To go home we had to pass a village completely deserted, a village that was once prosperous, where people lived and traded and only wanted to be left alone. Now grass is growing in the streets. Shops have their merchandise strewn and rotting in all directions. On one fragment of a wall a family portrait was still hanging, and a woman's undergarments. A grand piano, and a perambulator tied in a knot were trying to get down through a coal chute. To wander through a village like this one that has been smashed up, and with the knowledge that the smashing up may be continued any time, is thrilling. Churches are always hateful to the Germans. They shell them all; bits of the organs are wrapped around the tombstones, and coffins, bones and skulls are churned up into a great stew. In some of the villages a few of the inhabitants had stayed [pg 080] and traded with the soldiers. They lived in cellars usually and suffered terribly. British military police direct the traffic when there is any, and are stationed at crossroads with regular beats like a city policeman.
While traveling to another part of the line we had an opportunity of seeing the “Archies” (anti-aircraft guns) working. They were mounted on lorries and fire quite good-sized shells. They fired about fifty shots at one Taube, but didn't register a bull. Later in the evening from a trench we had the satisfaction of seeing another aeroplane set on fire, burn, and drop into the German lines like a shot partridge. Aeroplanes are as common as birds. Yesterday a “Pfeil” (arrow) biplane came right over our lines and was chased off by our own machines. The enemy's aeroplanes have their iron cross painted on the underside of their wings and are more hawkish-looking than ours. They are more often used for reconnoitering and taking photographs than for dropping bombs.
We are being moved up closer to the firing line. I have been made billeting officer. I went to headquarters; a staff colonel showed me a subdivision on a map. “Go there and select a place for your unit.” The place was a wretched village of about six houses, all of which are more or less smashed about, windows repaired with sacking and pieces of wood. All of the inhabitants have moved except those who are too poor. Every square inch is utilized. I managed to get a cow-shed for the officers. It looks comfortable. On the door I could just decipher, written in chalk, by some previous billeting officer,—
2 Staff Officers
6 Officers
2 Horses
Billeting chalk marks are on almost all the shops and houses up from the coast to the front.
The field which we are expecting to put the men into belonged to a miller who lived [pg 082] in a different area. We went to see him. He couldn't speak English or French, so I tried him with German. While we were talking, I noticed some non-coms watching us very intently and was not surprised to find one following us back down the road. When he saw our car he came up and apologized for having taken us for spies. They are looking for two Germans in our lines wearing British uniforms, who have given several gun positions away. Two days ago the enemy shelled the road systematically on both sides for half a mile when an ammunition column was due. It was quite dark before we left; the sky was continually lit up by the star shells, very pretty white rockets, which light up No Man's Land. The enemy has a very good kind which remains alight for several minutes.
Our days of comfortable billets are over, I am afraid. Unless you are working hard, it is miserable here,—wrecked towns, bad roads, shell holes, smells, dirt, soldiers, horses, trenches. The inhabitants are a [pg 083] poor, wretched lot. Many of them are thieves and spies. We are right in Belgium, where flies and smells are as varied as in the Orient.
Wherever we travel by day or night we are constantly challenged by sentries and have to produce our passes. We stopped in one darkened shell-riddled town and knocked up an estaminet; we got a much finer meal than you can get at many places farther back. We talked to the woman who kept it and asked her if she slept in the cellar. “Oh, no! I sleep upstairs, they never bombard except at three in the morning or nine at night. Then I go into the cellar.” This woman was a very pleasant, intelligent person, most probably a spy. Intelligent people generally leave the danger zone.