Chapter VIII

Take a large French village, shell it a little and bomb it a little from aeroplanes so that all the windows are broken and most of the roofs damaged, remove the civilian inhabitants, pass several hundred thousand troops through it, plant horse-lines all round it, so that every road approaching it is churned into a morass by the horses’ hoofs, make the road running through it one of the main arteries leading into battle, and choke it--day and night--with marching troops and motor ambulances and long strings of lorries, smear it alternately with layers of dust and mud, add several billion flies--horse-, house-, and bluebottle--pop in a hundred thousand rats or so, bring back a few score civilians to take possession of the only whole houses remaining, and serve hot--extremely hot--and stinking. And there you have the village of M----, the Brigade’s next halting-place, as it presented itself to our Ensign and his billeting party about the hour of noon on a blazing hot day.

Behind them they had a twenty-mile cycle ride, under a fierce sun, against a violent and exhausting head-wind. And now, soaked to the skin with perspiration, covered with dust, thirsty, tired, and (to speak for our Ensign only) extremely cross, they pushed their heavy machines up the long slope of the main street amid a dense mass of traffic and clouds of petrol-scented dust.

They were early for their rendezvous with the Staff Captain: in fact, they had more than half an hour to spare. They stacked their bicycles together outside the Town Major’s office, which was to be their trysting-place, and forthwith went their several ways in search of shade and refreshment, to meet again at the appointed time. Our Ensign was carried off by a billeting Coldstream officer to a Y.M.C.A. establishment, where, among more flies than our Ensign had ever seen together before, they quaffed some cold, green liquid, retailed at a penny a glass as lemonade by a bespectacled Hebe (_masculini generis_) behind the cake-laden counter. Our Ensign and his brother officer absorbed several glasses of this refreshing beverage, and then went forth to find the Town Major.

He was sitting in his office, a large, clean-shaven major of infantry, urbane and charming. He mopped his brow, and sighed when he saw them enter.

“Oh dear!” he groaned, “you keep on coming in, and I haven’t the least idea where you are all to go. I do hope you’re not expecting anything great in the way of billets: you’ll not get ’em here. Half the place is in ruins, AND the dirt! AND the smells! You never saw anything like it! Oh, damn these flies!”

He whisked his handkerchief round his head.

“Well,” he continued, “I think there’s some Perrier left: I believe I got the last case in this part of the country: and I expect there will be some whisky, too. Come along into the garden: the rest are there!”

His frankness boded ill: like Billeting Officers, Town Majors are generally optimists, and chatter gaily about the “unexceptional advantages” of the billets in their domain. The two officers followed their host in silence into the garden, where they found the other Billeting Officers of the Brigade, in various stages of exhaustion, conversing in gloomy tones over the Town Major’s whisky and Perrier.

The garden was a dirty backyard contrived so as to collect all the sun’s rays as in a burning-glass. It commanded a view of a flat green field in which the principal object was an abandoned incinerator.

In due time the Staff Captain appeared and distributed the billeting lists. He, too, was brutally frank about the accommodation: they had best expect nothing, he told them. Our Ensign found allocated to his battalion a short patch of houses in the main street, opposite and on either side of the Town Major’s office. The list looked promising enough: several billets were marked down as furnishing accommodation for as many as a hundred men at a time: one even--as shown on the list--would take two hundred. But as soon trust a company prospectus as a billeting list; the element of truth is about the same in both.

It was a quarter to one when our Ensign started his round of the billets. The billeting parties had come across country on their bicycles; the Brigade was going to cover part of the journey by rail and march the rest; they were not expected to arrive before three o’clock at the earliest, so our Ensign felt that he could take things fairly easily.

The peasants were not friendly--and why should they be, poor creatures?--returning, with the French peasant’s fatalistic attachment to his native soil, to find their houses wrecked, their gardens ravaged, and their barns and sheds occupied by an ever-changing succession of foreign soldiers. They came to their house doors and pointed silently to the barns and outhouses about the yard, then shut the door in our young man’s face.

