VI. THE MOVE UP (2)
Our train journey did not promise to be a comfortable one. We were three aside on the seats of the first-class carriage and the disposition of legs was not easy. However, we all slept without much difficulty, and for six hours the train rumbled through the night to the accompaniment of snores and grunts. The day broke gloriously, and when we looked out of the windows we found ourselves going through a lovely bit of France. Breakfast was the next question; we had in our ration-box a tin of jam, a loaf and a half of bread, and two tins of sardines, also a packet of cocoa. This last possession did not look as though it was going to be particularly useful, as we had nothing but cold water in our bottles. We ate the sardines and bread and jam and took one or two unappetizing sips from our water-bottles. Then the train stopped, and looking out of the window I saw one or two men standing beside the engine with canteens in their hands. They handed up their tins to the driver, who filled them with boiling water from an exhaust pipe and they proceeded to make tea. Borrowing a couple of canteens from the next carriage I took the packet of cocoa and followed the men's example, so our breakfast was complete.
About noon we reached our destination, a pretty cathedral town in Northern France. After waiting a little while in a siding we detrained and marched off. The town was evidently not one of those which the Germans had entered, for it looked prosperous and well filled. The same sense of security pervaded the country through which we marched; we were, in fact, outside the zone of war. After following a straight white road out of the town for some four miles, we came to a village where we were to billet for the night. The village priest came forward to assist us in billeting, and the squire of the place sent over a present of wine for the officers and put up the Colonel and Adjutant in his house.
The next morning I borrowed a horse and rode in to ——, the town at which we had detrained. I had got from the mess president a list of things wanted for the officers' mess and proceeded to shop. Two dozen eggs were among the items on the list, and I had an opportunity of buying these from a farm cart in one of the streets leading to the town. A passer-by happened to overhear me making the bargain and upbraided the good woman selling me the eggs for charging too high a price. I could not quite follow the conversation, which took place in animated French, but I gathered that to ask a British soldier so much for eggs was no way for an ally to behave to a guest and brother-in-arms, and that the farmer's wife thought that passers-by should mind their own business.
This sense of hospitality which the passer-by had shown pervaded all my shopping transactions; the tradespeople were all cordial, obliging, and most moderate in their charges.
I lunched at the main hotel of the town, which was filled with all the nondescript and various personages who follow an army; there were gentlemen chauffeurs, Red Cross workers, interpreters, and one or two staff officials. At my table there was a clean-shaven, shrewd-looking man wearing the red tabs of staff, who spoke with a strong cockney accent, and did not give the impression of having been a soldier all his life. He said he was attached to general headquarters as spy officer, that is to say, he was responsible for discovering any espionage which went on in our lines. In civil life he looked as though he might be one of those private inquiry agents who advertise in the columns of the Press that they are ready to undertake divorce, financial, and other investigations of a confidential nature. I dare say this is what he was, and I am sure he was a very capable man for the position he held.
After lunch I had my hair cut and shampooed. It was delightful to sit in a hairdresser's chair again and taste some of the luxuries of civilization. I could not help envying the barber his peaceful occupation, which I dare say he is still pursuing and which I knew he would be doing long after I was out of reach of a machine brush and hair oil; and I thought, too, how much pleasanter it would be to be attached to headquarters staff as an espionage officer and have one's lunch in the restaurant of a hotel instead of eating bully and biscuits and dodging shells in a ditch. However, it was no good reflecting and becoming discontented with one's lot, and after completing my purchases I rode back to the village where the regiment was billeted.
Our last march was the longest of all, as we marched all through the night and did not get into the billets where we were to sleep till dawn the next morning. Evans and I shared a room in a cottage, and after eating some breakfast with some delicious coffee, which the woman the cottage belonged to made us, we flung ourselves down on mattresses on the floor and slept. It was past two when I woke, and I hurried off to the headquarters mess to see if there was any lunch left. Luckily the mess sergeant had kept some of the stew he had made for lunch and heated it up for me. After putting down this and half a bottle of wine, I made my way back to the cottage. A stretch of mossy grass under a shady tree looked inviting, and flinging myself down I was soon asleep again.
