Letters to Helen | Page 4

The water isn't good
even when boiled. However, all will be well soon.
[Illustration: BAILLEUL A peaceful place behind the battle.]
_June 23._
[Sidenote: MANY SMELLS AND NO WATER]
The most extraordinary things are happening. All very quiet and
humdrum on the surface. Only the aeroplanes are busy, and if the sun is
between you and them there are always the little black high Archie
clouds following them, like vultures appearing from nowhere.
Our quick bolt up here has had several pleasant results. First, the
country is very beautiful, more hilly in this immediate neighbourhood,
with great plains stretching away on all sides. The low hills all have
woods round them, and a windmill or a church on the top. Second, B
Squadron have already arrived, and our old Brigade-Major and lots of
other old friends. It was most joyous meeting them all again. We came
trotting down one road, covered with dust, and they came trotting down
another road even more covered with dust, having trekked all day.
Isn't it funny. One gets so quickly used to things that already we have
ceased to notice the smells, which at first made us wield bottles of

disinfectant wherever we went. But now, when the farms and outhouses
and other places where we live smell, we merely laugh, and "fatigues"
are all at work automatically before nightfall, and by next
morning--well, the smells have not gone, but the general feeling is that
a good start has been made.
The water problem is still unsolved, and we get very thirsty; but thirst
is a small fleabite, after all. "Which would you rather have," I asked a
discontented lance-corporal, "a bit of a thirst or a dentist drilling a hole
down a pet nerve?" And he owned he'd rather have a thirst. You know,
it's most awkward. They come to you when there's any difficulty and
seem to think you can put things right always. For instance, a man
came up the other day: "Please, sir, I've lost my haversack." "When did
you miss it first?" "Between ---- and ----, sir." "Now what do you want
me to do?" "I don't know, sir." "Do you want me to go back to ---- and
search the whole of the twenty odd miles to ---- on the off chance of
finding it?" "No, sir." "Do you want to do so yourself?" "No, sir." "And
even if I ordered you to go, do you think that, with so many troops
about, you would be likely to find it still there?" "No, sir."
The result is, of course, that I have to buy one for the unfortunate lad in
the nearest town. One must eat. And our haversacks are our larders.
Haversacks are supplied by the army, but it takes such a time to get
anything, that, if the matter is urgent, it has to be done without the army.
We (the bloomin' orficers) have a "mess-cart" for all our absurd wines
and tinned peaches and things, but the men often have nothing but the
contents of their haversacks.
_June 25._
[Sidenote: READY FOR THE PUSH]
We are in a funny state of waiting for something to happen. Rumours
flying about all the time. We live on them--a bite off one, a slice off
another, a merry-thought off another. And so we learn the news of the
world. Papers when we get a chance of going into some town, and then
only two days old, or else French, which are very scrappy. Often we get
no news at all for three or four days, except what some passing

ambulance will vouchsafe. And usually they don't really know much.
So when there's an extra heavy strafing or an extra quiet lull we learn
that the entire German staff has been captured, or Rheims evacuated, or
Holland sunk, or something else equally strange. The M.G.'s were
hammering away furiously last night, and the whole line was lovely
with star shells hanging like arc lights in the air, and then dropping
slowly to earth. They light up everything like immense moons.
_June 28._
Starting from the farm where the horses are hidden at nine o'clock last
night (twenty-one, as we call it out here), after a hot meal, we marched
through Bedfordshire-like country, along ascending paths, to the
bottom of a wooded hill where a motor lorry with picks and shovels
met us. Thence along a narrow muddy path through a wood. The path
circles round the hill. The east side of the hill faces the Boche front line.
It was still quite light. The undergrowth thick and dank. Our fellows
very merry. The Boches know this path, which is pitted with shell holes.
They shell the place by day, oddly enough, but hardly ever by night.
It was raining gently. Turtle-doves