"I've got a fine breakfast for you," said the Quartermaster, "bacon and eggs and sausages."
We were glad to hear it. Meals for the past week had been scrappy affairs. Since we had parted company with our transport we had none of us tasted a hot dish of any description. Cold bacon and bread for breakfast, cold bully and cheese for lunch, cold bully and cheese again for supper. Good enough nourishment, of course, for anyone, and nice enough at the time to eat, but still a real steaming dish of bacon and eggs did sound delicious.
We soon came to the village where the brigade was to be billeted in reserve. It lay in a curve of a winding valley which ran down into the main valley of the river. The billets were allotted by companies, so much cottage and farm space being given to each company commander for his company. To those who read these lines in England the quarters allotted to men back for a few days rest from trenches may not sound very grand. My company had, for instance, a stable, two farm outbuildings, and a sort of underground cellar which was approached by a narrow arch—to crawl through which the men had to go on hands and knees—and which looked just like the kennels of a pack of foxhounds. The stable, the cellar, and the outhouses were bare except for a layer of straw. However, to the men these places seemed amply satisfying. They meant warmth at night, shelter from rain, and soft dry lying. It was the first rest the men had had for some while. Many of them had lost their greatcoats, cardigans, and woollen underclothing, owing to the exigencies of actual fighting, and had had nothing to add to their scanty clothing as they lay out in the open during the cold nights. They crowded joyfully into their billets as Goyle and I and Evans went round allotting so much space to each platoon.
Having arranged for the men we now looked round for quarters for ourselves. Goyle, whose natural inclinations for Spartan simplicity were being rapidly fanned to a mania by active service, suggested that he and Evans and I should share the stone-slabbed floor of the lower room of a cottage which looked out on a manure yard. Evans, always anxious to please, was quite agreeable to this, and set to work with a broom to sweep out the yard, but I broke away from the arrangements and went to look for quarters for myself.
After a short search I came on Mulligan, who had found some quite good quarters in a cottage. He had got a small bedroom leading off the owner's room, and suggested that the apple-loft on the same floor would do for me if I had one of the mattresses from his bed. I therefore sent Jenkins for my kit and set up house with him.
The 35-lb. kit which officers are allowed to keep with the transport meets all requirements on active service. As first bought and taken out from England it is a most immaculate and neatly arranged affair, but after a fortnight's jolting around in the wagons and a few hurried packings and unpackings it becomes a mere bundle containing a few cherished necessities. My valise held a sleeping-bag, two shirts, two pairs of socks, a pair of boots, a pair of trousers, some slippers, a few sticks of chocolate and a tin of tobacco. However, as Jenkins unpacked I watched it with the complacency of a man regarding his home. A bucket of cold water and a canteen of hot were next produced, and from the sleeping-bag my toilet set—razor, shaving brush, cake of soap, comb, and toothbrush—wrapped in a towel; and removing my coat and boots and puttees I sat down on the valise and shaved. A bath followed in the bucket and then getting into clean socks and shirt and putting on the slippers and trousers for greater comfort, I combed my hair and surveyed myself with satisfaction in a small pocket mirror. Burnt by the sun and hardened by outdoor life, I certainly have never felt fitter in all my life.
It was now about noon, and Mulligan and I strolled across to the mess. The mess consisted chiefly of "Black Maria," a small lumbering van which the mess sergeant had bought for two pounds in Belgium at the beginning of the war, and which carried all our provisions. We were only able to gather round "Black Maria" at such times of comparative peace as being in billets or on the march behind the firing-line, but her presence on the scene always meant a scale of meals and comfort undreamed of in the trenches. Bacon and eggs came from her inside, and joints and vegetables, cocoa, tea, jam, bread, butter, biscuits, also vermouth, whisky and other stimulating drinks. It was wonderful the amount she held.
We found "Black Maria" had been drawn up in the yard of a farm. A long trestle-table was set outside the front door of the farm, and several officers were sitting round this untying parcels and reading letters which had been sent out in a mail from England.
Over a fire on the far side of "Black Maria" the mess sergeant and his assistants were cooking lunch.
With the parcels which had just arrived from England there was now a plentiful supply of cigarettes, tobacco, socks, and underclothing for everybody, and while we sat waiting for lunch various exchanges were made between officers: a pair of socks for twenty-five cigarettes, an electric torch for a new briar pipe, and so on. Others, who had more of the same things sent than they wanted, put them into a box reserved for general use, from which any officer could take anything that he wanted. The parcels of officers who had been wounded and gone home were opened unceremoniously and their contents divided among the survivors.