Letters to Helen | Page 9

the back of the front. Last night we arrived in a cool lull after showers.
From quiet and uneventful stretches of hedgeless corn-fields,
intersected by long straight roads, lined sometimes with poplars, but
more often with lopped wych-elms or willows, we descended rather
suddenly into a little wooded valley where a village sits by the trouty
stream. After watering the horses at the stream, we filed by squadrons
into various fields and picketed down for the night. Some of us in a
small but clean estaminet, others in barns.
A very peaceful trek, quite different from the dazzling swoop that was
threatened.
_July 20._
Am I telling you about the things you want to hear? Usually I think I've
talked mostly about our surroundings, doings, and only to a very small
extent about our thoughts. But, truth to relate, we think so little that
there is not much in that line to record. On this job you just can't think.
And a good thing too, perhaps.
[Sidenote: FLESSELLES]
However, here we are, and here I expect we shall remain for, say, a
week. The horses are all right out in the open. The men are in barns.
But we are in cottages--real, almost English-looking cottages. Edward
and I share a room in one, and the others are dotted about the village.

Now, this is the cottage:
From the high street (the only street) you turn into a little gate, and then
walk down a path of brick with a narrow flower border on either side,
and vegetables beyond. The cottage is white, with lace curtains and
brick floors, without carpets, like all French cottages. The walls have
endless pictures of saints and things, with occasional crucifixes and
school certificates and faded photographs of people in stiff dresses and
crimped hair.
Out at the back more kitchen-garden with some fruit-trees.
Altogether quite a charming little place. Dusty and rather flat open
country intersected by deepish valleys, not unlike the Cirencester road
if you removed all the woods, or nearly all. We don't, of course, know
what we are going to do now.
_July 23._
Things is curiouser and curiouser. In all haste we got ready to move.
We then moved like tortoises. I rode over to ---- yesterday. Cavalry all
over the place like locusts. And, lawks! what a din! Guns in a violent
paroxysm of rage. Aeroplanes wandering about in the sky, purring like
angry panthers, all yellow in the sunlight. And all day and night more
dusty men and dusty horses and dusty lorries and dusty guns coming
and going, coming and going.
The other squadron at last quite close to us. Long talks with Dennis.
He's had an exciting time, and was under orders for a most hair-raising
job, which didn't come off owing to Fritz's tiresome habit of doing the
unexpected. Horrors! The General has been trying Swallow. I fear he
may steal him. Of course he has every right to any horse in the
regiment, but it is quite difficult to smile. Swallow is, unfortunately,
even more showy than Rinaldo was; but he shied at a goat, bless him,
and I think that may just turn the scale. I shall now proceed to train
Swallow to shy at every blade of grass, every grain of sand. Long live
that goat! We are still "standing by." It is a wearing existence. I bathed
yesterday in a well-known river. So beautiful and willowy.

_July 28._
[Sidenote: A BATH]
Temperature 100,000°! And I am lying on a bed in a wee cottage, very,
very dusty and dirty. Hale, however, is going to bring some water from
the pump, and, oh Jerusalem, won't it be heavenly--a bath! All these
things off, and lovely clean things on, and lovely coffee to drink when
that's done. I wouldn't change the prospects of the next half-hour for all
the pearls and peacocks of Araby--no, not if you offered me the Peace
of Europe! Europe be blowed! I want my bath.
You see, it's like this: The corps H.Q. moved to a different area some
days ago, preceded by us. Everything in the area left in an utterly
unorganized, uncatalogued condition. We have to tear round and find
out where the various divisions can go.
And we have got to find room for more divisions than have ever
occupied this area before. Useless to come back and report that such
and such villages have no water for men or horses. The water has got to
be found. Dig for it. Organize fatigue-parties and dig. Dam up little
trickles by the roadside until quite large ponds are formed. Get the
engineers and pioneers on to it. Labour battalions--anything. So I've
been riding madly about, and I'm like a treacle pudding in a sand-storm.
The bath! Hale, you