CHAPTER IX
DAYS IN CANTONMENT
The regiment is holding the first line trenches in front of the La Vache woods. When the company is in the lines, the echelons, the war train, and the clerks remain behind in the cantonment at Morcourt.
Morcourt is a delightful little village hidden in the green meadows under the poplars on the banks of the canal of the Somme. Morcourt was once a hamlet of one hundred and fifty houses and their flower gardens, but to-day it is a real village where there are crowded together a population of more than ten thousand men. More than twenty thousand horses are bivouacked in the neighboring villages of Proyart, Lamotte, Bayonvillers, which have no water, and they come to Morcourt twice a day to dry up the watering places.
Our quarters here are in the open fields. Everybody can’t have covered shelters. The major of the cantonment showed us the field and said,
“Try to make shift with that.”
And we did.
Less than an hour later the grass was mowed, ground down by our haltered horses, who devoured it with their sharp teeth.
Beyond, on the edge of the road, in impeccable alignment our sixteen ammunition wagons are parked.
Behind are the horses, the huts of the four sections of the echelon, and the war train.