Before leaving Albert, the Quartermaster aroused the wrathful indignation of the C.Q.M.S.’s by the issue of a quantity of clothing and equipment which had been applied for at Henencourt. Many of the men for whom it was intended had now become casualties, but that made no difference to the Quartermaster’s stores of the Civil Service Rifles. The most important article of clothing was the clean shirt which was issued just before leaving Albert. The troops had not had a clean shirt for many weeks, and the one they discarded was naturally somewhat the worse for wear. One C.Q.M.S. on inquiring at the Orderly Room what should be done with the old shirts was told by an Orderly Room clerk to burn them. The clerk was trying to be funny, but the Q.M.S. missed the point of his humour, and all Companies thereupon threw their old shirts on the dust heap. When he was demobilised some years later the C.Q.M.S. was still explaining to the authorities why he had destroyed his ultra lousy shirts.

The train journey from Albert to Longpré is surely a record even for the R.O.D. A distance of just over thirty miles was covered in the astonishingly short time of twenty-six hours, during which time many men had left the train, dined in Amiens, visited the local cinema, and still caught the train up again without being recorded as absent. Indeed, during one part of the journey there seemed to be more men walking than were riding. At the same time every one seemed conscious of the fact that he had said good-bye to the dreaded Somme battlefield, so few felt disposed to complain of the shortcomings of the R.O.D.

After detraining at Longpré, two happy days were spent in the village of Villers-sous-Ailly. The men received a hearty welcome from the natives and M. le Maire, who seemed to be the greatest French authority on the organisation of an English infantry battalion. This worthy was very popular with the billeting party, for he had his village completely mapped out, and could tell them whether a particular barn was big enough to hold a platoon, a section, or a Lewis gun team.

The Battalion returned to Longpré on the 16th of October and entrained for Caestre, which was reached in the early hours of the following morning, whence a long and uninteresting march brought the Battalion to scattered billets outside the village of Boeschepe, and after another long march on the 19th, the Civil Service Rifles relieved the 16th Battalion Australian Infantry in support to what was called the Bluff Sub-sector (or Canal Sub-sector) south of Ypres, and close to what had once been the Ypres-Comines canal.

CHAPTER XII
A REST CURE IN THE YPRES SALIENT

To those whose memories of Ypres are only associated with thoughts of mud and slaughter, and who at the mention of the word “Salient” instinctively think of the horrors of Passchendaele, the Menin Road and Hooge, it will seem incredible that there was a time during the war when the Ypres Salient was peaceful and quiet, a place where Divisions, shattered on the Somme, came for recuperation.

It was in such a state that the 47th Division found the Ypres Salient in October, 1916, and after what had been endured in the previous month, it was particularly welcome.

In the Civil Service Rifles reconstruction had only just begun. No drafts had reached the Battalion, which was very much below strength. Some Companies had only one officer, the Company Commander, and practically no N.C.O.’s above the rank of Lance-Corporal. It was well, therefore, that there was no fighting and the sound of a shell was the exception rather than the rule.

The Division had had no experience of trench warfare for some months, and when the Civil Service Rifles on the 24th of October, 1916, relieved the Post Office Rifles in the front line in what was called the Ravine, a section of the Bluff Sector, they found several features of trench warfare which were quite new to them.

In the first place, each Company had a cookhouse in the trenches, and the Company cooks came in with their Companies and cooked all the meals on the spot. Rations were pushed up almost to Company Headquarters in trucks along a light railway, and there was a dump of R.E. material actually in the Battalion area. These were all amenities of trench life hitherto unknown, and all helped to convey the idea that the Civil Service Rifles were making a new start in life. These conditions helped materially to restore the confidence and fighting spirit of troops who were rapidly approaching the “fed-up” state.