DECEMBER-JANUARY, 1918

HOUVIN

Detraining at a railroad the small force of Normans swung away upon a long march to billets in Houvin, partaking at last of the rest that had for so long been their dire need.

The plentitude of food, ample sleep, clean clothing, and the wholesome cleanliness of pure water in which the body could be purified of a war’s protracted stagnations, acted visibly upon the spirits. They had had access to papers portraying to the full how much had depended upon their stand in those critical days, and now it was over they marvelled at how they had done it.

From their connection with the 29th Division, in the previous September, there had been borne upon them from friendly contact with brother Battalions, the subtle esprit de corps permeating a Division who had won fame at Gallipoli, who inspired when transferred to France a fear of their arms in the Hun mind, and won from the recalcitrant foe eulogy in the form of “The Iron Division.”

A strong mutual respect was apparent between them and the remaining regiments of the 86th Brigade. Each felt that reliance could at any time be placed upon the other: had they not already put their mettle to the test and come through with honours?

The old humour re-asserted itself among the wild, careless fellows who had come through. Tich, one of the Duo, Birfer, and Ginger were no longer there to plot out their daily round of “schemes.” Clarke, Martel, Stumpy, and Old Casey were left to carry on and they were quite capable of doing so.

Stumpy formed a friendship with another of his diminutive height and large waistband in the Middlesex, and the two were frequently hobnobbing together in each others’ billets.

“We lost a lot of good fellows,” Stumpy sighed heavily over his pipe, “wot we couldn’t spare. There was three wot never drank rum and who all got ’it.” A roar of laughter interrupted him. “Yes, all got ’it. And there was pore old Jack who got a dose in the arm an’ ’ad to walk a ’ell of a way to the dressin’ station. ‘E was bleedin’ bad an’ asked me ter take orf ‘is pack, which I did, an’ his water-bottle as well, becos it was full of rum and an’ rum is ’eavy.”

“Rum, full of rum,” his little pal looked up at him with dry lip, “you you ain’t got any left?”

“No, becos I put it aside, an’ some scrounger pinched it. All I ’opes is that it bloomin’ well choked ’im.” Someone bawled from the doorway that “supper was up.”

Billets are a form of barracking troops in a number of barns and stables spread over as small an area as possible. The one salient advantage of these shelters is fresh air; it comes in with icy gusts through these apertures made for the purpose and whistles through cracks in the door if there is a door and gaps where once glass had kept it out. For those to whom the sky on a star-lit night provides an hour’s ecstacy a hole or two in the roof is a blessing, but to the common mortal is a damnation by which the winter wind tints the nose o’ nights a soft shade of deep purple or gives passage to a gentle flow of rain that forms lakes and pools on your overcoat and blanket and which at the slightest movement runs like a small river down your chest until you wake with a shivering gasp.

Rats and mice make their way interestedly in and out of sleeping forms, investigate with deliberate intent the contents of your pack, or perchance make a tentative nibble at an odd toe or so. If anything digestible is found in an overcoat pocket the exasperating rodents do not enter by the obvious pocket-flap, but Chew their way in from the outside.

The weary old monotony of daily routine common to the Army set in, parades and inspections forced their unpleasant encroachments upon each day. Men whom a few weeks before had been forced to face the heaviest fighting they had ever experienced, now made the abrupt discovery that they were again liable to fall foul of the miles of red-tapeism that is everywhere rampant in Regulations respecting innumerable minor offences.

This perpetual inspection by an officer sickens. His minute survey of every inch of the uncouth, Army-rigged mortals, peppered with injunctions in relation to an absence of polish on boots or equipment, was never favorably received. There was a grain of humour in the actions of subalterns who were wont to jab up and down the bolt of a rifle with the air of an expert and solemnly inform the owner (who had fired several hundred rounds through it at tight moments) that he must “... be careful to oil the bolt most important.”

Much new clothing had to be issued to replace the battle-scared remnants of the Cambrai stunt. Thrown to the men in the happy haphazard Army method there were created a new series of Parisian modes for draping the figure. Army-rig! There was no lack of space or originality in the cut of Le Huray’s enormous wide trousers (the leg would comfortably have encircled his waist), turned up when worn without puttees two and one-half inches at the bottom; the top if hitched well up had manifest advantages as a muffler. Issued on the same logical lines, Mahy received a tiny pair of nether garments for his loner legs and a little tunic that hung limply like an undersized Eton-jacket six inches short of where it should have reached. Some lads were lost in shirts with sleeves generally associated with Chinese or other Eastern gentlemen, others moodily surveyed themselves in small shrunken garments that with only superhuman effort could be forced to meet the waistband without emiting a warning rip. Duport found it so.

