Letters to Helen Part 4

Swallow is coming back. Isn't it splendid! The General finds him too irritating and tiresome. Jezebel will be glad, for she doesn't like the ghost-horse Moonlight, and she never really disliked Swallow. I can't say she liked him, because she likes no one, dear lamb. But she used to look on Swallow with rather less suspicion, somehow. And Swallow has a habit of licking that she approves of. I have often seen her snap at him even while he is licking her; but he always continues after a moment. I think it soothes her when the flies are tiresome.

This place has a beautiful church, which I have drawn. It's quite an unusually charming bit of the country.

_August 11._

[Sidenote: DOMART]

Jezebel did such an astonis.h.i.+ng thing yesterday. I was out with the signallers practising. We didn't want the bother of holding or picketing the horses. So I ordered "off-saddle," and then put a guard over the disused quarry where I had decided to leave them. The quarry had a gra.s.sy floor, and walls of chalk that in one place were only about 7 foot high. Jezebel has been so good (for her) lately, that I determined to leave her with the other horses. They were stripped of all bridles and saddles and things, and had heaps of room to wander.

Meanwhile we were carrying on with our work.

Presently shouts from the guard. I went back to see what was the matter.

My dear, Jezebel had tried to jump out of the quarry!

She had tried twice, but the sides were too steep and high, and she had slipped back. When I arrived, she was quietly grazing as if nothing had happened. Ah, but wait. This is not all.

Later on in the morning another hooroosh. A loud squealing and sounds of kicking. One of her moods again, I thought to myself grimly. That well-known voice. I should recognize her squeal anywhere. As I was going towards the quarry with Corporal Dutton to get her tied up or else hobbled, lo and behold! the two guards had vanished. "What the devil...." And all of a sudden out pour the horses careering downhill like mad! It was so appalling that Corporal Dutton and I just stood and shouted with laughter.

My dear, if there is anything in the whole world that goads a Major, a Brigadier, or any other military man, to fury and madness, it is a loose horse.

Imagine, then, forty-four horses all riderless, without saddles or bridles (and therefore almost impossible to catch), stampeding straight into a corps H.Q. village. This village is crawling with Generals!

Well, in the end we caught them all, and by some dazzling piece of luck, for which Allah be praised, no General, no Colonel, nor anyone else, seems to have got wind of the incident. Subalterns, yes, and I am sumptuously ragged about it. But how all the Generals and things happened to be out of sight and hearing at the time, I don't know. And _still_ this is not the cream of the comedy.

After giving orders for rounding up the animals, I went on to the quarry with Corporal Dutton. My dear, _There was Jezebel grazing, as cool as a cuc.u.mber!_

She still further insulted me by coming up and trying to push her nose into my pocket, where I sometimes keep an apple for her.

[Sidenote: ANOTHER MOVE NORTHWARDS]

The guards, you see, had instantly gone in to get her away from the horse she was kicking, when we first heard the commotion. The other horses had mooned out of the entrance gap, and then, I suppose, something--a fly, perhaps--had frightened them, and off they had galloped. While "the accursed female," as we sometimes call Jezebel, too sensible to stampede, quietly continued feeding. I shall never be taken in by her air of innocence again. Never. I don't a bit mind saying I was decidedly alarmed. That mare might have been responsible for the death of the Corps Commander.

O Jezebel, I wish I could get angry with you and give you a jolly good hiding one day. But you know I can't, you dear old thing. I'm writing this in the orchard, where the H.Q. horses live, and Jezebel is standing sleepily in the shade of her tree. She looks intensely stupid. She occasionally tries to flick away a fly with her short tail. Occasionally she sighs deeply, with that blubbery, spluttery noise that all horses make when they sigh.

_August 15._

On the move. This is our first day's trek, and we are at a place where we have been before--but not the same billets. I am in a cottage with an earth floor (which looks very odd with a hideous drab-coloured wall-paper), and small children and hens, both dirty, wander in and out of my room. It's too hot to keep the door latched. A swallow's nest in the room next door; and the people say that, although the young have flown, they still return at night.

_August 19._

The Adjutant is away, and won't be returning for some time; so I am still acting. And this, together with signal work, etc., is somewhat arduous. I live all day in the "office," a very small bivouac in a green field. There I sit praying for inspiration, when letters come in marked _Urgent_, beginning something like this:

"LP/3657042--G1.

