Chapter XIII: The Trek South

Until we left Bailleul the Canadian Division had been a part of the 2nd Army under Sir Herbert Plumer. We were now to go to the other end of the British line and become part of the 1st Army, then commanded by the present Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig.

The news of this change was greeted with little enthusiasm by the old soldiers in our midst, but old soldiers are invariably pessimists, and imagine that every inspection is the prelude to more "dirty work at the cross-roads" and that every change made in their dispositions is for the worst.

Still, we were all sorry to leave Bailleul, with its bright little shops, and to say good-bye to the _curé_ and our other friends there.

We fell in at night in the Grande Place--the little square that has probably seen more British troops come and go than any other town in northern France--and waited there for the battalion to form up. It was a beautiful summer night, the square tower of the cathedral and the Moorish spire of the Hôtel de Ville forming perfect silhouettes against the starlit sky.

We were not kept waiting long; the shrill of a whistle from somewhere in the darkness put an end to all talking, and we hastily slung our packs on our shoulders again and started on our long tramp south to La Bassée.

For a while our route lay through country that some of us had traversed before, and Merville, Vieux Berquin, and other places were hailed with delight. There is a certain charm in returning to places that one has never expected to see again. Much speculation began as to whether we were going back to our old trenches at Bois Grenier and Fleurbaix or not, but all hopes of this happening were dashed to pieces when, after passing through Neuf Berquin, we turned sharply to the right.

After this disappointment our packs began to weigh more heavily; the mouth organs and vocalists were less persistent in their efforts and gradually stopped in disgust, and only an accordion, wielded by a husky Scotchman at the rear of the company, strove to cheer us up. It was probably "Lochaber no more" or some other dirge he was playing, as he always showed unnatural fondness for the weird and the sad--probably due to the difficulty of fingering lively airs while on the march.

Passing through Merville, A----, who was marching beside me, regained his spirits sufficiently to point out a shop where a pretty girl sold champagne, and then relapsed into silence again.

A little further along the road we saw the adjutant riding alongside the major, and we knew we were nearing our billets. We turned up a side-road through Calonne, and the companies again broke off in different directions to the various farms to which they had been allotted.

We were again fortunate in getting very good accommodation--good airy barns, a mill-pond for washing, and a well of no-worse-than-the-ordinary water. But imagine our surprise to find chalked on the gate of the largest and best farm a sign:--

"SMALL POX. BY ORDER."

Here we were in a fix, as the men would not enter the place till we hunted up that long-suffering individual the interpreter. Then we found the placard to be only a ruse on the part of the unsophisticated peasantry to avoid having troops billeted there.

Having been found out and beaten at this game, Madame produced a sheet of paper she called a "reclamation," for some straw she claimed had been stolen by the preceding troops, and while she and the interpreter harangued over this we stowed our men away and sought our own billets a little distance up the lane.

At Calonne we received newspapers telling of the starting of the French offensive in the Artois district and prophesying an attack on our part to co-operate with them. We got out our maps and saw we were quite close to Neuve Chapelle, and as the Aubers Ridge--the great natural barrier to Lille--formed the obvious point to attack, we were not greatly surprised when a day or two after arriving at this peaceful little village we again took the route--this time toward Neuve Chapelle. We had heard the guns drumming along the Aubers Ridge all the day before during church parade service (May 9th), and were, on the whole, rather disappointed when after a few miles' march we turned off the road into a farm near "le Cornet Malo" and lay there in the mud all day. Some of the Lahore Division passed us on their way into the affair, the Indian gunners sitting on their limbers like statues.

It was rather a wretched day we spent in this farm. A heavy rain had turned the orchard in which we lay into a "bit of a bog," and all the straw we could buy or steal from the inhabitants could not keep us out of the mud. Here, too, we found the first instance of friction between the troops and the civilian populace, and the old lady made no bones about telling us how unwelcome we were. She opened hostilities by taking the rod from the pump so that we could not fill our watercart, and the troops retaliated by stealing bundles of unthreshed wheat. This was speedily put a stop to (and paid for) by the officers, and, for a while, peace reigned supreme while a thriving trade was done in coffee at two sous a cup and beer at three sous a glass.

Then some of the officers, seeing a lot of freshly-baked bread in a room just off the kitchen, offered to buy some. To our surprise the old woman started to wave a knife around dangerously and screamed: "You take my wheat, you take my water, and now you won't even leave me my bread! I would rather the Germans had come; they at least pay for what they take!"

As we had just paid her for the straw we thought this was going a little too far, and F----, who had a fine taste for sarcasm, waved his coffee-cup eloquently in the direction of the two slatternly girls that were peddling the coffee to the soldiers through the window, and said "What? With all these beautiful daughters," and then continued with a graphic description of the horrors in Belgium.

This quieted the old lady down, but we were not sorry to leave there and shift to billets further up the road that night. It was the only instance we encountered of our being unwelcome in France, and the billet we occupied that night, although one of the filthiest houses we came across, was marked by a much more cordial spirit.

We were fortunate to get into this farm, as two of the companies had to bivouac, there being only accommodation for the staff and two companies in the area. The matter was decided by lottery, the major being lucky enough to draw a long straw.

It was rather a squeeze getting the company stowed away that night, but we managed somehow, and then turned into the kitchen. Here we were entertained with a graphic description by an old hag of how she had been wounded. It seemed that in some of the preliminary fighting she had run across a field between our troops and the Germans and received three bullets. She was quite cheerful about it and showed us two wounds, and when A---- casually asked about the third she collapsed in a chair and went into spasms of laughter. All the rest of the evening she would point her finger at him and start again to tee-hee. A---- was much annoyed.

We stayed in that vicinity another day, as it was not certain whether we would be thrown into support in the attacks on the Aubers Ridge at Fromelles or the Bois de Biez, but it was eventually decided that the artillery preparation had been inadequate, and the following night we continued our march southward.

Near Locon we passed some of the Indian Cavalry, gigantic-looking men with their turbanned heads. They surveyed us gravely as we passed, one or two flashing brilliant smiles in response to some friendly greeting. Then shortly afterwards we crossed the canal, and without further incident reached the outskirts of Bethune, where we went into bivouac in an open field, being favoured, most fortunately, with fine weather.

Our long trek had ended.