Keeping daily touch with your supply column is one of the fine arts of moving warfare, and the resourceful M'Donald had again proved his worth. "Refilling point, to-morrow, will be at Babœuf, sir," he added, "and after to-morrow it will be only iron rations. Good forage to-day, sir."
11 P.M.: Brigade Headquarters had pulled into the right of the road behind B Battery, just outside a village that up to the 21st had been a sort of rest-village, well behind the lines. Army Ordnance, Army Service Corps, and battalions out of the line were the only units represented there, and a fair proportion of the civil population had re-established itself after the German retreat in the spring of 1917. Now all was abandoned again, furniture and cattle bundled out, and houses locked up in the hope that shortly the Boche would be thrust back and the village re-occupied by its rightful owners.
The colonel had ridden forward with young Bushman to meet the brigade-major and to settle where the Brigade would camp. More French infantry passed, going up to the Front by the way we had come back. Twice, big lasting flares illuminated the sky over there where the fighting was—stores being burnt to prevent them falling into German hands, we concluded. Presently, Bushman returned and pointed out a particular area where Brigade Headquarters could settle down.
The small village green would do for horse lines and for parking our vehicles. I sent off the sergeant-major to scout for water supply, and took possession of a newly-roofed barn in which the men might sleep. There was a roomy shed for the officers' horses and a stone outhouse for the men's kitchen. Now about a billet for the colonel!
"There's a big house at the back, sir, with an artillery mess in it," said the sergeant-major, who had finished watering and feeding the horses. "Perhaps there's a spare room there for the colonel."
I went round and came upon the officers of a 6-inch how. battery, who had reached the village two hours before, and were finishing their evening meal. They offered me dinner, which I refused, and then a whisky, which I accepted; but there were no spare rooms. They had got away from the neighbourhood of the canal with the loss of two hows., but told me of a 9.2 battery at ——, that it had been absolutely impossible to get out. "I believe it is true that we've done very well up north," replied their Irish captain cheerfully. "Lots of prisoners at Ypres, they say.... Have another whisky!"
"We have one tent, haven't we?" I asked the sergeant-major when I got outside.
"Yes, sir, but there's a cottage where Meddings has put the officers' cook-house. It looks all right, and there might be something there for the colonel."
The cottage certainly looked clean and neat from the outside, but the door was locked, and it is the rule that British troops only enter French houses with the consent of the owners. However, I climbed through the window and found two empty rooms each with bed and mattress. Times were not for picking and choosing. "We'll put the tent up," I decided, "and ask the colonel if he cares to take one of these beds or have the tent. You and I, Bushman, will take what he doesn't want."
When I took a turn round to see if the men were comfortably settled for the night, I learnt that the skurried departure of the A.S.C. had provided them with unexampled opportunity of legitimate loot. There was one outbuilding crammed with blankets, shirts, socks, and underwear—and our men certainly rose to the occasion. Even the old wheeler chuckled when he discovered a brand-new saw and a drill. The sergeant-major fastened on to a gramophone; and that caused me for the first time to remember my Columbia graphophone that I had loaned to C Battery before I went home wounded from Zillebeke. Hang it, it must have been left behind at Villequier Aumont. The Germans had probably got it by now.