Letters to Helen Part 3

Am I telling you about the things you want to hear? Usually I think I've talked mostly about our surroundings, doings, and only to a very small extent about our thoughts. But, truth to relate, we think so little that there is not much in that line to record. On this job you just can't think. And a good thing too, perhaps.

[Sidenote: FLESSELLES]

However, here we are, and here I expect we shall remain for, say, a week. The horses are all right out in the open. The men are in barns.

But we are in cottages--real, almost English-looking cottages. Edward and I share a room in one, and the others are dotted about the village.

Now, this is the cottage:

From the high street (the only street) you turn into a little gate, and then walk down a path of brick with a narrow flower border on either side, and vegetables beyond. The cottage is white, with lace curtains and brick floors, without carpets, like all French cottages. The walls have endless pictures of saints and things, with occasional crucifixes and school certificates and faded photographs of people in stiff dresses and crimped hair.

Out at the back more kitchen-garden with some fruit-trees.

Altogether quite a charming little place. Dusty and rather flat open country intersected by deepish valleys, not unlike the Cirencester road if you removed all the woods, or nearly all. We don't, of course, know what we are going to do now.

_July 23._

Things is curiouser and curiouser. In all haste we got ready to move. We then moved like tortoises. I rode over to ---- yesterday. Cavalry all over the place like locusts. And, lawks! what a din! Guns in a violent paroxysm of rage. Aeroplanes wandering about in the sky, purring like angry panthers, all yellow in the sunlight. And all day and night more dusty men and dusty horses and dusty lorries and dusty guns coming and going, coming and going.

The other squadron at last quite close to us. Long talks with Dennis.

He's had an exciting time, and was under orders for a most hair-raising job, which didn't come off owing to Fritz's tiresome habit of doing the unexpected. Horrors! The General has been trying Swallow. I fear he may steal him. Of course he has every right to any horse in the regiment, but it is quite difficult to smile. Swallow is, unfortunately, even more showy than Rinaldo was; but he s.h.i.+ed at a goat, bless him, and I think that may just turn the scale. I shall now proceed to train Swallow to shy at every blade of gra.s.s, every grain of sand. Long live that goat!

We are still "standing by." It is a wearing existence. I bathed yesterday in a well-known river. So beautiful and willowy.

_July 28._

[Sidenote: A BATH]

Temperature 100,000! And I am lying on a bed in a wee cottage, very, very dusty and dirty. Hale, however, is going to bring some water from the pump, and, oh Jerusalem, won't it be heavenly--a bath! All these things off, and lovely clean things on, and lovely coffee to drink when that's done. I wouldn't change the prospects of the next half-hour for all the pearls and peac.o.c.ks of Araby--no, not if you offered me the Peace of Europe! Europe be blowed! I want my bath.

You see, it's like this: The corps H.Q. moved to a different area some days ago, preceded by us. Everything in the area left in an utterly unorganized, uncatalogued condition. We have to tear round and find out where the various divisions can go.

And we have _got_ to find room for more divisions than have ever occupied this area before. Useless to come back and report that such and such villages have no water for men or horses. The water has got to be found. Dig for it. Organize fatigue-parties and dig. Dam up little trickles by the roadside until quite large ponds are formed. Get the engineers and pioneers on to it. Labour battalions--anything. So I've been riding madly about, and I'm like a treacle pudding in a sand-storm.

The bath! Hale, you are a most excellent fellow. That'll do splendidly.

Have you got my towel?... INTERVAL.... And now, dear friends, it is another man that you see before you. A man who has had a bath. A man less like a bit of oily motor-waste, and more like Sir George Alexander. This delicious coffee, too! A bowl of it, made by Mme.

Whatever-her-name-is. I take it up in both hands and quaff it. Here's to You and to Home, and to Everybody--and (just to show there's no ill feeling) here's to the poor old Boche!

_July 29._

In the same cottage.

It's very hot. Ammunition lorries go by in an endless string, making the deuce of a dust. But we are far away from guns and gun food and noise. I got leave to go up to ---- yesterday.

