Letters from France | Page 4

sense. We are quite old soldiers now and past such excitement; we could billet ourselves in China if necessary. However, Brown goes to help. To-day we rose early and breakfasted at 10-0 off bacon and eggs (fried by me), bread and jam. We have a company orderly officer, and it is my turn to-day, so I had to get up and put trousers, coat and boots over my pyjamas and to mount a guard at 8 a.m. and to dress properly afterwards. We have cold baths out of a hand basin and shave. One is very particular about shaving and all small details. The men have to be kept as smart as possible, and it is laid down that shaving is most important. If left to themselves they soon grow long beards, long hair and dirty clothes. All the morning we spent in cleaning up. We swept out the yard. They hardly know themselves now. The farm has never been so clean before. We built an incinerator to burn all our rubbish; we organised a Company Store, a cobbler's shop, and we have a qualified cobbler to do all our repairs. We organised our rations, and collected remains to make stews for the men. Constructed scrapers for boots outside each barn to keep them clean. At about 12-0 a.m. the doctor and C.O. came round with me and inspected our billets and praised them as the cleanest and best organised in the Battalion.
This afternoon ammunition drill, &c., to smarten the men up. At 4-30 I mounted our guard. Each lot of billets has its own guard; and we mount them with all the pomp and ceremony a guard should have, so that our guard mounting is really as impressive as that at Buckingham Palace, and it keeps the men smart. Tea time, visitors from other companies; afterwards the others go shopping. I am cook and mess president of our little lot, and I give them a housekeeping list of what to purchase. Then having nothing else to do I sit down and write the largest and most drivelling letter I have ever written in my life, I call it No. 35. The next ought to be No. 135. Please tell me if it is too long. If it bores you, censor it and pass it on. I hope it does not; tell me if it does. Now:--
Cigarettes. Please give someone an order to send me 150 cigarettes a week. I will send you a cheque for them any time. They may be either Matinee, Abdulla No. 5 or No. 4. Sullivan, Savoy, Nestor, Pera, or any similar brand. They might send vain attempts, but please get them to send them regularly then and I will send a cheque. Letters will be very welcome. Please give my love to all, and thank May again for her cigarette case, it is awfully useful and much admired. Please ask her to excuse a letter. Give Amy my love and thank her for her letter I received a little time ago. Also, if you could let Auntie Effie see this bit, or tell her I will try and write, I should be very pleased. I am very happy, as you may gather, and it is the first real holiday I have had for 14 months. We have a theory out here similar to Miss ----to wit, that there is no war. We have come to the conclusion that the whole thing is engineered by Heath Robinson, Horatio Bottomley and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Heath Robinson because he thinks humour is decadent, Horatio Bottomley to advertise "John Bull," and the Archbishop to cause a religious revival. How it is worked is as follows:--Heath Robinson bought a chateau in Flanders and a Crimean war gun. Then Churchill and the Kaiser came into the show. They bring troops up to within 20 miles of Heath Robinson, who fires off his gun every half hour. The troops are quite happy; if anyone grumbles they are sent up to the trenches, where George Graves and Sarah Bernhardt let off crackers. The battalion snipers are put in the opposite trench and told to snipe the trench opposite them. Occasionally they hit a man, and then there is a casualty list, and some General gets sent home in disgrace. Gallipoli is another chateau near here.
If you came out in pith helmets the corporation sand cart spreads sand in front of you, and you are supposed to be in Egypt. To accomplish The Great Practical Joke, Troops are trained to exercise their imagination. They begin by being soldiers in blue, and imaginary uniforms. Then they do arm drill and imagine they have rifles. Then they do Brigade operations and have an imaginary enemy, get killed by imaginary shells, shoot with imaginary rifles,