We emphasized the manual of formal guard mount as a disciplinary exercise. One of the regulations is that when the ranking officer in a post passes the guardhouse, the sentry calls, "Turn out the guard—commanding officer," and the guard is paraded. We had lived so long by ourselves that although we sometimes had the colonel in the same town, when we were in the Montdidier sector, I never could persuade them to pay any attention to him. They had it firmly rooted in their minds that the ceremony was for me and no one else.
Occasionally a German airplane would come over and bomb the towns in the area. This furnished a real element of excitement, as we had anti-aircraft guns set up. The one trouble was that we could not tell at night which was a German and which was a French plane, with the result that if we should happen to hit one it was as likely that we would hit a French one as not. We were saved this embarrassment by never hitting one. Later, in the Montdidier sector, I remember hearing how, in a burst of enthusiasm, the gun crew of one of our 75's had fired at an airplane, and by some remarkable coincidence had torn a wing off and brought it down. On rushing out to inspect it they found it contained a very irascible Frenchman.
CHAPTER VI
EARLY DAYS IN THE TRENCHES
"How strange a spectacle of human passions
Is yours all day beside the Arras road,
What mournful men concerned about their rations
When here at eve the limbers leave their load,
What twilight blasphemy, what horses' feet
Entangled with the meat,
What sudden hush when that machine gun sweeps
And flat as possible for men so round
The quartermasters may be seen in heaps,
While you sit by and chuckle, I'll be bound."
A. P. H. (Punch).
EARLY in October mysterious orders reached us to spend forty-eight hours in some trenches we had dug on top of a hill close to the village, simulating actual conditions as well as we could. At the same time a battalion of each of the other three infantry regiments were similarly instructed. The orders were so well worked out that we were convinced at once that we were to go in the near future to the front. Everyone was in a high state of excitement, and very happy that we were at last to see action.
The hilltop where we were to stay was covered by the remains of an old Roman camp, commanding the two forks of the stream. We marched up the following day over the remains of the old Roman road, and passed our last short period training to meet the barbarians of the north, where Cæsar's legions, nearly two thousand years ago, trained for the same purpose. Many features were lacking from the trenches on the hill, such as dugouts, for example, but we felt we could get along without them, and everything went happily and serenely the first day.
We had the rolling kitchens and hospitals placed on the reverse slope in the woods. Carrying parties brought the chow along a trench traced with white tape to the troops, and they ate it without leaving their positions. During the evening, however, "sunny France" had a relapse, and a terrific rainstorm came on. It was bitterly cold, and a high wind swept the hilltop. We were all soaked to the skin.