Some providence must have been watching over me that day, for I woke just ten minutes before the regiment marched off. No one had been able to find me when the order came to move, and they had decided to go off without me. I was glad I had just woken in time, for an officer does not look at his best chasing after a regiment by himself down a road because he has been asleep.
I joined up the group of officers who were sitting by the mess van making a hasty tea and stuffing their haversacks with biscuits.
"I should advise you to take some food," said the Adjutant to me, "this may be your last chance. We are going to march five miles, load up on motor-buses, and the transport is to be left behind."
"The transport to be left behind?" some one echoed.
"Yes," the Adjutant answered a little grimly. "We're for it again."
When a regiment parts with its transport it generally means it is going to fight. We had been with our transport for so many days now that it came as quite a thrill to hear we were to leave it behind. A feeling half of relief that we were going on with the business and half of apprehension came over me.
We marched for an hour or so; at seven o'clock we reached the point of rendezvous for the motor-buses, a long straight stretch of road running through open country just beyond a village. Just before we got to the point of rendezvous the regiment was divided up into parties of thirty men, and a gap of twenty yards left between each party. We did this on the march so that no time was lost in sorting out the different parties. When the last division had been made and all the proper distances between parties obtained, the leading party halted and the others halted behind. The men were then cleared to the right side of the road so that the fleet of motor-buses could come and each halt opposite its party, load up, and move off again with the whole regiment stowed away in no longer time than it took to load thirty men.
When we got to the rendezvous there were no motor-buses and we had to wait. The nights were turning cold; however, not knowing when the next chance might come, most of the men prepared to sleep. In the rush to get off at the start, I had left my greatcoat with the transport and had only a Burberry and a woollen waistcoat with me. I undid my Burberry, unrolled it, pulled out the waistcoat and put both on. Then I lay down by the side of the road, taking care to have a stout tree between myself and any possible motor-cars—a very wise precaution if one is sleeping by the roadside anywhere near the Front—slipped my haversack under my head and went to sleep. A haversack makes quite a good pillow, and when one is tired any piece of ground, which enables one to lie on one's back and take the weight off one's feet, seems soft, and I was soon asleep. Not for long though, as after half an hour I woke with icy feet. I stamped about to warm them, but the thought of going to sleep again and waking up in another half-hour for the same reason was tiresome, so I cast my eye round in the night for some means of keeping warm. I saw what looked like a stack and going up found it was so. While I was busy pulling hay out of the side to make a bed, the motor-buses arrived, and we proceeded to embark. Having got all the men into my bus I was climbing up by the driver on his seat when he shook his head and pointed to the interior of the vehicle, which was a seething mass of Tommies. I shook my head over this and it looked like an impasse, as the other officers were all being made to get inside by the different drivers. However, a knowledge of French and of the ready response of the Frenchman to geniality saved me. For, while pretending to agree to go inside I stood talking with him while we waited to start, offered him a cigarette, and asked him about his wife and family, with the result that when we did set off he said, "Montez, monsieur," and made room for me on the seat beside him. He said that every night he was driving troops from one part of the line or another—French troops generally, and it was interesting to hear the way in which the French troops used the motor-buses. The warmth of the engine having reached my feet I fell asleep and nodded and lurched beside him on the seat blissfully unconscious for I don't know how many hours and miles. Once on the journey we halted for a quarter of an hour in a small village. The driver got off the bus and disappeared. Presently he came back and beckoned to me to come with him. I followed him into a cottage where he and several other drivers had had prepared against their arrival hot coffee and rolls of bread and butter. It was extremely kind of the man to have let me in for this feast, which was quite a private affair, and I have seldom enjoyed a cup of coffee more. On we went again and off I went to sleep once more. At last, as day broke, we came to the village where we were to halt, climbed off the buses, and sat down by the roadside watching them roll away the way we had come to get more troops.
As we sat by the roadside we soon saw we were nearing more lively parts, for streams of refugees poured by all the time, flying in front of the advancing Germans who were pouring down in strength after the fall of Antwerp. We sat watching the refugees in silence. So this, then, was the reason for our leaving the Aisne and our long secretive seven days move.