1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [30]
It was pretty slow going as our speed wasn’t by any means fast and we made several short stops. The distance to GHQ at St Omer is only thirty or forty kilometres, but we didn’t arrive until 3 p.m. We detrained and paraded in the station which took some time. We moved off at last and marched out to our billets at Tatinghem. It is about three miles out of St Omer, which is GHQ. All the roads are paved, but as they are paved with cobblestones marching is rather uncomfortable. We reached billets after about an hour’s march feeling a bit tired. We were wearing equipment for the first time, including a large pack in which the men carry their worldly belongings. It feels a bit heavy on one’s back. The village looks a bit desolate and a lot of the inhabitants have gone. We were a very long time getting settled and getting the men into billets. Most of them are in barns and very comfortable. My sleeping quarters are only fairly comfortable – the place is, alas, the quartermaster’s stores. I have a large room which, when I arrived, contained little furniture but I managed to scrounge a washing cabinet, a chair and a table. There is a bed of sorts.
We are not yet assigned to any brigade or division and are Army Troops. We are apparently to continue training until the advance, which people say is to be in April.
But even ‘a bed of sorts’ and a roof overhead was a welcome improvement on the tented camp at Etaples where, since their camp beds had been sent back as ‘superfluous kit’, the officers’ sleeping bags had rested on hard tent boards. And the men, deep-bedded on straw in barns that were dry if not warm, had no complaints. The wind was blowing from the east and from time to time they could hear a gentle thudding in the distance. It was the sound of the guns at the front, now barely thirty miles away. The men nudged each other, listened, and were thrilled. But, as they burrowed into nests of warm rustling straw, pulling rough blankets over limbs wearied by the long march, and settled themselves contentedly to sleep, not many soldiers were inclined to give much serious thought to the future.
Chapter 4
Three miles away at his headquarters at St Omer, the Commander-in-Chief, Sir John French, in consultation with his staff officers, was giving the future very serious thought indeed. There was a great deal to think about and the Commander-in-Chief was a frustrated man. He wanted to get on with the war and it seemed to him that people and events were conspiring against him. He was under pressure from two directions – by General Joffre, in command of the French armies, who required his help in mounting an offensive of his own, and by the War Council in London who appeared to Sir John French to be thwarting his every move and had, moreover, failed to keep the promises of supplying the men and munitions on which his plans depended. Part of the trouble lay in the fact that the War Council was not convinced that French’s plans were sound or even if the war on the western front should be carried on in more than token terms. They were staggered by the casualties, disillusioned by the lack of any significant gains, and dismayed above all by the total failure of attacks undertaken in conjunction with the French in mid-December. They had seriously considered withdrawing the British Expeditionary Force completely, leaving a strong reserve near the French coast in case of emergency, and sending the bulk of the troops with the new armies, as they became-available, to strike at the enemy in some other place where their efforts might possibly bring the war to a speedier end. Opinion was divided as to where that place should be, but the politicians were united in the view that the deadlock on the western front was absolute and that the chances of either French or British breaking through the German lines were small.
The Germans had been digging in and, even in winter conditions, with the advantage of higher, drier, ground they had managed to construct a formidable