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      Don Murray and I are in clover.^ix This billet is all right. And we have turned the dining room into the Coy mess room, a purpose it serves admirably. We are all foregathered in it this evening writing letters etc. and are a cheery party. Murray, Bowly, Cotton, Shelmerdine and Prince are all here.^x Young Shel did jolly well yesterday, so Murray tells me. He is our Mess President and is full of eggs and the price of fowls at the moment.

      I have put your photo and Baby’s on the mantelpiece in our mess and they look jolly homely, my sweetheart. Tonight I have written you and am mighty glad to say I had two letters and a watch case from you last night.

      This village is quite quaint and its inhabitants more so. For the most part they are hairy, dirty, baggy-breeched and in sabots. They have not had the English before but they evince no interest at all. Seemingly they have no interest left in life than the driving of an odd cow or two out on to the hillside to graze. Poor devils. I always understood the French were characteristically clean and neat. But I am sure you could not find a village in England where the occupants are so really grubby.

      My bed I must put on record. It is wooden framed, stands against a wall and has a mattress over a foot thick. There is a lovely soft pillow and a warm quilt. The fat pillow arrangement which lies on top I have cast aside because I mistrust it. It looks as though it might work on to your face and try to smother you. Over this massive arrangement hang heavy, cretonne curtains, flowered with a mystic red and yellow flower. I think this must be native to France. Certainly I never saw such a repulsive species of flora in the British Empire. It has its advantages however because the sight of it makes me hot – and warmth is very desirable in this chilled atmosphere.

      14th November ’15

      Sunday. Church parade at 10 a.m. in an old, broken-down Church with nothing inside it save damp and mildew.^xi

      Afterwards, we toured the Coy billets and had to strafe some of the men for having them untidy. For the most part, though, they were quite good although a lot of the men are pretty sorry for themselves, thinking straw but a poor bed. They may, however, be thankful they are doing so well and I have no doubt will fully realise this before we are many months older. Many of them realise it now and are thoroughly enjoying themselves while they may.

      Prince is laid up with bad neuralgia and toothache. The day before yesterday cracked him up and he is pretty dicky today. I am very nervous about him because, as you know, I never thought him strong and I am afraid he will prove a weakness if we have hard slogging to do. It is a pity, because he is such a good boy when he is in form.

      We have had Bethmann, our interpreter, to lunch today. He is a very decent chap and works hard. We like him. Also he is a good man to keep in with because he has all the arranging of billets etc. – and B Company is not averse to a decent billet when one is going.

      We strolled around the village this afternoon and thoroughly explored it. On the top of the hill east of the place there is a great crucifix hanging over in the wind and looking very desolate and sad. Just below it is a hovel or two standing in its attendant heap of manure. These heaps are the chief – at any rate they are the most obtrusive – features of the landscape. They assail the nostrils at every turn and are prolific to a degree. Every house has one, and the bigger the house the larger its heap. Pride of place seems to go with the magnitude of one’s dung-heap. Every man to his own taste, of course. This one, however, certainly strikes a mild outsider like myself as strange.^xii

      Doc, who is Scotch, calls these heaps ‘middens’ and curses them unceasingly. He swears we will all die of typhoid if we remain here a week. The well from which the battalion water is drawn he looks upon as chief drain to the collective ‘middens’ and he chlorides of lime like fury. The well, by the way, only fills a dicksie (two galls.) in four minutes, and since it takes about 100 dicksies per day to make tea for the battalion and another 100 or so to fill the watercarts, you will understand that everyone does not look on the well with the same degree of antagonism as does the Doc. It is a splendid thing to put a defaulter on to. One day’s turning of that handle will cure a man of the most divers evils.

      15th November ’15

      The ground was white as far as one could see this morning with the bare trunks standing out black against it and the frosty sunlight glistening on the snow. Three inches had fallen in the night to the sorrow of all save sundry small boys who whooped and bellowed outside my window and threw snowballs at everyone and became a general nuisance.

      The battalion went out for a route march under Seconds-in-Command, leaving Coy commanders with fatigue parties to try and get their houses in order. It was a problem fraught with many pitfalls for the unwary. My own especial bête noir was drainage.

      This village is innocent of any such modern fastidiousness as a sewer. Indeed everything drains back on you, not away as any ignorant Anglican might suppose.

      I have seen sinks dug, planned gutters here and erected dams there, and striven generally and with moderate profanity till the impossible has been achieved. Water has been persuaded beyond a higher level and my cookers now stand on a more or less dry foreshore.

      Also we have dug a bath and built seats round it and a soak-hole for the water which is no longer pellucid. So altogether we have progressed and, so encouraged, I begin to feel some confidence that, did we remain here long enough, the mud might be persuaded to leave the village street.

      Dear, old, tax-ridden, law-abiding England! How I would delight to see one of your wolf-nosed sanitary inspectors turned loose in this, our Brucamps.^xiii How you would sniff, how snort, how elevate your highly educated proboscis! How you would storm, how shriek and how summons! And how masterly indifferent would our grubby people be of you, how little would they be impressed, how hopelessly insane they would think you, and what grave danger there would be of a second Revolution if you or any untold number of you essayed to remove from them their beloved dung-heaps.

      16th November ’15

      More snow greeted us this morning. It is about six inches deep now and the fall continued up to lunch time. It makes the district look very beautiful and, but for the slush underfoot, would constitute no nuisance, since the temperature remains quite mild.

      I sent the Coy out under Murray for a march which warmed the men up and, having rescued an ambulance wagon and an ASC [Army Service Corps] lorry from two separate drifts away out in the country, they come back very pleased with their morning’s labours and looking very red-faced and healthy withal.

      It has been a day of settling claims for billet damages. I think the French peasantry have Hebrew blood in their veins in degrees of varying intensity. They claim 30 francs for firewood. You offer five and eventually after Madame has dissolved into tears, and protested by various saints her inability to supply firewood of less than two sous the stick, you settle for ten amid a shower of mutual protests of undying affection.

      Prince is about again and looking much better. I am very glad because we move tomorrow and it would have been hard luck on him to have been left behind. Also now he can take his Platoon, which is altogether desirable.

      As I say, we move. But whither I know not. It is a strange feeling this of being moved about an unknown country like pieces on a chess-board as helpless as they to control our movements and as ignorant of why and wherefore. Yet it has its advantages. It saves worry. One gets into a regular happy-go-lucky way of looking at things, conscious only that one will fetch up somewhere all right and that we will get to the trenches just so soon as the master player decides that we are wanted.

      17th November ’15

      As anticipated we moved today and, in passing, struck some of the most vile roads one could imagine. The snow had deteriorated on the fairway to a thick slush which made the going heavy and penetrated the stoutest boots. It also has, up to now, defeated the efforts of the heavier transport vehicles to get here but we have rounded up

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