Letters to Helen Part 1

Letters to Helen.

by Keith Henderson.

PREFACE

These letters were never intended for publication.

But when the pictures were brought back from France it was suggested that they should be reproduced, and a book evolved.

Then a certain person (who shall be nameless) conceived the dastardly idea of exposing private correspondence to the public eye. He proved wilful in the matter, and this book came into the world.

LETTERS TO HELEN

_June 6, 1916._

Well, here we are in the slowest train that ever limped, and I've been to sleep for seven hours. The first good sleep since leaving England.

And now, as we've got twenty-eight hours to go still, there's time to write a letter. The last three days' postcards have been sc.r.a.ppy and unintelligible, but we departed without warning and with the most Sherlock Holmes secrecy. Not a word about which ports we were sailing from or to.

However, I'll tell you what I can without disclosing any names of places.

After moving off at midnight from among the Hamps.h.i.+re pine-trees, we eventually reached our port of departure. Great fun detraining the horses and getting them on board. The men were in the highest spirits.

But how disgusting those cold rank smells of a dock are.

We sailed the following evening. Hideously rough, and it took seventeen and a half hours. The men very quiet indeed and packed like sardines.

It was wonderful to think of all those eager souls in all those s.h.i.+ps making for France together over the black deep water. Some had gone before, and some came after. But the majority went over that night. I felt decidedly ill. And it was nervous work going round seeing after the horses and men when a "crisis" might have occurred at any moment!

Luckily, however, dignity was preserved. Land at last "hove in sight" as the grey morning grew paler and clearer. What busy-looking quays! More clatter of disembarkation. No time to think or look about.

Then, all being ready, we mounted and trekked off to a so-called "rest camp" near the town, most uneasy and hectic. But food late that evening restored our hilarity. A few hours' sleep and we moved off once more into the night, the horses' feet sounding loud and harsh on the unending French cobbles. By 8 a.m. we were all packed into this train. Now we are pa.s.sing by lovely, almost English, wooded hills. Here a well-known town with its cathedral looks most enticing. I long to explore. Such singing from the men's carriages! Being farmers mostly, they are interested in the unhedged fields and the acres of cloches. They go into hysterics of laughter when the French people a.s.sail them with smiles, broken English-French, and long loaves of bread. They think the long loaves _very_ humorous! There are Y.M.C.A. canteens at most stations, so we are well fed. The horses are miserable, of course. They were unhappy on board s.h.i.+p. A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to. And now they are wretched in their trucks, Rinaldo and Swallow are, of course, terrified, while Jezebel, having rapidly thought out the situation, takes it all very quietly. She has just eaten an enormous lunch. Poor Rinaldo wouldn't touch his, and Swallow only ate a very little.

[Sidenote: FRANCE AT LAST]

In this carriage Jorrocks is snoring like thunder. Edward is eating chocolate. Sir John is trying to plough through one of "these Frenchy newspapers--d.a.m.ned nonsense, you know! they don't know what it all means themselves." And Julian is scrutinizing a map of our area.

Everyone is so glad to be going up right into it now. That pottering about at home was most irritating. Just spit and polish, spit and polish all the time since August, 1914.

We are all getting cramp, and have to stand up occasionally. Toby has smoked his fourteenth pipe.

Oh, look! What a lovely rainbow! Treble. And under it a village with an estaminet, a dozen slate-roofed houses, and a very new chateau, hideous with scarlet bricks and chocolate draw-bridge and pepper-pot turrets.

Poplars and more poplars. Still we rumble along through symmetrical France.

_June 7._

We are in one of the most lovely old French chateaux I have ever imagined. Half chateau, half farm, fifteen miles behind the line. We remain here for two or three days. Arrived late last night, tired and grubby. But, O ye G.o.ds, when dawn began to reveal this old courtyard with its hens and chickens and pigeons! On one side the old house with its faded shutters. On the other side the old gateway with a square tower and a pigeon-cote above. Along the other sides old barns. The country round we have hardly seen, but it looks exquisite. There are several most attractive foals in a field close by.

