The subaltern then asked the sergeant if he had a map!
What was even more curious, the sergeant said yes. The subaltern said we had to get to a place called Flêtre within three quarters of an hour and they proceeded to try and find it on the sergeant’s map without any success for perhaps five minutes.
During that time the troopers around me made remarks in undertones, most ribald remarks. We had come through Flêtre the previous day and I remembered the road. So I turned to a lance-corporal on my right and said, “Look here, I know the way. Shall I tell him?”
“Yes, tell him for Christ’s sake!” said the lance-corporal. “It’s too perishin’ cold to go on sitting ’ere.”
So I took a deep breath and all my courage in both hands and spoke. “I beg your pardon, sir,” said I. “I know Flêtre.”
The subaltern turned round on his horse. “Who knows the place?” he said.
“I do, sir,” and I told him how to get there.
Without further comment he gave the word to advance in half sections and we left the parade ground, but instead of turning to the left as I had said, he led us straight on at a good sharp trot.
More than half an hour later, when we should have been at the pin point in Flêtre, the subaltern halted us at a crossroads in open country and again had a map consultation with the sergeant. Again it was apparently impossible to locate either the crossroads or the rendezvous.
But in the road were two peasants coming towards us. He waited till they came up and then asked them the way in bad German. They looked at him blankly, so he repeated his question in worse French. His pronunciation of Flêtre puzzled them but at last one of them guessed it and began a stream of explanations and pointings.