One good feature of this war is that it will cause many a thousand men to appreciate our England. For myself, I have groused at her and called her hard names but, when I return, if I am discontent at any time and feel inclined to rail at her I shall think of this filthy, malodorous country and call myself a fool.
The post has just come in bringing me a parcel from your mother full of almonds and raisins and dried fruits galore.v Good egg. We will gorge ourselves upon them this evening and have a snap-dragon and lots of fun. A tune strummed out on the piano, a dish of snap-dragon and a jolly lot of pals around him and what more can a man want? Only one thing. The girl he loves. But never mind next Christmas will come in its time and then we shall know how to appreciate it the more.
Diversity is the spice of one’s life I believe. If so I have just had an extra hamper. There was a crash in the kitchen. The three girls came running into me in a very excited and frightened state. ‘Les soldats sont très malharde, [malade] m’sieur!’ I go forth. Smith,vi our cook, I find sitting on the range, our potatoes on the floor before him, an inane grin on his face the while he declares with somewhat blurred emphasis the fact that ‘he doesn’t believe there’s a … German this side of the Rhine at all’.
I ordered him out to bed. He saluted, said, ‘And ’bout time too, Capton’, and promptly subsided in the hearth where he gave way to uncontrollable laughter. I shout for Bunting, my trusty henchman, but remain unanswered. I shout, again. The reply is a most appalling crash. I rush into the scullery and find Bunting, my trusted man, the husband of a wife and father of a family, on hands and knees in the midst of a paralysing tangle of unwashed debris. With his head beneath the drip-board, he commenced ‘’pologising for disgrashfell ’dition’. I cursed him for a low beast, and returned to Smith. The latter was already preparing for slumber ’mongst the cinders. With my own hands I pulled them up and kicked their posteriors out of the back-door.
Later I heard from Oldhamvii that both the delinquents had fallen in the duck-pond. C’est très triste. I am afraid they will smell most atrociously tomorrow.
The British Tommy is something of a gross animal. I think he is drunk en masse tonight. It is terrible. Yet I cannot find it in my heart to blame him. God knows he has enough to put up with. And I cannot help but love him, even though he sits on the range and desires to slumber in the ash-pan.viii
26th December ’15, Boxing Day
A rather farcical marching [drill] competition marked the morning. The CO had ordered it, but neither B nor D Companies competed. It is likely there will be trouble for Worthy and myself. Noblesse oblige. Bow-wow!
The rest of the day I have spent writing, working off great arrears of correspondence and feeling much refreshed thereby. It has been quite a treat to have a slack day and we all feel twice as fit for work tomorrow. The fresh programme is out. Yet it is fresh in nothing. Only the old, well-worn routine. I must add a prayer to the soldier’s Litany. It will run something like this: ‘From all Routine and such like plagues, Good Lord deliver us.’
27th December ’15
We have had a really useful day in the open as the first of our new Routine. We have been on an improvised range and have run a competition in rapid fire which 5 Platoon won.
It was quite a lovely day, though cold, and lunch out there on the hill-side, with the wood to shield us from the wind and with no sign of house or man in all the landscape to disturb our sense of isolation, was most enjoyable. It was quite like one of the old days on the Plain and one felt it hard indeed to realise that only a few miles off there was real war.
Bunting has come back. A bedraggled and repentant Bunting, clothed in a wonderful mixture of garments which he has conned from various friends. I had meant to be angry with him but his repentance was so deep and his condition still so sad that I had not the heart. He has now gone sick with a septic foot and is on ‘Light Duty’. I wonder he has not succumbed to a combination of diphtheria and typhoid fever. Had any one less inebriated than he fallen in the pond there is no doubt but that would have been his fate.
28th December ’15
We have been out today on a battalion attack and most enjoyable it was. Quite a change from the ordinary ruck, quite like an old day down Stonehenge way on the Plain. If routine continues like it has for the last two days we shall bear up beneath it quite well.
And tonight comes the rumour that we leave here in a day or two, but whether it be true or not I do not yet know. Nor does rumour say our destination, whether trenches or another village. The big bombardment, we have heard, has commenced. If so, it may well be that we move up to the firing line. If we do, I trust that this time we may go through. But I talk foolishly, the whole thing is only rumour and may well end as so many such have done.
29th December ’15
Usually is rumour a lying jade, but for this once she has told the truth. We do leave here, and tomorrow morning we go to Le Quesnoy[-sur-Airaines], another training billet and not to the trenches. Not yet anyway. Perhaps the next move we will. At any rate we can but live in hopes.
I have just been reading some extracts from letters found on German prisoners. They are authentic, and, from them, one can only conclude that life in Germany is not easy to sustain just now. Some of the people seem in parlous state. So much so that until one remembers the excesses committed in the first days, when Prussia’s star was in the ascendant, one can almost find it in one to pity the poor devils.
A blow has fallen on me tonight, a very heavy blow, yet one, I am glad to say, which I could, had I would, have avoided. I mean that they have asked for Garsideix for a commission in one of the new units at home, and I have recommended him. He will, I feel sure, get the job, and his going will be the blow. As yet I do not know what I will do without him. He has been invaluable to me and to the company and I cannot imagine B without him. However, I suppose it must be. One has to look on these things from the larger rather than the personal standpoint. Nevertheless I feel very sad. One cannot have a good servant for long without getting a sincere attachment for him, and such an attachment I most certainly have for my keen, hard-working QMS.
He told the CO he wouldn’t take the commission if I didn’t want him to go. And, later, he said to me that he hoped he would not get the job, that he wanted to stay with me, that I was a leader of men and he would never feel the same under any other captain. Which was all rather foolish, I suppose, but which I hadn’t the heart to stop him saying. Damn it, he meant it so! Please God I may always justify half such faith. It is marvellous. I cannot understand it. As you so well know, I am such a truly ordinary sort of clout-head. Poor Garside.
30th December ’15
We have now moved as ordered to Le Quesnoy. That is scarcely worth recording now. It is not like the days when first we were out and moves meant endless thought and fret and worry. Now everyone is so used to it and so knows his job that the battalion just flits from one village to another as easily and with rather less fuss than a commercial traveller.
It was a fine day, a fact I am only too thankful to put down. For otherwise we should have had a bad time indeed, the roads – save the mark – being as it was absolutely atrocious and ankle deep in mud in many places.
This, Le Quesnoy, is a much better village than any yet which has suffered from us. We have good billets and the people are kind. I think we shall be all right here.x
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