Our Christmas would have been a grand day if it had not been away from home.
At eight o"clock there was breakfast of porridge, bacon and eggs, and bloaters--everybody in the best of spirits. About nine the Skipper presented us with cards from the King and Queen. Then the mail came in, but it was poor. By the time we had tidied up our places and done a special Christmas shave and wash, we were called upon to go down to the cookhouse and sign for Princess Mary"s Christmas gift--a good pipe, and in a pleasant little bra.s.s box lay a Christmas card, a photograph, a packet of cigarettes, and another of excellent tobacco.
It was now lunch-time--steak and potatoes.
The afternoon was spent on preparations for our great and unexampled dinner. Grimers printed the menu, and while I made some cold curried sardines, the rest went down into the village to stimulate the landlady of the inn where we were going to dine.
In the village a brigade was billeted, and that brigade was, of course, "on the wire." It was arranged that the despatch riders next on the list should take their motor-cycles down and be summoned over the wire if they were needed. An order had come round that unimportant messages were to be kept until the morning.
We dined in the large kitchen of the _Maison Commune Estaminet_, at a long table decorated with mistletoe and holly. The dinner--the result of two days" "scrounging" under the direction of George--was too good to be true. We toasted each other and sang all the songs we knew. Two of the Staff clerks wandered in and told us we were the best of all possible despatch riders. We drank to them uproariously. Then a Scotsman turned up with a noisy recitation. Finally, we all strolled home up the hill singing loudly and pleasantly, very exhilarated, in sure and certain belief we had spent the best of all possible evenings.
In the dwelling of the Staff there was noise of revelry. Respectable captains with false noses peered out of windows. Our Fat Boy declaimed in the signal office on the iniquities of the artillery telegraphists.
Sadders sent gentle messages of greeting over the wires. He was still a little piqued at his failure to secure the piper of the K.O.S.B., who had been commandeered by the Staff. Sadders waited for him until early morning and then steered him to our lodge, but the piper was by then too tired to play.
Here is our bill of fare:--
CHRISTMAS, 1914.
DINNER OF THE TEN SURVIVING MOTOR-CYCLISTS OF THE FAMOUS FIFTH DIVISION.
Sardins tres Moutard.
Potage.
Dindon Roti-Saucisses. Oise Roti.
Pet.i.ts Choux de Bruxelles.
Pommes de Terre.
Pouding de Noel Rhum.
Dessert. Cafe. Liqueurs.
_Vins._--Champagne. Moselle. Port.
Benedictine. Whisky.
On the reverse page we put our battle-honours--Mons, Le Cateau, Crepy-en-Valois, the Marne, the Aisne, La Ba.s.see, the Defence of Ypres.[28]
We beat the Staff on the sprouts, but the Staff countered by appropriating the piper.
Work dwindled until it became a farce. One run for each despatch rider every third day was the average. St Jans was not the place we should have chosen for a winter resort. Life became monotonous, and we all with one accord began applying for commissions. Various means were used to break the monotony. Grimers, under the Skipper"s instructions, began to plant vegetables for the spring, but I do not think he ever got much beyond mustard and cress. On particularly unpleasant days we were told off to make fascines. N"Soon a.s.sisted the Quartermaster-Sergeant. Cecil did vague things with the motor-lorry. I was called upon to write the Company"s War Diary. Even the Staff became restless and took to night-walks behind the trenches. If it had not been for the generous supply of "days off" that the Skipper allowed us, we should by February have begun to gibber.
Despatches were of two kinds--ordinary and priority. "Priority"
despatches could only be sent by the more important members of the Staff. They were supposed to be important, were marked "priority" in the corner, and taken at once in a hurry. Ordinary despatches went by the morning and evening posts. During the winter a regular system of motor-cyclist posts was organised right through the British Area. A message could be sent from Neuve Eglise to Chartres in about two days.
Our posts formed the first or last stage of the journey. The morning post left at 7.30 A.M., and the evening at 3.30 P.M. All the units of the division were visited.
