Part 12 (2/2)

At last, at 5.30 P.M., we started for our chateau, and hardly had we gone 150 yards when a terrific fire broke out. We got behind a little ruined hut to escape the bullets, and I made ready to return in case it was a serious attack. But it died down in ten minutes, and we pursued our way in more or less peace, for it was only a case of firing at reliefs, and I think the Germans were rather jumpy.

The Chateau of Beukenhorst was a square white block of a place, and merits perhaps some description, as we were there for a most uncomfortable fortnight--uncomfortable as far as events and fighting went, though not so as regards living.

It belonged to some people whose name I have forgotten--Baron something (Belgian) and his German wife, and it was due to this lady's nationality--so the story went--that the place had suffered so little.

Personally I think that it was due to the house only being indicated on the map, whilst the stables, 200 yards off, which were perpetually being sh.e.l.led, were marked in heavy black, and were a c.o.c.kshy for the German guns, which were evidently laid by map and not by sight; yet the house was on a fair elevation, and must have been visible from certain points on the German side. By the same token, General Capper had had his Headquarters there for a few days, but had cleared out, I believe, because of sh.e.l.ls. Half a dozen shrapnel had certainly hit it, but they had only chipped off some bits of stone and broken all the windows at the eastern end.

We lived in a room half below ground at the western end, which must evidently have been the housekeeper's room or servants' hall, next to the kitchen. About half the Signal Section lived in some sort of cellars close by, the other half being away with the transport. Two of these cellars were also used as a dressing station for the 7th Brigade, and wounded used to be brought in here frequently and tended by a sanitary Highlander, a corporal whose exact functions I could never discover, but who worked like a Trojan. The wounded were visited by a medical officer in the evening, and removed on stretchers every night to the ambulances who came to fetch them. Our own wounded did not come here, but were looked after just behind the trenches near the Herenthage Chateau, and taken away from there at night by our own 15th Field Ambulance, who worked all night in circ.u.mstances of much danger, but were luckily hardly ever hit.

The owners had evidently had plenty of notice before clearing out, for they had removed all the smaller articles and most of the furniture, and had rolled up the carpets and curtains and blinds, leaving only big cupboards and bare bedsteads and larger bits of furniture. These were, oddly enough, in very good taste--Louis XV. style--and only sand-papered and not polished or painted. There was a good bathroom too, and a lavatory with big basins, but much of it had been smashed by shrapnel, as it was at the east end. Our bedrooms were on the first floor, and most of them had good beds and washhand-stands, but no linen or blankets. I need hardly say that we carefully selected those at the western end of the house, whither few bullets had penetrated.

But the windows there were mostly untouched, and consisted of good plate gla.s.s. Altogether the whole place gave one the idea of comfort, money, and good taste, and was an eminently satisfactory abode--bar the sh.e.l.ls.

I know that, as far as looking after the Brigade was concerned, we got through three times as much satisfactory work in the morning after we arrived as we did during all the three days we were in the little dug-out. For we could now communicate not only by wire but by messenger and by personal contact with the authorities and commanders in our rear and on our flanks, and could discuss matters _re_ artillery and defences and plans in a way which had been quite impossible in our advanced position.

General Wing[19] used to come and see us most evenings, and I used to communicate personally with Shaw (9th Brigade), and Fanshawe (Artillery), and M'Cracken (7th Brigade), about combined movements, &c. Every morning before daylight, and at a good many other times besides, I, or Weatherby, or Moulton-Barrett, used to go down to the trenches and confabulate with Griffith--always cool and resourceful, who was in immediate command--or Frost and Burfeild, who were running the Ches.h.i.+res excellently between them. It was not always a very easy business getting down to the trenches, for there were nearly always sh.e.l.ls bursting in the woods and on the open field which lay between us and the trench wood; and we had generally to hurry in order to leave the chateau precincts unperceived by the beastly Taubes who hovered overhead, always on the lookout for headquarters to sh.e.l.l; so we cut down orderlies and staff to a minimum, and absolutely forbade any hanging about outside.

[Footnote 19: To everybody's great regret, he was killed in October 1915.]

It is no use going into or describing our proceedings day by day: ”Plus ca changeait, plus c'etait la meme chose.” I have the detail of it day by day in my diary, but it was always, in the main, the same thing--minds and bodies at high tension throughout the day and most of the night; perpetual artillery fire--if not by the enemy then by ourselves; sh.e.l.ls bursting round the chateau and hardly ever into it, mostly shrapnel near the house and Black Marias a bit further off--chiefly into a walled garden 200 yards off which, for some unknown reason, the Germans were convinced held some of our guns, though, as a matter of fact, our batteries were in our right rear, in well-covered positions just inside (or even outside, in some cases) the woods. But we got sh.e.l.ls on the other side of the house as well, over the bare half-grown lawn and flower-beds between the chateau and the Hooge-Menin road.

