2nd December ’15
A quiet day of rest and cleaning up. And much did we appreciate it. We did not wake till 7.30, nor breakfast till 9.30 a.m. A regular treat. Afterwards we rotted [illegible] about, written letters, instituted various improvements for our convenience and generally had a lazy day. This evening three platoons went out, under Murray, trench-digging. They were shelled and it rained very heavily so in the end they came back. Bowly took a section out to put up some wire, got under machine gun fire, and very wet dodging it, so had to come in too. Altogether I am glad I was prevented from going with them. I had to see the E. Lancs about tomorrow’s programme and that kept me till fairly late.
Shelmerdine and Prince have gone out to dinner this evening with the men they messed with in the trenches. So we have pinched their fire and am now sitting by it having pigged a Maconochie ration, a tin of sardines, Penau, a pound of jam, a loaf of bread and half a bottle of OO whiskey.x We are now fed to repletion and are sitting, well-fed and happy, before our stolen fire yarning and getting more and more sleepy. It is grand to think that you are going to sleep both dry and warm. It fairly braces you. We little appreciate in our ordinary lives what home comforts mean. A man may thank his God every night for his blankets and the good roof over him. Yet I know he won’t any more than will I when the war is over and we get back to our firesides, our slippers, sheets, hot toddy, hot water, baths and carpeted floors. It is perhaps easy to philosophize when one has not got them handy but, once one is amongst them, it is damned hard not to take them as only your fair due from the world.
3rd December ’15
It is always a source of wonder to me to watch the power practical experience gives a man when imparting knowledge to others. In my little time I daresay I have been lectured as much as any and more than most by johnnies who have been entrusted with the thankless task of improving my mind. Many of these oases of boredom have endeavoured safely to pass by resort to the strengthening arm of Morpheus,xi others I have endured with a dull eye and rebellious heart, but I do not remember ever having the faintest desire to sink so low when the man who spoke did so from knowledge born of what he had actually done himself. And Captain Woodgate was like that today when he spoke to us. Much he told us we already knew and there was much which we did not but whether he spoke of familiar or unfamiliar things, he held us just the same because we felt he had done and seen those things of which he spoke. He is a good fellow and a fine man and once again I must record our feeling for the E. Lancs. They have done all they can for us, no trouble has been too much for them and I trust we will all benefit from their example and experiences.
We have finished our paths today. They are broad brick fairways through a sea of mud and are very clean and dry and comforting. Did we stay here a week or two I feel sure the château would become something of home from home. Certainly we have an affection for our stable and as for the old rat who sports about my carcase of a night I feel that he and I would become firm friends in time were it not for his bad habit of pinching our scanty cheese. That one little failing will, however, yet prove his undoing do we but remain here long enough. There is almost an element of sadness in the thought. Sadness, that is, for the rat.
4th December ’15
D Company has come out of the trenches today very muddy, very wet but quite cheery and safe. They have had rather a tough time from the rain and trench mortars. The latter have pounded the trenches without cessation for two days but without effecting a single casualty. This afternoon our guns set about them in retaliation and have pounded their lines most unmercifully. I hope they have laid out a few of the beggars.
I got working parties of the Coy. going first thing this morning and cleaned up billets and lit fires for D coming in. Poor devils they were grateful for the job, the fires putting new life into them.
Tomorrow we turf out at 7.45 am to march some 15 miles back. I believe we march on again the next day to reserve billets where I trust we may stay a while and get thoroughly cleaned up.
Tonight I am going to dinner with the CO of the E. Lancs and am looking forward to it. All the other of our officers are pigging with D Company in our billet on tinned grub and whiskey. The E. Lancs fellows are coming up later to say farewell and I have no doubt if we do not watch it but that we will march out of Mesnil with fat-heads in the morning. Never mind, it’s worth it when you have bumped into jolly good pals.
5th December ’15
Sixteen miles march today [to Puchevillers].xii And a long sixteen they were, what with wet great-coats, mud-laden, feet still wet and puttees hard-caked with trench clay. Still, we are here now and right for a night’s rest in good billets which is a reward one gets to look forward to with amazing keenness. The men are all comfortably tucked down on good, clean straw and the officers are in various cottages with a little mess room in an old lady’s cottage. We have a fire, a bottle [of] vin blanche [sic] and the old Madame to chatter to us about her boy who is fighting in the Argonne.
It is quite interesting, quite warm and produces in one that grand feeling of happy sleepiness which a hard day’s slog always produces.
We have left our good friends the East Lancs but I trust only for the time and that we may meet again one of these fine days. They were most decent to me last evening and I must once more speak of all their kindnesses to us.
Young Shelmerdine has done well again today. He always turns up trumps when it is wanted of him and I think he will do well before this job is over.
