SABBATH, MARCH 28, 1915.
We have now been exactly one week on the other side of the Channel, and the time has passed so quickly that it seems much shorter than that.... We are staying in a little village not many miles to the south-west of a fair-sized town.[[1]] The village was at one time occupied by the Germans, and there is evidence of them in abundance. Great numbers of the inhabitants have left their homes and gone elsewhere. Some of them have taken their belongings with them and left their houses empty, and others have gone hurriedly and left everything. The troops are allowed to billet in these empty houses, and, in the case of the full ones, notices have been posted up on the doors forbidding any soldier to enter (except by order of an Officer during the course of an action) on pain of being charged with looting.... The Germans dropped a few shells on this village to-day, and some of them exploded near us, and fragments were picked up with considerable interest. Some of our officers have been up to the trenches to see what things are like. The trenches are about a mile away from our billets, and on this portion of the line there happens to be good cover to screen the approach of troops from the enemy's observation, so that one can go from here right to the trenches in the day time. At other portions of the line this is only possible after darkness has fallen.... I shall probably go to-morrow to see what my duties will be when the Battalion takes its tour of duty in them. The Battalion goes on duty in the trenches for six days at a time, but each half Battalion is relieved by the other half after three days' duty. Then at the end of the six days I believe we go a good deal further back and rest for some days. My transport are all in a field about a mile further back than this, and I go there in the early morning before breakfast to see to them, and return here for meals.
[[1]] Armentières.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 31, 1915.
To-day is specially busy, as the Battalion goes to-night to take its turn in the trenches, but there has not been much firing in our portion of the line recently.... I have been riding a good deal, and shall ride more this coming week probably, because my transport is in a field about three miles from the trenches, and I have got to get backwards and forwards all the time.
SATURDAY, APRIL 3, 1915.
Did I tell you?—I don't think I did—that I had my first experience of the trenches on Wednesday night, which was the first night the Regiment took over its section of the line[[2]] from an English Regiment of Territorials who are out beside us. It was full moon and a splendid night for seeing,—and being seen! I went round the section of the line allotted to our Battalion with the Colonel and Major Shaw, but I don't think I was in the trenches for more than perhaps an hour and a half altogether. It was a weird sight under the moonlight. The line is very zig-zag and irregular—more so than I had expected to find. It is pretty narrow, and not always easy to pass along behind the men, but every here and there to the rear are what are called 'dug-outs'—simply big holes in the clay, with wooden frames supporting some sort of roof which gives head cover. Some of these have a little straw in them, and everyone has a little brazier for cooking—it is usually just a pail with holes in the sides of it—-and cooking goes on nearly all the time. The men use their mess tins to make their tea and fry their bacon and cook their eggs (when they get them), and make their stew at all times of day and night when they are not actually standing to arms. We have loopholes and periscopes and trench-pumps (for the water). They are a good deal drier now than they have been all winter, but even yet there are places in our section that I measured with a stick to be eighteen inches deep in water on either side of the board that forms the platform. Out in front of our line, between us and the Germans, are our barbed wire entanglements and what are called our 'listening posts.' You get out to these by going flat along a ditch with the clay thrown up on one side to give some head cover.
[[2]] This was at 'La Bouttelerie,' near Fleurbaix.
Just now there are three of us living in one room of this farm—the Quartermaster, the Interpreter, and myself. We sleep in it, cook in it, and take our meals in it, and through it the farmer himself has to pass on his way to and from his bedroom which opens off it. Fortunately there is a window which can open. Needless to say, many a thing wants washing, and your store of soap would be well-nigh exhausted before things were made right, but we don't mind that much. We wash at the pump in the farm-yard which is just outside the door. The pump again is just six feet away from a large square manure and straw heap which forms the centre of the farm-yard, and round this square the farm buildings are placed; and these contain the farmer and his family, the pigs, the hens, the horses, the calves, the rabbits and the dogs and the rats! In a field at one side are my horses, mules and wagons—there they sleep, and from there they go forth daily to do their work.
There are characteristic touches in some shorter letters a little later—characteristic of James's mechanical ingenuity on the one hand, and of his love of music on the other:—