“Look ’ere,” he growled, “trousers won’t reach me waist upwards; shirt won’t either, downwards. Leavin’ a bloomin’ two inches orl round of bare flesh.”

“Camouflage it.”

“’Ow d’you mean?”

“Paint the space brown an’ pretend it’s a belt.”

The Quarter-Master Sergeant and his assistant found an avalanche of new material and old on their hands. (The Q.M.S.’s are those individuals who keep all the new clothing in store and by only the wiliest of Tommies can such material be wangled.) The Q.M.S. of the Ten Hundred was not exactly popular among the ranks. N.B. Neither Q.M.S.’s nor C.Q.M.S.’s are acquainted as a rule with the gentle solitude of the first line trenches. Their duty it is to receive and issue the “plum and apple,” the “road-paving” biscuit and the weekly change of under-garments.

In the Field no man has actual possession of shirt, sock, or under-garments. These are all given in at each visitation to the baths and others issued in return. Your shirt thrown over to you by the C.Q.M.S. might be somewhat decrepit and holey or might have some resemblance to a new one. You might have two odd socks or (if you were among the bevy of schemers) two or three pairs would be in your possession illegally.

Parades were detestable. They had imagined that England was the training camp for these operations. In France they had expectation of fighting and resting, not marching up and down with occasional halts, while the Platoon Officer furtively asks his sergeant what order he must give next.

The pivot round which all parades manoeuvre is always with the Regimental Sergeant-Major (the main function of all R.S.M.’s is to walk round with a big stick). He, an old Regular, despite the iron discipline so candidly hated, was withall a staunch supporter of fair play for the ranker, a tartar on parade, and feared more by the junior N.C.O.’s than the very inhabitor of lower regions.

An N.C.O. (Non-Commissioned Officer) is an individual whose main talent lies in the ability to bawl out orders at men one yard distant in a voice having a hundred yards range. The possessors of some subtle superiority not descernible by ordinary individuals, they are for this reason forbidden to converse or walk with the men when “off parade.”

These stringent regulations never materialise in actual practice, but it conveys a hint of the tinge of “Hindenburgism” with which the Army is tainted excepting Dominion forces, wherein the negligible gulf between officers and men is easily bridged.

There will always, however, be a sneaking regard in the hearts of the few Normans who rested there; for Houvin. It was there that men could sleep far from the haunting spectre of anticipated death or devastation: there, too, life could be enjoyed to the full in the happy knowledge that no shells would pitch near by, no machine-gun turn its whining trail of bullets across your path. And it was at first difficult to realise that danger to limb was past, that movement to and fro was free from the hovering shrapnel that had so long dogged their steps and penetrated the mind with its presence until accepted as an everyday visitation such as the sun.

Parcels and mail arrived with a glad regularity. There is no more pregnant a “reviver” of downheartedness than letters from the old people, nor is anything more liable to inspire the “pip” than the absence of such personal touches with familiar scenes. Papers can never replace the badly penned and still more badly worded missives despatched from some humble cottage. Those two pages of scrawled information go far nearer to the receiver’s heart than twenty columns of polished well written print. The letter is almost a living link with all that in which he has the strongest interest ... he is far more delighted at the news of Tilly’s overthrow of Jim for Jack than a mere possible fall of the British Cabinet which might be pending.

“Besides,” Stumpy pointed out with unconscious irony, “you opens a paper an’ you knows there ain’t nothin’ in it, while the olé woman might ’ave put ten bob in yer letter.”

Tommy has never sufficient a supply of cash. Everywhere a few miles behind the Line a canteen or Y.M.C.A. had been pushed forward and in these places the five francs a lad receives about once a fortnight does not go very far or last long. Nor does its purchasing value cover more than a meagre supply of such commodities as cake, chocolate, tobacco and beer. With regard to the latter, stress must be laid on the fact that Tommy is far less often in a state of drunkenness than the average civilian and that he is far more prone to derive humour out of it than to drink it.