We got to Bethune by half-past ten
: I am well aware that the statement is, in itself, an arid though an accurate one. And at this crisis in my career I should surely be ready with something spectacular and exciting. Nevertheless, I must admit that I have no such episode to exhibit. The events in my experience must take their natural course. I distinctly remember reporting at battalion headquarters in Bethune. In a large dusky orderly room in—was it a wine-merchant’s warehouse?—the Colonel shook hands with me. I observed that he was wearing dark brown field boots, small in the leg, and insinuating by every supple contour that they came from Craxwell. And since the world is a proverbially small place, there was, I hope, nothing incredible in the fact that the Colonel was a distant relative of Colonel Hesmon, and had heard all about how I won the Colonel’s Cup. It will be remembered that Colonel Hesmon’s conversational repertoire was a limited one, so it wasn’t to be wondered at that my new Commanding Officer could tell me the name of my horse, or that I was already well acquainted with his name, which was Winchell. For the old Colonel had frequently referred to the exploits of his dashing young relative.
I mention this mainly because my first few minutes with my unit in France transported me straight back to England and the Ringwell Hunt. Unfortunately, the migration was entirety mental; my physical feet took me straight along a pavé road for about three miles, to Le Hamel, where my company was in billets. Anyhow, it was to my advantage that I was already known to Colonel Winchell as a hunting man. For I always found that it was a distinct asset, when in close contact with officers of the Regular Army, to be able to converse convincingly about hunting. It gave one an almost unfair advantage in some ways.
Mansfield (who had been received with reservations of cordiality), Dick (persona grata on account of his having been at Sandhurst, and also because no one could possibly help liking him at sight), and I (no comment required) were all posted to C company which was short of officers. The battalion had lately been much below full strength, and was now being filled up with drafts. We had arrived at a good time, for our Division was about to be withdrawn to a back area for a long rest. And the Givenchy trenches on the La Bassée Canal had taken their toll in casualties. For the time being the Western Front received us into comparative comfort and domesticity. We found Captain Barton, the company commander, by a stove (which was smoking badly) in a small tiled room on the ground floor of a small house on the road from Bethune to Festubert. The smoke made my eyes water, but otherwise things were quite cheerful. We all slept on the floor, the hardness and coldness of which may be imagined. But then, as always, my sleeping-bag (or “fleabag” as we called it) was a good friend to me, and we were in clover compared with the men: (no one who was in the War need be reminded of that unavoidable circumstance).
Barton (like all the battalion officers except the C.O., the Second-in-Command, and the quartermaster, and four or five subalterns from Sandhurst) was a civilian. He was big, burly, good-natured, and easygoing; had been at Harrow and, until the War, had lived a comfortably married life on an adequate unearned income. He was, in fact, a man of snug and domesticated habits and his mere presence (wearing pince-nez) in a front line trench made one feel that it ought, at any rate, to be cosy. Such an inherently amicable man as Barton was a continual reminder of the incongruity of war with everyday humanity. In the meantime he was making gallant efforts to behave professionally, and keep his end up as a company commander. But that stove had no business to be making the room uninhabitable with its suffocating fumes. It really wasn’t fair on a chap like old Barton, who had always been accustomed to a bright fire and a really good glass of port. …
So my company received me; and for an infantry subaltern the huge unhappy mechanism of the Western Front always narrowed down to the company he was in. My platoon accepted me apathetically. It was a diminished and exhausted little platoon, and its mind was occupied with anticipations of “Divisional Rest.”
To revert to my earlier fact, “got to Bethune by half-past ten,” it may well be asked how I can state the time of arrival so confidently. My authority is the diary which I began to keep when I left England. Yes; I kept a diary, and I intend to quote from it (though the material which it contains is meagre). But need this be amplified? …
“Thursday.
Went on working-party, 3 to 10:30 p.m. Marched to Festubert, a ruined village, shelled to bits. About 4:30, in darkness and rain, started up half a mile of light-railway lines through marsh, with sixty men. Then they carried hurdles up the communication trenches, about three quarters of a mile, which took two hours. Flares went up frequently; a few shells, high overhead, and exploding far behind us. The trenches are very wet. Finally emerged at a place behind the first- and second-line trenches, where new trenches (with ‘high-command breastworks’) are being dug.
“Saturday.
Working-party again. Started 9:45 p.m. in bright moonlight and iron frost. Dug 12–2. Men got soup in ruined house at Festubert, with the moon shining through matchwood skeleton rafters. Up behind the trenches, the frost-bound morasses and ditches and old earthworks in moonlight, with dusky figures filing across the open, hobbling to avoid slipping. Home 4:15.
“Sunday.
Same as