I do dislike noise so, don't you? The noise of a battery in action is diabolical, and the very thought of it makes me s.h.i.+ver. There go the senseless lorries, all packed with music for a more h.e.l.lish orchestra than you can remotely imagine. The first few bars are enough to drive you nearly frantic. It's unholy. It seems to split your head and tear your ears out of their sockets. Can you understand a noise that hits you? Hits unbearably, and then again. Crashes on to you. Bangs your bones out of your skin, till you feel dazed and sick.

Still the lorries go by.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRICOURT CEMETERY The moon and some signal lights over FRICOURT. LA BOISELLE just over the hill. French crosses all bent and twisted.

The little chapel still standing.]

_August 3._

[Sidenote: GUNS AT FRICOURT]

I hear the General doesn't like Swallow, so there's a good chance of his returning. When you get angry with Swallow, he loses control of his legs altogether, and they all fly about in every direction. He is quite like Rinaldo in character,--not so perpetually fidgety, but as nervous, and more easily frightened. Jezebel is showing her worth now like a Trojan.

She knows she has to make up for the loss of Swallow (whom I think she rather misses). She is behaving splendidly. She is blatantly well, and obeys all orders like clockwork; never tired; always hungry--a model.

The other mare, Moonlight, a dark brown, seems to be somehow exhausted.

I think she has had a very hard time of it, and has been wounded in the foot. Her foot is all right now, but she seems to have no life left in her. The war has utterly beaten her. Hunt is grazing and grooming and petting her all day. So she may pick up. At present she is somehow rather pathetic. She was with the Indian cavalry before she got wounded. And then she went to a veterinary hospital. She is well made, and may possibly brighten up. Hunt declares that she has "lost all her courage." I'm glad I'm not a horse.

_August 5._

This is such an amazing country and in such an amazing condition. I could collect a Harrod's Stores in a day--interesting and useful things, too. But it's impossible to carry things about. One daren't overload the horses, and one daren't overload the transport. Both are so heavy laden, as it is.

The signal job is quite interesting, really, and the Colonel gives me an absolutely free hand.

Jezebel and Co. are driven distracted by the horse-flies. I took Jezebel into a stream to-day, but she started to sit down! So the flies must just bite, I fear. Large grey brutes.

Hunt made me laugh so last night. I was looking round the horses with Edward. They were waiting to be fed with their evening hay. To my surprise and pleasure, Moonlight suddenly neighed. "Evidently getting her appet.i.te back," I remarked. "Oh yes, sir," says Hunt; "several times I've caught her _hollerin'_ for her meals lately!" Isn't that a lovely expression?

[Sidenote: JEZEBEL IN ONE OF HER MOODS]

Hunt is such a good chap. He thinks nothing of "abroad," but a lot of the "'osses," as he calls them. I found him what seemed to me a very nice loft to sleep in when we got here. But no: "I'd rather sleep with my 'osses, sir, thank you." And he sleeps practically under their noses.

"You see, sir, the mare might get one of her moods on."

He is getting very fond of Jezebel now, and whenever she errs, he attributes the error to one of her moods.

She tore her nosebag to pieces the other day; whether because she was hungry and it was empty, or because it amused her, or because she was being bitten by a fly, I don't know. No one seems to have seen her do it. "One of her moods," says Hunt; and that's all there is to be said about the incident.

My dear, this country is most enchanting. Far away from nasty noises, full of unexpected wooded valleys and willowy streams.

All the little shrines are, as usual, surrounded by half-clipped trees.

And the wild-flowers. Clear pale blue succory is the most charming of all, and I am going to send you some plants as soon as they have ceased flowering.

_August 6._

You can't think how difficult it is to take any interest in military matters sometimes. The inclination to let things slide. The feeling that an order is not so terrifying as it once was; that after all, who will know or bother if one furtive subaltern creeps out one evening to sketch?

_August 8._

Do you know, it's unintelligent, but I do so enjoy being here away from the fevers of war. War is getting tedious, and the summer is all too short.