1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [261]
At first while the divisions grouped they were a good way behind the firing line with only the grumble of guns in the distance to hint at what lay ahead, and across a hundred miles of France and Flanders every available building had been pressed into service to provide accommodation for the burgeoning British Army. The northernmost billet was in the farm and out-buildings of a Trappist monastery some miles beyond Ypres. If the silent monks moving imperturbably about their business in their white habits were disturbed by the presence of the British Tommies they gave no sign of it, and the Tommies of the headquarters troops, intrigued though they were by these strange companions, were only too happy to be there. It was a cushy billet, if only because the Trappists supported themselves by brewing a sweet beer, dark and strong, and since the normal channels of distribution had been disrupted, they were only too happy to sell it to the troops. The word soon spread and the men trudged long distances to buy beer from a hatch in the buttery wall. It kept them happy. The Battalion Medical Officer who was billeted in the monastery itself was less happy. He did not object to the sale of beer, but he took strong exception to the insalubrious pond which abutted the walls of the monastery. It was filthy, an obvious breeding ground for disease, and he was fearful of an epidemic among the troops. The Royal Engineers were peremptorily ordered to drain the pond and to remove the danger of infection. A few days later a notice appeared on the buttery hatch, laboriously written in English: ‘There Is No More Beer.’ The officers, who had also acquired a taste for Trappist beer, confronted the abbot. Why had the beer run out? The Trappists were a silent order and the abbot the only monk in the monastery with a dispensation to speak, but he was not a brilliant conversationalist. Unclasping his hands from his voluminous white sleeves, spreading wide his arms in a gesture of despair, he looked like some lugubrious bird of prey. ‘You have drained the pond,’ he said simply. There is no water to make beer. Therefore there is none.’ The MO was aghast. The Commanding Officer was consulted and the Royal Engineers were ordered to refill the pond, but to keep a close eye on future cleanliness. The beer flowed again – but some of the troops were heard to remark that it had lost something of its flavour!
After years of strict peacetime soldiering, some of the regular NCOs who had nurtured Kitchener’s battalions through their training and come with them to France brought with them ideas of disciplined cleanliness which were not entirely appropriate to the new circumstances. During one Battalion’s first tour of initiation in the trenches, one such sergeant went so far as to put a soldier on a charge for what he regarded as a heinous crime. The unfortunate Tommy was standing stiffly to attention when the Commanding Officer happened to come round the corner of the firing bay. ‘What’s the matter, Sergeant?’ he inquired. The sergeant was bursting with righteous indignation. There’s a fly in this man’s butter, sir!’ The Colonel peered into the tin of butter lying open on the fire-step. Sure enough, there was a fly. He gazed at it for some moments then, turning to the NCO, he bellowed, ‘Sergeant. Arrest that fly!’ The soldier did not dare to laugh, nor did he dare to catch the sergeant’s eye, but that was the end of the matter.
The fledgling soldiers of Kitchener’s Army were sent into supposedly quiet sectors for their