If the roads were moderately good and no great movements of troops were proceeding, the post took about 1-1/4 hours; so the miserable postman was late either for breakfast or for tea. It was routine work pure and simple. After six weeks we knew every stone in the roads. The postman never came under fire. He pa.s.sed through one village which was occasionally sh.e.l.led, but, while I was with the Signal Company, the postman and the sh.e.l.ls never arrived at the village at the same time.
There was far more danger from lorries and motor ambulances than from sh.e.l.ls.
As for the long line of "postmen" that stretched back into the dim interior of France--it was rarely that they even heard the guns. When they did hear them, they would, I am afraid, pluck a racing helmet from their pockets, draw the ear-flaps well down over their ears, bend down over their racing handle-bars, and sprint for dear life. Returning safely to Abbeville, they would write hair-raising accounts of the dangers they had pa.s.sed through to the motor-cycling papers. It is only right that I should here once and for all confess--there is no finer teller of tall stories than the motor-cyclist despatch rider....
From December to February the only time I was under sh.e.l.l fire was late in December, when the Grand Attack was in full train. A certain brigade headquarters had taken refuge inconsiderately in advanced dug-outs. As I pa.s.sed along the road to them some shrapnel was bursting a quarter of a mile away. So long was it since I had been under fire that the noise of our own guns disturbed me. In the spring, after I had left the Signal Company, the roads were not so healthy. George experienced the delights of a broken chain on a road upon which the Germans were registering accurately with shrapnel. Church, a fine fellow, and quite the most promising of our recruits, was killed in his billet by a sh.e.l.l when attached to a brigade.
Taking the post rarely meant just a pleasant spin, because it rained in Flanders from September to January.
One day I started out from D.H.Q. at 3.30 P.M. with the afternoon post, and reached the First Brigade well up to time. Then it began to rain, at first slightly, and then very heavily indeed, with a bagful of wind. On a particularly open stretch of road--the rain was stinging sharply--the engine stopped. With a heroic effort I tugged the bicycle through some mud to the side of a shed, in the hope that when the wind changed--it did not--I might be under cover. I could not see. I could not grip--and of course I could not find out what the matter was.
After I had been working for about half an hour the two artillery motor-cyclists came along. I stopped them to give me a hand and to do as much work as I could possibly avoid doing myself while preserving an appearance of omniscience.
We worked for an hour or more. It was now so dark that I could not distinguish one motor-cyclist from another. The rain rained faster than it had ever rained before, and the gale was so violent that we could scarcely keep our feet. Finally, we diagnosed a complaint that could not be cured by the roadside. So we stopped working, to curse and admire the German rockets.
There was an estaminet close by. It had appeared shut, but when we began to curse a light shone in one of the windows. So I went in and settled to take one of the artillery motor-cycles and deliver the rest of my quite unimportant despatches. It would not start. We worked for twenty minutes in the rain vainly, then a motor-cyclist turned up from the nearest brigade to see what had become of me,--the progress of the post is checked over the wire. We arranged matters--but then neither his motor-cycle nor the motor-cycle of the second artillery motor-cyclist would start. It was laughable. Eventually we got the brigade despatch rider started with my report.
A fifth motor-cyclist, who discreetly did not stop his engine, took my despatches back to "the Div." The second artillery motor-cycle we started after quarter of an hour"s prodigious labour. The first and mine were still obstinate, so he and I retired to the inn, drank brandy and hot water, and conversed amiably with madame.
Madame, who together with innumerable old men and children inhabited the inn, was young and pretty and intelligent--black hair, sallow and symmetrical face, expressive mouth, slim and graceful limbs. Talking the language, we endeavoured to make our forced company pleasant. That other despatch rider, still steaming from the stove, sat beside a charming Flemish woman, and endeavoured, amid shrieks of laughter, to translate the jokes in an old number of "London Opinion."
A Welsh lad came in--a perfect Celt of nineteen, dark and lithe, with a momentary smile and a wild desire to see India. Then some Cheshires arrived. They were soaked and very weary. One old reservist staggered to a chair. We gave him some brandy and hot water. He chattered unintelligibly for a moment about his wife and children. He began to doze, so his companion took him out, and they tottered along after their company.
