Letters to Helen | Page 8

a crump or two, just to wake us up. Jezebel is gorging herself
close by. Swallow eats a bit, and then suddenly looks up and sniffs
nervously. I suppose he has heard a beetle trotting by, or seen a twig
fall off a tree.
The horses are all picketed out in a field, and we are in bivvies. Hale
has made me a bed out of some poles and wire netting, as he says it is a
clay subsoil and I mustn't lie on the grass. I suppose he knows.
_July 12._
[Sidenote: THE HORSES]
I'm writing this in a queer dilapidated mud cottage, inhabited by an
ancient ex-soldier aged eighty-three. He is very difficult to understand.
His language is quite foreign to me. But he owns the quaintest little
doll-like image of the Virgin in a glass case, and several Bristol balls! I
nearly fell flat when I saw them. His grandfather, I think he says, was
in England once. The cottage is quite close to our present camp, and we
go in for meals when it's very wet.
The bed Hale made me is growing into a house. He has discovered
various old sacks, bits of tarred felt, and planks, and the place is
becoming a most attractive little abode.
Then you must imagine an old wild-cherry tree, and lots of young oaks
and elders, etc., all round. Jezebel and Swallow live close by. Jezebel
has acquired a new trick. You know she doesn't like having her tummy
groomed. Well, now (especially, of course, when it's very muddy) she
waits till Hunt has finished dressing her, and then, as soon as his back

is turned, she lies down and rolls. Hunt is in despair. He used to be
really fond of her. But now I believe he'd kill her if he could,
sometimes. All his labour entirely and ridiculously in vain. I'm
convinced that she does it on purpose, because she always chooses just
the moment when he has achieved a beautiful polish on her, and either
has to go off to breakfast or else to get the saddle or something. It's as
good as a play.
We are learning the "tactical" merits of all the roads and woods and
hills (such as they are) all along our sector of front, and as much as we
can, with field-glasses, of the other side. An offensive. What fun. But
exactly where are we going to offend? Rumours everywhere. If, we say,
that village or that ridge has to be taken from this or that unexpected
position, how shall we do it? Suppose we get Fritz on the hop, as they
have near Peronne. Where are the most covered approaches to the
slopes of that hill? Shall we carry the thing off as splendidly as those
squadrons did before Peronne, or shall we bungle the show? You'll see.
We get so few papers here, and only two days old at that, but no one
seems much the worse for it.
[Sidenote: NEUVE EGLISE]
Only one solitary man with lice so far. The man has been sent away,
and is, I hear, to be given sulphur baths and scrubbed with a scrubbing
brush.
Oh, I was going to say just now--re reconnoitring--that we were doing
all the ground about a village where there is a church even more
smashed than the St. John place. It is on a hill, and all the village is
Sahara. The church remains with the remnants of four outside walls and
the tower. Fritz does not destroy the tower, as it is a good spot for him
to range on to. And outside the tower, right up at the top, is the bronze
minute-hand of the old clock. The rest of the clock-face has been blown
into the middle of the church, and lies there nearly complete amidst a
crumbled heap of pillars and mortar and chair-legs and pulpit fragments.
One notice on a house amused me so, and the troop too. It says, "Do
not touch this house." The reason being rather obvious. For if you did

touch the house, it would certainly fall on to your head. The next shell
will bring it down, even if it's a couple of hundred yards away, merely
by the vibration. We find shell holes so useful for watering the horses.
They seem to retain water in a most curious way.
_July 19._
On the move again. A four days' trek. Not more than twenty miles a
day, in order to keep the horses "in the pink." They are certainly very
fit now, and a gentle twenty miles a day just keeps them nicely
exercised. But twenty miles at a walk is not overexciting. Still, it is
interesting to be covering the ground. We already know quite a lot of