tracking strings of horses, which were not allowed through the village, and which persevering grooms, well knowing the prohibition, hoped yet to be able to get through, patiently answering inquiries from dustpowdered lorry-drivers who had lost their way. The shades of evening deepened gently amid a depressing drizzle, but still the Brigade did not come, still the traffic flowed past without a moment's break. "It looks as if the Brigade were not going to arrive until after dark!" said one of the Billeting Officers; "and in this squash there'll be the most holy confusion-the Lord help us!" A Grenadier subaltern, who had discovered a wayside café just past the cross-roads, led some of them to it. None of them had had anything more substantial than a sandwich since breakfast, and they demanded food. All that Madame could produce was a box of wafers, very sweet and sickly, which they ate with some excellent coffee which Madame prepared over the stove. at eight o'clock. The dark and the traffic notwithstanding, the Guards made their entry to the tap of drum, and, despite all forebodings, each battalion got safely tucked away in its billets. When he reached the mess our Ensign found that his brother officers had so many remarks to offer on the slowness of the train that had conveyed them, and the general inefficiency of railway transport in particular, that they altogether omitted to comment on the nature of the billets which he offered them. Though the sleeping quarters were indescribably bad, the actual mess-room proved to be better than might have been expected. It was a room in a small farmhouse occupied by a Frenchwoman, whose husband was in the trenches, and who, after the gifted Apollo had talked to her a little in his most Parisian French, proffered her services as cook. And so, while the traffic rumbled, and the rain splashed down outside, they made a good dinner, and eventually repaired to their squalid lodging in excellent spirits. There they found their sleeping-valises spread on the dusty floor, and there they laid them down to sleep, promising to turn every available servant on to swabbing in the morning. Outside night fell, muggy and wet. Then the Brigade transport, which had come by road, arrived, a long train of rumbling limbers, with the Transport Officers on horseback. They had no news of the Brigade, but a little later a staff car, which the Billeting Officers stopped, reported that it had passed "some Guards or other" on the road about two miles back. And then at last they came ing in the rubbish pits which M- proved itself to be every bit as bad as it had promised. The billets were positively filthy, and for days the battalions of the Brigade swept and garnished and burnt, fill gaped, stinking, in every garden, and leaving a trail of chloride of lime behind them wherever they went. Fly-papers and fly-swatters proved illusive against the indomitable breeding energy of the flies, and only days of unremitting hard work contrived at length to abate this very disagreeable and very unhygienic pest. It rained for days on end. In a few hours the deep dust of the road turned first to a thick morass of mud, and then into a liquid lake of slime which flowed across the gutters to the very gateways of the billets. To avoid wading in mud up to the ankles, the men built little causeways to bridge the gutters, using the bricks from the more dilapidated houses, and laying branches on top. Nearly all the billets leaked, and the yards, filthy as they always are abroad with a vast and sodden midden - heap in the centre, were ankle-deep in slush. What was possible to do with tarpaulin to stop the gaps in roofs and walls was done, but while the rain lasted the men had a very thin time, which they bore, as all men do in France, without grousing, reserving their grumbling for superficial and insignificant details, as is the way of the British soldier. The billets were so bad and the weather continued to be so wet that a rum issue was ordered, though the season of the daily rum issues had not yet arrived. An officer superintended the issue of rum to each company, for the regu VOL. CCI.NO. MCCXIX. lation is that each man must drink his tot on the spot where it is issued, in the presence of an officer this to prevent hoarding and its attendant evils. Accordingly, our Ensign found himself one wet evening attending the issue of rum to the company. On the floor of the barn stood a lighted candle, the centre of a number of mess-tins representing the portions of the different groups in the company. At our Ensign's side was the Company Sergeant-Major with the rumjars. Silent and expectant, the men stood all around and in the yard without. out The Company SergeantMajor poured the rum into the different tins, announcing as he did so the name of the recipients-" No. 5 Platoon," "The Cooks," "The Pioneers," and so on. Then, after much shuffling about in the outer darkness, the men got formed up, mess - tin in hand; but before the first received his noggin, the Company Sergeant - Major put to our Ensign that time-honoured question, "Would he try a little drop?" Rum on an empty stomach before dinner is not to be recommended, but our young man knew what was expected of him, and with suitable gratitude accepted the offer. About a mugful of raw spirit was thereupon poured out for him, greatly to his dismay, but he picked it up, and crying "Here's luck!" drained it. The rum burnt his throat and brought the tears to his eyes, 3 в but he finished off the por- themselves within measurable tion and held the mug upside distance of the ultimate goal down, as the men do, to show of all their wanderings, the that it was empty-all this Battle of the Somme. Day amid profound silence, with and night the little village every man's eye upon him, street resounded to the tramp Then, one by one, the men of marching columns, to the emerged out of the gloom into thunder of the jarring, quiverthe yellow circle of light, with ing trains of ammunition outstretched tin or mug, re- lorries. In that cramped and ceived their portion, tossed it crowded village the only off, inverted their drinking- parade-ground was the dirty vessel, and moved away, wiping courtyards of the different their mouths on the backs of billets, where the most stentheir hands. When every man torian word of command would had been served, the Company often be lost in the roar of Sergeant-Major picked up the traffic from the street. last tin, and, tipping it down for the officer to see the contents, said "For the sergeants and myself, sir!" This last portion was divided