Читать книгу To Fight Alongside Friends: The First World War Diaries of Charlie May - David Crane - Страница 40

We are now filled with ambition as house builders. Orders have arrived that we are to look out suitable buildings and convert them into fit habitations for L’Armée Brittanique, which is to feed, wash and sleep in them at its own sweet will and get strong and dangerous ready for the ever-recurring ‘new offensive in the Spring’. It is most interesting, and no end of a problem. We have one hammer per company, the promise of some wood, 25 yards of waterproof canvas for the battalion, a limited supply of chloride of lime, and 12lbs of nails. And thus armed we set forth, [illegible] is ordered, to produce four Ritz hotels replete with every comfort for the soldiers of the King. I ask you! Truly if it is accomplished, as I have no doubt it will be, my admiration for the Army will go up by leaps and bounds. If only we had some bundles of firewood and a screw or two the outlook might be more rosy. But 12lbs of nails, a hammer and 25yds of felt! I ask you!!!^xiv

We have been to see D Company again tonight and have gambled. Naughty boys! Yet somehow I do not feel so naughty as I might have done had I not won 28 francs.