Things went all right at first. Everything was filthy and swarming with flies, everywhere the ground was befouled, and in many of the once trim gardens, amid the full-blown roses and the straggling and broken lines of peas and scarlet runners, water-logged and evil-smelling dug-outs were crumbling into oblivion--mementoes of the days when the German artillery was close enough up to shell the French troops in their billets. But our Ensign managed to get billets for three out of the four companies, though most of the places had holes both in the roof and in the wattle walls. He intended to put the remaining company in the billet noted as accommodating 200 men.

This was where the billeting list let him down badly--an act of base betrayal. For the farmer came out of his house at the officer’s summons and announced, politely enough but with great firmness, that the _granges_ were no longer available, for the harvest, which was to be brought in that afternoon, would fill them to the rafters.

Here was a staggering blow indeed. The whole Battalion was provided for except the officers; and now, unless the Town Major could allot them another billet, the whole billeting scheme would have to be rearranged and a quart crammed into a pint pot--that is to say, a thousand men packed into billets for 750.

Back to the Town Major’s office our young man went. It was already half-past two; neither Headquarters nor the messes nor the officers had yet been provided for. The Town Major was out. He had been carried off by the Brigade Medical Officer, who was clamouring for a site for the field ambulance. Sending one of his party to watch the entrance of the village in case the Brigade should appear before its time, our Ensign set off feverishly on the track of the Town Major.

It was three o’clock by the time that our young man had found him. There was no sign of the Brigade as yet. Heedless of the clamouring throng of petitioners at the Town Major’s heels, our Ensign resolutely button-holed him and poured his pathetic story into his sympathetic ear. Our young man’s desperate situation stirred the generous heart of that Town Major.

“The harvest again!” he groaned, clasping his brow. “I’ll go and see what I can do with the fellow, but I fear we are undone!” As they hurried up the street, he explained to our Ensign that, by virtue of some dark arrangement between the British and French authorities, the peasants had the right to claim exemption from billeting to make room for the crops.

The Town Major’s fears were justified: the farmer was in the right; his position was incontestably sound; they would have to forego the billet.

Together, the Major and our Ensign inspected two other billets--“emergency billets” the Town Major called them, the last two in the place. One was occupied by an artillery store, but they contrived to filch from the gunners accommodation for one platoon; the other was a gaunt barn, open all along one side, with shell-holes in the further wall, and the corrugated iron roof abundantly perforated by shrapnel.

Our Ensign shook his head, thanked the Town Major, and fled. The whole billeting scheme had to be rearranged. He picked up his billeting party once more and started the round again, reshuffling the billets, redistributing the men, cramming in half a platoon here and tucking little packets of men away in there, deaf to expostulation and entreaty, coldly ignoring the dismay in the faces of his quartermaster-sergeants.

Half-past three! No Brigade yet: now for the officers ... two or three in this empty room, with sacking stretched in front of the paneless windows, and the mess across the entrance-hall in a dirty apartment, where fat bluebottles hovered greedily about decaying fragments of bully beef; this silent and forbidding house, to which they obtained access through a window, with three filthy little rooms, would accommodate six or seven officers--say, the members of the double-company mess: some tents could be put up in the garden at the back; another mess here, the company commanders there ... but where, oh where, to put Headquarters?

There was nothing suitable under a roof, but our Ensign remembered the field with the incinerator behind the Town Major’s garden. Four o’clock: not a drum to be heard: the Brigade was late: back to the office to obtain from the ever-patient Major a lien on the field. Done! and three tents promised into the bargain in case it rained that night and the billets leaked.

It had already started to rain when our Ensign, his appointed task over, hastened down the village street to the cross-roads by the river by which the Brigade would come in.

There he found his fellow-billeters in the Brigade, each with his tale of dirty billets and leaky roofs and swarming flies, each with his story of the treachery of billeting lists, for the harvest surprise, our Ensign found, had been sprung on them all.

They waited patiently in the rain for hours. The traffic never ceased to pour into the village in a double stream, going in both directions to and from the battlefield, troops and guns and transport and ambulances and motor-cars. A red-capped sergeant of military police stood on point duty at the cross-roads, immutably calm and affable amid the confusion and the din; eternally side-tracking strings of horses, which were not allowed through the village, and which persevering grooms, well knowing the prohibition, hoped yet to be able to get through, patiently answering inquiries from dust-powdered lorry-drivers who had lost their way.

