CHAPTER II[ToC]
THE TREK THROUGH BELGIUM
My first experience of billeting was sufficient to prove the very arbitrary character of the whole proceeding. Imagine some one hundred and fifty men, and twelve officers, suddenly appearing in a small outlying street of the far-famed Belgian city, at the untimely hour of 4 a.m., and all clamouring for a night's lodging. To begin with, it was not an easy matter to arouse the slumbering people; and the billeting party had to wait long before each door, ere slippered feet were heard along passages, and drowsy voices inquired suspiciously as to our business; then appeared more or less clad figures, who gazed anxiously at the cloaked men standing at the door (for the Germans lay at the back of every mind). However, the talismanic charm of 'Englishmen' did wonders. It was 4.30 a.m. before I tumbled into an extremely comfortable bed, and had barely laid my head upon the pillow—so it seemed—when a great knocking at the door aroused me with a start from vivid dreams of home, as an orderly entered the room with the alarming statement that the column was moving off in ten minutes. It was seven o'clock, and I felt inclined for another twelve hours in bed; there were no ablutions that morning. A flying leap into my clothes; a most indiscriminate packing of my valise, which I left my servant struggling with, in an inexperienced attempt to roll it up correctly, and I swallowed a cup of coffee which my kind hostess had provided for me (why is coffee always so hot when one is in a hurry?), and I mounted my horse in the nick of time to fall in with my column as it moved off.
It was a long weary march over a very flat country, intersected with dykes, and only broken by the ubiquitous poplar trees; and one had ample time to think, and sometimes doze, as we marched along on our twenty-five mile trek. At the midday halt, a little diversion enlivened the proceedings in the shape of pulling two bogged horses out of a narrow cut where they had been 'watered.' We managed with the help of ropes and planks to get the poor brutes on to terra firma again, more dead than alive.
Then on and on, hour after hour, halting ten minutes each hour for a needed breather and rest, until Ostend hove in sight. Visions of a comfortable billet rose before one's luxurious mind, but no such luck; right through the city we marched, finding the station square crammed with terror-stricken and most wretched-looking refugees; until, some four miles out, we lighted upon the most filthy and forsaken place to be found on the map of civilization—Steene. The houses were so vile and malodorous, that it was with great reluctance the O.C. allowed the men to enter. By this time it was very dark and very cold, and it was with purely animal instinct that we found the way to our mouths in the darkness, and tried to make believe that we enjoyed the biscuit and bully beef which formed our rations.
Then came the somewhat important question of where to sleep. I deemed myself among the fortunate in securing a stretcher, and dossed in a transport wagon; a tired man might have a worse bed than that, and I slept the sleep of the weary and, as I would fain hope, of the righteous.
The following morning, as it seemed likely that we should remain at Steene for at least another day, I cast round for something more comfortable in the way of a billet, and had secured three rooms at the worthy Burgomaster's for the O.C., Mr. Jaffray and myself, and was about to enjoy a more or less comfortable tea in the open, when an orderly rode up with orders to trek back to Bruges.
In a few minutes the camp was struck, and once more we moved on. I felt that I could enter into the spirit of the well-known refrain—