Our tonic began by being taken, one dose after meals, twice daily.  In the morning the battalion generally went for a long route march, and in the afternoon practised military training of various kinds in the fields about the village.  My whole time was occupied with machine-gun training.  Morning and afternoon I and my sections went off out into the country, and selecting a good variegated bit of land proceeded to go through every phase of machine-gun warfare.  We practised the use of these weapons in woods, open fields, along hedges, etc.  It was an interesting job.  We used to decide on some section of ground with an object to be attacked in the distance, and approach it in all kinds of ways.  Competitions would follow between the different sections.  The days were all bright, warm and sunny, so life and work out in the fields and roads there was quite pleasant.  Each evening we assembled in our cheerful billet, and thus our rest went on.  My sketching now broke out like a rash.  I drew a great many sketches.  I joked in pencil for every one, including Suzette, Berthe and Marthe.  I am sorry to say I plead guilty to having cast a certain amount of ridicule at the Cure.  He was so splendidly austere, and wore such funny clothes, that I couldn’t help perpetrating several sketches of him.  The disloyalty of his parishioners was very marked in the way they laughed at these drawings, which were pinned up in the row of cottages.  Sometimes I would let him off for a day, and then he would come drifting past the window again, with his “Dante” face, surmounted by a large curly, faded black hat, and I gave way to temptation again.

He didn’t like soldiers being billeted in his village, so Suzette told me.  I think he got this outlook from his rather painful experiences when the Germans were in the same village, prior to being driven north.  They had locked him up in his own cellar for four or five days, after removing his best wine, which they drank upstairs.  This sort of thing does tend towards giving one a bitter outlook.  He preached a sermon whilst we were there.  I didn’t hear it, but was told about it simultaneously by Suzette, Berthe and Marthe, who informed me that it was directed against soldiery in general.  His text had apparently been “Do not trust them, gentle ladies.”  A gross libel.  I retaliated immediately by drawing a picture of him, with a girl sitting on each knee, singing “The soldiers are going, hurrah! hurrah!” (tune—­“The Campbells are coming").

I’m afraid I was rather a canker in his village.

One day, my dear old friend turned up, the same who accompanied me on leave to England.  He didn’t know we were having our rest, and searched for me first behind Wulverghem.  He there heard where we were, and came on.  He was rather a star in a military way, and could, therefore, get hold of a car now and again.  I was delighted to see him, as it was possible for me to go into Bailleul with