It was rarely ”healthy” to take a stroll in the grounds, however much we might be in want of fresh air. Even on days which were exceptionally quiet--and there were not many of them,--when one would move out to look at the grounds with a view to future defences in case we were driven back, or with a desire to ease a torpid liver, suddenly there would be a loudening swish in the air and a crash which would send one of the tall pine-trees into smithereens, with a shower of broken branches in all directions, followed by another, or half a dozen more; and we would retire gracefully--sometimes even rapidly--behind the shelter of our house.

There were some late roses in the garden, or rather in the scattered flower-beds near the house, which lasted out even when the snow was on them; but about the only live beings who took any interest in them were three or four goats, who haunted the precincts of the chateau, and were everlastingly trying to get inside. Indeed, when Moulton-Barrett first came to take possession, there were two goats in the best bedrooms upstairs, who peered out of the windows at the undesired visitors, and had to be evicted after a display of considerable force.

Also pigs; for half a dozen great raw-boned pink and dirty swine rootled about in the woods near by for sustenance. They were, however, shy, and did not seek the shelter of the chateau. Stray cattle there were too; but neither these nor the pigs paid any attention to the sh.e.l.ls which fell near them with impartial regularity, but did them, as far as I could see, no damage whatever.

There was a stable a couple of hundred yards in rear of the house, and here at first we put what horses there were in the neighbourhood.

Having Squeaky and Silver there one night--I forget why, but I know they were there--I put them into a couple of loose-boxes. Silver went in all right, but Squeaky, generally a most sensible mare, s.h.i.+vered and sweated with terror, had almost to be forced in, and refused to feed when there. So I let her out again, and picketed her outside. Two nights after, a doctor's horse which was in there was all but killed, for a shrapnel burst through the window and drove fourteen bullets into his head and neck. They wanted leave to kill the poor beast, but I refused permission, as he was not hit in any vital spot, and he recovered, more or less, in a few days.

As mentioned above, this stable was marked in black on the map, whilst the chateau--a far bigger building, of course--was hardly indicated. I take it that this accounted for our comparative immunity, for the stable was sh.e.l.led (and hit) with great regularity, whilst the chateau was hardly ever touched. We had, however, a couple of small H.E. sh.e.l.l through the eastern end whilst we were in the western; one of these bored clean through the wall of a room where there was a big cupboard against it on the far side and exploded forthwith. But the cupboard was not even scratched; it was blown into the middle of the room and a table or two upset, but, strange to relate, nothing serious in the way of damage was done.[20] On another occasion, however, a few shrapnel exploded just outside the kitchen window. At the sound of the first we all bolted to the other side of the house, and called to the servants to do the same. They came out; but Brown, our excellent cook, who had come out in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, must needs go back, without orders, to fetch his coat: for which he promptly received a jagged piece of sh.e.l.l in his left arm, which put a stop, alas, to his cooking for good and all, as far as we were concerned, for he was sent away, and, although he recovered, never came back to us.

[Footnote 20: This is a fact, though I cannot explain it.]

During the chief hours of the day, when not (or whilst) being sh.e.l.led, we were pretty busy with telegrams and reports and queries and excursions and alarums. We were comfortable enough in the housekeeper's room, and got our meals ”reg'lar,” and we even had two or three arm-chairs, and newspapers and mails fairly well, and news from outside, which used to arrive with our rations at 9 P.M. or thereabouts. But a minor trial was the fact that two out of our five panes of gla.s.s had been blown in by sh.e.l.l, and let in an icy draught on most days. So we got some partially-oiled paper, and made some paste, and stuck up the panes.

The first sh.e.l.l explosion made the paper sag, the second made it s.h.i.+ver, and the third blew it out. The paste would not stick--it was the wrong sort of flour or something.

Then we used jam--that glutinous saccharine mess known as ”best plum jam”--and blue sugar paper, and it stuck quite fairly well. But it wouldn't dry; and tears of jam used to trickle down the paper panes and mingle with the tin-tacks and the bread-crumbs on the sill.

The room was even then fairly dark, but the sh.e.l.l-bursts again s.h.i.+vered the jam paper and burst it, and we had to take to cardboard and drawing-boards. This made it still darker, and was not even then successful, for the explosions still shook the boards down and eventually broke another pane: it was most trying. On the last day but one four panes had been broken, and on the last day, as will be recounted, all were broken and the whole window blown in. Then we left.

But what was of much vaster interest, of course, than these trifles, was the desperate fighting which was being waged along our front, not 1000 yards from the chateau. Our two battalions, being entrenched in the wood, did not receive such a severe hammering as the brigades on either side--the 7th and 9th respectively on our right and left,--who were more in the open. And the sh.e.l.ling and attacks on them were incessant, as well as on troops still further off on the other side of them.

The 11th November was a typically unpleasant day. It started with a touch of comedy, Weatherby arriving stark naked in my room at 6.30 A.M., just when I was shaving, saying, ”I say, sir, may I finish my dressing in here? They're sh.e.l.ling the bathroom!” He had a towel and a few clothes on his arm, _et praeterea nihil_. (He, M.-B., and St Andre, though sleeping in different rooms, used to dress in the bathroom, where there were excellent taps and basins, though no water was running.)

The sh.e.l.ling continued till 10. It was on this morning that Brown was damaged and lots of windows blown in.

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