June 7. Appointed Lewis Gun Officer to the company and spent the day lazily, apart from giving two lectures.
June 8. We are going to move again, although, thank heaven, it is still westwards. At 1.30 p.m. received orders to meet Staff Captain at Brigade H.Q. at 2.15 p.m., and it is 12 miles away!!!!
What would they do with bloody fools like that in business at home? And they make just the same kind of mistakes when lives are at stake. Set off with 12 men as billeting party, and after a very tiring ride reached the rendezvous at 6 p.m. to find the blasted captain not yet arrived. I would love to write down the men’s remarks! When he turned up he told me that our billets were a little farther on at the next village, but when I got there I found nothing arranged. After three hours’ hard work (a great strain on my French!) I had everything ready for the arrival of the company. M. le Maire and the farmers were very obliging people and extremely keen to help. If anything they were a little too hospitable, and as I was in a dickens of a hurry it was rather trying to have to stay and drink beer with 17 different farmers! About 10 p.m. Mellor arrived with the main body of cyclists, and we went to the Maire’s to eat a dry bully sandwich. The old man watched us very gravely, and when we had absorbed the bully I poured a drink of greenish-looking water from my bottle. He made an awful face and exclaimed, “Ah! Chateau de la Pompe, pas bon!” He immediately rushed into his kitchen and brought us each a huge glass of sparkling cider, and as we drank he roared with laughter at the recollection of his joke on Chateau de la Pompe. After this I went out to find the company, and met them on the far side of Brigade H.Q. about 11.30. I shall never forget how they came back that night. They were marching with our own Brigade, and long before I met them I could hear the jingling of the transport, the rhythm of their step, and occasionally catches of song floating down the valley—“Annie Laurie!” They have left more than half their pals to “sleep” in Ypres to-night, they are exhausted, limping, lousy, and white with dust, yet, thank God! the spirit is still there. The ranks kept well together, and, finished though they are, I believe they would try to struggle back to-morrow if it were necessary. I am a sentimental ass even yet, but I could have cried as I stood on the path and watched the P.B.I. go by. Except where the fitful glare from a travelling kitchen threw them into flickering relief it was impossible to see their faces, and yet I felt I knew them—hard and scarred and ugly, brown as their rifle stocks, as a real man’s face should be. And always I wonder if England understands, if England will remember! How many of the ladies whom these darling blackguards have saved would condescend to trail their dresses through the hells these boys call home? I wonder and I doubt!
“There are men in No Man’s Land to-night,
In travail under a starless sky,
Men who wonder if it be right
That you should lie snug in your beds to-night
While they suffer alone—and die!”
June 9. Spent a very quiet day settling down and getting used to the beauty of our surroundings. We are in a charming little valley between wooded hills with a pebbly trout stream to sing us to sleep at night. It is just like Cefn on the Elwy in North Wales—a week here will do us worlds of good.
June 10. Sunday. Was notified that a battalion of Middlesex is coming to share our billets with us, so I rode over to see the Area Commandant and had rather a stormy interview with him. Rode over again in the afternoon to try to get some tents out of him, and again I was successful, although between him and the Brigade I made myself generally unpopular. It has been some sort of fête day in the village to-day and the Sappers had a good time helping the inhabitants to decorate their little village square—it was very charming.