Letters to Helen | Page 8

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 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