Football matches were allowed, and were daily fought out between the various regimental teams.
General Robertson succeeded General Murray as Chief of the Staff at G.H.Q., a change generally welcomed, as Robertson was held in very high esteem throughout the Army. Many of us considered him the greatest man the British Army had produced throughout the campaign. That is certainly how I should describe him.
[CHAPTER II.]
Broken car springs on February 1st took me to Poperinghe, where a Belgian carriage-maker made a villainous repair for a considerable charge.
Motor car repairs were fearfully and wonderfully executed at the front in the earlier stages of the war. The G.H.Q. shops were not bad, and once in a while I found clever, conscientious young chaps in charge of a road-side repair shop attached to a division, an ammunition supply column, or some such unit, who had managed to organise a very creditable "first-aid and emergency hospital" for the ills a car was heir to.
All too often some A.S.C. officer in charge, however, knew as little of the mechanism of an automobile and how to put it in order as one could well imagine. I remember one youth, possessed of a wonderful opinion of his own efficiency, whose mechanical experience had been gained in a railway workshop. He ordered repairs to be done in weird fashion at times. As soon as he had delivered his dictum and departed, his chief non-commissioned officer would put the men right, generally by a complete reversal of the youngster's orders, and all would go happily until he might again put in an appearance, when the work would suffer proportionately to the time he spent in its vicinity.
Stories of the excellence of the performance of individual cars were often marvellous. One big limousine, which had been "out since the first of the show," was ever the boast of the Major to whom it was assigned and of his faithful chauffeur. At tea one day it transpired that the car, which the Major was always ready to declare had run sans repaire et sans reproche during the whole campaign, was in the repair park for its "initial derangement." Calling at the repair lorry early next morning, I was astounded to hear the A.S.C. sergeant-major in charge say to the major's chauffeur: "So you have done in the old girl again, have you? Let's see, that's the third time this month, ain't it? Why the Major hasn't sent the bally old wreck in months ago to get her put in decent shape, I don't know. Not a bit of use tinkering at her all the time. She's given us more bother than any car in the division."
How we did chip the Major! Motorists' yarns bear some odd relationship to fishermen's stories, so I have heard.