Here is a gap in the letter, during which I have had my hair cut by one of our chauffeurs. You’d laugh if you saw it now. It was done in a farmyard where we live and have our being, and was watched by a dirty crowd of kids of all sorts and sizes from two to fourteen years. They chanted a chorus during the performance of ‘Cigarette and souvenir.’ We couldn’t even get rid of them when we turned the farmyard dog on to them. However, they were terrified when we threatened them with some pigs that we keep in the yard against the day when our rations do not arrive. Our farm is fairly close to the battle and we hear it all when an entertainment is in progress, though it never wakes us now. Well, after the hair was cropped, we had the bath—just like that—made out of canvas and bits of wood, the water being heated in petrol cans cut in half. Delicious!!
Suddenly, a frightful noise! In the middle of having a wash, the peaceful farmyard is invaded by a lot of steaming war-horses, and we dash down in time to welcome the headquarters and a squadron of the Blues. Very glad to see them; very nice too being among horses once more. They had just come back from the battle and were very hungry. We gave them dinner, to the great consternation of our limited staff and the good house-wife of the farm. For my sins I was responsible, as I was mess-president of our little flying crowd of six or seven, but, all the same, fifteen of us sat down to an enormous meal in half an hour. We had haggis, beef and onions, porridge and sardines, potatoes and almond icing and brandy cherries. The table for dinner grew rapidly out of a door and a few packing cases and tins, and light for the feast was provided by the head lamps of one of the motor transport cars. So now you see the advantage of this life is, that although all these officers, and 160 men besides, rolled up, the house was not overcrowded—we merely got more straw and ejected the rats, and the newcomers slept alongside of us. By the way, I found that the cavalry snore was much worse than the article supplied by the Flying Corps.
We all try to be as comfortable as we can, and are lucky in having an ex-tailor, who is now a corporal mechanic—promoted, I really believe, for his skill in sewing odd bits of sacking and cloth produced from nowhere at all, on to bits of broken under-carriages and so forth, and making them into armchairs and sofas that would not disgrace the Ritz.
The other day, when some of us were foraging in a town not very far from a quaint spot called Wipers, the Huns had mistaken the time of their Evening Hate, and started by blowing a house into the road on both sides of our car. These Jack Johnsons are sometimes rather a bore—our party had to wait for the shop people to emerge from their cellars, before we could buy our dinner, and then the third shell came and knocked the opposite house down. However, we had the goods first, so it didn’t much matter. The driver of the car burnt his hand, picking a hot bit of shell out of the car’s way, at a spot where another projectile had pitched and burst, fifty yards ahead of us, and we saw one of the funniest sights in the war—namely, a terrified Belgian civilian running for all he was worth, and taking a complete toss into the shell hole. We picked him up in the car, and his only thanks was a bitter complaint at the jolty way in which the car ran over his own pavé.
On the way home, we saw one of our Avros hit while observing our heavy gun-fire. It was a horrid sight, as an Archie shell hit the engine full toss. Luckily, the pilot was able to come down safely, but unfortunately it was in the German lines and he was captured. He was at Eton with me, and we were very glad to hear that both he and his observer were practically unhurt;—rotten luck, was it not? But it is all part of our show and what we all expect more or less. To make up for it, next day we got a brace of their machines by a fair stalk and a fair fight in the air, and not by these horrible Archies.