between them and consumed. Then the C.S.M., shaking the rum jar, said— "There's some left yet, sir." "Everybody had his tot?" asked our Ensign. "Yes, sir," was the reply. "Right," answered the officer; "tip the rest out!" (For such is the inexorable rule of the Army: what is left over from a rum issue must be spilled. Rum does not keep.) "Sir!" replied the C.S.M., and in obedience to the order he emptied a brown gush of the spirit upon the earthen floor under the sorrowful gaze of the men. Our Ensign would have gladly given them an extra tot all round, for the night was raw and chill, but an order is an order. But while the stream of men and munitions flowed unceasingly eastward towards the Somme, from the battlefield came daily reports of further successes. Every sign pointed to the imminent participation of the Guards in the great offensive. There were frequent conferences, and, day after day, the Guards marched out by platoons, by companies, by battalions, past the little military cemetery, past the vast camps stretching away to the horizon, past the gangs of grubby German prisoners working on the roads, to the training - ground, where the coming attack was rehearsed in every detail. There were field-days and night operations and lectures and several false alarms, . . . warnings to be in readiness for immediate departure, which were afterwards cancelled. ... A few days after the arrival of the Brigade at M, the Guards' Divisional Divisional Canteen turned up and installed itself And now the Guards found in the main street, and was followed shortly afterwards by the Guards' Divisional Cinema, which was set up in that very barn with shrapnel-riddled roof which our Ensign had rejected as a billet. Tarpaulin supplied the missing wall, a little gasengine furnished the power, and on the many wet evenings that the Clerk of the Weather bestowed on the Guards at M——, "the pictures" proved a great attraction. There, on one of the rare fine afternoons, our Ensign and a large party of his friends sat in a stifling atmosphere and saw the Somme battle film. Save for a few gunners and sappers, the whole audience consisted of Guardsmen, and their comments on this celebrated series of pictures were instructive they made none. They only cheered and laughed every time "Fritz" was seen on the screen. for The Guards' Divisional Baths a travelling concern this, that plants itself in any empty building that seems adapted to the purpose, or, in default of such a building, erects its own premises-happened along with its array of tubs and heating apparatus and vast supplies of towels and clean shirts, socks, and underwear. Every day parties of men were marched down by an officer under a scheme that ensured to every man one bath a week. There was much entertaining between the different Messes, Everybody was always dining are out with one or other of the company Messes in the different battalions, with the Brigade machine-gunners, or with the Stokes Mortars, who charming fellows, but whose propinquity in the trenches is unpopular owing to the disagreeable tendency of their murderous weapons to draw fire. In the double-company Mess all went as merry as a wedding bell. Madame, in whose house the Mess was lodged, proved herself a jewel and cooked them wonderful omelettes and ragouts, and 8 Potage Bonne Femme before which Escoffier himself would have doffed his hat. The Mess raged and wrangled and argued, as young men do the world over, but the underlying good fellowship was never disturbed. The past tense is ever a kindlier critic than the present, but our Ensign, looking back on those pleasant summer days, cannot recollect that there was a single discordant element in that little band of men. But the sand in the hourglass had all but run out. At last the word for their departure came. And Battalion Orders that evening closed with a significant paragraph. Under the heading DRESS, it ran "The polishing of buttons and cap-stars is discontinued until further orders." A bon entendeur, salut! (To be continued.) THE SCENE OF WAR.-VIII. THE CANAL. EVER since the War began, Egypt has played a vital if not a capital part in its progress; for Egypt is the Suez Canal, and the Suez Canal is a highway of the World. If you came upon it suddenly in the course of a journey across the Desert, you would see it lying there with the silvery sandhills upon either side of it, a mystery asleep. Even if you had never heard of it before in your life, you could not mistake it for any ordinary water; it lies there so solitary, and silent, and unreal. You would ask yourself who made it? and why? and as you looked up its course from North to South, where it emerges from one sand-waste to pass on into the wide spaces of another, you could not but wonder whence it had come and whither it was going. What gives it its power is just this definition of purpose, as of something directed to a single end, and there is something appropriate, therefore, in its having sprung from a Frenchman's brain. It is more, too, than a Canal, for it is a part of that mighty element upon which our seapower moves and has its being. If one could know the number of men and guns and implements of War (not to speak of the traffic of the world) that have travelled upon this narrow road since the conflict began, the record might be full of interest. We shall doubtless know some day. Yet it is more than a highway, for it is the moat also of a great citadel. Egypt lies upon one side of it, the desert sands of Sinai upon the other. It is the only waterway in that land of weariness and thirst. To hold the Canal, then, has been to hold Egypt from invasion, and to protect from harm an artery of the Empire. These circumstances have made it of singular interest to many thousands of our people, for to many this journey along the Canal has offered their only glimpse of War. From end to end of it they have seen nothing but soldiers and guns and white encampments, cavalry on the march, camels moving along the skyline, military trains and convoys, the Flag of Empire. There, upon that hillock of sand, is the barbed wire of which they have heard so much; there, sure enough, are the sand-bagged trenches; and there, standing guard upon the parapet of a fort, his bayonet gleaming in the fierce sunlight, his body erect if unimpressive, is the British soldier. Το many, therefore, this transit from one continent to another, across a third, has been charged with the subtle joy of romance, almost of adventure. They have been taken by the hand and led for once in their lives along the Parapet of War. |