[Illustration:  BAILLEUL A peaceful place behind the battle.]

June 23.

[Sidenote:  MANY SMELLS AND NO WATER]

The most extraordinary things are happening.  All very quiet and humdrum on the surface.  Only the aeroplanes are busy, and if the sun is between you and them there are always the little black high Archie clouds following them, like vultures appearing from nowhere.

Our quick bolt up here has had several pleasant results.  First, the country is very beautiful, more hilly in this immediate neighbourhood, with great plains stretching away on all sides.  The low hills all have woods round them, and a windmill or a church on the top.  Second, B Squadron have already arrived, and our old Brigade-Major and lots of other old friends.  It was most joyous meeting them all again.  We came trotting down one road, covered with dust, and they came trotting down another road even more covered with dust, having trekked all day.

Isn’t it funny.  One gets so quickly used to things that already we have ceased to notice the smells, which at first made us wield bottles of disinfectant wherever we went.  But now, when the farms and outhouses and other places where we live smell, we merely laugh, and “fatigues” are all at work automatically before nightfall, and by next morning—­well, the smells have not gone, but the general feeling is that a good start has been made.

The water problem is still unsolved, and we get very thirsty; but thirst is a small fleabite, after all.  “Which would you rather have,” I asked a discontented lance-corporal, “a bit of a thirst or a dentist drilling a hole down a pet nerve?” And he owned he’d rather have a thirst.  You know, it’s most awkward.  They come to you when there’s any difficulty and seem to think you can put things right always.  For instance, a man came up the other day:  “Please, sir, I’ve lost my haversack.”  “When did you miss it first?” “Between ——­ and ——­, sir.”  “Now what do you want me to do?” “I don’t know, sir.”  “Do you want me to go back to ——­ and search the whole of the twenty odd miles to ——­ on the off chance of finding it?” “No, sir.”  “Do you want to do so yourself?” “No, sir.”  “And even if I ordered you to go, do you think that, with so many troops about, you would be likely to find it still there?” “No, sir.”

The result is, of course, that I have to buy one for the unfortunate lad in the nearest town.  One must eat.  And our haversacks are our larders.  Haversacks are supplied by the army, but it takes such a time to get anything, that, if the matter is urgent, it has to be done without the army.  We (the bloomin’ orficers) have a “mess-cart” for all our absurd wines and tinned peaches and things, but the men often have nothing but the contents of their haversacks.

June 25.

[Sidenote:  READY FOR THE PUSH]