Part 14

It was gradually borne in on us that we were going to be moved off by train to take part in a different theatre of the fighting altogether; but where we should find ourselves we had not the least idea. What caused us much joy to hear was that we had intercepted a German wireless message, two days after four out of the six Divisions had left the Aisne, to say that it was "all right, all six British Divisions were still on the Aisne!"

Oct. 6th.

On the 6th we moved off at 2.15 P.M. and pushed on to Bethisy St Pierre, where the Bedfords and Norfolks and ourselves halted, whilst the Dorsets and Cheshires pushed on to Verberies, so as to save time for the entraining on the morrow. We got our time-table that night, and found that we were to entrain at four stations--i.e., Compiegne, Le Meux, Longueil Ste Marie, and Pont Sainte Maxence--on the following day. Very careful arrangements and calculations had to be made, so that the whole thing should go without a hitch, and we sat up for some time at the Convent, a sort of educational establishment where Brigade Headquarters was quartered, making out the orders.

A "Brigade Area" command was allotted to me, including, besides my own Brigade, the 8th Brigade R.F.A. (howitzers), 59th Co. R.E., 15th Field Ambulance, and 4th Co. of 5th Div. Train.

Oct. 7th.

Then off at 5 A.M. next morning, ourselves for Pont Ste Maxence. Major Vandeleur of the Scottish Rifles had just arrived to take command of the Cheshires, who had had nothing but a captain to command them since Lt.-Col. Boger was taken prisoner on the 24th August. He seemed to me a first-rate sensible fellow, but we were not destined to keep him for long.

As the Brigade was still rather short of socks, I bought as many as I could here for the men, but not many were available. It was a nice little town with a blown-up stone bridge, but the French R.E. had already constructed another of wood.

The French entraining orders are that all troops have to be at the station four blessed hours before the train starts, so as to give time to load up properly. We thus arrived at 8, and did not start till 12; but the actual entraining of the Cheshires--the only battalion with Brigade Headquarters--took only one hour and a quarter,--not bad at all considering that there were no ramps or decent accessories, and all the vehicles had to be man-handled into the trucks.

There were two sorts of trains--one mostly for men, the other mostly for horses and vehicles; but although they were very long--thirty-four to forty cars if I remember right--they were not quite long enough for us, and several men and vehicles had to be left behind and brought on by other trains, resulting in slight incompleteness for a few days.

We rapidly reached Creil, where we were to get our final orders. What on earth would our destination be? Rumour had it that we should go to Calais, or even to Bruges; but we had no such journey after all, for we were only intended to go to Abbeville as it turned out--rather a disappointment, as we hoped it would be further afield.

Abbeville--a two hours' journey as a rule in peace time--was not reached till 8 P.M., although we were due there at 6.30 P.M. We halted by the way, for half an hour or more, at Amiens, where we made the acquaintance of a cheery crowd of "Fusiliers Marins," sturdy naval reservists from Normandy and Brittany, who covered themselves with glory later on amid the Belgian dunes.

Oct. 8th.

We were not allowed to detrain at Abbeville till 9.30 P.M., as the platforms were already occupied by other troops. It was wretchedly cold and pitch-dark by the time we had got away from the station, and we marched in dead silence through the town at 12.30 A.M. Not a soul was in the streets, not even a policeman from whom to ask the way, and we nearly lost our direction twice.

Our orders, which we received from Dunlop (5th Divisional staff), who was ensconced in a red-hot waiting-room in the goods yard, were to the effect that we were to billet near Neuilly, a village about six miles off. Done (Norfolks) had been sent ahead on the previous day to prepare the billets, but when we got near the village, after a cold march with a clear moon, Done was nowhere to be seen; and I nearly ordered the battalion to "doss down" in the road, as all the houses near were full of men of other brigades. However, Weatherby rode on, and eventually found Done in bed at the Mairie, he having been officially told that the Brigade would not be in till the following day. He had had a trying time, having been deposited by his train at a station about ten miles off, and having to make his way across country (riding) without a map and with very vague ideas of where he was to go. However, he had already told off billets for all the Brigade Area, and the troops trickled in independently by battalions and batteries, arriving by different trains and even at different stations, up to 10 A.M. in the morning. I thought it showed distinctly good work on the part of all concerned that we concentrated our "Brigade Area" so quickly and without being deficient of anything except the few vehicles which had perforce been left behind for want of trucks; but they turned up all right a day or two after. The Brigade staff billeted at the chateau (as usual!), a strangely ruined-looking little place belonging to the Comte de Belleville, now at the wars. We turned up there about 4 A.M., and were guided thither by an old gardener, who thumped at the door and shouted loudly for "Madame." A woman soon appeared, and showed us most civilly to our rooms--very plain and bare but very clean. I could not quite make her out, for though she was dressed in the plainest of print clothes she did not talk like a servant--in fact she talked like a lady; so I put her down as some relation perhaps who was helping Mme de Belleville. But later in the morning I discovered that she was Madame la Comtesse herself, who had kindly risen at that unearthly hour to let us in, and that there were no servants in the establishment at all except the old gardener and a nurse.

