To Fight Alongside Friends: The First World War Diaries of Charlie May. David Crane

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СКАЧАТЬ I sincerely trust we shall.

      All our fellows are in hilarious mood, singing and joking no end. They are a grand lot and as I look at them I can’t help feeling proud of our old battalion and the men who’ve made it. They are all so clean-cut and English as you know so well, my own, I feel confident they’ll go when the chance comes. Please God the 22nd may carry the old Regiment’s name another rung up the ladder of fame.

      They have me on to make a bit of a speech tonight at mess when proposing the King’s health. I wish they wouldn’t do these things. It is one of the chief trials a senior officer has to face. I always make such a hash of speeches. Go red and hum & hah and generally look a perfect ass. However, ‘faint heart never won fat turkey’, so I shall have to go through with it.

      All the transport has gone now with the machine gun[s] etc. Our kit has been taken with the former so we are reduced to what we stand up in and must endure the horrors of a floor-board couch for the first time for some months. There is some proverb about hard work softening the roughest couch, I believe. I am unfortunate. I have had an easy day.

      9th November ’15

      We have not gone yet. That is the one and only item to be recorded today … Yet how near we were!

      The right half Battalion paraded and marched off at 11.40 a.m. and had progressed as far as 600 [yards] from camp when a whistle blew and we were recalled.

      How flat we felt and how everyone swore!

      I understand that the bad weather in the Channel is the reason for the delay. It breaks the mines loose and you run on them and get blown to blazes.

      I am sorry for the rest of the Brigade.^vii It has already preceded us and I can picture whole regiments lying in puddles on the quayside with only the howl of the wind and the pattering rain-drops to sing them a lullaby. That sounds quite melodramatic. But I bet it is all that and more for the poor beggars.

      We now go tomorrow at 5.30 a.m. Reveille 3.30. Bow-wow! It is hardly worth going to bed and I wouldn’t but that I had so little slumber last night.

      The men I am afraid won’t sleep at all. They are now busy singing, ‘When this b..... war is over we’ll be there …’ I am afraid some of them will get drunk, which will mean a rotten tour in the morning dark for company officers. That, however, is all in the game.

      Countess Brownlow^viii has sent all the mess little pocket writing pads today. Very neat and very welcome. I am exceedingly pleased with mine. It was just the thing I wanted but couldn’t find. I have already written you the first note on it and have no doubt but that I will finish the pad on you, my dear girlie.

      I wonder what you are doing tonight and of what you are thinking. My darling soul, when shall we meet again. When will the time come that we can once more set up our home and recommence our life of utter happiness. Ah, Maudie, how little I realised where happiness lay till this old war came along and it was denied me. How limited is a man’s mind. It does not allow him to enjoy life in the present but only to realise what moments have meant to him by looking back on them when they have passed. At any rate it has been so with me.

      8.45 p.m. Fresh orders have just arrived. The 5.30 a.m. idea is now off and we do not move till 11.40. Thank heaven for its mercies and also for the forethought which led me to sneak the Second-in-Command’s blankets after he had left yesterday. I look like having a warm night’s sleep after all.

      10th November ’15

      At last we are under way. But our journey is destined not to be a straightforward one.^ix

      We came like birds as far as Folkestone, even to the pier of that town. But there we stopped. A Scotch major met us with the announcement that the Channel is closed and that we must stop the night in Folkestone billets.

      A long march out into the night is the result with a longer halt on the Leas^x where the wind blows chill and people say nasty things about the Army in whispers. The men were great. Never a murmur out of them after they had been warned that all was to be treated as night operations.

      Our billets were eventually allotted and we got the fellows into several large empty houses – 150 in each. They are right as trivets.^xi We officers dropped on a top-hole billet also. A large boarding house where guests were non est before our advent.^xii

      They hunted up steak and chips for us and what with this and a whiskey and soda to wash it down, we are happy as bugs in a blanket and quite satisfied with the war up to now. Don Murray, D. S. Murray^xiii and myself share a room where we have sheets and a cheval glass.^xiv Corn in Egypt, I have not known such luxury since I left you, my sweetheart, and it has a most heartening effect upon one.

      Especially is this so after my journey down. I came with Major Merriman and he, poor fellow, is rather depressing. I think he is obsessed with the idea that he is going to be shot. He is rather mournful about everything. I am no good in that attitude. The rest of the boys are so bright, God bless them. And yet I have no doubt but what the chances are the same for all of us.

      If we don’t get away tomorrow I am going to try and find Miss Carey’s^xv and see her for you. I’d be tickled to death to meet her after all you have told me of her.

       Chapter 1

       ‘And all because it is war!’

      11–27 November 1915

      11th November ’15

      At last we are in France! We had no word in Folkestone of what they wanted us to do until 3 p.m. Then it came in a hurry that we were to embark at 4 p.m. A rush and a hurry and then the job was done, the whole battalion getting aboard intact. It was a good passage till about ten minutes out from here but then we ran into the rain.ⁱ At 3.30 p.m. the battalion finally sailed, with destroyer escort, for Boulogne.

      What rain! Bow-wow. And it must have been going all day. They have put us into tents on the top of a hill and the whole place is a quag with running streams feet deep all about it.ⁱⁱ

      We are soaked to the skin and cheery as the devil. Cotton, Don Murray, Bowlyⁱⁱⁱ and myself are in one tent all cuddled up close together for warmth. 10.20 p.m.

      Townsend^iv has just poked his head under the flap and asked for shelter. The CO’s tent has blown down and its three occupants are hunting for homes. We have taken Towny in and he is now cheerily pessimistic, wondering why he joined the Army and expressing the wish that his mother could see him now.

      We are a happy party, even though wet.

      My stars, what strange creatures men are. Six months ago and half these fellows would have been half dead with less than half this dampness and now here we are happy as Larry and busily preparing for sleep. And all because it is war!

      12th November ’15, 8.10 a.m.

      What a night it has been! Rain in torrents and a gale which СКАЧАТЬ