The shades of evening deepened gently amid a depressing drizzle, but still the Brigade did not come, still the traffic flowed past without a moment’s break.

“It looks as if the Brigade were not going to arrive until after dark!” said one of the Billeting Officers; “and in this squash there’ll be the most holy confusion--the Lord help us!”

A Grenadier subaltern, who had discovered a wayside café just past the cross-roads, led some of them to it. None of them had had anything more substantial than a sandwich since breakfast, and they demanded food. All that Madame could produce was a box of wafers, very sweet and sickly, which they ate with some excellent coffee which Madame prepared over the stove.

Outside night fell, muggy and wet. Then the Brigade transport, which had come by road, arrived, a long train of rumbling limbers, with the Transport Officers on horseback. They had no news of the Brigade, but a little later a staff car, which the Billeting Officers stopped, reported that it had passed “some Guards or other” on the road about two miles back.

And then at last they came ... at eight o’clock. The dark and the traffic notwithstanding, the Guards made their entry to the tap of drum, and, despite all forebodings, each battalion got safely tucked away in its billets. When he reached the mess our Ensign found that his brother officers had so many remarks to offer on the slowness of the train that had conveyed them, and the general inefficiency of railway transport in particular, that they altogether omitted to comment on the nature of the billets which he offered them.

Though the sleeping quarters were indescribably bad, the actual mess-room proved to be better than might have been expected. It was a room in a small farmhouse occupied by a Frenchwoman, whose husband was in the trenches, and who, after the gifted Apollo had talked to her a little in his most Parisian French, proffered her services as cook. And so, while the traffic rumbled, and the rain splashed down outside, they made a good dinner, and eventually repaired to their squalid lodging in excellent spirits. There they found their sleeping-valises spread on the dusty floor, and there they laid them down to sleep, promising to turn every available servant on to swabbing in the morning.

M---- proved itself to be every bit as bad as it had promised. The billets were positively filthy, and for days the battalions of the Brigade swept and garnished and burnt, filling in the rubbish pits which gaped, stinking, in every garden, and leaving a trail of chloride of lime behind them wherever they went. Fly-papers and fly-swatters proved illusive against the indomitable breeding energy of the flies, and only days of unremitting hard work contrived at length to abate this very disagreeable and very unhygienic pest.

It rained for days on end. In a few hours the deep dust of the road turned first to a thick morass of mud, and then into a liquid lake of slime which flowed across the gutters to the very gateways of the billets. To avoid wading in mud up to the ankles, the men built little causeways to bridge the gutters, using the bricks from the more dilapidated houses, and laying branches on top. Nearly all the billets leaked, and the yards, filthy as they always are abroad with a vast and sodden midden-heap in the centre, were ankle-deep in slush. What was possible to do with tarpaulin to stop the gaps in roofs and walls was done, but while the rain lasted the men had a very thin time, which they bore, as all men do in France, without grousing, reserving their grumbling for superficial and insignificant details, as is the way of the British soldier.

The billets were so bad and the weather continued to be so wet that a rum issue was ordered, though the season of the daily rum issues had not yet arrived. An officer superintended the issue of rum to each company, for the regulation is that each man must drink his tot on the spot where it is issued, in the presence of an officer--this to prevent hoarding and its attendant evils.

Accordingly, our Ensign found himself one wet evening attending the issue of rum to the company. On the floor of the barn stood a lighted candle, the centre of a number of mess-tins representing the portions of the different groups in the company. At our Ensign’s side was the Company Sergeant-Major with the rum-jars. Silent and expectant, the men stood all around and in the yard without.

The Company Sergeant-Major poured the rum out into the different tins, announcing as he did so the name of the recipients--“No. 5 Platoon,” “The Cooks,” “The Pioneers,” and so on. Then, after much shuffling about in the outer darkness, the men got formed up, mess-tin in hand; but before the first received his noggin, the Company Sergeant-Major put to our Ensign that time-honoured question, “Would he try a little drop?”

