Part 6

All the little shrines are, as usual, surrounded by half-clipped trees.

And the wild-flowers. Clear pale blue succory is the most charming of all, and I am going to send you some plants as soon as they have ceased flowering.

August 6.

You can't think how difficult it is to take any interest in military matters sometimes. The inclination to let things slide. The feeling that an order is not so terrifying as it once was; that after all, who will know or bother if one furtive subaltern creeps out one evening to sketch?

August 8.

Do you know, it's unintelligent, but I do so enjoy being here away from the fevers of war. War is getting tedious, and the summer is all too short.

Swallow is coming back. Isn't it splendid! The General finds him too irritating and tiresome. Jezebel will be glad, for she doesn't like the ghost-horse Moonlight, and she never really disliked Swallow. I can't say she liked him, because she likes no one, dear lamb. But she used to look on Swallow with rather less suspicion, somehow. And Swallow has a habit of licking that she approves of. I have often seen her snap at him even while he is licking her; but he always continues after a moment. I think it soothes her when the flies are tiresome.

This place has a beautiful church, which I have drawn. It's quite an unusually charming bit of the country.

August 11.

Jezebel did such an astonishing thing yesterday. I was out with the signallers practising. We didn't want the bother of holding or picketing the horses. So I ordered "off-saddle," and then put a guard over the disused quarry where I had decided to leave them. The quarry had a grassy floor, and walls of chalk that in one place were only about 7 foot high. Jezebel has been so good (for her) lately, that I determined to leave her with the other horses. They were stripped of all bridles and saddles and things, and had heaps of room to wander.

Meanwhile we were carrying on with our work.

Presently shouts from the guard. I went back to see what was the matter. My dear, Jezebel had tried to jump out of the quarry!

She had tried twice, but the sides were too steep and high, and she had slipped back. When I arrived, she was quietly grazing as if nothing had happened. Ah, but wait. This is not all.

Later on in the morning another hooroosh. A loud squealing and sounds of kicking. One of her moods again, I thought to myself grimly. That well-known voice. I should recognize her squeal anywhere. As I was going towards the quarry with Corporal Dutton to get her tied up or else hobbled, lo and behold! the two guards had vanished. "What the devil...." And all of a sudden out pour the horses careering downhill like mad! It was so appalling that Corporal Dutton and I just stood and shouted with laughter.

My dear, if there is anything in the whole world that goads a Major, a Brigadier, or any other military man, to fury and madness, it is a loose horse.

Imagine, then, forty-four horses all riderless, without saddles or bridles (and therefore almost impossible to catch), stampeding straight into a corps H.Q. village. This village is crawling with Generals!

Well, in the end we caught them all, and by some dazzling piece of luck, for which Allah be praised, no General, no Colonel, nor anyone else, seems to have got wind of the incident. Subalterns, yes, and I am sumptuously ragged about it. But how all the Generals and things happened to be out of sight and hearing at the time, I don't know. And still this is not the cream of the comedy.

After giving orders for rounding up the animals, I went on to the quarry with Corporal Dutton. My dear, There was Jezebel grazing, as cool as a cucumber!

She still further insulted me by coming up and trying to push her nose into my pocket, where I sometimes keep an apple for her.

The guards, you see, had instantly gone in to get her away from the horse she was kicking, when we first heard the commotion. The other horses had mooned out of the entrance gap, and then, I suppose, something--a fly, perhaps--had frightened them, and off they had galloped. While "the accursed female," as we sometimes call Jezebel, too sensible to stampede, quietly continued feeding. I shall never be taken in by her air of innocence again. Never. I don't a bit mind saying I was decidedly alarmed. That mare might have been responsible for the death of the Corps Commander.

O Jezebel, I wish I could get angry with you and give you a jolly good hiding one day. But you know I can't, you dear old thing. I'm writing this in the orchard, where the H.Q. horses live, and Jezebel is standing sleepily in the shade of her tree. She looks intensely stupid. She occasionally tries to flick away a fly with her short tail. Occasionally she sighs deeply, with that blubbery, spluttery noise that all horses make when they sigh.

August 15.

On the move. This is our first day's trek, and we are at a place where we have been before--but not the same billets. I am in a cottage with an earth floor (which looks very odd with a hideous drab-coloured wall-paper), and small children and hens, both dirty, wander in and out of my room. It's too hot to keep the door latched. A swallow's nest in the room next door; and the people say that, although the young have flown, they still return at night.

August 19.

The Adjutant is away, and won't be returning for some time; so I am still acting. And this, together with signal work, etc., is somewhat arduous. I live all day in the "office," a very small bivouac in a green field. There I sit praying for inspiration, when letters come in marked Urgent, beginning something like this:

"LP/3657042--G1.

"Ref. your memo HC/516342/L12 of 13/8/16, please find A.F. 361B for completion and immediate return."

And I haven't the least idea what I said in my memo HC/516342/L12 of 13/8/16, and I can't find any record of it. And I can't for the life of me make out how I am meant to fill in A.F. 361B, because I haven't the least idea what it's all about.