For a few days all went well; then it began to rain. About the middle of November it settled down in earnest and rained steadily for a month; sometimes it merely drizzled, at other times it poured; but it never stopped, except for an hour or so. The constant tramp of many feet speedily churned into mud the clay turf overlaying the chalk, and the rain could not percolate through this mixture as it did the unbroken sod. In a few days the mud was one inch—four inches—and even a foot deep. Many a time I waded through mud up to my knees.
The smooth English roads, lacking depth of road-metal, were speedily torn to pieces by the heavy traffic of motors and steam traction engines. Passing cars and lorries sprayed the hedges with a thin mud-emulsion formed from the road binder, and exposed the sharp flints which, like so much broken glass, tore to pieces the tires of the motors.
Cold high winds, saturated with moisture, accompanied the rain and searched one's very marrow. Nothing would exclude these sea breezes but skin or fur coats, and though accustomed to a severe climate, we Canadians felt the cold in England as we never had at home. Sometimes the temperature fell below the freezing point, and occasionally we had sleet, hail or snow for variety. Tents were often blown down by the hundreds, and it was a never-to-be-forgotten sight watching a small army of soldiers trying to hold and pin down some of the large mess tents, while rope after rope snapped under the straining of the flapping canvas. One day the post office tent collapsed, and some of the mail disappeared into the heavens, never to return.
The officers of the headquarter staff were fairly comfortable in comparison to the others. Our tents were pitched in a quadrangle formed by four rows of trees and scrub, which had evidently been planted around the site of a former house and served to break the high winds. Each officer had a tent with a wooden floor. Mine was carpeted with an extra blanket to exclude draughts and make it feel comfortable under one's bare feet in the morning. The tent was heated by an oil stove which was kept burning night and day; and at night I slept snug and warm in the interior of a Jaeger sleeping blanket in a Wolseley kit. My batman, Karner, had made a table from some boxes and boards which he had picked up, I know not where. It is unwise to ask your batman too many foolish questions as to the origin of things,—take what he gives you and be thankful.
This table covered with another blanket, served to support a splendid brass lamp with a green silk shade, for which I had paid a fabulous sum in Salisbury town. It also held some books, brushes, and other necessaries. A shelf underneath displayed a little brass kettle and other paraphernalia for making tea, while my other books were arranged in a neat row beneath.
The tents were wet all the time, and the clothes and blankets of the men soon became water soaked and remained so for weeks at a stretch for they had no stoves or other facilities for drying them. But Tommy, the resourceful, learned that he could get warm by the simple process of wrapping himself up in wet blankets and steaming as he would in a Turkish bath,—with himself as the heater. He also discovered that a pair of wet socks, well wrung out and placed next his chest at night would be half dry in the morning. He had to sleep in a bell tent with seven others, radiating like spokes of a wheel from the centre tent pole. He had nothing to give him any comfort whatever.
It was impossible to do any work, even route marching, and, having nothing to do but lie around and think of himself, Tommy began to grouse. Each camp had become a morass with mud a foot deep, and Tommy looked out upon it and behold it was not good, and he cursed both loud and long whoever he thought might be responsible for the conditions, and particularly Emperor Bill the cause of it all. The Canadian contingent had begun a process of mildewing.
One felt sorry for the poor horses. Picketed in the open plain or in the partial shelter of the occasional "spinneys," they stood with ears drooping and tails to the wind, pictures of dejection. No doubt they, too, cursed the Kaiser. Their feet became soft from standing idly in the mud, and in a good many cases had become diseased; in general they went off badly in condition. Standing orders prohibited the cutting down of a bush or tree on Salisbury Plain, but in the night time we could sometimes hear the familiar sound of an axe meeting standing timber, and one could guess that Tommy, in his desire for wood to build a fire, and regardless of rules, had grown desperate. As one of them said to Rudyard Kipling when he was down visiting them, "What were trees for if they were not to be cut down?"
Towards the middle of December, one evening there was a sharp tap on the tent of Capt. Haywood, Medical Officer of the third (Toronto) Battalion.
"Come in" he cried.