She had played hostess continuously since August 1914 to every kind of soldier, including French motor-bus drivers, Indian chiefs (sic), and generals.
English officers arriving after the battle of Loos slept in her hall for twenty-four hours, woke to have a bath and to eat an omelette, and then slept the clock round again.
She remembered 1870, in which war her husband had fought.
The Boches were barbarians, but they would never advance now, though at one time they had been within a few kilometres of her house.
The lettuce and cabbages in her garden were at our disposal.
She took an enormous interest in the Infant, who is even younger than the Child and is our latest acquisition.
‘Regardez donc le petit, comme il est fatigué!’ she exclaimed to me in the tones of an anxious mother—and then added in an excited whisper, ‘A-t-il vu les Boches, ce petit sous-lieutenant?’
When I assured her not only that he had seen them, but had fired his guns at them, she was delighted and declared that he could not be more than sixteen. But here the Infant, considering that the conversation was becoming personal, intervened, and the old lady left us to our dinner.
Towards the end of our week we packed up essentials and marched out to bivouac two nights and fight a two days’ running battle—directed, of course, by our indefatigable colonel. After the dead flat ugliness where we had been in action all the winter and early spring it was a delight to find ourselves in this spacious undulating country, with its trees and church spires and red-tiled villages. We fought all day against an imaginary foe, made innumerable mistakes, all forcibly pointed out by the colonel (who rode both his horses to a standstill in endeavouring to direct operations and at the same time watch the procedure of four widely separated batteries); our imaginary infantry captured ridge after ridge, and we advanced from position to position ‘in close support,’ until finally, the rout of the foe being complete, we moved to our appointed bivouacs.
In peace time it would have been regarded as a quite ordinary day, boring because of its resemblance to so many others. Now it was different. True, it was make-believe from start to finish, without even blank cartridge to give the vaguest hint of reality. But there was this: at the back of all our minds was the knowledge that this was a preparation—possibly our last preparation—not for something in the indefinite future (as in peace time), but for an occasion that assuredly is coming, perhaps in a few months, perhaps even in a few weeks. The colonel spoke truly when, at his first conference, he said: