Bullets Billets | Page 3

after midnight I parted from my companion and started off to
get back to that Base Camp of mine.
Standing in the main square of the town, I realized a few points which
tended to take the edge off the success of the evening:
No. 1.--It was too late to get a tram.
No. 2.--All the taxis had disappeared.
No. 3.--It was pouring with rain.
No. 4.--I had three miles to go.
I started off to walk it--but had I known what that walk was going to be,
I would have buttoned myself round a lamp-post and stayed where I
was.
I made that fatal mistake of thinking that I knew the way.
Leaning at an angle of forty-five degrees against the driving rain, I
staggered along the tram lines past the Casino, and feeling convinced
that the tram lines must be correct, determined to follow them.
After about half an hour's walk, mostly uphill, I became rather
suspicious as to the road being quite right.
Seeing a sentry-box outside a palatial edifice on the right, I tacked
across the road and looked for the sentry.
A lurid thing in gendarmes advanced upon me, and I let off one of my
curtailed French sentences at him:
"Pour Bléville, Monsieur?"
I can't give his answer in French, but being interpreted I think it meant

that I was completely on the wrong road, and that he wasn't certain as
to how I could ever get back on it without returning to Havre and
starting again.
He produced an envelope, made an unintelligible sketch on the back of
it, and started me off again down the way I had come.
I realized what my mistake had been. There was evidently a branch
tram line, which I had followed, and this I thought could only have
branched off near the Casino, so back I went to the Casino and started
again.
I was right about the branch line, and started merrily off again, taking
as I thought the main line to Bléville.
After another half-hour of this, with eyes feverishly searching for
recognizable landmarks, I again began to have doubts as to the veracity
of the tram lines. However, pretending that I placed their honesty
beyond all doubt, I plodded on; but round a corner, found the outlook
so unfamiliar that I determined to ask again. Not a soul about. Presently
I discovered a small house, standing back off the road and showing a
thin slit of light above the shutters of a downstairs window. I tapped on
the glass. A sound as of someone hurriedly trying to hide a pile of
coverless umbrellas in a cupboard was followed by the opening of the
window, and a bristling head was silhouetted against the light.
I squeezed out the same old sentence:
"Pour Bléville, Monsieur?"
A fearful cataract of unintelligible words burst from the head, but left
me almost as much in the dark as ever, though with a faint glimmering
that I was "warmer." I felt that if I went back about a mile and turned to
the left, all would be well.
I thanked the gollywog in the window, who, somehow or other, I think
must have been a printer working late, and started off once more.

After another hour's route march I came to some scattered houses, and
finally to a village. I was indignantly staring at a house when suddenly,
joy!--I realized that what I was looking at was an unfamiliar view of the
café where I had breakfasted earlier in the day.
Another ten minutes and I reached the Camp. Time now 2.30 a.m. I
thought I would just take a look in at the Orderly Room tent to see if
there were any orders in for me. It was lucky I did. Inside I found an
orderly asleep in a blanket, and woke him.
"Anything in for me?" I asked. "Bairnsfather's my name."
"Yes, sir, there is," came through the blanket, and getting up he went to
the table at the other end of the tent. He sleepily handed me the wire:
"Lieutenant Bairnsfather to proceed to join his battalion as
machine-gun officer...."
"What time do I have to push off?" I inquired.
"By the eight o'clock from Havre to-morrow, sir."
Time now 3 a.m. To-morrow--THE FRONT! And then I crept into my
tent and tried to sleep.
CHAPTER II
TORTUOUS TRAVELLING--CLIPPERS AND
TABLETS--DUMPED AT A SIDING--I JOIN MY BATTALION
Not much sleep that night, a sort of feverish coma instead: wild dreams
in which I and the gendarme were attacking a German trench, the
officer in charge of which we found to be the Base Camp Adjutant after
all.
However, I got up early--packed my few belongings in my valise,
which had mysteriously turned up from the docks, and went