ll these we had to find billets. The troops
billeted in these areas varied in composition nearly every day. It was
very hard work for the Staff Captain (Moulton-Barrett), whose proper
job would normally have been limited to the 15th Brigade; but he and
Saint Andre, who both worked like niggers, somehow always managed to
do it satisfactorily. It would have turned my hair grey, I know, to
stuff away a conflicting crowd of troops of different arms into an
area which was always too small for them. But M.-B. would sit calmly
on his horse amid the clamour of inexperienced subalterns and grasping
N.C.O.'s, and allot the farms and streets in such a way that they
always managed to get in somehow--though occasionally I expect the
conditions were not those of perfect comfort. We were lucky in the
weather, however, and many times troops bivouacked in the open in
comparative ease when a rainy night would have caused them extreme
discomfort.

It was not always easy to find billets even for our own Brigade
Staff, for though we were a small unit, comparatively, we had a good
number of horses and half a dozen vehicles; and besides this, we had
to have a decent room or place for the Signal section, and rig up a
wire for them to work in connection with the Divisional Headquarters
or other troops. In this Cadell was excellent, and we rarely had
a breakdown. Sometimes, of course, we were too far off to get
a wire fixed in time, and then we had recourse to our Signal
"push-bikists"--no motor cyclists being on our establishment. The
Signal companies, by the way, had only been completely organized a
month or two before the war, and what we should have done without them
passes my imagination, for they were quite invaluable, and most
excellently organized and trained.

And sometimes when, after all this work, we had settled down into
billets for the night, an order would come to move on at once. Fresh
orders had then hurriedly to be written, and despatched by the orderly
of each unit (who was attached to our headquarters) to his respective
unit, giving the time at which the head of the unit was to pass a
given point on the road so as to dovetail into its place in the
column in the dark, and all with reference to what we were going to
do, whether the artillery or part of it was to be in front or in rear,
what rations were to be carried, arrangements for supply, position of
the transport in the column, compositions of the advanced or
rear-guard