Some signs are not official: "Level crossing ahead: keep your blood-shot eyes open."
The village streets show signs that have no reference to speed. Most estaminets publish "English Stout"; "Good beer 3d., best beer 4d."; "Officers' horses, 10"; "Cellar, 50"—i.e., we have a cellar that will billet fifty men. The villages are very quiet and old-time—grey and yellow walls abutting directly on the roads (footpaths are unknown); thatch or slate roofs; low windows from which, sitting, your feet would touch road; tortuous streets; plentiful girl and women denizens; a wayside Calvary on the outskirts; a church spire rising somewhere from the roofs; a preponderance of taverns, estaminets, cafés, and sweet-shops in the chief street.
Wednesday, —th.—I got some notion this morning of life on the ambulance trains. They move between railhead and the bases with the ebb and flow of the offensive tide. After their load is discharged to a base they garage at a siding erected in this station for the purpose, and await orders. They may rest three days or three hours. Sisters and M.O.'s have lived on the same train—some of them—for twelve or fifteen months, but are too busy to be mutually bored. At the garage you will see them dismounted from the train taking their lunch among the hay-ricks in the harvested field beside the line. An orderly will alight from the train and race across the field, and you'll see the party rise, hastily pitch their utensils incontinently into a rug, and climb aboard as the train steams out. The order has come to move up again and "take on." ... This is one aspect of the state of flux in which the world behind the lines stands day and night, month after month.
At the gare here is a canteen for voyageurs exclusively. A blatant and prohibitory notice says so with no uncertainty. This is English. An English girl is in charge of it. She gets as little respite as the chef de gare. Who can say when she sleeps? She is supplying tea and cakes and cigarettes to troops every day and every night. No one is refused at any hour, however unhallowed. French railway-stations on the lines of communication all carry such an English girl for such a purpose; and usually they are in the front rank of English aristocracy. The English nobility have not spared themselves for "the Cause." Their men have fallen thick; their women have resigned the luxury of their homes to minister to the pain and the hunger of the force in France. And they do it with a thoroughness apparently incompatible (though only apparently so) with the thoroughgoing luxury and splendour of their civilian way of life.
Thursday, —th.—This afternoon I walked down the river that winds through the town and goes south. It is a comfortable, easy-flowing trout-stream. Beyond the town bridge it turns into pastures and orchards and cultivated fields, nosing a way through stretches of brown stubble, apple-groves, and plantations of beet. Groves of elm and beech overspread the high grass on its brink. The hop clusters with the wild-strawberry and the red currant: a solitary trouter stands beyond the tangle. The fields slope gently away from the stream—very gently—up to the tree-lined road on the ridge. The brown-and-gold stubble rises, acre beyond acre, to the sky-line; and in the evening light takes on a rich investiture of colour that is bold for stubble, but not the less lovely because it is virtual only. As the evening wears on, this settles into a softness of hue that you cannot describe.
Such is the Somme country: such is the land of war.
At nine to-night all the station lights were switched off. Advice had come from —— of enemy aircraft approaching this junction. They did not come—not to our knowledge. But the chef de gare waddled over to his private house and bundled wife and children down into the cellar—and cave, as they call it—and when he had seen them safely stowed, returned to his station to await orders. The French girls and women inhabit the cellar with alacrity at such times. Every house has its funk-hole, for there is hardly a dwelling so small as to neglect a vault for cidre and vin ordinaire. "In the season" they lay up a year's store; as a rule, the cidre is home-brewed, too. At table the jug goes round, filling the glass of the enfant and the père without discrimination. By the end of the meal the colour has mounted in the cheeks of the little girls, and they are garrulous and the boys noisy. Amongst the cidre barrels there is good and secure cover from Taubes.
When the lights got switched on again, the detraining of the ——th Division resumed....
Friday —th.—I was wakened at two o'clock this morning by the hum of their collective conversation. Sergeants-major were roaring commands in the moonlight; some of them were supplemented by remarks not polite. Many English sergeants-major speak in dialect: most of them do. There is something repellent about words of command issued in dialect. Why can't England cut-out dialect? It's time it went. Dialect is a very rank form of Conservatism. Why can't a uniform pronunciation of vowels be taught in English schools? Active-service over a term of years will perhaps help to bring about a standardising of English speech. One hopes so....