"Ref. your memo HC/516342/L12 of 13/8/16, please find A.F. 361B for completion and immediate return."

And I haven't the least idea what I said in my memo HC/516342/L12 of 13/8/16, and I can't find any record of it. And I can't for the life of me make out how I am meant to fill in A.F. 361B, because I haven't the least idea what it's all about.

_August 26._

[Sidenote: BEHIND KEMMEL]

Impossible to write yesterday, and only a brief scrawl to-day.

The regiment is being scattered over the face of the earth--an O.P.

here, an O.P. there; a digging-party here, a draining-party there, etc., etc., etc.; not to mention a few on duty as military police _pro tem._, others guarding bomb shelters, others reconnoitring new areas for new divisions, etc. Dennis is very badly wounded. He can't be moved yet.

Some bits of sh.e.l.l went into his thigh, up his back, and it's not certain yet whether it entered his lungs or not. They are afraid so. He was on his tummy at an O.P. A crump got him. Dear old Dennis! I hope he'll pull round. Also Clive is very seriously wounded, I fear. d.a.m.n!

_August 27._

I am Acting Adjutant now. An Adjutant's job is a most hairy job, and I sit with drops of perspiration dripping off my brow all day. Never see the horses, never get any exercise except for a moment or two.

_August 29._

We are probably going to move again soon, and consequently the amount of correspondence is vast. Clive is better, I think. Dennis about the same. I suppose a thing can go into your lung and not kill you?

_September 2._

The Colonel seemed (from a telegram he sent yesterday morning) to be in a great hurry for me to come down to the other squadron. So I decided to go by train, and send Hunt with the horses. And this is the train journey.

The station at ---- quite recovered and tidy after a feeble strafing the other day. Even two or three civilians travelling. Not many of the military--a hundred or so, perhaps, all waiting and smoking idly, each armed with his "Movement Order." The dull boom of guns not excessive, though there's a frequent "plom! plom! plom!" of the Archies, and the sky is dotted with cl.u.s.ters of pretty little shrapnel clouds. Sometimes the crack! crack! crack! crack! of machine guns high up in the blue. It makes you feel slightly homesick. I don't quite know why. That sort of thing isn't done at home.

[Sidenote: THROUGH HAZEBROUCK]

In comes the train. The French station officials all in a paroxysm of excitement because one Tommy throws down a gas helmet for the train to run over. Up we clamber. Hale heaves up valise and coat and so forth, and retires to a "third," while I feel a beast lounging in this luxurious "first." Off we go, and I look out at all the familiar country.

There's one of those quaint French notices in the carriage:

TAISEZ-VOUS!

MeFIEZ-VOUS!

LES OREILLES ENNEMIES VOUS eCOUTENT!

All too necessary, they tell me.

_Later._--It is getting dark. We stop at a large town that I know well.

Two hours to wait. I turn in to a Follies show. There is usually one going on, run by this or that division, all soldiers, but looking very odd in their paint and ruffles. But what a curious concert. The first I've seen out here. The comic Scot vastly popular; but even more so are hideously sentimental songs all about the last bugle and death and my dead friends under the earth and eternal sleep. You know? However, they love it, and the dismal piano beats a tinny accompaniment.

Staff officers even are here, and I recognize one Somerset; also Grey, who was in the Gun section with Dennis and me, now a Captain. Delightful talking over old times.

_Later._--Into the train again. On the platform beforehand I meet a gunner subaltern. We talk. He's very well read, and interested in lots of the things I love so much. We discuss the war. He knows a lot of the billets I know. Evidently we have nearly met out here often before. What is that book he is reading? Richard Jefferies? From Jefferies to Maeterlinck. What has become of him? War so foreign to that mystic mind.

Yet his beautiful abbey in Flanders must be in the hands of Fritz, if it still exists at all. We talk for about two hours. Then he gets out at ----. I don't know what his name is, and very likely I won't ever meet him again. But out here one makes friends quickly. There are so many of us all in the same boat. And one hardly expects ever to meet again. Then (alone in the carriage) I doze. The electric light in full blaze, and no curtains are down. Stations rather like bad dreams. Soldiers everywhere.

A great clanking of horse-trucks and gun-carriages. Vast stores of timber for huts. Bookstalls open all night. These trains seem to hoot and whistle most horribly. Far more noisy than English trains, surely.