We move on again first thing tomorrow morning for another dose but I hope by then we will be finished for a time so that the men may get dry, have a bath and get their clothes cleaned. They do wonderfully, the men, putting up with every inconvenience and discomfort cheerfully and slogging along on their flat feet to the end. The battalion has had a good dose of graft ever since we landed, as good a dose as any could have had but every time it has got [at] them, and that is everything. The Manchesters are all right and the 22nd one of their best battalions.
And now to bed to the sleep of the just. I share my couch with Prince so at least we will be warm.
6th December ’15
Another march today [to Candas]. It was only ten miles but it very nearly beat the men, already tired and worn out as they were. Old B got rather messed up this morning through Murray getting mixed over some order about great-coats with the Brigade Sergeant-Major. They got them off for the wagons to carry only to find that idea was off. We therefore had to put them on again, which made us late and the CO left us to follow on by ourselves. This we did to the best of our ability and eventually arrived at this village just on the tail of the battn. The Coy had been near beat but they bucked up to pass the other Coys, swinging along at a great rate and singing. Only we, their officers, knew how done the poor devils were. But they have a good sleep before them tonight and, as we are here for a fortnight at least, we hope to be right as rain and a thoroughly fit battalion before that time is out. And no doubt we shall be.
7th December ’15
I stole an hour this afternoon and rode out towards Canaples for a look round and to forget the battalion and the war and for a little time to imagine that you were with me and that we had the open countryside to stroll through as so often we have done in the dear days before all the world were soldiers. It is pretty country out this road, especially to the left where the ground slopes down into a little valley the sides of which are dotted with clumps of larch and birch and other such spidery limbed, delicate trees. I turned off the highway out there and Lizzie and I strolled down the slopes to the valley’s foot where we wandered along the edge of the woods cut off from all sight of man’s handiwork and with only the wood-pigeons and the magpies for company. It was all damp and clean-looking, fresh and peaceful – one of the few pretty spots I have yet seen in France – and it cleared my head and made me happy and sent me back to my work refreshed.
I thought of you as we strolled there, Lizzie with her reins slack wandering where she wou
ld and at her own pace and I longed that you could have been with me, for I know how you would have loved it and how happy we two would have been.xiii The green rides of Epping came back to me in a flash. You in that black spotted muslin dress you used to wear looking cool and lovely so that I just asked nothing more than to walk along and gaze at you dumbly, like any simple country lout gazes at his maid.
It is a strange world. Here I am in the midst of men, of work and dirt and close to fire and steel and sudden death. My heart should be fired with martial ardour, I should have no thought for anything but the fighting I am paid for but instead my whole being is filled to the exclusion of all else with the thought of you, dear heart, of our darling Baby and of the happiness which has been ours.
We are here I hear for about three weeks and already seem to have returned to our wonted routine. The Army is wonderful. One day it strains and strives and fights with blood and noise and dirt predominant, the next it returns to all its old starch and buckram and curses a man for a dirty boot whom the day before it had loved though he was mud-caked to his eyebrows in the trenches.
8th December ’15
We are now filled with ambition as house builders. Orders have arrived that we are to look out suitable buildings and convert them into fit habitations for L’Armée Brittanique, which is to feed, wash and sleep in them at its own sweet will and get strong and dangerous ready for the ever-recurring ‘new offensive in the Spring’. It is most interesting, and no end of a problem. We have one hammer per company, the promise of some wood, 25 yards of waterproof canvas for the battalion, a limited supply of chloride of lime, and 12lbs of nails. And thus armed we set forth, [illegible] is ordered, to produce four Ritz hotels replete with every comfort for the soldiers of the King. I ask you! Truly if it is accomplished, as I have no doubt it will be, my admiration for the Army will go up by leaps and bounds. If only we had some bundles of firewood and a screw or two the outlook might be more rosy. But 12lbs of nails, a hammer and 25yds of felt! I ask you!!!xiv
We have been to see D Company again tonight and have gambled. Naughty boys! Yet somehow I do not feel so naughty as I might have done had I not won 28 francs.
9th December ’15
The house building continues, but very slowly. Up to now it has been mostly talk. In a day or two, however, we really expect to do something, and, personally, I am consumed with a fiendish desire to use up those 12lbs of nails. I feel that to smite lustily upon a nail would furnish some outlet for the awful amount of energy which is fast accumulating within me and causing me, in common with the rest, to fret and fume at the idleness which is now being forced upon us.
Rumour appears to be rife in Manchester that we, their darling ‘Pals’, have suffered heavy casualties. Save the mark. I should think it must have originated in some poor devil in another battalion dying of ennui. That is the only way I can account for it.
It is raining again. It always rains here. For that reason I can never understand why they haven’t a river or two knocking around. But they haven’t, nor even a decent stream. I haven’t seen running water, save the Somme, since we landed. It is rather remarkable when one thinks of it. They seem quite content with their village ponds, which are apparently kept going by the drainage from the ‘middens’, and from which the horses and cattle drink, apparently thriving thereon and so producing a somewhat pleasurable example of perpetual motion.
