With The Immortal Seventh Division | Page 6

when one is in a hurry?), and I mounted my horse in the nick of time to fall in with my column as it moved off.
It was a long weary march over a very flat country, intersected with dykes, and only broken by the ubiquitous poplar trees; and one had ample time to think, and sometimes doze, as we marched along on our twenty-five mile trek. At the midday halt, a little diversion enlivened the proceedings in the shape of pulling two bogged horses out of a narrow cut where they had been 'watered.' We managed with the help of ropes and planks to get the poor brutes on to terra firma again, more dead than alive.
Then on and on, hour after hour, halting ten minutes each hour for a needed breather and rest, until Ostend hove in sight. Visions of a comfortable billet rose before one's luxurious mind, but no such luck; right through the city we marched, finding the station square crammed with terror-stricken and most wretched-looking refugees; until, some four miles out, we lighted upon the most filthy and forsaken place to be found on the map of civilization--Steene. The houses were so vile and malodorous, that it was with great reluctance the O.C. allowed the men to enter. By this time it was very dark and very cold, and it was with purely animal instinct that we found the way to our mouths in the darkness, and tried to make believe that we enjoyed the biscuit and bully beef which formed our rations.
Then came the somewhat important question of where to sleep. I deemed myself among the fortunate in securing a stretcher, and dossed in a transport wagon; a tired man might have a worse bed than that, and I slept the sleep of the weary and, as I would fain hope, of the righteous.
The following morning, as it seemed likely that we should remain at Steene for at least another day, I cast round for something more comfortable in the way of a billet, and had secured three rooms at the worthy Burgomaster's for the O.C., Mr. Jaffray and myself, and was about to enjoy a more or less comfortable tea in the open, when an orderly rode up with orders to trek back to Bruges.
In a few minutes the camp was struck, and once more we moved on. I felt that I could enter into the spirit of the well-known refrain--
The brave old Duke of York, He had ten thousand men. He marched them up to the top of a hill, And he marched them down again. And when they were up, they were up; And when they were down, they were down: And when they were half-way up the hill, They were neither up or down.
As we retraced our steps through Ostend, we found a large and acclaiming crowd lining the route. As I rode just behind the Gordons, who were marching with their usual swinging step, I was amused to hear a Belgian woman ask her friend, 'And who are those?' pointing to the Highlanders. 'Oh,' was the reply, 'those are the wives of the English soldiers.' The gay Gordons were greatly incensed on my setting before them their new status.
In the centre of the city I came across my friend Peel (padré of the 22nd Brigade; he has since won a military cross, and gained the universal love of his men by his gallant conduct and splendid ministry). He had somehow or other lost his Brigade, and being thus stranded, had slung his batman up behind him on his horse and was proceeding with unruffled dignity in the direction of the line of march.
It was late at night and raining as it seldom rains in dear old England, when we splashed ankle deep in water, over the cobbled streets of Bruges, the stones being too slippery to permit of riding. Hungry and tired we slouched along, until we came to the Monastery of St. Xavier, at St. Michel, some two miles out of the city. Never shall I forget the kindness extended to us by the lay brothers; especially one, Brother Sylvester. I hope if these lines should ever reach his eye, that he will accept the grateful thanks of those who benefited by the charitable goodness of the Order, and especially his own.
The men were speedily billeted in sweet straw, laid down in the upper dormitories of the building; whilst the hundred and twenty horses were stalled in the spacious stables; and beds provided for the officers in the dormitories. But what was better still, after the men had been attended to (and this is the invariable rule, men first) we regaled ourselves upon tea and bread and butter in the bakehouse, where, in front of the huge fire, we