Rum on an empty stomach before dinner is not to be recommended, but our young man knew what was expected of him, and with suitable gratitude accepted the offer. About a mugful of raw spirit was thereupon poured out for him, greatly to his dismay, but he picked it up, and crying “Here’s luck!” drained it. The rum burnt his throat and brought the tears to his eyes, but he finished off the portion and held the mug upside down, as the men do, to show that it was empty--all this amid profound silence, with every man’s eye upon him. Then, one by one, the men emerged out of the gloom into the yellow circle of light, with outstretched tin or mug, received their portion, tossed it off, inverted their drinking vessel, and moved away, wiping their mouths on the backs of their hands. When every man had been served, the Company Sergeant-Major picked up the last tin, and, tipping it down for the officer to see the contents, said--

“For the sergeants and myself.”

This last portion was divided between them and consumed. Then the C.S.M., shaking the rum jar, said--

“There’s some left yet, sir.”

“Everybody had his tot?” asked our Ensign.

“Yes, sir,” was the reply.

“Right,” answered the officer; “tip the rest out!”

(For such is the inexorable rule of the Army: what is left over from a rum issue must be spilled. Rum does not keep.)

“Sir!” replied the C.S.M., and in obedience to the order he emptied a brown gush of the spirit upon the earthen floor under the sorrowful gaze of the men. Our Ensign would have gladly given them an extra tot all round, for the night was raw and chill, but an order is an order....

And now the Guards found themselves within measurable distance of the ultimate goal of all their wanderings, the Battle of the Somme. Day and night the little village street resounded to the tramp of marching columns, to the thunder of the jarring, quivering trains of ammunition lorries. In that cramped and crowded village the only parade-ground was the dirty courtyards of the different billets, where the most stentorian word of command would often be lost in the roar of traffic from the street.

But while the stream of men and munitions flowed unceasingly eastward towards the Somme, from the battlefield came daily reports of further successes. Every sign pointed to the imminent participation of the Guards in the great offensive. There were frequent conferences, and, day after day, the Guards marched out by platoons, by companies, by battalions, past the little military cemetery, past the vast camps stretching away to the horizon, past the gangs of grubby German prisoners working on the roads, to the training-ground, where the coming attack was rehearsed in every detail. There were field-days and night operations and lectures and several false alarms, ... warnings to be in readiness for immediate departure, which were afterwards cancelled.

A few days after the arrival of the Brigade at M----, the Guards’ Divisional Canteen turned up and installed itself in the main street, and was followed shortly afterwards by the Guards’ Divisional Cinema, which was set up in that very barn with shrapnel-riddled roof which our Ensign had rejected as a billet. Tarpaulin supplied the missing wall, a little gas-engine furnished the power, and on the many wet evenings that the Clerk of the Weather bestowed on the Guards at M----, “the pictures” proved a great attraction. There, on one of the rare fine afternoons, our Ensign and a large party of his friends sat in a stifling atmosphere and saw the Somme battle film. Save for a few gunners and sappers, the whole audience consisted of Guardsmen, and their comments on this celebrated series of pictures were instructive--for they made none. They only cheered and laughed every time “Fritz” was seen on the screen.

The Guards’ Divisional Baths--a travelling concern this, that plants itself in any empty building that seems adapted to the purpose, or, in default of such a building, erects its own premises--happened along with its array of tubs and heating apparatus and vast supplies of towels and clean shirts, socks, and underwear. Every day parties of men were marched down by an officer under a scheme that ensured to every man one bath a week.

There was much entertaining between the different Messes. Everybody was always dining out with one or other of the company Messes in the different battalions, with the Brigade machine-gunners, or with the Stokes Mortars, who are charming fellows, but whose propinquity in the trenches is unpopular owing to the disagreeable tendency of their murderous weapons to draw fire.

In the double-company Mess all went as merry as a wedding bell. Madame, in whose house the Mess was lodged, proved herself a jewel and cooked them wonderful omelettes and ragouts, and a _Potage Bonne Femme_ before which Escoffier himself would have doffed his hat. The Mess raged and wrangled and argued, as young men do the world over, but the underlying good fellowship was never disturbed. The past tense is ever a kindlier critic than the present, but our Ensign, looking back on those pleasant summer days, cannot recollect that there was a single discordant element in that little band of men.

But the sand in the hour-glass had all but run out. At last the word for their departure came. And Battalion Orders that evening closed with a significant paragraph. Under the heading Dress, it ran--

“The polishing of buttons and cap-stars is discontinued until further orders.”

_A bon entendeur, salut!_