1915_ The Death of Innocence - Lyn Macdonald [91]
Rfn. W. Worrell, 12th Bn., Rifle Brig.
People were awfully kind. I was invited to tea with Lady Haliburton, but I’ve never had such an awkward afternoon in my life. I’d thought to get a good tuck-in and that there would be other people there, but I was all on my own in this fancy drawing room, and there was even a footman serving out the tea. I sat on the edge of a little chair trying to balance a tea-cup and eat these dainty little sandwiches, with a lady old enough to be my grandmother asking me questions and me trying to make polite replies and not to talk with my mouth full. I thought, ‘No more of this for me!’ But as I was going out Lady Haliburton said, ‘I don’t think you’ve enjoyed yourself, have you?’ I said, ‘Oh yes I have, and thank-you-very-much-for-having-me’ – like a well brought up lad. She gave a half-smile and said, ‘Perhaps you’d like to come back next Sunday and have tea with the servants?’ So out of politeness I had to say yes, and out of politeness I had to go back the next week.
They took me down to this big kitchen where there was the cook and the other maids and they made an immense fuss of me. They said, ‘What would you like for tea?’ I said, ‘Can I have anything I like?’ The cook said, ‘Yes, of course you can. What would you like?’ I said, ‘Well, I’d like smoked haddock with an egg on it’ – thinking I’d beat them! – but she said, ‘Yes, certainly.’ So I had poached haddock with an egg on it, and I don’t know what-all after that. We had a very jolly time, and I also had a large bag of home-made cakes to take back with me.
Pte. Η. N. Edwards, 6th (Bristol City) Bn., Gloucester Regt.
When we moved to Danbury in Essex I was billeted with two other blokes on some very nice people called Lancaster. I shared a room with a chap whose father was the man who cleaned out the dustbins in Bristol. You met all sorts in the army. The other chap was a bit of a snob and he rather looked down on this chap, Billy Williams, but I found out that he was as nice a chap under the skin as anybody else and we mucked in together and got on like smoke.
Mrs Lancaster was very good to us and looked after us really well. She always gave us an onion pudding before the main meal on the Sunday. It was a long roly-poly suet pudding with plenty of onion in it. She’d cut you a good thick slice of that and pour gravy on it. It was an old tradition in big families, because if you had that you wouldn’t eat so much meat, but we loved these onion puddings. We thought they were marvellous and, of course, with the exercise and all the fresh air you were getting, you were permanently ravenous. But she’d always put on a meal for us, though the billeting money couldn’t have gone far. Oh, she was good to us! We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves there. When we left we clubbed together to buy Mrs Lancaster a present, just some small thing but she was ever so pleased. Many’s the time when we got to France, sitting in some dirty old trench, nothing but bully beef and biscuits, we’d say, ‘Remember those onion puddings at Mrs Lancaster’s?’ We often used to think of them. We could have done with one then!
If the problem of housing the troops had not been entirely solved it was at least much improved since the chaotic early days of mass enlistment when they had squeezed sardine-like into camps and barracks, town-halls, public houses, even race-courses, sleeping in grandstands, on floors, on billiard tables and occasionally at first in the open. Those who were in private billets usually came off best, and even though the majority had moved into camps and the tents were gradually being replaced by huts, private billets were still in demand as Kitchener’s Mob moved around the country. There were few landladies who failed to give full value for the billeting allowance of seventeen shillings and sixpence a week, supplying hearty meals, washing clothes, darning socks and generally mothering their ‘boys’. Some even rose from their beds in the