Bullets & Billets

CHAPTER VI

THE TRANS­PORT FARM--FLEECED BY THE FLEM­ISH--RID­ING--NEAR­ING CHRIST­MAS

It was about 9 p.m. when we turned in­to the court­yard of the farm. My sergeant saw to the un­lim­ber­ing, and dis­missed the sec­tion, whilst I went in­to the farm and dis­man­tled my­self of all my tack­le, such as re­volver, field-​glass, great­coat, haver­sacks, etc.

My ser­vant had, of course, pre­ced­ed me, and by the time I had made a par­tial at­tempt at clean­ing my­self, he had brought in a meal of sorts and laid it on the oil­cloth-​cov­ered ta­ble by the stove. I was now joined by the trans­port of­fi­cer and the reg­imen­tal quar­ter­mas­ter. They lived at this farm per­ma­nent­ly, and on­ly came to the trench­es on oc­ca­sion­al ex­cur­sions. They had both had a go at the nasty part of war­fare though, be­fore this, so al­though con­sumed with a sneak­ing en­vy, I was full of re­spect for them.

We three had a very mer­ry and ge­nial time to­geth­er. We now had some­thing dis­tinct­ly re­sem­bling a break­fast, a lunch, and a din­ner, each day. The trans­port of­fi­cer took a live­ly in­ter­est in the ef­forts of Messrs. Fort­num and Ma­son, and thus added gen­er­ous­ly to our menus. It was a glo­ri­ous feel­ing, push­ing open the door of that farm and com­ing in from all the wet, dark­ness, mud and weari­ness of four days in the trench­es. Af­ter the sup­per, I dis­ap­peared in­to the back kitchen place and did what was pos­si­ble in the shav­ing and wash­ing line. The Bel­gian fam­ily were all herd­ed away in here, as their front rooms were now our ex­clu­sive prop­er­ty. I have nev­er quite made out what the fam­ily con­sist­ed of, but, ap­prox­imate­ly, I should think, moth­er and fa­ther and ten chil­dren. I am pret­ty cer­tain about the chil­dren, as about half a pla­toon stood around me whilst shav­ing, and solemn­ly watched me with dull brown Flem­ish eyes. The fa­ther kept in the back­ground, rest­ing, I fan­cy, from his usu­al day's work of hid­ing unattrac­tive turnips in enor­mous num­bers, un­der mounds of mud--(the on­ly form of farm­ing in­dus­try which came un­der my no­tice in Flan­ders).

The moth­er, how­ev­er, was “all there,” in more sens­es than one. She was of about ob­ser­va­tion bal­loon pro­por­tions, and had an unerring eye for the main chance. Her tele­graph­ic ad­dress, I should imag­ine, was “Fleecem.” She had one sound com­mer­cial idea, _i.e._, “charge as much as you can for ev­ery­thing they want, hide ev­ery­thing they _do_ want, and slow­ly col­lect any prop­er­ty, in the way of food, they have in the cel­lar; so that, in the fu­ture, there shall be no lack of bul­ly and jam in our farm, at any rate.”

They had one farm labour­er, a kind of epilep­tic who, I found out, gave his ser­vices in re­turn for be­ing fed--no pay. He will re­gret this con­tract of his in time, as the food in ques­tion was bul­ly beef and plum and ap­ple jam, with an oc­ca­sion­al change to Ma­conochie and ap­ple and plum jam. That store in the cel­lar ab­so­lute­ly pre­cludes him from any change from this di­et for many years to come. Of course, I must say his work was not such as would be classed amongst the skilled or in­tel­lec­tu­al trades; it was, ap­par­ent­ly, to pump all the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed drainage from a sub­ter­ranean vault out in­to the yard in front, about twice a week, the rest of his time be­ing tak­en up by as­sist­ing at the hid­ing of the turnips.

