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Twenty-four hours later, after a wash, shave and sleep we were different men, and in another twenty-four hours we had marched through Armentières and relieved some troops in trenches on the right of Houplines. We were relieved eight days later and billeted in a cotton factory in that place. We thought we were going to have a rest, but we were wrong: every night we had to go up the line digging communication trenches leading back from the front line. During this time we were issued with caps and packs. It was the first cap I had worn since August.

About one hundred of us were sent to a village outside Armentières, where the King inspected some of his Army. I hadn’t seen the King since he was Prince of Wales, when early in 1905 he held a garden party in the grounds of Sikundra Taj, about six miles from Agra in India. I was present as a signaller at that party, and although over nine years had elapsed he did not look a day older. No king in the history of England ever reviewed more loyal or lousier troops than what His Majesty did that day. To look at us we were as clean as new pins, but in our shirts, pants and trousers were whole platoons of crawlers. His Majesty decorated one of our sergeants with the Distinguished Conduct Medal, who had won it at Fromelles.

There were fifty-eight Number One Field Punishment prisoners in the Battalion at this time. When out of action they were locked up and had to do all the dirty jobs that wanted doing, and were tied up two hours a day (by the ankles and wrists, generally) to the carts and wagons in the transport lines. Outside the factory on the one side of the street was a wall with some iron railings sunk in. One afternoon the fifty-eight prisoners were tied up to the railings and I should think three parts of the female population of Houplines and Armentières paraded that street in the afternoon. Some were sympathetic and some were laughing. The prisoners resented this very much, and one remarked that he didn’t mind being tied up but he didn’t want a bloody lot of frog-eating bastards gaping at him. There were some hard cases among the Number One’s and the majority were continually in trouble, but these on the whole were the finest soldiers, in action, that I ever saw. During the first four months of the War, if a man was sentenced to imprisonment he left the Battalion to serve his sentence, but afterwards it was only an isolated case that was sent away. I have known men who were sentenced to five or ten years imprisonment stay with the Battalion, and in less than a month’s time have their sentences washed out for gallant conduct in the field.

One man in my company whom we called Broncho was the hardest case of the lot. Whenever we were out of action he was always up in front of the Colonel for some crime or other. He was a grand front-line soldier, and most of his crimes were caused by overbearing non-commissioned officers. There was an old saying that in the Army they tamed lions; but Broncho was never tamed. I was one of the escort to him one morning when he was in front of the Colonel. His crime was too serious for the Company Commander to deal with. It was insubordination to an N.C.O.—he had told a corporal that he was no bloody good. The Colonel gave Broncho the usual twenty-eight days Number One and warned him that he would be put up against the wall and shot if he did not alter. Broncho then reminded the Colonel that it was the third time he had given him that warning and that he didn’t care a damn whether he was shot or not. “March him out!” shouted the Colonel. He was brought up again next morning and sentenced to another twenty-eight days Number One for insubordination to his Commanding Officer.

But he got the whole lot washed out a fortnight later in the following manner. The enemy had been shelling so badly in the rear of us that all communication had broken down, and Buffalo Bill called for a volunteer to take a message back to Battalion Headquarters. Anyone who took the message back would have to make his way through the barrage and the communication trench had not yet been dug. Broncho shouted out: “I’ll take the bloody message,” and it was handed to him. It was a hundred-to-one he would be blown to bits before he had gone sixty yards—he not only arrived at Battalion Headquarters with the message but also came back with an answer. He was recommended for a decoration for this. A week previous when returning from a night-patrol one of the patrol had got badly wounded by unaimed fire; and it was Broncho who carried him back safely to the trench. For these two acts he had a term of imprisonment washed out and about six months accumulated Number Ones; but he got no decoration.

About the 2nd of December we took over some trenches in front of Houplines. Our trench ran into the River Lys and we were exactly eighty yards from the enemy’s trench, which was dug in front of a brewery. Duffy said that there was some sense in digging a trench in front of a place like that and that only good soldiers could have chosen such a spot. Ten yards behind our trench was a house which had been badly knocked about, but which had a good cellar. A small trench led from the front line to the house. Buffalo Bill and Deadwood Dick, who was now Second-in-Command of the company, stayed in the cellar. In a château five hundred yards behind the front line were Battalion Headquarters. Colonel Delmé-Radcliffe had gone home with a nervous breakdown and our senior major, Major Williams, had taken his place. Just below the château on the other side of the road was a block of houses, and a corporal and four of us who were sent out to do police duty for a week were billeted in one of them. The people living in the block were given twenty-four hours in which to clear out, but if they failed to do so we had to turn them out and drive them back into Houplines. At the end of twenty-four hours not one of them had budged, so we had a very unpleasant duty to perform, especially as it was snowing heavily at the time. We entered every house and in two cases had to pull the ladies out of their beds, but we finally turned them all out with the exception of one very old lady who was over eighty years of age, and she absolutely refused to budge an inch, and we didn’t want to use force on an old lady that age, so we gave her best. The end house of the block was the Battalion’s Aid Post and three young French ladies were allowed to stay in that house. They were always up during the night and doing what they could for our wounded men who were brought there before they were evacuated down the line. The communication trench leading to the front line had not yet been completed and our wounded had to stay in the trench until dusk before they could be brought back.