Our movements were still by way of being kept a dead secret, so we went off in the afternoon at 6 P.M., reinforced now by some divisional cavalry and divisional cyclists. The road, in the dark, was an extremely complicated one, as it involved about twenty turnings and movement along narrow lanes with high hedges and big trees, making it quite impossible to see for more than a few yards. So I took the guiding of the column into my own hands, and distributed the rest of my staff along it to see that the different units did not miss the way and kept well closed up. The result was good, and after 5 hours march, via Agenvilliers and Gueschard, we reached the little village of Boufflers about 11 P.M. Here, at an odd little Nouvel Art "Chateau"--or rather small country house, empty of its owners--belonging to M. Sagebien, Prefet de Niort, we of the Brigade staff put up, the rest of the command being billeted in the tiny villages lining each bank of the tiny stream near--I have forgotten its name.

Oct. 9th.

It was a nice sunny day on the morrow, and we got our orders by midday that we were to move off at 2 P.M. We wrote out Brigade orders and prepared to start, when suddenly post-haste came some orders cancelling these, and telling us that we were to drop our transport and be moved off at once in a series of motor-buses to a place called Dieval.

And then began a lovely jumble, which resulted (not our own fault) in getting to Dieval rather later than we should have done had we trusted to our own unaided powers of locomotion.

We moved off at 2 P.M., only taking blanket-waggons which were to dump blankets and supplies into the buses. These were to have turned up on the Haravesnes-Fillievres road at 7 P.M.; in any case it would have been a complicated job getting into them in the dark, but they did not arrive till midnight, owing to some mechanical breakdowns in the column. The first lot of "camions" were to have taken six battalions--i.e., the 14th Brigade, which was just ahead of us, and half of the 15th Brigade. But when they did arrive, there were only enough for three and three-quarter battalions; so we bivouacked in more or less peace by the roadside until this bunch had moved off and returned from Dieval to fetch us. Horribly cold it was too, and we only kept moderately warm by pulling down several straw stacks--which we carefully put together again next day--and covering ourselves up in the straw.

I had, by the way, an extremely narrow escape from being killed that night. I had been lying down just off the road, when it struck me that I should find out more of what was happening and going to happen if I went to the head of the camion column and interviewed the officer in charge. It was a tramp of a mile or more through the 14th Brigade, and I found out something of what I wanted; but when I returned to the bivouac I heard that, not two minutes after I had started, a motor-bus had swerved off the road and passed exactly over the place where my head had been. It very nearly went over St Andre and Moulton-Barrett, who were lying a few feet away, as it was. Of course the driver could not see any one lying down in the dark.

Oct. 10th.

Next morning we had breakfast at 7.30 in the field, and still the buses had not returned. We waited in that place till 11 o'clock before they turned up, and then clambered into them as quickly as we could--twenty-two men to a bus, sixteen buses to 300 metres being the allowance. Even then we had to leave about two battalions behind for a third trip.

I got into the first bus--a very fast one,--and reached Dieval some time before the rest of the Brigade; but there was no room in the town for another Brigade, as it was already full of the 14th.

I went to see Rolt, and got into telephone communication with Divisional Headquarters on the subject, and they gave me leave to billet at La Thieuloye, one and a half miles back and off the road. So W. and I walked back and turned the buses off there just as they were arriving.

A curious sight were the hundreds, or even thousands, of French civilians whom we met--all men of military age, whom the French Army was sending away westwards out of Lille; for it was likely that Lille would shortly be invested by the Germans, and they did not want this large batch of recruits and reservists to be interned in Germany.

The rest of the Brigade--transport, horses, and all--rolled up by 6 P.M., the horses being very tired after their long night march.

From what I could gather German cavalry was trying to get round our north-west flank, whilst a big fight was going on at Arras. Lille, with a few Territorial battalions in it, was still holding out, but was surrounded by the enemy. Hence the hurry. But we ought to have plenty of troops now to keep the Germans off. It was very puzzling to make out what was happening, for we had not even the vaguest idea where the rest of our own Army was, let alone the French or Germans. Nobody seemed to know anything, except that we should probably soon be fighting again.

Our quarters that night were a horrid little chateau--empty, damp, and desolate, in a deserted wilderness of a place, with no furniture except some straw, a mattress or two, and some packing-cases. So here we tried to make ourselves comfortable, and succeeded in lighting a fire and settling down. But it was beastly cold and damp.