Divisional rest beds are at least two points superior to the last. They are the kind of beds run by a sixth-rate lodging-house in Bloomsbury, taken on the whole. Usually there is one bed short per unit, so some one has to double up, with the result that the stronger of the twain wraps all the bed-clothes around him, and the other chap does not sleep at all, or is ignominiously rolled out on to the brick pavé.
Every one in French villages must go to bed with their stockings on.
Judging by the permanent kinks in all the beds, they must have been beds solitaire for a life-time, before the soldiers came.
Once we were asked to share a bed with bébé, who was three. We refused. On another occasion, when we were very tired indeed, we were told that the only bed available was that usually dwelt in by “Jeanne.” We inspected it, and made a peaceful occupation. “Jeanne” came home unexpectedly at midnight, and slipped indoors quietly to her room. It was a bad quarter of an hour, never to be forgotten! Especially when we found out in the morning that “Jeanne” was twenty years old, and decidedly pretty. Our reputation in that household was a minus quantity.
In corps reserve one gets beds with coffee in the morning at 7 A.M. “Votre café, M’sieu.” “Oui, oui, mercy; leave it outside the door—la porte—please!” “Voiçi, M’sieu! Vous avez bien dormi?” And of course you can’t say anything, even if Madame stands by the pillow and tells you the whole story of how Yvonne makes the coffee!
They are fearless, these French women!
MARCHING
We have left the statue of the Virgin Mary which pends horizontally over the Rue de Bapaume far behind us and the great bivouacs, and the shell-pitted soil of the Somme front. Only at night can we see the flickering glare to the southward, and the ceaseless drum of the guns back yonder is like the drone of a swarm of bees. Yesterday we reached the last village we shall see in Picardy, and this morning we shall march out of the Departement de la Somme, whither we know not.
It is one of those wonderful mid-October days when the sun rises red above a light, low mist, and land sparkling with hoar-frost; when the sky is azure blue, the air clean and cold, and the roads white and hard. A day when the “fall-in” sounds from rolling plain to wooded slope and back again, clear and mellow, and when the hearts of men are glad.
“Bat-ta-lion ... Shun!”