A dog of no possible breed belonged to the estaminet. Madame called him "Automobile Anglais," because he was always rushing about for no conceivable reason.
We were sorry when at 9.50 the lorry came for the bicycles. Our second driver was an ex-London cabby, with a crude wit expressed in impossible French that our hostess delightfully parried. On the way back he told me how he had given up the three taxis he had owned to do "his bit," how the other men had laughed at him because he was so old, how he had met a prisoner who used to whistle for the taxis in Russell Square. We talked also of the men in the trenches, of fright, and of the end of the war. We reached D.H.Q. about 10.30, and after a large bowl of porridge I turned in.
FOOTNOTES:
[25] The soldier"s contemptuous expression for the inhabitants of the civilian world.
[26] I retired with some haste from Flanders the night after the Germans first began to use gas. Militant chemistry may have altered the British soldier"s convictions.
[27] I have left out the usual monotonous epithet. Any soldier can supply it.
[28] To these may now be added--St Eloi, Hill 60, the Second Battle of Ypres.
CHAPTER XII.
BEHIND THE LINES.
I had intended to write down a full description of the country immediately behind our present line. The Skipper, for fear we should become stale, allowed us plenty of leave. We would make little expeditions to Bethune for the baths, spend an afternoon riding round Armentieres, or run over to Poperinghe for a chop. We even arranged for a visit to the Belgian lines, but that excursion was forbidden by a new order. Right through the winter we had "unrivalled opportunities"--as the journalists would say--of becoming intimate with that strip of Flanders which extends from Ypres to Bethune. Whether I can or may describe it is a matter for care. A too affectionate description of the neighbourhood of Wulverghem, for instance, would be unwise. But I see no reason why I should not state as a fact that a most excellent dry Martini could be obtained in Ypres up to the evening of April 22.
Wretched Ypres has been badly over-written. Before the war it was a pleasant city, little visited by travellers because it lay on a badly served branch line. The inhabitants tell me it was never much troubled with tourists. One burgher explained the situation to me with a comical mixture of sentiment and reason.
"You see, sir, that our Cathedral is shattered and the Cloth Hall a ruin. May those devils, the dirty Germans, roast in h.e.l.l! But after the war we shall be the richest city in Belgium. All England will flock to Ypres. Is it not a monstrous cemetery? Are there not woods and villages and farms at which the brave English have fought like lions to earn for themselves eternal fame, and for the city an added glory? The good G.o.d gives His compensations after great wars. There will be many to buy our lace and fill our restaurants."
Mr John Buchan and Mr Valentine Williams and others have "written up"
Ypres. The exact state of the Cloth Hall at any given moment is the object of solicitude. The shattered Belgian homes have been described over and over again. The important things about Ypres have been left unsaid.
Near the station there was a man who really could mix c.o.c.ktails. He was no blundering amateur, but an expert with the subtlest touch. And in the Rue de Lille a fashionable dressmaker turned her _atelier_ into a tea-room. She used to provide coffee or chocolate, or even tea, and the most delicious little cakes. Of an afternoon you would sit on comfortable chairs at a neat table covered with a fair cloth and talk to your hostess. A few hats daintily remained on stands, but, as she said, they were last year"s hats, unworthy of our notice.
A pleasant afternoon could be spent on the old ramparts. We were there, as a matter of fact, to do a little building-up and clearing-away when the German itch for destruction proved too strong for their more gentlemanly feelings. We lay on the gra.s.s in the sun and smoked our pipes, looking across the placid moat to Zillebeke Vyver, Verbranden Molen, and the slight curve of Hill 60. The landscape was full of interest. Here was shrapnel bursting over entirely empty fields. There was a sapper repairing a line. The Germans were sh.e.l.ling the town, and it was a matter of skill to decide when the lumbersome old sh.e.l.l was heard exactly where it would fall. Then we would walk back into the town for tea and look in at that particularly enterprising grocer"s in the Square to see his latest novelties in tinned goods.