Everyone well and cheery. Billets very fair, but we can’t get baths.
Yesterday was Easter Day and I managed to work in an early chapel (which was rigged up in the local château), and also an ordinary Church parade later on. We had a full-blown Padre, and the Services were very welcome and well attended. Sleepy now, so farewell. By the way, the last cake wasn’t so big as the previous one. Gott strafe War Economy.
The Huns aren’t scrapping much, so yesterday three of us went on duty in three machines to a jolly little seaside watering place, where they were supposed to grow submarines. We only found bathing machines, and some quite pretty French girls who talked some quaint language. However, one of us managed to find out what it was all about, and we discovered we were asked to an enormous dinner party given in our honour at the local château. The brother of one of the ladies I had met last year at Olympia, when he was riding his show horses. It was a regular West Country dinner, as several of us had hunted regularly with the Devon and Somerset in happier days, and the rest had been to the Cathedral at Exeter. We had a gorgeous time and, leaving our machines there according to orders, came back in a car driven by the Fortescues’ late chauffeur, now a full-blown private. Funny little world, isn’t it?
(Interval for refreshments and also to tune our Wireless.)
A very quaint thing happened here the other day. A pilot was coming down in his Martinsyde Scout to land after a very strenuous time aloft. A man was on the floor lighting an experimental smoke-bomb by a fuse. Neither saw the other and they very nearly met. Bang went the smoke-bomb just at the moment of landing. The pilot thought he had been hit by a shell, or that his machine had suddenly blown up, and couldn’t for the life of him remember what the drill book said was the correct attitude to maintain when this sort of thing happened. The floor man fell down flat on his face, frightened out of his life, and yelled out that he had been knocked down and was rapidly expiring. Lots of us saw the whole show a hundred yards off and howled with laughter. The Court found both prisoners guilty of attempted death by misadventure, and fined them each one drink all round. That’ll learn ’em!