round to us all to stand-​to and be ready to move off that evening. Be­fore the ap­point­ed day! What could be up now? I was full of en­thu­si­asm and cu­rios­ity, but was rather ham­pered by hav­ing been in­oc­ulat­ed the day be­fore, and was feel­ing a bit quaint in con­se­quence. How­ev­er, I pulled my­self to­geth­er, and set about col­lect­ing all the ma­chine gun­ners, guns and ac­ces­sories. We said good-​bye to the fair ones at the bil­lets, and by about five o'clock in the evening the whole bat­tal­ion, trans­port and all, was lined up on the main road. Soon we moved off. Why were we go­ing be­fore our time? Where were we go­ing to? No­body knew ex­cept the Colonel, but it was not long be­fore we knew as well.