Lieutenant Watson Smyth—April 23.—“Wild excitement has possessed us for the last four hours, but it is now dying down, and in fact is nearly dead. It all started by our getting some wild story of Ypres, and asphyxiating gas, and the French, and standing-to. We were just starting out on a Brigade scheme, but this was abandoned, and we came back to billets and commenced furiously to pack. We are now feverishly unpacking. It really is extraordinary the rumours that get about out here; it is only very seldom that one meets any one who really knows anything worth knowing, and will tell what it is.
“It is a very good thing for every one to have these occasional bursts of energy, as one learns a lot about packing, and how things are lost, &c. To-day, of course, I got caught short of forage. Some one had stolen one of my sacks of oats.... I had to buy a sack of oats and feed on oat straw instead of hay. That is the advantage of a country-bred, he will eat anything, and his example makes the walers and English join in. I wish we could get a move on: these are excellent billets, but I want to see a German before peace is declared!”
IN THE SANDPIT. MARCH 1915
Captain W. H. Eve—April 30.—“The weather is simply lovely now, has been these last few days, and to-day has been as hot as summer. It is very lucky, for we are (all the men and horses) in the open. We ourselves have got into a barn, where we make ourselves very comfortable with lots of straw. I have celebrated my birthday by having a bath. I always carry the indiarubber one in my saddle-bags, and wouldn’t be without it for anything. Well, I can’t tell you where we are exactly, but we have moved twice since I last wrote, owing to this scrap which is still going on near Ypres.... We are sitting tight again now, listening and waiting. The only thing we see is our own captive balloons, and occasionally a Taube (German aeroplane) coming over and being shelled by our guns. You know, of course, the scrap that is going on now, but the papers make it out a much more important thing than it really is. It is a very weak point round Ypres, because (first) it is a salient, and (secondly) our junction with the French is near here.... But all goes well, so much so that I fancy we shall move back in a day or two—where, I don’t know in the least. I expect that now we shall be continually up and down the line on this game—mobile reserve until our time really comes.
“In this fight our casualties have been very heavy—ours, I believe, about 18,000, but we have our line all right.... It’s hard this waiting, but we must be patient. There is nothing in the least to worry about, nor is it the important affair the papers make out.
“We are all tremendously cheery, jolly, and fit.... The horses are feeling the benefit of the better weather and are a joy to me now, looking better every day. Of course I seize every opportunity of grazing them in somebody else’s fields with the good spring grass coming up. I have never felt fitter in my life. There are crowds all round, but the worst of it is one can’t go more than a few hundred yards from one’s billet, as we always have to be ready to turn out at once.
“The old lady at our last billet insisted on embracing us when we left with all kinds of good wishes.”
The billets, of course, varied greatly, some being very good indeed—one where the officers of the Regiment or squadron were actually provided with beds and “linen sheets,”—others very dirty and bad. Lieutenant Chrystall writes on the 19th of May: “It is very wet and muddy, and we are at present in a coal-mining village, and everything as you may imagine filthy. Last night I slept next my skipper on the road with my head between two spokes of a cart-wheel, and Eve’s between the next. Cobbles are not very springy or soft!”
Captain W. H. Eve—May 27.—“You say you are watching for news of the Cavalry. Well, you have it now in the Casualties List. That is the British Cavalry. It is, I think, wicked, for they are men we can’t replace, but the fact is they can’t trust any but the very best up there at Ypres, and that’s why they sent for the Cavalry. They get their chance and are used, but we, poor devils! ... never get a chance.... Our turn will come some day.[11] Up there we are holding on and shall do so, but it costs good men. We sit back here well within sound of the guns, and go on with more or less peace-training and try to be patient. Whenever there is a big show on, off we go up behind the line, and every time we think our time has really come; but every time we come back again in a few days—a sort of mobile reserve, that’s all. We are known out here as the ‘Iron Ration,’ only to be used in the last emergency! We went up like this during Neuve Chapelle into Belgium during the fighting round Ypres, and the other day near La Bassée. We are back here again, now very comfortable in a pretty straggling village.... We are all very fit and flourishing, but rather fed up with our own share of the proceedings.”