The farmhouse stands about a hundred yards away from the main road, with a cart track, slushy and muddy running across the fields to the very door. The whole aspect of the place is forbidding, it looks squalid and dilapidated, and smells of decaying vegetable matter, of manure and every other filth that can find a resting place in the vicinity of an unclean dwelling-place. But it is not dirty; its home-made bread and beer are excellent, the new-laid eggs are delightful for breakfast, the milk and butter, fresh and pure, are dainties that an epicure might rave about.
We easily became accustomed to the discomforts of the place, to the midden in the centre of the yard, to the lean long-eared pigs that try to gobble up everything that comes within their reach, to the hens that flutter over our beds and shake the dust of ages from the barn-roof at dawn, to the noisy little children with the dirty faces and meddling fingers, who poke their hands into our haversacks, to the farm servants who inspect all our belongings when we are out on parade, and even now we have become accustomed to the very rats that scurry through the barn at midnight and gnaw at our equipment and devour our rations when they get hold of them. One night a rat bit a man's nose—but the tale is a long one and I will tell it at some other time.
We came to the farm forty of us in all, at the heel of a cold March day. We had marched far in full pack with rifle and bayonet. A additional load had now been heaped on our shoulders in the shape of the sheepskin jackets, the uniform of the trenches, indispensable to the firing line, but the last straw on the backs of overburdened soldiers. The march to the barn billet was a miracle of endurance, but all lived it through and thanked Heaven heartily when it was over. That night we slept in the barn, curled up in the straw, our waterproof sheets under us and our blankets and sheepskins round our bodies. It was very comfortable, a night, indeed, when one might wish to remain awake to feel how very glorious the rest of a weary man can be.
Awaking with dawn was another pleasure; the barn was full of the scent of corn and hay and of the cow-shed beneath. The hens had already flown to the yard and the dovecot was voluble. Somewhere near a girl was milking, and we could hear the lilt of her song as she worked; a cart rumbled off into the distance, a bell was chiming, and the dogs of many farms were exchanging greetings. The morning was one to be remembered.
But mixed with all these medley of sounds came one that was almost new; we heard it for the first time the day previous and it had been in our ears ever since; it was with us still and will be for many a day to come. Most of us had never heard the sound before, never heard its summons, its murmur or its menace. All night long it was in the air, and sweeping round the barn where we lay, telling all who chanced to listen that out there, where the searchlights quivered across the face of heaven, men were fighting and killing one another: soldiers of many lands, of England, Ireland and Scotland, of Australia, and Germany; of Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand; Saxon, Gurkha, and Prussian, Englishman, Irishman, and Scotchman were engaged in deadly combat. The sound was the sound of guns—our farmhouse was within the range of the big artillery.
We were billeted a platoon to a barn, a section to a granary, and despite the presence of rats and, incidentally, pigs, we were happy. On one farm there were two pigs, intelligent looking animals with roguish eyes and queer rakish ears. They were terribly lean, almost as lean as some I have seen in Spain where the swine are as skinny as Granada beggars. They were very hungry and one ate a man's food-wallet and all it contained, comprising bread, army biscuits, canned beef, including can and other sundries. "I wish the animal had choked itself," my mate said when he discovered his loss. Personally I had a profound respect for any pig who voluntarily eats army biscuit.
We got up about six o'clock every morning and proceeded to wash and shave. All used the one pump, sometimes five or six heads were stuck under it at the same moment, and an eager hand worked the handle, and poured a plentiful supply of very cold water on the close cropped pates. The panes of the farmhouse window made excellent shaving mirrors and, incidentally, I may mention that rifle-slings generally serve the purpose of razor strops. Breakfast followed toilet; most of the men bought café-au-lait, at a penny a basin, and home-made bread, buttered lavishly, at a penny a slice. A similar repast would cost sixpence in London.
Parade then followed. In England we had cherished the illusion that life abroad would be an easy business, merely consisting of firing practices in the trenches, followed by intervals of idleness in rest-camps, where cigarettes could be obtained for the asking, and tots of rum would be served out ad infinitum. This rum would have a certain charm of its own, make everybody merry, and banish all discomforts due to frost and cold for ever. Thus the men thought, though most of our fellows are teetotallers. We get rum now, few drink it; we are sated with cigarettes, and smoke them as if in duty bound; the stolen delight of the last "fag-end" is a dream of the past. Parades are endless, we have never worked so hard since we joined the army; the minor offences of the cathedral city are full-grown crimes under long artillery range; a dirty rifle was only a matter for words of censure a month ago, a dirty rifle now will cause its owner to meditate in the guard-room.
Dinner consists of bully beef and biscuits; now and again we fry the bully beef on the farmhouse stove, and when cash is plentiful cook an egg with it. The afternoon is generally given up to practising bayonet-fighting, and our day's work comes to an end about six o'clock. In the evening we go into the nearest village and discuss matters of interest in some café. Here we meet all manner of men, Gurkhas fresh from the firing line; bus-drivers, exiles from London; men of the Army Service Corps; Engineers, kilted Highlanders, men recovering from wounds, who are almost fit to go to the trenches again; French soldiers, Canadian soldiers, and all sorts of people, helpers in some way or another of the Allies in the Great War.
We have to get back to our billets by eight o'clock, to stop out after that hour is a serious crime here. A soldier out of doors at midnight in the cathedral city was merely a minor offender. But under the range of long artillery fire all things are different for the soldier.