Af­ter I had washed and shaved un­der the crit­ical eyes of Angèle, Rachel, An­dré and Co., I re­tired in­to an in­ner cham­ber which had once been an ap­ple store, and went to bed on a straw mat­tress in the cor­ner. Py­ja­mas at last! and an un­trou­bled sleep. Oc­ca­sion­al­ly in the night one would wake and, lis­ten­ing at the open win­dow, would hear the dis­tant rat­tle of ri­fle fire far away be­yond the woods.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: boy and bird]

These four days at the Trans­port Farm were days of wal­low­ing in rest. There was, of course, cer­tain work to be done in con­nec­tion with the ma­chine-​gun de­part­ment, such as over­haul­ing and clean­ing the guns, and drilling the sec­tion at in­ter­vals; but the evenings and nights were a per­fect joy af­ter those spent in the trench­es.

One could walk about the fields near by; could read, write let­ters, and sleep as much as one liked. And if one wished, walk or ride over to see friends at the oth­er bil­lets. Ah, yes! ride--I am sor­ry to say that rid­ing was not, and is not, my forte. Un­for­tu­nate this, as the ma­chine-​gun of­fi­cer is one of the few priv­ileged to have a horse. I was en­ti­tled to ride to the trench­es, and ride away from them, and dur­ing our rest, ride wher­ev­er I want­ed to go; but these ad­van­tages, so cov­et­ed by my horse­less pals in the reg­iment, left me cold. I nev­er will be any good at the “Haute Ecole” act, I'm sure, al­though I made sev­er­al at­tempts to get a lik­ing for the sub­ject in France. When the fi­nal day came for our de­par­ture to the trench­es again, I rode from that Trans­port Farm.

Rid­ing in Eng­land, or in any civ­ilized coun­try, is one thing, and rid­ing in those bar­ren, shell-​torn wastes of Flan­ders is an­oth­er. The usu­al dark­ness, rain and mud per­vad­ed the scene when the evening came for our re­turn jour­ney to the trench­es. My groom (curse him) had not for­got­ten to sad­dle the horse and bring it round. There it was, stand­ing gaunt and tall in front of the pa­rad­ed ma­chine-​gun sec­tion. With my best eques­tri­an de­meanour I crossed the yard, and haul­ing my­self up on to my horse, choked out a few com­mands to the sec­tion, and sal­lied forth on to the road to­wards the trench­es.

Thank Heav­en, I didn't go in­to the Cav­al­ry. The roads about the part we were per­form­ing in were about two yards wide and a pre­cip­itous ditch at each side. In the mid­dle, all sorts and con­di­tions of holes punc­tu­at­ed their long wind­ing length. Add to this the fact that you are ei­ther meet­ing, or be­ing passed by, a mo­tor lor­ry ev­ery ten min­utes, and you will get an idea of the con­di­tions un­der which rid­ing takes place.

[Il­lus­tra­tion: kit and ka­boo­dle]

Well, any­way, dur­ing the whole of my eques­tri­an ca­reer in France, I nev­er came off. I rode along in front of my sec­tion, bal­anc­ing on this “Ship of the Desert” of mine, past all the same land­marks, cracked hous­es, wind­mills, es­taminets, etc. I ex­pe­ri­enced in­nu­mer­able tense mo­ments when my horse--as fre­quent­ly hap­pened--took me for a bit of a cir­cu­lar tour in an ad­ja­cent field, so as to avoid some colos­sal mo­tor lor­ry with one head­light of about a mil­lion can­dle-​pow­er, which would sud­den­ly roar its way down our sin­gle nar­row road. At last we got to the dump­ing-​ground spot again--the spot where we horse­men have to come to earth and walk, and where ev­ery­thing is un­baled from the lim­bers. Here we were again, on the thresh­old of the trench­es.

This monotonous drea­ry rou­tine of “in” and “out” of the trench­es had to be gone through many, many times be­fore we got to Christ­mas Day. But, dur­ing that pre-​Christ­mas pe­ri­od, there was one out­stand­ing fea­ture above the nor­mal dan­ger­ous drea­ri­ness of the trench­es: that was a slight af­fair in the na­ture of our at­tack on the 18th of De­cem­ber, so in the next chap­ter I will pro­ceed to out­line my part in this pas­sage of arms.