In spite of M.’s instinct for locality we came on the wrong one first. Our chief was located in the most obscure corner. We found him at last, or rather we found his office. The good man himself was probably in bed. An orderly invited us to write our names in block capitals, insisting severely on the block capitals, in a large book. Then—he must have recognised that we were new boys and gullible—he said that we ought to report ourselves to some one else called the billeting officer.
The fact that we were already provided with beds made no difference. To the billeting officer we ought to go. It is greatly to our credit that we did. I followed M. through the streets of that town, very narrow streets, very twisty and very badly lighted. I felt as Carruthers did when Davis piloted him across the sand-banks through the fog to Memert. It was 11 o’clock when we found the billeting officer. He was playing bridge and did not in the least want to see us, appeared indeed to think that our visit was unnecessary and troublesome. We left him hurriedly.
Our hotel seemed a home when we got back to it. A friendly subaltern helped us out of a difficulty and increased our knowledge of the French language by telling us that:
“In this country when you want soda water you say ‘Oh, gas us.’”
We said it to the damsel behind the bar, and I have seldom been more surprised than I was when she produced a siphon. After that we went to bed.
CHAPTER III
A JOURNEY IN THE WAR ZONE
Next morning we went to see the Deputy-Chaplain-General. It is not right or possible, either in the army or anywhere else, to plunge straight into very august presences. We introduced ourselves first to a staff officer. I was impressed afresh with the way the war throws old acquaintances together. I had taken that staff officer out trout-fishing, when he was a small boy, and he remembered it. He said that Irish trout gave better sport than those in the French rivers, from which I gathered that it was sometimes possible to get a little fishing, in between battles and other serious things. He had also been a college friend of M.’s at Cambridge. He asked us to luncheon and treated us most hospitably. Indeed, I formed an impression that officers, at all events staff officers at G.H.Q., are not badly fed. I have in my time “sat at rich men’s feasts.” That staff officers’ luncheon did not suffer by comparison. M. is, as I said, indifferent to food, but even he was moved to admiration.