ansport officer was
again with me on the same quest. We separated, and each searched a
different part of the village. The first house I went into was a dismal
failure. An old woman of about 84 opened the door about six inches, and
was some time before she permitted the aperture to widen sufficiently to
allow me to go inside the house. A most dingy, poky sort of a place, so
I cleared off to search for something better. As I crossed the farmyard
behind, my servant, who had been conducting a search on his own,
suddenly appeared round the corner of the large barn at the end of the
yard, and came towards me.

"I've found a place over 'ere, Sir, I expect you'll like."

"Where?" I asked.

"This way, Sir!" and he led the way across a field to a gate, which we
climbed. We then went down a sort of back lane to the village, and
turned in at a small wicket-gate leading to a row of cottages. He led me
up to one in the centre, and knocked at the door. A woman opened it, and
I told her what I was looking for. She seemed quite keen for us to go
there, and asked if there was anyone else to come there with me. I told
her the transport officer would be coming there too, and our two
servants. She quite agreed to this, and showed me the rooms we could
have. They were extremely small, but we decided to have them. "Them"
consisted of one bedroom, containing two beds, the size of the room
being about fourteen feet by eight, and the front kitchen-sitting-room
place, which was used by everybody in the house, and was about twice the
size of the bedroom. I went away and found the transport officer,
brought him back and showed him the place. He thought it a good spot,
so we arranged to fix up there.

Our servants started in to put things right for us, get our baggage
there, and so on, whilst I went off to see to billets for the
machine-gun section. I had got them a pretty good barn, attached to the
farm I first called at, but I wanted to go and see that it was really
large enough and suitable when they had all got in and spread
themselves. I found that it did suit pretty well. The space was none too
large, but I felt sure we wouldn't find a better. There was a good field
for all the limbers and horses adjoining, so on the whole it was quite a
convenient place. The section had already got to work with their cooking
things, and had a fire going out in the field. Those gunners were a very
self-contained, happy throng; they all lived together like