During our tours in "Divisional reserve" we generally spent the time in St Jan's Cappel (already described) or Bailleul. The latter town, with its rather quaint old brick fourteenth-century church, porched à la Louis Quinze, was tolerable rather than admirable. Nothing of civil interest, and hardly anything to buy except magnificent grapes from the "Grapperies," even in November. We housed a battalion or more in the man's series of greenhouses, and he responded—after several more battalions had been quartered there—with a claim for 2,000,000 francs. He could not prove that a single pane of glass or any of his vines had been broken, nor any grapes stolen, for indeed they had not been, but he based his claim on the damage done to them by tobacco smoke (which I always thought was particularly good for them), and by the report of the big guns, which shattered the vines' nerves so that he was sure they would not produce again (also a fallacy, for I had some more excellent grapes there nearly a year afterwards—September '15). I did not hear what compensation he got, but he would have been lucky to get 20 francs.
I once went into a poorly furnished watchmaker's shop, but the lady there could do nothing for my watch. She told me that, being an optician in a small way as well, she had had a whole stock of spectacles and glasses. When the Germans came through the town in October, they demanded fieldglasses. The few ones she had they stole, and then because she had no more they stole her watchmaker's tools, and swept all the spectacles and glasses and watches on to the floor and stamped them to powder.
There is really little more to relate about our time at Dranoutre and neighbourhood. It was a time of a certain amount of nerve-strain, for we all knew that our trenches were by no means perfect, and that if the enemy did attack us we should have great difficulty in bringing up reserves in time to beat them off; for we could not keep them under cover within decent range—there were no billets or houses,—and if we dug trenches for them they were not only exposed to the enemy's shell fire but were certain to be half full of water in two days; whilst we could not get anything like enough trench stores and timber, and what we did get we had enormous difficulty in bringing up to the trenches.
During all this time the artillery helped us all they knew, and were extremely well run, first by Ballard, then Saunders, and then Sandys, as Brigade Commanders. But they were badly handicapped by want of shells, especially howitzer high explosives, and we had to suffer a great deal of shell fire without returning it.
We used to average about four casualties a day in each battalion, say fifteen to twenty a day in the Brigade, which made a big hole in the strengths. Officers were always getting killed—often, alas, their own fault, through excess of zeal; and men used perpetually to lose their lives through getting out of the trenches in order to stretch their half-frozen limbs. Sickness was, strange to say, almost negligible. There were far more cases of arthritis and other things due to cold wet feet than anything else; and the men were extraordinarily healthy, comparatively speaking, considering the desperately uncomfortable hard life.
General Morland was, of course, commanding the Division during this time, and used to come nearly every morning in his car to see us; also Sir C. Fergusson, now Corps Commander, often came.
But during the whole of that winter there was very little for the higher commands to do, except to collect and send up material for the trenches, and to try and keep pace with the German developments—for we could do little or nothing in the way of offensive action.
I tried to get the thing neatly organised, as to stores and times and amounts and transport for taking the things up to the trenches; but it was very difficult, as sometimes there were no engineer stores to be had, or the wires got broken by shell fire and took a long time to repair, or it was more urgent to bring up rations or water or ammunition, and the requisite transport for all was not available. But all the same, the trenches gradually improved.
At last, on the 18th February, we got news that there was to be a move from our present line. The fact was that the 28th Division (also the 27th), composed of white troops from India and other tropical places, had had an exceedingly nasty time. Many of the men were rotten with fever, and the cold wet weather had sent scores and scores into hospital. They had been put into the trenches round St Éloi to relieve the French, who had held all the line round here chiefly with their field artillery and a very few men; and the trenches were, consequently, most sketchy, according to British ideas, and the approaches under heavy fire. The French did not mind, for, if they were shelled out of their trenches, as often happened, they just skipped out of them and turned their guns on till the Germans were cleared out; and then they went back again. But this sort of thing did not suit us; and when the Germans did attack our trenches here they took a good many and we lost a lot of men, especially when we tried to counter-attack and retake them. So the 28th Division was hors de combat for the moment, and was sent down to recuperate in a quieter area—which was that of the 5th Division.
Our orders were for the 13th and 15th Brigades to move north to St Éloi and be replaced by the 83rd and 84th Brigades. This was done,—a most complicated move, for the 84th Brigade, which fell to our lot, was composed of four very weak battalions, and we had five battalions, mostly rather strong; and by the 24th February we had six battalions, including the 9th Londons (an excellent battalion) and 6th Cheshires (a strong and hard-working one).