No civilians were allowed up this road during the day and they were only allowed to visit one of the houses in the block if they had permits signed by the Assistant Provost-Marshal of the police. At night a password was used and anyone coming up that road was challenged and asked for the password. Our orders were that if anyone came up the road at night and didn’t have the password we were to march them to Battalion Headquarters, and if they attempted to run away to either shoot or bayonet them.

That week we lived like lords. There were plenty of ducks and chickens about, pigeons in the toilet of the house we were staying in, and vegetables in the gardens. We also scrounged a lot of bottles of champagne and other wines and made up for the starvation diet we had been on for some time. Our usual rations were also more plentiful now and we were getting a bread ration. One morning a man came up with a permit. He had formerly occupied the house we were staying in and he told us he wanted to take two pigeons away. We had killed some pigeons the day before and only that morning I had killed another four which were boiling merrily away with a couple of chickens in a dicksee. He went up to the tollet and came down crying. He made us understand by pointing to the photographs of two pigeons hanging up on the wall that they were the two finest pigeons in the whole of Northern France and that they had pedigrees as long as ships’ cables. But we also made him understand by pointing to our bellies that they were as empty as drums. The finish was that we told him to take as many pigeons as he liked and clear off. I expect we had had a very expensive feed during one of the days we were in that house, because the man could not find those two pigeons anywhere.

Early in October the Germans had occupied Houplines, Armentières and other villages for a day or two before they were driven out. One old lady had had twelve billeted in her house, and one night after they had retired upstairs for the night one of them came down and commenced pulling her grand-daughter about. Her screams awoke the other Germans who came downstairs, seized hold of the dirty dog and gave him a good hiding. They then tied him to a post outside the house, where he spent the night (the old lady said), and it was raining heavily at the time. Another woman keeping a café in Houplines told me that a lot of German soldiers had looted her place, but a German officer came in while the looting was going on; there was hardly anything left by this time and he paid her in gold marks for the damage that had been done. A café near the cotton factory in Houplines was the scene of a remarkable fight, with only the lady of the café and her daughter as witnesses. When our troops drove the enemy out of Armentières one man who, I expect, was on the scrounge, wandered into Houplines, which was joining Armentières, and entered this café. He came on six Germans drinking: they had their rifles leaning against the wall by them. He recovered from his surprise first and attacked them before they knew where they were. Finally he killed the six but received a very bad wound himself. The old lady and her daughter carried him upstairs and laid him on the bed, dressing his wound the best way they could, but he died within an hour, she told me. They buried the seven in the garden behind the café, the six Germans side by side and the British soldier a few paces from them. The old lady had the man’s identity disc and pay-book, which she was keeping as souvenirs. He belonged to the Buffs (the East Kents) who were in the Sixth Division. The old lady wouldn’t allow anyone to sleep in that bed. She used to say that a grand soldier had died in it; and she was right: the man of the Buffs must have had the heart of a lion, and if ever a man won the Victoria Cross, he did. In the early days of open warfare, where a man fell so he was buried.

We were back in the trenches again and the five of us had gained about a stone each during the week. Our trenches were flooded. We were knee-deep in some places, and it was continually raining; but we had hand-pumps which we had scrounged from Houplines and worked them day and night. At night, we numbered off, one, two, three, one, two, three—ones up on sentry, twos and threes working. Every evening at twilight the order would come “Stand-to!” and every man in the trench would get up on the fire-step and gaze across no-man’s-land at the enemy’s trench. The same thing would happen at dawn in the morning. After standing to about five minutes the order would come “Stand down!” A sentry would be on from stand-to in the evening until stand-to the next morning, which during the long winter nights meant fourteen or fifteen hours continual standing on the fire-step and staring out at no-man’s-land. At night all sentries stood head and shoulders above the parapet: they could see better and were less liable to be surprised. Also when enemy machine-guns were traversing or enemy sentries firing it was better to be hit through the chest and shoulders than through the head; although that was all according to a man’s luck. Twos and threes were working all night, some carrying R.E. material from Houplines—this consisted of duckboards for laying on the bottom of the trench when the water was cleared out, barbed wire, sandbags and other material for building trenches. Some were carrying rations, others filling sandbags. There was a great dump of sand just behind our trench on the river bank which came in very useful. Some were putting out barbed wire in front, and others strengthening the parapet. A good standing trench was about six foot six deep, so that a man could walk upright during the day in safety from rifle-fire. In each bay of the trench we constructed fire-steps about two feet higher than the bottom of the trench, which enabled us to stand head and shoulders above the parapet. During the day we were working in reliefs, and we would snatch an hour’s sleep, when we could, on a wet and muddy fire-step, wet through to the skin ourselves.

If anyone had to go to the company on our right in the daytime he had to walk through thirty yards of waterlogged trench which was chest-deep in water in some places. We took turns in one part of the trench bailing out water with a bucket; we had to lift the bucket and empty it in a little ditch, on the back of the parapet, which led into the river. Of course we kept our heads well down during the operation. One morning a man named Davies had his thumb shot off whilst bailing. Every one of us volunteered to take his place, but one man got the bucket first. He deliberately invited a bullet through one of his hands by exposing them a little longer than was necessary; but the bucket got riddled instead and he spent the remainder of the day grousing and cursing over his bad luck. Everyone was praying for a wound through the arm or leg, and some were doing their level best to get one.

