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By Root 1986 0

stations east to Courtrai. It had stood there all winter long, and there it would stand for the rest of the war. The wooden carriages were holed and splintered, the engine was bullet-grazed and streaked with rust beneath a grimy coat of mud, with its wheels rusting into the few rails that still lay on the battered track, and coarse weeds poked through the layer of mud and cinders where the track ran into No Man’s Land. The sleepers had long ago been carted off and used to strengthen dug-outs. But every morning on the dot of seven o’clock a railwayman picked his way across the debris and climbed into the signal box. And there he sat, trains or no trains, war or no war, until it was time to go home at six o’clock in the evening. It had apparently not occurred to the railway authorities to pay him off.

Sgt. B. J. Brookes, 1/16 Queen’s Westminster Rifles (County of London Regt.).

The station was about three hundred and fifty yards behind the trenches, and the trenches ran through the village, at right angles to the road. To get to the front line one went into the first house along the road, and a passage had been made by knocking big holes in the side walls of the houses. Two of these houses were still occupied, and were open to the troops as estaminets, and it was quite possible to come out of the trenches for a quarter of an hour to get a glass of beer. In one of these houses two old women and a young girl were carrying on the business (which, needless to say, was very brisk) and it was remarkable how they stood the strain. There was a curve in the road which prevented bullets from hitting the house, but they continually whizzed by as it was easily within range and the people didn’t dare go out of their house. The beer was brought to them by army transport when it was available. I think I can safely say that in no other part of the line were civilians living so near the danger zone.

Now that things had settled down and to all intents and purposes there was a lull in the war and time to take stock, Sir John French was at last able to accede to General Joffre’s request to stretch his line northwards and take over another sector of line from the French. Groups of officers were sent up in advance of their battalions to familiarise themselves with the terrain and to ensure that the changeover would go smoothly. Second Lieutenant Jock Macleod went up with a party of his fellow officers of the 2nd Battalion, the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders.

This was a Regular battalion, but young Jock was not a Regular soldier. He was a student at Cambridge University and, although he had been commissioned into the Camerons at the start of the war, he was a ‘temporary gentleman’ of a few months’ training who, strictly speaking, was not yet qualified to be at the front at all. But the Camerons had suffered heavy casualties, Jock had wangled his way into a draft of reinforcements and, after two months at the front, regarded himself as an old campaigner. He had had an enjoyable time. There had been a few exciting days in the trenches at St Eloi, three weeks away from the line on a machine-gun course and, having passed out with flying colours, he now had his own command as the battalion’s newly appointed machine-gun officer. The battalion had been out at rest when Jock rejoined it, but the machine-gun section had been kept hard at it under the eye of this energetic new officer who was intent on sharing the benefit of his newly acquired expertise. He was having the time of his life and his letters home were virtual paeans of enthusiasm. The only slight disappointment – for Jock was a fastidious young man – had been the discovery that the army did not permit him to send his washing home from the front. But he quite saw the point that, if every officer did so, the weekly passage of several thousand sets of shirts and pants, socks and pyjamas, would overload the mail boats and put an unreasonable strain on the army postal service. In passing on this news to his family, Jock took the trouble to remind them kindly that there was, after all, a war