1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [227]
There was good food, plain, but plenty of it. There were estaminets in Brandhoek where the beer was thin but abundant, there was money to jingle in their sporrans – four weeks’ unspent pay – there were letters from home and parcels galore whose contents included the occasional bottle of whisky which certainly helped to enliven camp sing-songs in the warm evenings.
Best of all there were baths. Baths were arranged at Poperinghe for one company at a time, and although water was plentiful and U Company had been able to wash regularly, a cold water wash in a bucket could not be compared to a bath – even if the bath was a communal one in the vats of a brewery. U Company’s turn came at the end of their first week’s rest and it was a red letter day. It was their first trip to Poperinghe and, after a blissful scrub, a lot of horseplay, and an invigorating cold douche from a two-inch hosepipe, the men were allowed the indulgence of two hours to explore and to enjoy the novelty of a town that still contained shops and civilians and was only slightly battered by shell-fire, for many of the refugees and tradesmen had returned. Since they had existed entirely on army fare for the past five months, most of them explored no further than the cafés and restaurants in the square, and once the novelty of being presented with menu cards had evaporated, and given the limitations of time and money, they set to and did their utmost to work their way through them. Stew was not popular, but there was good hearty soup, gargantuan omelettes, veal, steak, sausages, and mountains of golden chips, so cheap that even the less provident, who had spent the lion’s share of four weeks’ deferred pay on beer, could afford several large portions of chips, if they could afford nothing else.
By the time they fell in for the three-mile tramp back to Brandhoek, U Company were new men. They were pleasantly replete with decent food, washed down with quantities of beer and wine, but best of all they were clean – and felt properly clean and spruce for the first time in weeks. During the past days they had spent hours smartening up. Kilts and tunics had been dried off and brushed clean, buttons and boots were polished, puttees were free of mud, faces were scrubbed and shining beneath khaki Tarn o’ Shanters perched at a jaunty angle on gleaming slicked-back hair. They stepped out smartly, for the pipes were playing them along the road to the lively strains of ‘Cock o’ the North’, and U Company, who knew a variety of versions, was in excellent voice. It would have been hard to find a happier-looking bunch of Jocks. Just as the tune came to an end they caught up with a battalion of Kitchener’s Army. They were the first New Army men they had seen and they were not an alluring sight.
Sgt. A. Rule.
They were resting by the wayside and looking unutterably weary and dispirited. We later learned that they had just received their baptism of fire on the Menin Road and had been relieved – after just forty-eight hours in the line. They were probably misled by our ‘shining morning faces’ and took us for a newly arrived Territorial unit, anyway they began to shout caustic comments and we catcalled back at them. One woebegone-looking sergeant called out, ‘Just wait till you’ve been up there, lads, and you won’t be singin’ then!’ Well, we soon put him right. I’ll never forget his look of utter incredulity when we informed them we’d just come back after holding the Menin Road for weeks on end. It sent us into roars of laughter.
To add spice to the joke someone sang out in a high falsetto voice ‘We don’t want to lose you, but we think you ought to go…’ It set U Company off again and when they had recovered they favoured Kitchener’s unfortunate soldiers with another mocking ditty which struck them as peculiarly appropriate, bellowing as they swaggered down the