It was a quiet life. There was very little soldiering, and that, as some one said, was more like manœuvres in the millennium than anything else. Everywhere corn was offered for our horses and wine for ourselves, but there was a great fear underlying the quiet. We were constantly asked whether the Germans would ever get to Vadencourt, and always said we were quite sure they would not. We used to mess at the inn close to my house. Of French troops we saw practically nothing, except our two interpreters, Charlot, who talked very good English, and Bernard, a butcher from Havre, a most excellent fellow, who was more English than the English, though he could only talk a few words of the language. There was also another interpreter, head master of a girls’ school in Paris. He said to me: “Vous trouverez toutes espèces d’infames parmi les interprets, même des M.P.s.”
One day Hugo said that it would be interesting, before going into battle, to have our fortunes told. I told him he could not get a fortune-teller at Vadencourt. “Not at all, there is one in the village; I saw it written over her shop, ‘Sage Femme’.” ... I was very comfortable in my house, which was just out of bounds, but not enough to matter.
Monsieur Louis Prevot came in one day, with a beautiful mare, brown to bay, Moonshine II, by Troubadour out of Middlemas. He said that she could jump two metres. Her disadvantages were that she jumped these two metres at the wrong time and in the wrong place, that she hated being saddled and kicked when she was groomed: while Monsieur Prevot was showing me how to prevent her kicking she kicked right through the barn door. I bought her for £40. I think Prevot thought that the French authorities were going to take his stables and that I was his only chance. When she settled down to troops she became a beautiful mount.
That day I went with Hickie through Etreux to Boué, foraging. I drove with a boy called Vanston behind a regular man-killer. It was far worse than anything that happened at Mons. Vanston talked all the time of the virtue of Irishwomen, of the great advantage of having medals and the delight old men found in looking at them, of the higher courage of the unmarried man and his keen anxiety to get into battle, and of the goodness of God. Hickie was upset because he thought that the man-killing horse was going to destroy the Maltese cart, which was, apparently, harder to replace than Vanston or me.
The night before we left the Colonel gave us a lecture. As an additional preparation for the march we were also inoculated against typhoid, which made some people light-headed.
We left Vadencourt on August 19th, Hickie and Hubert both ill, travelling on a transport cart. I rode ahead, through pretty and uneventful country. At Oisy, Hickie was very ill, and I got him some brandy. We were to camp beyond Oisy. When we got to the appointed place the Maire was ill and half dotty. S. and I laboured like mad to find houses, but at last, when our work was finished we found that they had already been given to the Coldstreamers. Some of the people were excellent. One old fellow of seventy wept and wished that his house was as big as a barn, that he might put up the soldiers in it. A rough peasant boy took me round and stayed with us all the afternoon and refused to take a penny. But some of them were not so kind. In the end, billets were not found for a number of officers and men, who slept quite comfortably in the new-mown hay. We passed a big monastery where two Germans, disguised as priests, had been taken and shot the week before. I slept in a house belonging to three widows, all like stage creatures. They had one of the finest cupboards I have ever seen.
The next morning (August 20th) we marched off to Maroilles—a big dull town, and again some of the people were not overpleased to see us. Here we had an excellent dinner. I slept at a chemist’s. Hickie was sent back from Maroilles to Amiens with rheumatic fever. We got up at 4 o’clock the next morning (August 21st), and had a pretty long march to Longueville by Malplaquet.
As we crossed the frontier the men wanted a cheer, but they were ordered to be quiet, “so as not to let the Germans hear them.” This order gave an unpleasant impression of the proximity of the Germans.
The men began to fall out a great deal on the road. The heat was very great. Many of the reservists were soft, and their feet found them out. Their rough clothes rubbed them. Tom carried rifles all day, and I carried rifles and kit on my horse, while the men held on to the stirrups.
By this time the Maires of France seemed to be growing faint under the strain of billeting. We never saw the Maire of Longueville. The country made a wonderful picture that I shall never forget. We marched past fields of rich, tall grass, most splendid pasture, and by acres and acres of ripe corn which was either uncut or, if cut, uncarried.