Behind the back wall of the house behind the trench was a pump and we could safely get to it by day and draw drinking water. The pump was about a foot from the edge of the wall, and if a man rose the handle to the full extent of his arm, his arm would be seen by the enemy. Two men got shot through the forearm within five minutes of one another, and then Buffalo Bill wisely gave orders that no more water was to be drawn from the pump in the daytime. He would have lost some more men in a short space of time if he hadn’t given that order. During the whole of the 1914-15 winter we endured enough of physical hardships, one would have supposed, to break men that were made of iron; but we suffered more in our morale than in our health, for casualties from sickness were comparatively few.

About this time the 5th Scottish Rifles, a Territorial battalion, joined our brigade. They were in billets at Houplines. I was ordered one night to proceed to Houplines and guide a platoon of them into our trench; they were coming to us for instructional purposes; I was also warned to bring them along the communication trench which had just been completed. I had never been through this trench and the only way I knew back and forth to our trench was along the river bank. I met the platoon not far from the mouth of the communication trench, reported myself to their officer, and we started on our way. I came to a part of the trench which branched off in two or three directions, and made a wrong guess. Soon I found myself in C Company’s part of the front line. I worked my way to B which was the company on our right, and then had to decide whether I would take the platoon through that waterlogged trench or over the top. An enemy machine-gun was traversing every now and then and the enemy sentries were busy with their rifles too. As soon as the machine-gun packed up for the moment I decided to make my way over the top and we arrived at our trench without a casualty. It took us an hour and a half to do that journey. If I could have brought them the way I knew along the river bank it would have taken us ten minutes. Old regular soldiers never held a very high opinion of the Territorials, but as time went on we got to like the 5th Scottish Rifles very much. They were the best Territorial battalion that I ever saw, and after they had been a few months with us we never worried if they were on the left or right of us in the line or in attacks.

The enemy in front of us had about half a dozen stoves in their trench, and the stove pipes were sticking up like periscopes above the parapet. Some of us used to do snap-shooting at them until the smoke would be coming out of dozens of holes. We used to fix iron plates in the parapet of our trench, concealing them as cleverly as we could, but in a day or two the enemy generally discovered them and would rattle bullets all around. Later they had a bullet which would penetrate them; a man was never safe even when firing from behind them. The hole in the iron plate was just large enough to put the muzzle of the rifle through, and one morning I saw the greatest shooting feat that I ever saw during the whole of the War. A man named Blacktin was firing behind one of the plates. He had fired two rounds and was just about to pull the trigger to fire the third when he seemed to be hurled against the back of the trench, his rifle falling from his hands. A German sniper had fired and his bullet had entered the barrel of Blacktin’s rifle, where it was now lodged fast, splitting the top end of the barrel the same way as a man would peel a banana. Blacktin’s shoulder was badly bruised.

About halfway between our trench and the enemy’s were two large mounds about ten yards from the bank of the river: we didn’t know whether the enemy were using them for some purpose or not. So one night Deadwood Dick asked me to go out on patrol with him, and we were going to endeavour to find out for sure. We got out of the trench and started to crawl on our stomachs towards the enemy’s trench: it was very misty and we were about five yards from the bank of the river. We approached the mounds very warily and had a good hunt round, but discovered nothing. We went on another ten yards when Deadwood Dick whispered to me to stay where I was and he would go on a little further on his own: he would signal when he was returning by a low whistle. I didn’t like the idea and told him so, but he insisted on it. We were now only about thirty yards from the enemy’s trench, but it was so misty that we could hardly see five yards in front of us. It takes a man a long time to crawl a little distance on his stomach and the minutes seemed hours whilst I was waiting for his return. I was straining my eyes trying to pierce the mist; but this was now clearing a little. Presently I spotted what I thought were two men approaching me; one was crawling and the other seemed to be walking in a crouching attitude behind and now and again dropping down. In a couple of seconds many thoughts rushed through my head. Had Deadwood Dick been captured and was this a German patrol coming towards me? I rose my rifle to fire, but put it down as the thought struck me that he might be still safe and that I would be putting him in danger by firing. I now made up my mind to lay still and when they were very nearly on top of me to spring up and, trusting to the element of surprise, bayonet the one and capture the other. I could now see the man that was crawling quite plainly but the other had disappeared. The crawling man gave a low whistle, which I did not answer. I couldn’t make it out; he whistled again and stood up on his feet. I answered the whistle this time and recognized Deadwood Dick. When he had been crawling over the tumps in the ground his legs would go up in the air, and I now think that that’s what I took for the man walking and dropping down. He informed me when we arrived back in the trench that he had crawled until he could dimly see them working on the barbed wire and that he had come across no listening-post of theirs. He had plenty of guts. When I told him what a fright he had given me by the way he was crawling, he said that I had had an optical illusion caused through the mist.