LITMIR.BIZ

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Roll. Thus a prolonged moral depravity has by happy chance been avoided.

      I have just discovered one reason why streams are so scarce. There are no field drains here, nor any attempt at ditching. Hence when it rains the water just lies on the surface till, in good time, it soaks in. Very simple and very rotten. Even the uplands are a bog.

      13th December ’15

      The Coy has come back and I feel a happier man than I have done for days. They blew in this morning looking dirty and wet and were at once turned loose to clean up & have an easy. And not before they wanted it, I’ll be bound. The big majority have not had a half-hour to themselves since they landed in France. I think it a mistake. ‘All work and no play’ is a very true axiom and I certainly know the men do twice the work after a day’s holiday.

      Tomorrow I am going to let them have the day to themselves, even though the general is coming around. That may not be strictly military but it certainly is common sense, a factor one meets remarkably seldom in this game. I may be a heretic, certainly I am wrong to do so, but I cannot help but both see and feel that there is a vast wastage in this army of ours. Not, I mean, of materials or stores – for the distribution of such things is wonderfully organised – but of men and brains. Initiative is asked for, but woe to the man who displays it. Opinions are sometimes sought – but apparently with the sole idea of making an opportunity for the airing of some higher grade’s scheme, already settled in his own mind. So that one feels – and somewhat resents it – that there is humbug about and that one is being looked upon as more or less of a fool. One does not like being thought a fool, even though one has no claim to genius.

      If I were alone in this I might be thought that unutterable thing – a man with a grievance. But I am not alone. All our officers feel as I do. And when thirty active business brains feel like that surely it were but foolishness to deny justification.

      We came out here to fight, not heroically or in the heat of passion, but just to do our little bit like Englishmen should. We did not expect to be satiated with red tape and buckram or have our brains cramped into a hidebound receptacle of blank banality which those of a lad could fill.^xvii

      There is still something wrong with the Army. I do not think it is with the higher command that the fault lies. Nor can I allow that it is with the company officers. It is with that vast sea of senior ranks, or climbers, that I find the fault and I cannot but believe that there the fault will be found by others more fitted to judge than I.

      14th December ’15

      It has been inspection of kit, cleanliness, rifles, etc. today and if one had been looking for proof of the efficacy of this time-honoured army institution he had only to have seen my dear, dirty Coy at 9 a.m. parade and then look upon them, brushed and cleaned, at 3.30 p.m. The difference in them was simply marvellous though they are by no means properly clean yet. The trenches leave their marks on a man in more ways than one.

      We visited C Coy Mess this evening. It was quite a birthday party. Yet there was no real birthday. That, be it whispered, was Rambottom’s^xviii own unaided invention, and was used solely for the more or less base purpose of beguiling his landlady into letting him entertain his friends up till 10.15pm. Until this night he has been forced to seek his couch at 9.30, his landlady believing in the axiom of ‘early to bed’ and being a woman of very considerable force of character, which, in Ramsbottom’s eyes, is in no way diminished by the fact that she has two charming daughters whom only very respectable young men who go to bed at very respectable hours may converse with. My dear pal Gordon is so awfully susceptible. He confided in me tonight that the young and pretty one had called him her ‘cher Capitaine Gordon’. It had made his heart flutter. I advised him in future not to risk his chances by telling horrid untruths to the desired-one’s parents.

      15th December ’15

      We route-marched today as a company. The whole of B let loose on a freezing, windy morning when the sun shone and the blood pulsed and one’s legs flung out untiringly. It was a most enjoyable little tour through Bonneville and Fieffes. The latter village with its twin, Montrelet, is more charmingly situated than any we have yet met in France. It flaunts red and purple roofs among the brown tree trunks in a most jumbled, picturesque mosaic and its old white church with the square tower and slate roof is quite Scotch in its simple, quaint design. Altogether a charming, little spot and one which in summer must be quite entrancing – viewed always with a respectful aloofness.

      Prince very pertinently remarked, as we scrambled down the hill-side and feasted our eyes on the ripping little pictures in the valley below, ‘What a pity it stinks! And why is it that Art and a drainage scheme never will go together?’ I did not answer him, because I could not. Such things are beyond the mental capacity of a plain soldier such as I am.

      16th December ’15

      It is one of the many marvellous virtues of Tommy Atkins that he soon forgets. It is the thing which helps him more than all else to bear his none too rosy lot cheerfully. Therefore I suppose it is a trait everyone should be thankful for. Yet somehow one finds oneself looking upon the peculiarity with somewhat mixed feelings when one is the company officer of the aforesaid Tommy. For instance, today we went out to Auchen to do some firing on a very primal range. I conceived the idea of doing an attack, on the lines of field firing, and in due course it was duly launched.

      Certainly the Company fired. There was no doubt about that. The ‘rapid’, simply ripped out. But as the attack of trained soldiers the manoeuvre was otherwise scarcely a success. They did everything wrong they could possibly do, and were most cheerful about it. They seemed to think they were still in the trenches. I should have strafed them, but I couldn’t find the heart to spoil the really happy afternoon they were having.

      At Grantham and Salisbury [Plain] their attack was simply perfect. Now they are in the real thing it possesses a hundred faults. I suppose it is just human nature. And anyway we have had a jolly good afternoon.

      17th December ’15

      Your Xmas parcels came to me today. They made me feel a regular school-boy and I opened them with the same zest that one used to bring to bear on a tuck-box. They were ripping, the plum pudding especially being received with general cheers by the mess. Then your letter came, full of loving wishes to me. It was a sweet letter, the letter of a sweet woman.

      Tonight I have had officers and NCOs out on a little cross-country march on compass bearings. Murray brought his team in all right, Prince was out a bit and Bowly became quite lost. I find these sudden reversions back to long untouched work most instructive as showing how soon men forget the little essentials which make so for success. Poor Bowly was pretty sick with himself but passed if off by soundly cursing the map.

      We have the report in today from the 4th Division of the battalion’s behaviour in the trenches. It was excellent, the best in the Brigade. We are very pleased about it though not unduly elated. I think we all expected it would be quite all right. Those of us who have known it from the start have such utter faith in the battalion. I feel certain it will always do well. With officers such as we have I cannot see how it can do otherwise. They are a good lot, good boys all.^xix

      18th December ’15

      We went route-marching this morning, that is B, C and D Coys did. I took them and quite a little jaunt it was, the morning having cleared and the sun came out to glisten things up a bit. Especially the fog beads on the spider webs which hang about the trees on the hill between Bonneville and Montrelet.

      Worthy rode with me and we chatted of home and the early days and such things and were very happy. And this afternoon his Coy played mine at football and beat them. We had a very poor team up and I must look into it before we play again.

      The post has stopped once more for three or four days. We move on Monday down south another sixteen miles, to Fourdrinoy I believe. And there we become

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