With my regiment

by Arthur Mills

Having got the men settled I went off to find the officers' quarters. These proved to be the two lower rooms of an empty house. There was no furniture in the house at all, simply a thick layer of straw on the floor. However, it had been a long march, and the straw looked inviting enough. I got my valise off the transport, unrolled it in a corner, took off my boots and coat and slid into my sleeping-bag. Others did the same in different corners of the room. The room was not very well lighted, and one or two late comers, who stepped on people's faces or feet in their efforts to find a corner for themselves, came in for a good deal of abuse. In a quarter of an hour we were all sound asleep. When we woke in the morning we took stock of our quarters, and found they were not so sumptuous as tired limbs and thankfulness to be able to stretch ourselves out rolled up in blankets had led us to suppose. For by daylight we could see by inscriptions scratched on the walls that the last occupants of the place had been a company of the —th Regiment of Turcos. We had been sleeping in what for a time had been a barracks for native troops. On going outside the building and taking a stroll we discovered a pretty little château which the officers of another regiment had annexed for their use. They had all slept in beds, washed in comfort, and were having breakfast on a smooth green lawn, surrounded by flowers. We had nowhere to have breakfast except by the side of a wall outside the Turcos' house, and we felt we had done badly over our billets. However, the etiquette of billeting gave the château to the other regiment who had first taken it, and we had to put up with what we had got.

The next night we set out on the march again. The march was twenty miles, and proved a severe task for the men after their long spell in the trenches, coming as it did on top of the eighteen-mile march of the night before. It is always the second or third march which tells most on men, and after the first dozen of our twenty miles they began to fall out, till there was a long string of stragglers behind the brigade. In vain the company officers tried to keep their companies together, nothing could make the weary, footsore men keep their fours. Tired as some of the officers were themselves, it was a heavy strain passing up and down the company, stopping to issue "falling out" tickets and running on to catch up the column again. The hardest task of all fell to the subaltern who was detailed to bring up the rear party, and who was not allowed to come into billets until the last man was in. To this unfortunate officer fell the task of trudging along at half a mile an hour behind a group of dead-tired, limping, footsore men. He got into billets four hours after everybody else.

The officers' billets on this occasion were better than those of the night before, for we found a house which had been used by German officers when the town was in the enemy's hands. The house was large and comfortable, and belonged to the mayor of the town. It had been cleared of all valuables, but whether the mayor had done this himself before his departure, or the German officers had looted the place, I cannot say. From the look of things I should imagine that the mayor had taken away all he could and the Germans anything that was left. They had evidently broken open a writing-desk and some drawers, and scattered the contents all over the place. I was guilty of a little looting on my own account, as I found a tattered paper-covered copy of "Madame Bovary," and not having finished it when it was time to leave, slipped it in my haversack.

We again spent the day around the billets, and as we had a mail with a sack of parcels sent up with the ration convoy we had plenty to occupy ourselves. On active service washing is not necessarily done before breakfast. It is too elaborate a ceremony to be done in a hurry. First a complete outfit has to be got together; one may have a razor but no shaving-brush, or a piece of soap but no towel, or a hairbrush but no comb; possibly one has nothing at all, in which case one is treated as a general nuisance, and borrows from others with difficulty. But, as a rule, with a depleted cleaning outfit of, say, a razor, a comb and a bit of sponge, the rest can be collected and spread out on a towel. The toilet is then a leisurely process, after which, feeling very clean and fresh and superior, one strolls across to the mess van in one's shirtsleeves for a glass of vermouth and a cigarette. After washing there were the letters brought in by the mail to answer, and then lunch and a couple of hours' sleep.

At dusk we moved off again, this time for a very short march, for four miles brought us to our destination, and we were only moved on a little way in order to make room for other troops following on behind.

A night in the village and off we started once more. At one point we passed our Divisional General. From the cheery greeting one of his staff officers gave me I surmised something was on foot, and this conjecture proved right, for on reaching a town ten miles distant our billeting orders were suddenly cancelled, and we were told to go on another four miles and entrain. The remainder of the way led through the forest of Compiègne. It was a bright moonlight night, and the forest by night was incomparably lovely. With moonlight playing quietly through the branches it was hard to believe that the forest had ever held troops creeping from tree-trunk to tree-trunk seeking to take each other's lives. In the earlier days of the war we could imagine rival cavalry patrols stealing quietly towards each other along the grass-turfed, shady side of the broad white road, and many a small, bloody encounter must those old trees have seen.

We came on the siding where we were to entrain in a piece of open common. It took some manipulation to get forty men into each truck, but at last we all settled in, a bugle was blown, and we stole away towards the north.

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.