ll hours of the day and left on our best
drugget--a cheap, thin thing which I bought in Bailleul (they had not
such a thing as a carpet in the whole town) wherewith to cover the
nakedness of the brick floor of the one tiny room in which we all
worked and ate.

Weatherby and I slept in the house, and the others were billeted
outside, but the quarters were none of them more than passable--poor
villagers' rooms, with a frowzy though comfortable bed, a rickety
washhand-stand, if you were lucky (I did not even have that), no
carpet on the dirty wooden floor, and one small hard-backed chair,
generally minus a portion of a leg; never any chest of drawers or
anywhere to put your things, as if there by any chance was such a
thing in the room, it was sure to be full of the inhabitants' rusty
old black clothes and dirty blue flannel shirts, and petticoats, thick
and musty, by the ton,--I never saw so many petticoats per inhabitant.

Our mess had only had one change since the beginning of the war, and
that was in the signal officer. Cadell had gone sick in November, and
Miles had replaced him in December. For about a month, including all
the period at Ypres, we had had no signal officer (except Naylor for
two days), nor any Brigade-Major from about the 12th November (at
Ypres) till the beginning of December; so Sergeant King, a first-rate
signaller, though not the senior, had carried on for Cadell, and
Moulton-Barrett had added the duties of Brigade-Major to his own. But
by the middle of December we were complete again. Weatherby had
returned from his sick leave, and Miles, of the K.O.S.B.'s, was now
signalling officer. A quite excellent one he was, too--very silent,
always an hour or two late for dinner (owing to strenuous night work),
never asking questions, but always doing things before they were even
suggested, and very thoroughly at that; he was a great acquisition.
Moulton-Barrett was still Staff Captain--very hard-working and
conscientious, and very thorough; Weatherby was still Brigade-Major--keen
and resourceful; Beilby was still veterinary officer--capable and
helpful; and St Andre was still interpreter and billeting
officer--cheerful and most willing. His duties were mostly to
investigate the numerous cases of natives who wanted to go somewhere
or do something--generally to fetch their cows off a shell-swept
field, or to rescue their furniture from a burnt village, or to fetch
or buy something from Bailleul--and recom