10th December ’15
I am something of a hero today. When I have screwed up my courage to a point where it permits one to face officials, who present forms which I fill up and sign, always feel that I am. And today I have sent off a parcel to you. That entailed a three mile ride, which was joyous, and an interview with a postal official and yellow forms, which was not. And to think that all this writing and signing was all around nothing more offensive than the poor, little, shell-chipped and harmless statuette of St Joseph which I had brought from the old ruined château, of affectionate memory.
And I got hot and excited about it, entered things in the wrong places and had to rewrite the forms, so that I feel sure I have aroused the suspicions of the post people and it is doubtful if the parcel will ever reach you after all. Oh, dear, it is terrible, this war.
We have orders today that we are to split up as a Division and mix ourselves with others which have been out longer.xv It is a good thing and shows wisdom in the higher command which decreed it. It means stiffening for us in action and the fillip for the older crowd which the introduction of young, fresh and keen troops always produces.
We don’t know when we move yet, and it may not be for a long time but the news is something in that it shows we are not forgotten. It has bucked us all up wonderfully.
I have just heard that I do not get my company back till Monday. Two more days of this sickening idleness. It does not suit me at all. I am like a childless wife, peevish and ill content through having nothing on my hands to look after.
11th December ’15
It has rained again today, the 10th day in succession. They say you can get accustomed to anything. Perhaps you can, I do not know. All I can vouch for is that we do not get used to the rain. We only strafe it the more with each succeeding day of humidity. I had your letter today in which you say you have not heard from me since Nov 30th. I cannot understand it unless the Censor has been busy at the Base and I have unwittingly been too communicative.
Don Murray and I went out into the country by ourselves this afternoon and forgot building operations and rest billets and every other such objectionable thing in trying to shoot crows with our revolvers. Needless to say we did not succeed. But it took us completely out of ourselves and was therefore quite a success.
12th December ’15
The doctor came in to see me this morning on his way to Canaples and I decided to saddle up and go with him, the fresh breeze and stronger sunlight of the morning tempting me more strongly than the exhortations of the padre. So off we went, trotting along together down the open road, with the far-flung uplands on either side, the tempting curves of the road to lure us on, the buffeting breeze to set our blood a-tingling and the stronger sun to burn our spirits up with the joy of the morning. With such a morn as this was, with a good nag between his knees, a good friend at his side, with the merry clatter of hoofs in his ear and the open road before him, a man were surely but a common glutton if he asked more in an hour of his life?
We rattled under the railway bridge, where a picturesque but unsoldierly French territorial stood on guard, through Montrelet and Fieffes and so down the valley road to Canaples.
I found Prince there in good form but the others were out cutting wood.xvi Canaples must be noted. It has a stream, let that sink in. Also it is the proud possessor of a railway station, two street lamps, a milk refinery and a château. Canaples is some village in these parts and is typically French in that it has a café wherein two young ladies dispense drinks or, just as readily, photographs of themselves in the nude. Truly it is a pleasing country.
It was not possible for me to sample either of the chief wares of the café but I understand it has been overcrowded by my depraved company since the woodcutting commenced and the only reason any of its stock is still in the possession of its proprietors is the acute penury of my high-minded privates, who have not been paid for over a fortnight. I had intended paying them this morning but a wise providence decreed that I should forget the Acquittance Roll. Thus a prolonged moral depravity has by happy chance been avoided.
I have just discovered one reason why streams are so scarce. There are no field drains here, nor any attempt at ditching. Hence when it rains the water just lies on the surface till, in good time, it soaks in. Very simple and very rotten. Even the uplands are a bog.
13th December ’15
The Coy has come back and I feel a happier man than I have done for days. They blew in this morning looking dirty and wet and were at once turned loose to clean up & have an easy. And not before they wanted it, I’ll be bound. The b
ig majority have not had a half-hour to themselves since they landed in France. I think it a mistake. ‘All work and no play’ is a very true axiom and I certainly know the men do twice the work after a day’s holiday.
Tomorrow I am going to let them have the day to themselves, even though the general is coming around. That may not be strictly military but it certainly is common sense, a factor one meets remarkably seldom in this game. I may be a heretic, certainly I am wrong to do so, but I cannot help but both see and feel that there is a vast wastage in this army of ours. Not, I mean, of materials or stores – for the distribution of such things is wonderfully organised – but of men and brains. Initiative is asked for, but woe to the man who displays it. Opinions are sometimes sought – but apparently with the sole idea of making an opportunity for the airing of some higher grade’s scheme, already settled in his own mind. So that one feels – and somewhat resents it – that there is humbug about and that one is being looked upon as more or less of a fool. One does not like being thought a fool, even though one has no claim to genius.
If I were alone in this I might be thought that unutterable thing – a man with a grievance. But I am not alone. All our officers feel as I do. And when thirty active business brains feel like that surely it were but foolishness to deny justification.xvii
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