Bullets & Billets

CHAPTER V

MY MAN FRI­DAY--“CHUCK US THE BIS­CUITS”--RE­LIEVED--BIL­LETS

It was dur­ing this first time up in the trench­es that I got a sol­dier ser­vant.

As I had ar­rived on­ly just in time to go with the bat­tal­ion to the trench­es, the ac­qui­si­tion had to be made by a search in the mud. I found a fel­low who hadn't been an of­fi­cer's ser­vant be­fore, but who want­ed to be. I liked the look of him; so feel­ing rather like Robin­son Cru­soe, when he booked up Fri­day, “I got me a man.”

He lived in a dug-​out about five yards away, and from then on­wards con­tin­ued with me right to the point where this book fin­ish­es. This fel­low of mine did all my cook­ing, such as it was, and worked in con­junc­tion with my friend, the pla­toon com­man­der's ser­vant. Cook­ing, at the times I write about, con­sist­ed of mak­ing in­nu­mer­able brews of tea, and open­ing tins of bul­ly and Ma­conochie. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly ba­con had to be fried in a mess-​tin lid. One day my man soared off in­to culi­nary fan­cies and cur­ried a Ma­conochie. I have nev­er quite for­giv­en him for this; I am near­ly right again now.

These two sol­dier ser­vants nev­er had to leave the trench. It was their job to try and find some­thing to make a fire with, and to do all they could to keep the wa­ter out of our dug-​out, a task which not one of us suc­ceed­ed in do­ing. My plan for sus­tain­ing life un­der these con­di­tions was to change my boots as of­ten as pos­si­ble. If there wasn't time for this I used to try and boil the wa­ter in my boots by keep­ing my feet to the fire buck­et. I al­ways put my put­tees on first and then a pair of thick socks, and fi­nal­ly a pair of boots. I could, by this means, hur­ried­ly slip off the sod­den pair of boots and socks and slip on an­oth­er set which had be­come fair­ly dry by the fire. We lived per­pet­ual­ly damp, if not thor­ough­ly wet. My put­tees, which I rarely re­moved, were more like long rolls of the con­sis­ten­cy of nougat than any­thing else, thanks to the mud. Dug-​outs had no wood­en lin­ings in those days; no cor­ru­gat­ed iron roofs; no floor­boards. They were just holes in the clay side of the fire trench, with any old thing for a roof, and old straw or to­bac­co leaves, which we pinched from some aban­doned farm, for a floor. So, you see, there was not much of a chance of dodg­ing the mois­ture.

The cold was what got me. Per­son­al­ly, I would far rather have gone with­out food than a fire. A fire of some sort was the on­ly thing to cheer. Coke was scarce and al­ways wet, and it was by no means un­com­mon to over-​hear a re­mark of this sort: “Chuck us the bis­cuits, Bill; the fire wants mendin'.”

At night I would fre­quent­ly sal­ly forth to a cracked up vil­lage be­hind, and per­haps pro­cure half a man­tel­piece and an old clog to stoke our “fur­nace” with.

Well, af­ter the usu­al num­ber of long days and still longer nights spent un­der these con­di­tions, we came to the day when it was our turn to go out to rest bil­lets, and a re­liev­ing bat­tal­ion to come in. What a splen­did day that is! You start “pack­ing” at about 4 p.m. As soon as it is dusk the ser­vants slink off across that turnip morass be­hind and drag our few be­long­ings back to where the lim­bers are. These lim­bers have come up from about three to four miles away, from the Reg­imen­tal Trans­port head­quar­ters, to take all the trench “props” back to the bil­lets.

We don't leave, our­selves, un­til the “in­com­ing” bat­tal­ion has tak­en over.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: sol­dier at rest]

Af­ter what seems an in­ter­minable wait, we hear a clink­ing of mess tins and rat­tling of equip­ment, the slosh­ing of feet in the mud, and much whis­pered pro­fan­ity, which all goes to an­nounce to you that “they're here!” Then you know that the oth­er bat­tal­ion has ar­rived, and are now about to take over these pre­cious slots in the ground.

When the ex­change is com­plete, we are free to go!--to go out for our few days in bil­lets!

The ac­tu­al go­ing out and get­ting clear of the trench­es takes a long time. Hand­ing over, and fi­nal­ly ex­tri­cat­ing our­selves from the morass, in the dark, with all our be­long­ings, is a lengthy pro­cess; and then we have about a mile of coun­try which we have nev­er been able to ex­am­ine in the day time, and get fa­mil­iar with, to ne­go­ti­ate. This is be­fore we get to the high road, and re­al­ly start for bil­lets.

I had the dif­fer­ent ma­chine-​gun sec­tions to col­lect from their var­ious guns, and this not un­til the re­liev­ing sec­tions had all turned up. It was a good two hours' job get­ting all the sec­tions with their guns, am­mu­ni­tion and var­ious ex­tras fi­nal­ly col­lect­ed to­geth­er in the dark a mile back, ready to put all the stuff in the lim­bers, and so back to bil­lets. When all was fixed up I gave the or­der and off we start­ed, plod­ding along back down the nar­row, drea­ry road to­wards our rest­ing-​place. But it was quite a cheer­ful tramp, know­ing as we did that we were go­ing to four days' com­par­ative rest, and, any­way, safe­ty.

On we went down the long, flat, nar­row roads, oc­ca­sion­al­ly look­ing round to see the faint flick­er of a star shell show­ing over the tops of the trees, and to think mo­men­tar­ily of the “poor dev­ils” left be­hind to take our place, and go on do­ing just what we had been at. Then, fi­nal­ly, get­ting far enough away to for­get, songs and jokes took us chirp­ing along, past ob­jects which soon be­came our land­marks in the days to come. On we went, past es­taminets, shrines and oc­ca­sion­al wind­mills, down the long wind­ing road for about four miles, un­til at last we reached our bil­lets, where the bat­tal­ion will­ing­ly halt­ed and dis­persed to its var­ious quar­ters. I and my ma­chine-​gun sec­tion had still to car­ry on, for we lived apart, a bit fur­ther on, at the Trans­port Farm. So we con­tin­ued on our own for an­oth­er mile and a half, past the es­taminet at Romerin, out on to­wards Neuve Eglise to our Trans­port Farm. This was the usu­al red-​tiled Bel­gian farm, with a rect­an­gu­lar smell in the mid­dle.