There were many informal “celebrations” of the completion of the first year in France during a very pleasant fortnight spent in Lillers, where, in spite of intense cold and much snow, all ranks contrived to be merry and to forget the war, except for the various alarms, notably the two days’ stand-to in billets for Verdun.
A typical Company “celebration” held at the Restaurant Picot on the 27th of February has been recorded:—
“Covers were laid for 40. Our spirits were high and our appetites huge as we tucked into two helpings each of soup, sardines, tongue, chicken and peas, fruit, blanc mange and dessert. At 6.0 p.m. we could toast each other in French beer, cheap champagne and port.
“During some of the courses, Cooper, Lawman and others warbled sweetly at the piano, and by the time the dessert course was reached, the fun had become fast and furious. Old Picot himself, a fat and jovial Frenchman of 50, danced and frolicked with the youngest.
“There were no speeches made or toasts drunk to those whose faces we so sadly missed at the festive board, but was it altogether fancy that made us feel their presence?”
The occasions on which an infantry soldier in France was able to have a bath were so few and far between in these early days, that the event was usually recorded in the official Regimental War Diary. In the mining districts advantage was generally taken of the civilian baths at the mine heads, but sometimes the Divisional baths were installed in breweries, electric light works, or, in fact, anywhere near a water main. The baths naturally could not be near the billets of all units in the Division, so that a bath was often preceded and succeeded by a long march in full marching order at a most inconvenient time of day.
These objections were ultimately overcome in the Civil Service Rifles by Lieutenant-Colonel Segrave, who brought canvas baths from London, won a Soyer stove or two from Ordnance, and instituted the Civil Service Rifles baths, which were open daily whenever the Battalion was out of the line.
FESTUBERT CHURCH,
May, 1915.
MACHINE-GUN POSITION,
GIVENCHY,
April, 1915.