And inside the chateau funny old-fas.h.i.+oned things--old beds with frowsty canopies, and old wall-papers with large designs in ferns and cornucopias. Imitation marble in the hall. Gilded ta.s.sels. Alas! my kit has not yet arrived. It's awful. And the anxiety to draw these things is feverish. We go so soon.

When you look out of the rooms into the courtyard, you see our waggons and draft-horses, and the men eating bully-beef like wolves. Some of them (including Sergeant Cart) are shaving and was.h.i.+ng stripped to the waist. The others just tear at the bread and beef and munch without speaking. Corporal Nutley and Corporal Field are pointing with their tea-mugs to the old gateway and the ducks and things. They all evidently love it. They sleep in the barns amongst the hay. The sun is warm and sleepy.

_June 8._

[Sidenote: THE CHATEAU-FARM]

Still at this lovely chateau-farm, and Life seems to have gone into a trance. I wake up and look out into the courtyard and the sunlight, on geese, Muscovy ducks, pigs, and pigeons, and it all feels like a half-forgotten story. There are traces of the Huns, but all that seems unreal. You hear the boom! boom! boom! of the guns all day, and more so at night; but nothing can disturb the extraordinary remote peace of this chateau. The very stones in the courtyard look more friendly and more countrified than ordinary stones, as if some ancient fairy lived here.

There's no doubt at all that the men feel it. Several of them have said how they like the place. They think it's a little bit like ----s.h.i.+re. I think I know what they mean.

After the war perhaps we may visit the place together: I should love showing it to you. I'm not at all sure that it's really very beautiful.

The architecture isn't good when you consider it. But somehow....

_June 10._

The same chateau. We are living a simple and brainless life. No field-days, of course, and for this relief much thanks. We don't know in the least what is happening. Troops come and troops go, and guns go by during the night, and Red Cross waggons go hither and thither, and the old turkey gobbles.

Yesterday I was out with my troop, quite uninteresting. But what do you think? Something exploded not 100 yards away from Rinaldo. I was much farther off, dismounted. He didn't turn a hair, but only looked round and watched the smoke. Whereas, as you know, a little bit of paper blown across the road sends him into paroxysms of terror.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CONFERENCE IN THE CHATEAU DE FEBVIN-PALFART There are many of these old chateaux-farms in Northern France. The beds are under great frowsy canopies and all the curtains are looped up with heavy ta.s.sels.]

_June 11._

I went into an old church in a large town ten miles from here to-day with Sergeant Hodge. There were the usual tinsel things and red baize and sham flowers. Sergeant Hodge much impressed. He said after we emerged: "You know, sir, it's very fine indeed. It puts me in mind of a bazaar." This was in all good faith, and was intended as a great compliment to the church! We are having lots of rain, which is bad for the horses, who are picketed in the open. And thunder. It's often extremely difficult to tell whether, when the thunder is far away, it is thunder or guns. Quite a novel experience, and quite pleasant after the long period of make-believe in England. Discipline. So salutary and so irksome. Now for the battle. I own I long to get into the thick of it soon. We see infantry returning and going up, and we feel sick, somehow, to be still safe.

This country is very charming, but a bit monotonous. Every road and every field exactly like every other.

_June 13._

[Sidenote: A SERVICE FOR KITCHENER]

A service to-day for Kitchener. And we had to ride fifteen miles there in pouring rain. Then we stood in deep mud for about an hour, the rain gradually trickling down our necks.

To-day delicious rumours of a German defeat at Verdun. Lots of prisoners, including the Crown Prince!

Goodness me, such rain. Jezebel bit Swallow above the eye merely to show what her feelings were. He now has one eye enormously swollen and almost closed up. It is dressed with iodine, so he looks most remarkable. His beauty much damaged. But it will only be temporary.

Hunt tells me that Swallow is so frightened of Jezebel he daren't lie down at night. But then, Hunt thinks Jezebel a sort of Bucephalus, and the more horses she kicks or bites the more pride he takes in her. He has no love for Swallow, unfortunately.

There's a distant cannonade going on to-day. We all eye each other.