Our mess had only had one change since the beginning of the war, and that was in the signal officer. Cadell had gone sick in November, and Miles had replaced him in December. For about a month, including all the period at Ypres, we had had no signal officer (except Naylor for two days), nor any Brigade-Major from about the 12th November (at Ypres) till the beginning of December; so Sergeant King, a first-rate signaller, though not the senior, had carried on for Cadell, and Moulton-Barrett had added the duties of Brigade-Major to his own. But by the middle of December we were complete again. Weatherby had returned from his sick leave, and Miles, of the K.O.S.B.'s, was now signalling officer. A quite excellent one he was, too—very silent, always an hour or two late for dinner (owing to strenuous night work), never asking questions, but always doing things before they were even suggested, and very thoroughly at that; he was a great acquisition. Moulton-Barrett was still Staff Captain—very hard-working and conscientious, and very thorough; Weatherby was still Brigade-Major—keen and resourceful; Beilby was still veterinary officer—capable and helpful; and St André was still interpreter and billeting officer—cheerful and most willing. His duties were mostly to investigate the numerous cases of natives who wanted to go somewhere or do something—generally to fetch their cows off a shell-swept field, or to rescue their furniture from a burnt village, or to fetch or buy something from Bailleul—and recommend them (or otherwise) to me for passes—a most trying duty, wearing to the temper; but he was angelic in patience, and, as a light recreation, used to accompany me to the trenches fairly often.
One case there was where, for three nights running, great fids of wire were cut out of some artillery cables connecting them with their observers—a most reprehensible deed. So I had patrols out to spy along the lines,—no result, except that next morning another 100 yards had gone. So I made St André publish a blood-and-thunder proclamation threatening death to any one found tampering with our wires. Spies were plentiful, and a gap in our wires might be fatal.
And then the culprit owned up. It was an old woman near whose cottage the wires passed, and her fences required mending.
Neuve Église, which we inhabited for a fortnight or more, and where we spent Xmas Day, was a good cut above Dranoutre. Except for the first three days, when we lived with a doctor,—and his stove smoked frightfully till we discovered a dead starling in the pipe,—we dwelt in exceeding comfort, comparatively speaking. It was a brewer's house, about the biggest in the village—which was three times the size of Dranoutre,—with real furniture in it, a real dining-room (horribly cold, as the stove refused to work), and a most comfortable series of highly civilized bedrooms. (Last time I was in the neighbourhood—August 1915—there was long grass in the streets, not a soul in the place, half the houses in absolute ruins, and our late quarters with one side missing and three parts of the house as well.) The trenches were much less pestered with shells and bullets than the Dranoutre lot, and it was easier work altogether for the men. We quite enjoyed it, and on Xmas Day so did the Germans. For they came out of their trenches and walked across unarmed, with boxes of cigars and seasonable remarks. What were our men to do? Shoot? You could not shoot unarmed men. Let them come? You could not let them come into your trenches; so the only thing feasible at the moment was done—and some of our men met them halfway and began talking to them.
We got into trouble for doing it. But, after all, it is difficult to see what we could otherwise have done, unless we shot the very first unarmed man who showed himself—pour encourager les autres; but we did not know what he was going to do. Meanwhile our officers got excellent close views of the German trenches, and we profited accordingly; the Boche did not, for he was not allowed close enough to ours.
Which reminds me that on one occasion, when going round the trenches, I asked a man whether he had had any shots at the Germans. He responded that there was an elderly gentleman with a bald head and a long beard who often showed himself over the parapet.
"Well, why didn't you shoot him?"
"Shoot him?" said the man; "why, Lor' bless you, sir, 'e's never done me no 'arm!" A case of "live and let live," which is certainly not to be encouraged. But cold-blooded murder is never popular with our men.
Talking of anecdotes, and the trend of our men's minds, I heard that on another occasion a groom, an otherwise excellent creature, wrote home to his "girl" thus: "Me and the master rode out to the trenches last night. We was attacked by a strong German patrol. I nips off me horse, pulls out my rifle and shoots two of them, and the rest bolted." Not a single atom of truth in the story, except that he was nestling in a warm stable at an advanced village, whilst his master was shivering in the mud of the trenches that night.
Another gem was a statement by a Transport officer's servant that he had shot 1200 Germans himself with a machine-gun. This was a man who, I verily believe, had never even been within earshot of a gun, much less seen a German, his duties being exclusively several miles in rear of the firing line. And, being a civilian up till quite recently, I am sure he did not know the muzzle of a maxim from its breech.